Natasha Pickowicz

Dear friends, Save the date(s)—the EVERYONE HOT POT 2026 TOUR is here! We have been working so long and so hard to make the cookbook tour of my damn dreams. Like a mouthwatering hot pot spread, each venue, each city, each event contributes something ineffable and special to the bubbling TOUR STEW. More than anything I wanted every inch of this campaign to feel personal and warm, like coming home to see family. There are hot pot parties (!!), talks and gatherings and eating and drinking. I’m visiting my favorite restaurants, bars, farms (two!!), and bookstores in the entire country. Save the date if I’m coming to your city, and get ready for more detailed and dedicated posts for every event, coming right up. (And even more secret city stops to announce as well!!) 1/29 Brooklyn, NY, Archestratus Books + Foods 1/31 Philadelphia, PA, The Bread Room 2/5 Saratoga Springs, NY, SPAC 2/7-8 NY, NY, Elbow Bread 2/16 Brooklyn, NY, Bonnie’s  2/18 San Francisco, CA, Moongate Lounge 2/19 San Francisco, CA, Omnivore Books 2/22 San Diego, CA, Chino Farms  2/23 San Diego, CA, Mandarin House  2/24 Los Angeles, CA, Cafe Telegrama 2/27 Three Oaks, MI, Granor Farm  3/2 NY, NY, Lei Wine 3/5 Montreal, QC, Librairie Drawn & Quarterly 3/7 Montreal, QC, Polari  Deepest love and gratitude to my dear friend Bill Nace, a musician and visual artist bar none, who contributed the unbelievable artwork (I told him I wanted to pretend like I was a cool musician going on tour and he acquiesced). We will have a VERY LIMITED EDITION of signed and numbered hand screened posters done by the great Alan Sherry of @siwaprints available to purchase while I’m on tour (and I’ll ship out the rest). More on that soon. YEAR OF THE FIRE HORSE. Get ready to rise and be transformed. See you out there— With love, Natasha

Hello dear friends, cooks and bakers and hosts and readers near and far. I’m writing with a racing heart and the most excited I’ve been in a long, long time—I’ve written my second cookbook, and it’s called EVERYONE HOT POT: Creating The Ultimate Meal For Gathering & Feasting! It’s going to be released on January 27 by my beloved publisher @artisan_books , and is now available to PREORDER (just visit the link in my bio)! Before I wrote More Than Cake, before I worked in restaurants, before I learned how to cook, there was hot pot. There was always hot pot. It’s the strongest tradition we have in our family; my love for it grows exponentially every year, as I introduce new people to it and continue to make it my own. My life has been shaped by my love of bringing people together. By hosting and sharing, we create moments that are bigger than ourselves, bigger than a single ingredient or dish. Something ineffable happens over every hot pot. This book is about that magic—and I’ve researched, tested, tasted, and written about this topic so extensively I’m convinced you’ll have everything you need to effortlessly pull off the best damn meal of your life. I felt like I had so much to prove to myself with More Than Cake (why yes, I AM an only child/ overachiever/ daughter of a Chinese immigrant with exacting standards, thanks!); writing Everyone Hot Pot was scary in a totally different way—would the reader who wanted layer cakes from me be interested in soup and salad? Or might this topic incite curiosity in said reader, seeing hot pot as a natural continuation of my own skills and passions? We will see! Most important: Thank you to everyone who helped bring this book to life, especially to my parents—my dad, a legendary Chinese historian who fact checked the manuscript and contributed an essay (!!), and my mom, who played such a huge role in its execution that her name is right there on the title page. Everyone Hot Pot is about family, biological and chosen, and the role of hot pot, in all of that, a thread racing through my life, and hopefully through yours, too. I’m so grateful, so satisfied, and so ready for what is to come. Thank you. Love, Natasha

Hi! Okay. *Breathes into paper bag*. Big announcement!! My debut cookbook, MORE THAN CAKE, will be published by @artisan_books next spring, AND it is available for pre-order NOW online or at your favorite local bookstore! A little context: I started working on the proposal deep in the winter of 2019, when I met—and quickly became enamored with—my indispensable book agent Kitty Cowles. It was a different book kernel back then; it felt like the only stories I knew how to tell were of the time I spent baking in fancy restaurants. When I crept back to the idea of writing a book, over 6 months later, I completely scrapped that proposal, returning instead to the ideas and feelings that brought me to pastry in the first place—that baking is an infinite, generous tool, a set of soothing strategies, that bring us closer to each other, and can be used to express your values and how you want to live in this world and show up for your community. I spent the first two months of the pandemic rewriting the proposal, which was excruciating but exhilarating. (I didn’t own a computer then and wrote it on my iPhone but we’ll come back to that later). I had a secret project that kept me busy and thinking about the future. Then I spent the next two years developing over 100 new recipes, writing every single word (and then deleting most of them) from my little apartment and different libraries around the city, producing and food styling four (!) unforgettable photo shoots, and just generally throwing my entire heart and soul into these pages. Bringing this book to life is the hardest and scariest thing I have ever done, which is to say I will NOT stop talking about the actual geniuses that make this book so great. The photographs and illustrations and layout and structure and props and feel come from the minds of MANY fascinating and cool people and I am SO pumped to share more about their contributions. But for now, click on the link in my bio. If you like what you see, I hope you’ll consider pre-ordering it for yourself or someone else in your life. Thank you so so SO SO much!!! 📸📙: @graydonherriott (🤯❤️!!)

It is a very very rare thing for me to visit a place for the first time and feel wholly aligned with how they also observe and process and relate to the world around them—which is how I felt while teaching at @annatascalanza this spring. And, so transformative for me also to take what I have absorbed over the course of my life and apply that knowledge to a new context, new community, new terroir, a new everything. Anna Tasca Lanza feels both totally otherworldly and also somehow, radically, completely like home. I was so lucky to bring my methodology around baking and cooking and gardening to this highly vibrational place, full of its own nuances and thorny complexities, and to see the way my ideas weave in and out of the ideas embodied by the amazing people who live there, and to sink into the peace and quiet that comes when faced with a repetitive but pleasurable task. What a gift! Everything that happens here feels essential —essential in the way that you can choose to peel back and discard the nonsense and noise and junk and see what is left behind; it really does happen there effortlessly and without resistance. What did we do? To give you the barest idea, the tip of the tree, we candied roses for cakes and toasted fig leaves for whey and sucked honey from its comb and perfumed loquat preserves with sage blossoms and ate ricotta while still warm and drank cold white wine every lunch with crispy snacks like gently fried sage leaves. It was in a word exquisite. Everything spoke to abundance but also was somehow pared down to its most essential and intense self— it’s the way I want to eat but also cook and take care of the people around me. Endless gratitude to @luu.isa @leahtravelingchef @bare__food and the entire staff at @annatascalanza for their uniquely warm hospitality— and to all the new friends I made in our little tight knit group— more on them in my next long ass emo screed, so stay tuned :))))

For the most recent (mothers and daughters!) themed issue of @cherrybombe , I interviewed my one and only mother, Li Huai. When I was putting together the proposal for Everyone Hot Pot, I knew one thing for sure: my mom had to provide the artwork. I had many reasons for this—both mind- and heart-related—and she had already illustrated my first cookbook, More Than Cake, which was a transformative experience for us both. In this way, I see us as creating a body of work together, not just as mother and daughter, but as collaborators and artists. It can be tough to shift a dynamic as well-worn-in and tricky (to say the least) as mother-daughter, but the art we make together nudges us in new directions, and for that I’m really grateful. Thanks @kerrybombe for the sweet opportunity 🌷

Sicilian traffic jam 🐑🐑🐑🐑🐑🐑🐑🐑🐑🐑🚙!!! Thanks for the ride in the 🐼 @leahtravelingchef @bare__food @luu.isa @annatascalanza 💕

Dumplings don’t always need meat to deliver, and these caramelized mushroom and cabbage dumplings by @natashapickowicz prove it. Comment “dumpling” for the recipe! #f52community

THE OLD GRAINS OF NEW YORK VOL. III: WE’RE BAAAACK! You cannot keep us apart! THIS July 25-26 will mark the third time master bakers @graisongill @natashapickowicz and Patrick Shaw-Kitch reunite at Patrick and Laura’s acclaimed @brooklyngranaryandmill for a weekend-long intensive investigating all things whole grain. This class will explain the role of flour in our baking: how it is an ingredient in the vast majority of what we eat, but why it is the least understood. Our goal is to help bakers recognize that grains have identity and origin like any other ingredient—not only are whole grain flours nutritious, they are delicious and fun! Every time we reunite for this class, we learn smarter and more soulful ways to shape and present this curriculum—it’s truly a weekend to remember. To learn more or reserve your spot, visit the link in bio. We hope to see you there!

Hyacinth, topiary, lilac, five new friends, three old friends, bluebell groves, walled gardens, Kate Bush tributes, picnics, baked pears, avocado tarts, tube strikes, chlorophyllmaxxxing, THANK YOU LONDON and thank you new favorite person in the world @helen_goh_bakes for hosting a transcendent HOT POT dinner with yours truly xxxxxx

With heart caught in throat, we dive into the deep flowing river / vibrating life force / earthly offering of @_archestratus_ tributes— Paige is my family and Archestratus is my home and it will live forever in my soul and body and we are so blessed to have sat underneath the lilac skylights that one year and nibbled cookies at the cash register those other years and howled into the sky that one night and danced and laughed and wept and sang and held each other so many times over, through heartbreak and victory and rage and hope Community is not a passive noun it is an active verb— a commitment to care and sense of selfless duty embodied so richly by Archestratus, a world that gave people, especially the freaks and outsiders and nerds, a genuine sense of belonging and a place to freely be ourselves, going SO FAR beyond what could ever be reasonably be expected of a “bookstore” tucked into the upper folds of Greenpoint. It is as tender a process as the nurturing of a tangled + teeming garden, which Archestratus did with so much grace and originality and wit and PASSION In the early days of Covid lockdown, when we were both quietly freaking out, Paige made me a set of keys, extending the square footage of my studio apartment to also include Archestratus. For free, of course. We’d work in companionable silence or nonstop chatter, always over the howl of music, Robert Wyatt and PJ and Durutti Column and Wire. Those were destabilizing months and Archestratus really saved my ass, to have that place to unfurl and renew, in safety and in peace. The space kept shifting and expanding and contracting but always it stayed a place of effortless beauty and heart-racing wildness, bound together with the kind of exquisite taste that was copied relentlessly but of course never successfully. Thank you for everything Archestratus— we are so lucky we had this original and bold place to call home for so long. When we too are at the end of our days we won’t think of the banal VC-backed corporate sludge that clogs our mortal coil. We will think of places like one, imperfect and messy and forever alive, and be grateful to have known it ❤️ 🙏🏼

Beyond blown away to share that in the current issue of @the_gentlewoman there is a wonderful profile that traces my work, including a once-in-a-lifetime portrait shot by the iconic @inezandvinoodh . 🥵 😭 (NYC, buy your copy at @casamagazinesnyc !!) Nine years (!!!) after my first bake sale for @plannedparenthood , I believe firmly that it is this work that I consider the most meaningful of all the projects I tackle, not least of which because it has brought me closer to my peers and allies in the industry, especially a once-in-lifetime friendship with @peckynimson ; the badasses at @brigidalliance @onelovecommunityfridge @heartofdinner and so, so many others; and to play some small part in defining joyful community in the face of fascism and authoritarianism. I’ve read The Gentlewoman my entire adult life and have always regarded it as an aspirational/inspirational wellspring; it’s not just actresses and celebrities that are deemed worthy of coverage but also the women who attack life and its opportunity with intelligence and humor and originality. Thank you @matkahn for the great story and everyone at The Gentlewoman for bringing me into your electric fold! I’ll never, ever forget it ❤️

EVERYONE HOT POT Tour Report: The Final Stretch (Was Canada Really Six Weeks Ago? Plus Texas Too) Montreal, Toronto, Austin: Cities I chose strategically so as to see as many dear friends as possible (other authors must do this too???). I was straight-up sad when I returned to NYC. (Again, anyone else?? Help!) The comedown post-tour is scary and heavy! But also grounding and necessary! I was ready to sleep a million hours in my bed and cook my own mush but I couldn’t shake the bittersweet longing I felt (feel?) to be on the road seeing the people I love. Thanks to all my pals that kept me company and put me up during this long push, and to all the readers and hot pot lovers that came to our events. What a remarkable thing to be on the road doing what I love! PS. It’s not too late to hop on the Hot Pot Train— it’s spring and everything is potential, beginnings and tendrils, tender shoots and green things! Choo choo!🫛