Samantha Balaban

對于梅麗莎·克拉克來說，烹飪是一件讓人享受的事情……

In Melissa Clarks kitchen—which she calls “messy”， but actually beautiful—cooking dinner is fun and best when it takes as few dishes as possible.

Clark， whose The New York Times column is called “A Good Appetite”， has written dozens of cookbooks. In her latest Dinner in One， Clark offers 100 recipes that can be made in a single container. There are many recipes in this cookbook for chicken， dumplings， one?bowl cakes and so on. All of the recipes in the cookbook are flexible， which is quite special.

Before she was the winner of multiple James? Beard? awards，? Clark? was? a? coat checker and hostess at a restaurant called American Place. That job was her first

look behind the scenes at a professional kitchen. “I knew I wanted to be a food writer at that point. This was right at the beginning of food blogs coming out on the Internet. And I want food to be how I tell my story and how I tell other peoples stories. To really understand someone， to understand their souls and their minds， I really feel like you need to see what they eat，” she says.

“I love talking to people about food and answering questions and figuring out how theyre cooking and how I can make it easier for them. I really love cooking. And I really want everyone else to love it， too，” she adds.

What did Clark do before she was the winner of multiple James Beard awards？