Alison Roman Reinvented America’s Favorite Cookie. Up Next, World Domination

And as with Dining In, which was meant to nudge people into the kitchen, this cookbook also has an agenda. “Having food is great!” she summarizes. “I feel like people panic about having enough food or the right food but just have food. It doesn’t have to be an elaborate multicourse meal.” In fact, with an entire section of the book devoted to snacks, there’s a case to be made for a dinner built atop the perfect cracker or around a baked potato bar. Roman just wants people to commit to the notion that it doesn’t have to be stressful to send around a quick email or text invitation and sit down to delicious food. That could mean “house dip,” potato chips, and caviar or lasagna or a roast chicken. Or it could involve a summons to “come over for a giant ham,” which is a thing Roman that has done.

An admitted perfectionist, Roman tests and retests her recipes to make sure that when someone turns to one for that impromptu dinner, it works. It is, after all, much less fun to be spontaneous when the vegetables are burnt and the steak overcooked. “It’s all about trust,” Roman points out. Which means it’s important to her to be available to readers and to let them know that she's a real person, with each of her recipes workshopped in her own (small!) home kitchen. (“If I had three fridges, I would be Martha Stewart. I’d be like, ‘75 lobsters for my closest friends!’”)

It also means about about 250,000 people expect to be able to get ahold of her on Instagram. Roman tries hard not to let the constant pressure (and occasional blowback—see an entire article titled “Is #TheStew Actually That Good?”) affect her: “I think that I use Instagram now as a place for output. I take in much less than I used to. For me, it’s a place where I can go and share work, and I can announce things, and I can get information into the hands of the people that want it, whether that’s a new recipe, or an event, or whatever.”