The Creator of Instagram's Favorite Cookie, Alison Roman, Shares a Week of Dinners — A Week of Dinners

Welcome to Kitchn's series A Week of Dinners, where we show you how our favorite cooks put dinner on the table.

Alison Roman is the creator of a chocolate chip cookie that sent Instagram into wild fervor last fall — a recipe with enough panache to show off, but so easy it gives Tollhouse cut-and-bakes some competition. "They're really, really good and they're simple. They're not crazy. There's nothing polarizing about them," Roman says about their virality.

The truth is that the cookies were not a happy accident. Roman has been a professional cook for 13 years now, and the thought and attention she puts into her work is substantial. "I want to help people feel empowered in the kitchen," she explains. "It brings me a lot of joy."

As a former Senior Food Editor at Bon Appétit (turned contributor) and new columnist for the New York Times, Roman is a force in the food world. She came out with her first cookbook, Dining In, last fall, and her second one is well under way. Somewhere between working on all of her various side projects and checking Instagram messages, she manages to make dinner for herself and her friends — usually unplanned, and sometimes involving popcorn and nutritional yeast.

I got to visit Roman in her new Brooklyn apartment, where we talked meal planning (or her lack thereof), the pantry ingredients she always has on hand for easy dinners, and the things she makes consistently for dinner (you guys, her steak salad recipe is so damn good).

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