Simple Kitchen Memoir

In this wry and introspective memoir, Rebecca Orchant, a restaurateur and food writer known for her work with Huffington Post and Saveur, invites readers into the personal and professional kitchens that have shaped her life and the hard-won lessons she has learned along the way. Simmering: A Kitchen Memoir delves into the places and people who have influenced Orchant's love of food and the role it plays in her relationships - with others and with herself.

Orchant's narrative spans a wide epicurean breadth, from the culinary intrigue of her childhood in Albuquerque to a kitchen table marriage proposal in Brooklyn and a hearthside BDSM scene on Cape Cod. She reminisces about first loves and lasting losses, favorite meals and failed friendships, unblinkingly examining the complexities of her deeply meaningful polyamorous connections while also bravely recounting earlier sexual awakenings, betrayals, and assaults.

Throughout this journey, Orchant finds solace and a sense of belonging in the kitchens she has inhabited, the common spaces where so much comes together, often with joy, sometimes with pain, but always with the spice of life. Across Simmering: A Kitchen Memoir, she weaves in memorable dinner parties, visits to standout restaurants, beloved shared cooking rituals, and a few reliable recipes.

In the end, Orchant proves that the process of simmering is required to let the hardest moments of life blend together with the best ones, becoming something far richer than the raw ingredients one might have to work with. Her wry, insightful, and at times, erotic, memoir invites readers to consider the ways in which food and the spaces where it is prepared and shared can shape our most intimate and profound experiences.

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