It’s late November, and Padma Lakshmi has just returned home from a cross-country tour. She’s been promoting Padma’s All American , a cookbook celebrating the immigrant and Indigenous recipes that make our culture deliciously diverse. Her green-hoodie-clad Chihuahua, Divina, jumps into her lap, while her 15-year-old daughter, Krishna Lakshmi-Dell — who her mom affectionately refers to as “Littlehands” — cozies up next to them. They’re riffing on what makes someone a “hardcore New Yorker,” arguing about their favorite films (“ White Chicks is not better than A Fish Called Wanda ”), and telling us that if it weren’t a school night, they would both be tempted to stay awake until the sun rises (“We have to separate ourselves from each other because we just keep talking, keeping each

See Full Page