Her new book, Something From Nothing, grows out of all of this: the graft, the pantry-based cooking, the no frills and the understanding that most people don’t live above a perfectly stocked Italian deli. Spending more time in Upstate New York, away from the convenience of city life, forced her to cook like most home cooks do – with whatever’s available. Old fennel, a half-jar of capers, leftover rice, a head of garlic. Real ingredients, slightly scruffy, that need rescuing. She compares it to style. “If you’ve got loads of money, it’s easy to look good. But if you don’t and you still look great – a good white shirt, the right trousers – that’s style. It’s what you do with it.”
A few years ago, before meeting her, I’d filed Alison away in my mind as the poster girl for the “happy, child-free, 30-something woman in food.” Then she got married, had a baby and … didn’t go anywhere. Even with the first-trimester nausea, the C-section recovery, the logistics of childcare and touring with a baby in tow, she has kept going. “It’s not that your ambition gets cut in half,” she says. “It’s that everything else grows by 50 per cent. You still have 100 per cent of you – there’s just more life in it now.”
I rarely meet people who have similar careers to me because my life is so specific, so Alison felt like an old friend. Our time quickly turned into over an hour which then led to dinner together at Bouchon Racinethe the night after.
She’s exactly who I thought she’d be. Funny, impossibly cool and refreshingly different.
Dining and Cooking