Hot Mess Kitchen

FOREWORD

by Mindy Kaling

I wish I was a hot mess. Looking back on my twenties^* you probably could’ve described me as an “anxious mess,” a “workaholic mess,” or maybe just a plain “mess mess.” Unfortunately, I lacked the sexy confidence it would have taken to qualify me as a hot one. So when Miranda and Gabi gave me their book, I was so excited. Reading it felt so aspirational. If I can’t be a hot mess, at least I want to learn all the secrets of two bona fide ones (who also happen to be adorable and chic and blond).

And who wouldn’t be excited to tear into Hot Mess Kitchen? This book is awesome. I came for the recipes and stayed for the funny, personal writing. How could you not love a book with recipes like “Fuck It, Let’s Just Get Stoned Nachos” and “All My Friends Are Married Mud Pie”? Surely there is not one among you who has not felt both sentiments. You could buy this book and enjoy it without ever taking out your oven mitts.

But not me! I take my foreword-writing seriously, and I wanted to test out some recipes. A word about me: When it comes to cooking, I am really basic. I like things really obvious and hard to mess up. The extent of my cooking in my twenties was a piece of steak flattened into submission on my George Foreman Grill, then covered in Tabasco sauce. So I was a little worried about testing these out. The great news? They’re legit and they’re easy AF (am I using that acronym right? I’m old). My personal favorites were “Schadenfreude Sundae” and the “Netflix and Chili Con Carne.” If you think it sounds a little sad that I made a batch of delicious chili and ate it while watching Narcos alone on my sofa, then you don’t know just how good that recipe is. I feel sad for you.

This is a great gift for your young, coolest friends and an even better gift for yourself. I can’t wait for you to get your copy and promptly cover it in food stains, as I did. Joyfully.

WELCOME TO OUR BOOK

Hello, beautiful reader,

Gabi and Miranda here. Welcome to our book! Thanks for buying it! Or maybe your cool aunt bought it for you as a graduation gift? Perhaps the delivery guy who drops off your weekly burrito gave it to you passive-aggressively with your last order? Maybe your mom sent it to you after having hacked into your email account and deciding you were incompetent. Are you yelling at your mom right now? Stop! Forgive her. But just for buying you this book (because you will like it). No need to forgive her for anything else. You can blame your parents, or anyone else, forever and never assume responsibility for anything! It will be healthy and fun. Just kidding. Unfortunately, at some point, you do have to grow up and take care of yourself. We know, we know, this is truly a horrific endeavor (no matter how old you actually are), so we’re here to help by teaching you how to cook. We’re not asking you to open your mail every day or even to go through the giant stack of papers sitting on your bedroom floor. We’re merely suggesting that you think about learning how to cook.

Keep reading! Don’t run away because cooking seems scary and/or you’re lazy. We get it and we agree: doing basically anything is terrifying. What are plans? Do you stick with them? You do? You’ve left the house before? Whoa. Well, for the rest of us slackers, we’re going to demonstrate how to cook fun, tasty, mostly healthy food in a manageable way so that you actually do it when you say you will. The trick is breaking things down into steps and doing a little bit at a time, starting with what to buy at the grocery store and going all the way to using your culinary skills to trick someone into falling in love with you forever.

Cooking is a thing you can do to truly treat yourself well. Do you have some vision of a perfect, put-together, chic, awesome version of yourself? Are you worried you’ll never become her? The only way you will is if you start acting like her now. You, lovely reader, deserve to have a nice meal when you come home from work, or wherever you go during the day (we don’t judge). It will make you feel better. We promise. Okay, we know this is all very corny, and we’re sorry about that. We promise the rest of the book won’t be like this. Okay, it might have some moments, but everyone just chill.

And we’re going to be here every step of the way, telling you which knife to use and how to tell if your meat is ready or if you’ll be getting salmonella (relax, you probably won’t). We’ll be there when your mascara is running because you’re chopping onions, or because you’re crying, or because you sneezed right after applying it. And we’re going to sprinkle all our recipes with interesting musings and embarrassing anecdotes to keep you entertained. We’re going to be your friends. Your kitchen friends, your hot mess kitchen friends. Your best friends? No, no, this isn’t like a Her type of scenario. Have real friends.

We’re excited to hang.

XOXO,

Gabi and Miranda

FUTURE LOVERS!

MPB

Before we get deep into the cooking, Gabi and I want to introduce ourselves properly. You’ve got to be wondering who the hell we are and why you should bother listening to us. Well, I’m a comedy writer living in Los Angeles and Gabi is an accomplished chef. Gabi will be our sage cook throughout this book and I will be our more novice hot mess chef.

So, I’ll start with my hot-messness. One of my main problems in life is that I really do not want to grow up. In my adolescence, I’d wake up crying in the middle of the night realizing I was going to age and eventually have to leave my parents’ home. I’d like to be a true baby forever. My calculations have proven this impossible, so I’ve begrudgingly aged, fighting it harshly every step of the way. Refusal to accept certain responsibilities has left me acting like a hot mess for most of my twenties.

Sure, there are times when being a hot mess is fun and glamorous, like in a mainstream romantic comedy, but then there are also times when it’s really fucking terrible, like in an indie romantic comedy. I once ate dirt after seeing a YouTube video of someone else doing it. And it wasn’t even the right kind of dirt. It’s supposed to be, like, clay and I ate from a potted plant. I’ve never gone into full self-destruct mode in a visible way, although doing so seems very old-Hollywood chic, but I’ve never really taken care of myself in a serious way either, until recently.

I’d already been going to therapy and had even downloaded a meditation app on my phone (and used it like three times), but I still needed to make changes to my everyday life. I needed to do things like sleep in feet-softening gel socks every night, actually finish Infinite Jest, and finally, I needed to learn how to cook. (Probably never going to finish IJ.)

My mother rarely cooked when I was growing up, and when she did, she’d yell at me to get out of the kitchen. I also am pretty certain I was born without motor skills. I do love mixing things together though. Like, I was always the friend who put too much extra shit in the cake batter so no one would eat it. My friends thought I was sloppy and disgusting. I thought I was creative and that I might grow up to be a fairly decent chef. I was right. And if I can cook, then you can cook.

And I swear you will like it, or I hope you will like it. Honestly, sometimes just opening my pantry to see that I have flour in my house reminds me that I’m a human. Noticing dirty dishes in my sink reminds me that I had friends over for dinner last night and that I probably won’t die alone. Cooking also can distract you from your problems when you’re in a panic. It makes people like you and makes you want to entertain. Most importantly, it’s a great way to seduce people.

Are you still not convinced that you can cook? Okay, well then: read this book, and all our stories, and let us show you how cooking has helped us, or how it could have helped us, in our messiest moments.

I love you and the person who bought you this book, but I promise to always love you more.

I THINK WE’RE GOING TO LIKE EACH OTHER

GLM

Miranda and I wrote this book because, in separate ways, we each discovered that cooking is an excellent way to take control when life feels out of control. For her, it was a lesson that came in her midtwenties. For me, it started when I was a little girl.

I was a sensitive, moody, and probably clinically depressed kid. I was smart and creative, but I had a hard time fitting in. When I was eight, my mother bought me an antique set of pots and pans to play with. I begged to use them for real cooking, so she gave me her copy of Mollie Katzen’s The Enchanted Broccoli Forest and let me try my hand at some simple dishes.

In the kitchen, with my little mixing bowls, frying pan, and kid-size chef’s knife, I learned to dice, chop, bake, and sauté. I learned to trust my instincts with flavor combinations, putting my own stamp on recipes. I learned that if I could taste, I could cook—it was just a matter of learning a few simple techniques and being a little bit brave. The world was hard and scary, but the kitchen was a safe place where I could always be myself, and where my hard work was rewarded with something delicious.

Growing up has made some things easier (I made cool, like-minded friends and finally got those boobs I had been wishing for) and, of course, some things a lot harder. When I was in my early twenties, I floated from dead-end job to dead-end job, regularly overdrew my checking account, and slept with men who didn’t respect me. I was testing the boundaries, feeling my way through life, trying to get my bearings, and often failing. But through it all, at the end of every shitty, exhilarating, hilarious, disastrous day, I cooked dinner in my tiny apartment kitchen. And, just as it had when I was a little girl, it made me feel better.

Today, like just about every other woman I know, I spend my days oscillating between thinking I am amazing and questioning my worth. I am sometimes impulsive and sometimes so anxious about everything that I become immobile. We live in a world where advertisers, TV, magazines, and insane Instagram filters blast us with nonstop messages about what is wrong with us. We are told to be thin, but not too thin! Fun, but not irresponsible! Strong, but not so much that it’s threatening! Feminine and feminist, but not too much so! Have it all! But don’t take too much! It’s enough to make anyone feel crazy.

I hope this book helps make the craziness that lives both inside and outside of you more manageable. I can’t promise it will ever go away, but I do know that taming it is possible—and delicious.