7 questions with Alison Roman as she launches a new cookbook

Alison Roman has a knack for making home cooks feel like they can pull off something dazzling without trying too hard.

Her recipes for anchovy-rich pastas, big salads and unfussy desserts radiate ease, even if they’re built on sharp instincts and years of experience. “If something is taking a lot of effort,” Roman said, “it’s not working.”

A former New York Times and Bon Appétit recipe writer, Roman became a household name with her breakout cookbooks “Dining In” and “Nothing Fancy,” which helped define a new era of casually confident home cooking. That ethos runs through “Something from Nothing,” her third cookbook, which celebrates the art of turning pantry staples into dinner (Clarkson Potter, $37.99).

Roman, who’s also a newsletter writer, shop owner and new mom, spoke to the Star Tribune about why she keeps “playing the hits,” what she’s learned about effortlessness, and how it feels knowing her food has become part of so many people’s celebratory dinner tables. The interview has been edited for length and clarity.

What inspired you to focus a whole book around pantry staples?

Basically, I realized that’s what all my recipes were. I let my work dictate what the book is going to be. I try not to force anything. I just think about what I’ve been cooking and what do they all have in common? Sometimes I’m having people over all the time. And this book was like, well, everything I make involves lentils or beans, you know, like pantry staples. It felt nice to give myself that directive, because it was very much just how I have been cooking anyway.

You’re known for certain ingredients — anchovies, lemons, capers — and this book really leans into them. Was it freeing to just go all in?

But also, they’re used differently: they’re chopped for the dressing, they’re chopped and used to finish a steak, they’re used to roast fennel, they’re melted into olive oil for pasta. In the same way that capers show up, fennel shows up, lemons show up, and hopefully you start to see you can do a lot with very little if you treat them differently.

Your recipes have an unstudied ease, like you’ve thrown something together and it just works. How do you think about the balance between effort and effortlessness?

If I’m really struggling with something, food-wise, I give up. That’s not the case with writing. If I’m struggling with writing, that probably means that it’s worth digging into, and I should figure it out.

But food, to me, should be natural and effortless — it should taste good and it should work. And if I’m struggling too much to make something be easy or taste good, then I should probably rethink it. … That’s something that I shed a long time ago. In my early days of cooking or recipe development, I would struggle a lot more, and now I’ve learned my lesson. Sometimes in that process I’d be like, “This is really what I should have been doing” or “this is more delicious.” And it almost always clicks pretty instantaneously.

But I would say that the effortlessness appears that way because it is, more often than not. It’s very difficult to fake that, and anytime I’ve tried to fake it, you can tell and it doesn’t work.

People are afraid of being called boring or uncreative. I know that I have been. It feels like a real insult, but I think that there’s a lot of power in standing behind something if it’s the best version of it.

If I go to a pizza restaurant, I’m always ordering the margherita. I’m never ordering the wildest thing on the menu. And I think it’s because I want to know that you can do that really well first. I think people assume that it’s giving up, or lame, or — I don’t know. But I wear the same button-down shirt and high-waisted blue jeans. It’s reflected in everything about me. I like the classic basic things … they’re classic and basic for a reason.

Many of your recipes have become go-tos for holidays and dinner parties. How does it feel knowing your food shows up at people’s celebrations?

It’s so touching, and it’s absolutely my dream. It’s why I do what I do, and if that wasn’t the case, I would feel like I was doing something wrong. It’s the best validation. There aren’t really awards for what I do, especially in the world of social media. Going viral — that sort of validation is really fleeting and pretty hollow. But to be a part of people’s lives and their actual holidays and the food that they make for their families ... that is the award, the reward.

Between opening your shop First Bloom in New York and becoming a mom, you’ve had a lot of new beginnings. How have those shaped your relationship with cooking or your time in the kitchen?

When you travel do you look for pantry items or local ingredients to bring home?