Prospect Heights Food Writer Melissa Clark Explains How One-Pot Meals Are Like Haiku

With parents she describes as Julia Child disciples, but who were also riding the 1970s health wave, Melissa Clark wasn’t permitted store-bought cakes and cookies — but she was allowed to make her own.

Since setting up a station in her Brooklyn kitchen at around 8 years old, she’s barely left the bench. She has combined a love for the literary and tasty eats, putting out more than 40 cookbooks and writing a weekly food column for the New York Times.

After a stint working in restaurants and developing recipes for early food websites, Clark penned her first book, a bread machine cookbook. Her most recent, “Dinner in One: Exceptional & Easy One-Pan Meals,” published by Random House imprint Clarkson Potter, is a culmination of what she has learned over the years about reducing time and effort while maximizing flavor.

It’s an art the Prospect Heights-based author compares to writing haiku, the compact but expressive verse. An essential strategy is to use only one pot because, as Clark says, “nobody likes cleaning up.”

You were a coat checker in college at a restaurant. Was that what drew you into cooking professionally?

You know, [getting] into cooking, I really learned from my parents. They were big Julia Child fans. So it really started from a super young age. Plus, at the same time that they were total Julia Child disciples, they were also, in the 1970s, a little bit on the health wave. I mean, I wouldn’t call them health freaks, but they definitely did not buy me cakes and cookies. So if I wanted cakes and cookies I had to make them myself.

Could you tell us about the process of developing recipes and whether it has changed over time?

I’ve definitely gotten more professional. I now have recipe testers who come in and help me. I have a process that I go through, it’s less free-form. Generally I start with something that I’m just cooking at home. That is the seed of a recipe. It’ll go through several stages. So I’ll make, say for example, skillet chicken with corn and garlic, and it’ll just be something I whipped up for dinner. Then I’ll [ask] what are the elements that I want to include in the dish? How do I vary it? Should I add cream? Sour cream? Should I do it with brown butter? I’ll take different avenues and try them all and then decide, well, this is actually the best expression of these ingredients and of this dish. And then when I have that idea really firm, I will send it out to a recipe tester who has different equipment and a different kitchen, and then she’ll come back with notes and then I’ll redo it. So it’s a process that starts with a minimum of me making the recipe three times. I don’t want to make the recipe 10 times but sometimes I have to make it 10 times. It depends on how complicated the dish is.

As a lifelong Brooklynite, cooking out of Brooklyn, how does that influence your cooking style and your recipe development?

I feel like I’ve been so lucky to be in Brooklyn my whole life because you really can get almost anything here. And the great thing about Brooklyn is that it is such a diverse, cosmopolitan, exciting place. There’s just so much, there’s just always something new. Being able to take advantage of it and have it be right up at my door is always inspiring. So that’s great. And then I can get whatever ingredients I want, which is nice. It used to be that I’d have to go into the city to get some things but now I don’t ever have to go into the city if I don’t want to.

Do you have any favorite ingredients or foods that you always have in your pantry?

My pantry is bursting at the seams. But I always have garlic, lemons, and olive oil. Those are non-negotiable.

What inspired this new cookbook?

I’ve always been obsessed with how to get things down to the minimum amount of cleanup necessary. Whether you’re cooking in a small kitchen or a big kitchen, the less cleaning up you have to do, the more time you get to enjoy eating and spending time with your family. I find that a lot of recipes are written by professionals who have big kitchens, and maybe they have people to help clean up after them and so they’re not focused on that. So I wanted to spend an entire book really focusing on making everything as tightly knit as possible. It’s geared toward a very busy person who wants to get a delicious meal quickly. Because also, another thing is that if you’re using just one pot, and maybe a bowl and a cutting board and a knife, things go faster because you don’t spread out all over the place. So the recipes themselves are streamlined, to be quick, to be weeknight friendly, and to give you the least amount of cleanup. And it’s almost like writing a haiku in a way. You know, like you’re fitting something, you have this idea of an image or a flavor profile for a dish. You’re like, well how do I express that in the least amount of words when you’re writing a haiku? And for this book, it’s like how do I express that in the least amount of ingredients, space, equipment, cleanup, all of these things. And to me that’s fun.

Instant Pot and one-pot meals can have a reputation of blurring flavors together and churning out more stewy or boiled results, rather than necessarily what someone was aiming for. Do you have any tips to avoid that situation?

There’s a big myth that you need to add a lot of liquid and you don’t. But even if you do, then you just need to simmer it off. There are certain variables you can’t control, like how juicy is that tomato that you’re putting in and how much liquid do those greens have. Take the ingredients out before you simmer because you don’t want to overcook, say, shrimp, or you can leave them in if it’s meat.

Do you have any favorite sources for ingredients?

I definitely spend a lot of time in farmer’s markets. BKLYN Larder and R&D Foods have great specialty items. Mermaid’s Garden for fish is fantastic.

What do you do for fun when you’re not cooking, eating, or developing recipes?

We go to the opera. We love going to hear music. We love to go to Green-Wood Cemetery because what’s better than a concert at the cemetery? We love to go for walks. We love museums, especially the Brooklyn Museum, the Metropolitan Museum.

Have you noticed any notable changes over the last few years, with the pandemic, in how we’re eating and cooking?

People really are cooking more, and it’s so great to see. They’re feeling more confident in the kitchen. I think being stuck in the house was, for people who like to cook, they got more comfortable in their skills and willing to branch out more, which is great. But at the same time, I also feel like now that we’re free to go to restaurants, it’s like, woohoo alright, let’s get out there.

Editor’s note: A version of this story appeared in the Fall/Holiday 2022 issue of Brownstoner magazine.

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