Something from Nothing: A Cookbook

Hello, Again

Someone very close to me texted me out of the blue one day: “I just made your olive chicken. Every time I make your recipes, I’m amazed how I could make something so good from basically nothing.” Chicken and a jar of Castelvetrano olives is not nothing, but I know what she was trying to say. Even after all these years, I still struggle to succinctly describe my cooking style, but “something from nothing” is as close as I’ve come.

I’m not a lazy cook, really, but I am obsessed with being productive and efficient, which makes me pretty frugal with both my ingredients and my time. I don’t soak my beans, and I enjoy doing in two steps what’s usually done in five. I save the scraps of my vegetables to make soup to avoid going shopping, and one of my favorite snacks on planet Earth is the softened, chicken fat–soaked celery in the pot leftover from making broth because why waste perfectly good celery? Both as a cook and an eater, I’m turned off by needless complications, and as particular and fussy as I can be, my food remains quite the opposite.

Since my last book, I met, fell in love with, got married to, and had a baby with a wonderful man. In his vows, he told me that his favorite nights at home were when we didn’t have time to go grocery shopping and I made something out of what we had in the pantry, because it was in those thrown-together moments that he got to see how my imagination worked. I cried very hard, of course—never had I considered that someone might interpret my affinity for practicality as creativity. Gorgeous meals come together easily with perfect produce and well-marbled meats, but nothing gives me more pleasure than rooting around the cans and tins of a dimly-lit kitchen and emerging with the best tomato soup of my life.

Coincidentally, I wrote and shot this book in tandem with opening a tiny pantry store in upstate New York called First Bloom. It’s a longtime dream fully realized: a grocery store of my very own, a physical manifestation of all my favorite things about cooking, shelves stocked with tins of anchovies, both expensive and cheap pasta, the nice-looking beans from California, and, in the center of the room, a large wooden table of rotating seasonal produce (plus lemons). Everything you need to make a perfect meal; a room full of the practical things that make me happiest in the world. (This is less a plug for the store and more just to illustrate how dedicated I am to the pantrystaple lifestyle.)

I would be remiss if I didn’t mention that I was also pregnant through much of the writing and making of this book. (It was a big year.) I didn’t plan it that way, but I like the idea that my son, Charlie, will one day be able to cook from this book knowing it’s what fueled me while he grew in my belly—the foods I had the energy to make (lots of brothy soups) and the ingredients I craved (capers).

I feel both proud of and nervous to admit that this book could potentially be described as . . . adult. Mature, even. There’s a quiet confidence in recipes that have so little ingredients, take so little time, and yet promise so much. What the recipes here lack in bells and whistles, they make up for in soul and unimpeachable deliciousness. Some are old classics I’ve reinterpreted (I add garlic to my carbonara and there’s no cheese in my Caesar dressing), some are recipes that are classic to me (Caramelized Shallot Pasta, page 213, is undeniably more famous than I am), some aren’t classic at all (yet!), and all are easy to make with the help of a well-stocked pantry. Throughout, the complexity of the recipes stays low and the ingredient lists are minimal, all the while encouraging you to go off script, to adapt and make them your own. An extended love letter to simplicity, this book is about finding joy and satisfaction in the tiny miracles of cooking—all of the deliciousness that comes from making something from nothing.