In “Steamed: A Catharsis Cookbook for Getting Dinner and Your Feelings on the Table” (Running Press; $20) authors Rachel Levin and Tara Duggan look at all the ways the act of cooking can be therapeutic. Everyone needs to eat, but there are other reasons to turn to the kitchen: You can release some aggression pounding meat for the Pummeled Pork Tonkatsu; have a good cry while slicing onions for the Feeling Sad Onion Soup; or sneak in some downtime with a hands-off recipe like Peace Out Pot o’ Pintos as the beans simmer on the stove.
Levin, a Chronicle contributor, deploys the same wit and humor that’s on display in her previous cookbook, “Eat Something: A Wise Sons Cookbook for Jews Who Like Food and Food Lovers Who Like Jews” (Chronicle Books). Chronicle reporter Duggan, the former assistant editor of the Food + Wine section who now covers climate, brings the recipe chops demonstrated in her other cookbooks, which include “Root to Stalk Cooking: The Art of Using the Whole Vegetable” (Ten Speed Press).
Organized into three sections — Anger Management, It’s All Right to Cry, and Chilling the F Out — the book intersperses psychological research about why these techniques are cathartic with recipes for main courses, sides and desserts. Tweets, quotes from pop culture, and playful illustrations in place of styled food photography enhance the irreverent tone.
We caught up with the authors to learn a little bit more about what went in to making this extremely of-the-moment book. (This Q&A was edited for clarity and length.)
Q: Can you tell me a bit about how and when you came up with this idea?
Levin: It was actually before the pandemic, before we were sequestered in our kitchens, before the world fell apart, we came up with the idea. The world was in a terrible state because of … systemic racism, climate change, wildfire. … We realized that cooking has always been thought of as kind of therapeutic. But a cookbook had really rarely gotten into why is it therapeutic? And in what ways?
We turned in our first draft and then COVID hit, and it felt kind of prescient. It could not be more on point in that moment.
Q: And you’ve got categories — pounding meat, cutting up ingredients that are going to make you cry, etc. Did you start with those categories, or was it more thinking about dishes that feel therapeutic to make and figuring out why?
Levin: For me it was pounding chicken and chicken Parm, because I do that every year for my husband’s birthday. Then Tara kind of took it from there.
Duggan: I want to give you credit for the crying idea, because we always try to fight crying. We have a sidebar on the silly ways people try to avoid crying, (but) it kind of feels good sometimes.
Q: Where did these dishes came from? Are these all things that you could cook fairly often?
Duggan: Some of them are things that I cook a lot like the green sauces, chermoula or pesto that you make in mortar and pestle. I don’t always make them that way. I would often do it in a food processor — puree them. But doing it in a mortar and pestle, it’s super satisfying as you’re smashing, and … you get better flavor because you’re not just cutting up the herbs and the garlic, you’re mashing them and that releases more volatile compounds. So, it’s fun to reinvent a few things that I already cook a lot. And then some of them were things that I hadn’t really made before like the biang biang noodles, the hand-pulled noodles. … There are some theories that they’re named for the sounds that you make with the noodle on the counter.
Q: So what do you do for catharsis if you get stressed out working on a catharsis cookbook?
Duggan: Cannabis cookies.
Levin: That’s true. That recipe makes a lot of cookies. … It was peak COVID. I hadn’t really seen anyone out at my house for a while, and Tara comes over … with home-baked cookies. It was the sweetest thing. I’m like, Oh my god, this is what I need. It was just a fun co-author/cookbook moment.
The most stressful part, I think, was getting groceries (to test the recipes), as it was during a time that was stressful itself, and then trying to get things you might not have in your pantry and having to go find it in a special place.
Duggan: I was doing the book on top of my job at The Chronicle. And it was hard during the pandemic to have extra work. I think we were all so wiped out. But, for me, doing a cookbook project where I’m developing recipes, the planning part stresses me out — like, how am I going to get through all this on deadline? But the nice thing is you get dinner out of the deal. And I always had my kids’ help.
Levin: This is kind of a separate thing, but I feel like kind of the last thing we want to be doing right now is cooking when we can go to restaurants again. But at the same time, the kitchen will always have been there and will always be a refuge and a place where we need to retreat, to make dinner and to cry and feel better.
Layla Schlack is associate managing editor of print at Wine Enthusiast. Email comments to [email protected]
Mortared Basil Pesto With Trofie Pasta
Serves 4
It’s added to everything these days from frozen TJ’s pizza to “gourmet” grilled cheese. But pesto’s ubiquity obscures its humble origins, back when someone decided to simply smash basil leaves in a mortar with some garlic and pine nuts and call it a sauce. Purists still swear by the mortared method, and we do, too, though you do need a larger mortar to pull this one off. Not only does it render the basil leaves into a silky puree, releasing all of their anise-y, pungent aroma and flavor molecules like no food processor can, it’s also the most stress-relieving way to experience pesto. Especially on a particularly tough day, when you happen to have basil growing in your garden, or on your windowsill, anyway. Sure, the premade kind can be tasty, too — but once you smash, you may never go back. From “Steamed: A Catharsis Cookbook for Getting Dinner and Your Feelings on the Table” (Running Press; $20) by Rachel Levin and Tara Duggan.
¼ teaspoon salt, plus more for the water and seasoning to taste
½ cup extra-virgin olive oil
1 garlic clove, peeled
¼ cup pine nuts or walnuts
4 cups lightly packed fresh basil leaves (about 4 ounces on the stem), thick stems removed
½ cup grated Parmesan cheese, plus more to serve
12 ounces trofie pasta or spaghetti
Bring a pot of water to a boil for the pasta, and salt generously. Pour the olive oil into a measuring cup with a spout.
Place ¼ teaspoon of salt and the garlic clove in a large mortar and pound with a pestle until smooth. Add the pine nuts and continue to pound until they have turned to a pulp. This next part is where things get serious, requiring a few minutes of constant pounding, so have a friend or family member available to step in when your tricep gets sore. Begin adding the basil leaves, a handful at a time, and pound vigorously, adding more as you go. Keep pounding and smashing, bringing in reinforcements if you have to, until any stringy stems have transformed into small particles and you achieve a smooth, bright green paste.
Add a tablespoon or two of oil to the paste and mix in. Add the cheese, smash to combine, then drizzle in the rest of the oil slowly while continuing to pound and mix the sauce. Taste and add more salt if you like.
Cook the pasta according to the package directions. When draining, reserve ½ cup of the water. Return the pasta to the pot and stir in the pesto with a drizzle or two of the pasta water, if needed, to help thinly coat the noodles with the sauce. Season to taste with salt, and serve right away with the extra Parmesan on the side.
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