Simmering

In this wry memoir - filled with searing insights, cutting commentary, and heated eroticism - restauranter and food writer Rebecca Orchant (Huffington Post, Saveur) takes readers behind the scenes of the personal and professional kitchens that have shaped her life and its hard-won lessons.

With Simmering: A Kitchen Memoir, Orchant revisits the places and people influencing her love of food and the role food plays in her love - for others and for herself. From childhood culinary intrigue in Albuquerque to a kitchen table marriage proposal in Brooklyn to a hearthside BDSM scene on Cape Cod, Orchant examines the full epicurean breadth of her life. She recalls first loves and lasting losses, favorite meals and failed friendships. And she unblinkingly looks at the complexities of her deeply meaningful polyamorous connections while also bravely rendering earlier sexual awakenings, betrayals, and assaults: as a curious child, a vulnerable teenager, and an adult pushing away a renowned celebrity chef.

Throughout, Orchant finds comfort and belonging in kitchens, the common spaces where so much comes together, often with joy, sometimes with pain, always with the spice of life. Across Simmering: A Kitchen Memoir, she sprinkles in memorable dinner parties, visits to standout restaurants, beloved shared cooking rituals, and a few reliable recipes. In the end, Rebecca Orchant proves that simmering itself is required to let the hardest moments of life blend together with the best ones to become something far richer than the raw ingredients one might have to work with.