""I was losing my mind," the chef and writer Samin Nosrat said. We were sitting in the living room of her small house in Oakland, and she was describing a period in her life, just after the arrival of COVID vaccines, when she was sunk in a depression and floundering in her attempts to write the follow-up to her 2017 cooking guide, "Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat.""
"In 2019, Nosrat sold a proposal for an ambitious sequel called "What to Cook," which would help readers decide on a dish based on four constraints: time, resources, preferences, and ingredients. But the concept refused to cohere. After two years, she said, "I was, like, 'Take the money back.' " One of her agents suggested that she just write, you know, a cookbook, with recipes. At first, Nosrat resisted."
After COVID vaccines arrived, Samin Nosrat sank into a depression and struggled to write a coherent follow-up project based on time, resources, preferences, and ingredients. The proposed concept failed to cohere after two years, prompting her to consider returning the advance. An agent suggested she write a traditional cookbook with recipes, a suggestion she initially resisted because she viewed recipes as training wheels meant to be outgrown. She nevertheless creates highly influential recipes and came to appreciate recipes' capacity to teach, guide, and help cooks gain confidence and independence.
Read at The New Yorker
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