Samin Nosrat

Teacher, chef, and co-creator of the Pop-Up General Store
Berkeley, California

When the buttermilk-marinated chicken comes out of the oven,

it’s golden brown and fragrant, but that doesn’t mean there’s room

to leave the pan on the stove. So chef Samin Nosrat, who has a

sunny but small kitchen in Berkeley, California, lifts the chicken

onto a plate and moves the hot cast-iron pan to her rain-slicked

patio to cool off, making room for the pot of water into which

she’ll drop the butternut squash tortellini that we just hand-rolled

on her rolling wooden kitchen island.

This is a lesson in making it work at home: Nosrat doesn’t

make excuses, she makes food. Lots and lots of food that feeds her

friends (including Michael Pollan, from whose tree she gets her

Meyer lemons), employers (like Alice Waters, who hires Nosrat

to make butternut squash tortellini at events), and customers (with

chef Chris Lee, Nosrat runs the Pop-Up General Store, where they

sell prepared foods).

Nosrat doesn’t skimp on ingredients: she uses excellent olive oil

(one local, one from Italy) and beautiful farm-fresh eggs (both blue

and brown). Her cooking equipment is also impressive, including a

large copper pot that she fills with Meyer lemons, grapefruit, and

blood oranges for her citrus marmalade.