Steamed
Whip, pound, grate, and grind your way to culinary catharsis with Steamed, a cheeky cookbook for when you need to get dinner and your feelings on the table.
Where can a person express frustration, existential crisis, fleeting sadness, and consuming rage -- perhaps all at the same time -- without drawing attention to themself? Where is taking your feelings out with mallets, knives, grinders, and graters not just allowed but encouraged? The kitchen, of course! And in Steamed acclaimed food writers Rachel Levin and Tara Duggan offer readers 50 funny, feisty, and full-flavored dishes to unleash that sweet culinary catharsis.
Tired parents, stressed worker-bees, and newly-minted adults alike will find recipes for those inevitable moments when you're tired and need to let it all out. Recipes like "Pounded Chicken Parmesan," "Ripped Bread Salad," and "Feeling Sad French Onion Soup" are the perfect outlet for dealing with day-to-day indignities, while soothing kitchen projects like "Braided Challah" and "It'll-All-Be-Okay Chicory and Cannellini Beans" provide a moment of calm in a cuckoo world. Playful sidebars, including "Beat It All Out: When You Just Want to Whisk Like a Wild Woman," teach technique and channel all those feelings into something utterly delicious. For anyone looking for stress eating's more constructive cousin, Steamed and catharsis cooking are here to lend a helping hand -- or cleaver.
Rachel Levin, the first restaurant critic for Eater, is a freelance journalist who has written for the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the New Yorker, Lucky Peach, Outside, and the San Francisco Chronicle's Food section, where she writes a semi-regular column about restaurant regulars. She is the author of Look Big and Eat Something, with Wise Sons Deli.
Tara Duggan is the deputy food editor of the San Francisco Chronicle's James Beard Award-winning section, where she also won individual awards from the James Beard Foundation, the Association of Food Journalists, and the California News Publishers Association. She is the author of several cookbooks, including Root to Stalk Cooking, and coauthor of The Blue Bottle Craft of Coffee. Her recipes and articles have been published in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Food & Wine, and Sunset magazine, among other publications.