Samin Nosrat's 2017 cookbook, Salt Fat Acid Heat, was organized around what she considers the four fundamental elements of food — and how to make delicious dishes that didn't require step-by-step instructions. One thing deliberately absent: recipes.
"People can get trapped in a recipe, and feel so bound to the written letter," she says. "They feel really constraining, and that constraint hurts my heart."
Nosrat honed her craft at the famous Berkeley restaurant Chez Panisse, where she started out as a busser and eventually made it into the kitchen as a cook. Salt Fat Acid Heat felt like the culmination of a lifetime of work, and led to a four-episode Netflix show. But when the pandemic hit and Nosrat was forced to stay home, she struggled with depression.
"I was sitting in this house by myself and wondering like, what am I doing?" she says. "I already said everything I have to say about cooking. And I'm not even sure I like cooking or eating that much anymore."
The isolation made Nosrat realize the importance of sharing meals with other people. She started a Monday-night dinner party for friends, which she calls her "anchor for life." And she began to reconsider her stance on recipes. She now sees them as a tool for creating community around food.
"The truth is that people, I've realized, need some handholding," she says. "I think this is almost an act of service, the way I view making recipes is something I can do that can be of use to the greatest number of people."
Nosrat latest cookbook is Good Things: Recipes and Rituals to Share with People You Love.
Interview highlights
On her epiphany regarding recipes
Somebody had suggested to me, "You should just write a book of recipes. You make things so complicated for yourself. You don't need to, every time you write a book, like redefine the genre. Everything doesn't have to be this major philosophical tome."
I kind of got mad at her. I was like, "Do you even know me? I would never do that." And then just about a week later, I was making sort of this cabbage slaw with this like very gingery, sesame miso dressing that was so good and so easy and reminded me kind of, like, the hippie ginger slaws of my youth. ... I had pushed all the flavors to the max. It was like super gingery, super salty, super acidic, super spicy and just, like, tingled every bit of yumminess in my mouth. And I just stood there thinking, Wow, this is so delicious and so simple. If only I had like an easy way to share this with people. And then I was like, uh oh, I guess that's a recipe.
On falling into a depression after the huge success of Salt Fat Acid Heat
It felt so amazing and so lucky and such an honor to have that attention and that my work was reaching people and meaning something to them and that after so many years of sort of working in the background, I was finally sort of visible for the thing that I had done. That was all amazing. But it was also really grueling. And there were probably two years straight of traveling and promotion after finishing the book and the show and that was really exhausting. And so when I was in it, it felt sort of like the momentum of it kept me going.
And then as it was slowing down ... 2020 happened ... and so there was a lot of quiet for me after so much busyness and that quiet was a time to reflect. I had earned everything that I had thought I ever wanted, right? Like, I never thought I would have financial stability and all of a sudden I had financial stability. I was able to buy a house. People saw me for the thing that I had made and they loved it. And all of that felt so good but ... I hadn't admitted to myself on the deepest, deepest level that I really believed on some level if I achieved all of these things, that that would fill this hole of loneliness in my heart, that I always call my oldest friend, is this loneliness. And I thought maybe I could address this loneliness by succeeding. But then I succeeded and the loneliness was still there. And so that was a really sort of rude awakening.
On embracing imperfection
I was trained to be a perfectionist. But I've had finally to kind of come to terms with the fact that that's at work, that's in a professional kitchen where it's my job to deliver the best possible thing at any cost over and over again, night after night. But that's not what cooking is for in my life, and that's what cooking for I think in most people's lives at home. And I think there is a really sort of toxic and destructive message that's baked into food media in a way…
The idea that we are supposed to somehow produce professional results at home under home circumstances, there's something very disingenuous and harmful in selling that to people that it's something you can do at home. I hope that in some ways modeling me trying to be nicer to myself is a gift to people at home that like, hey, if she's a professional and sometimes she can't do more than just make rice in the rice cooker and eat some boiled broccoli with it and maybe some hot sauce, maybe it's OK for us to consider that dinner too. Maybe a baked potato can just be dinner.
On how her estranged father's death recalibrated her life
My dad was a really complicated person. He had a traumatic brain injury and then was in the hospital for several months before dying. And it was until he basically was incapacitated that I was able to reflect on some of my feelings, which I now understand were fear for my own safety. …
I was estranged from him basically my entire adult life, which also felt very shameful to acknowledge and talk about. But also I was scared to talk about it because he was often sort of stalking me and sending people to spy on me and stuff. … And so there would be sort of like distant family members that he would sort of assign to come check on me and stuff. And I lived with a very real fear that he could harm me in sort of meaningful ways, if not physical ways than other other ways. …
I watched him die and he was so sort of lonely and pathetic and the sort of sum total of everything that he'd done was coming back to end his life so sadly. Like, he did it to himself. And it made me reflect on that, in that moment and ever since, about how I wanna die and what I wanna be looking at, at the end of my life. And I want to look back and know that I made a life filled with beauty and friendship and joy and love and nature and goodness. And so how do I make my choices on a daily basis so that I can end my life that way? And that sort of has become part of this recalibration.
On starting a Monday night dinner group
This thing that was becoming sort of central to my own life was trying to create my own Sabbath-like practice with these Monday dinners that I have with my friends and trying to understand how it is that a ritualized meal can feel like such an anchor for life. …
These are the people sort of very much at the heart of this book and now at the heart of my life. And I am so glad for them. I'm so glad for this ritual. The other day I was leaving my house to go to the airport to begin this book tour and I locked the door and I walked to the car and I said a little prayer under my breath. I said, "It'll be different this time. It'll be different this time." Like I have something to ground me. I have [my dog] Fava. I have these friends. I have my girlfriend. I have my home. I have this ritual. I have a place that I'm expected to be every Monday. And I have somewhere where I belong and I don't know that I've really ever had that before and it feels really good.
Therese Madden and Susan Nyakundi produced and edited this interview for broadcast. Bridget Bentz, Molly Seavy-Nesper and Meghan Sullivan adapted it for the web.
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