Lorna Sass At Large

Lorna Sass is best known as a widely published food writer and an award-winning cookbook author.  She decided to start blogging to share not only her thoughts about food, but her passions and explorations beyond the kitchen.  For this reason, she called the blog Lorna Sass at Large.  As you will see, she rarely leaves home without her camera, and is currently documenting her passion for plants and her unique visions of Central Park, New York City streets, and subway stations.

Lorna has often found herself ahead of her time. She began her career in food as a culinary historian before anyone thought much about food history.  While studying for her PhD in medieval literature at Columbia University, Lorna wrote four historical cookbooks that were published by the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Lorna became interested in pressure cooking  during the mid-eighties when most Americans had either never heard of this magical appliance or were afraid of it!  After her vegetarian mother carted a cooker back from India and began producing delectable curries and dals in a matter of minutes. Lorna realized that the pressure cooker could produce “fast food” that was both nutritious and delicious.  She began culinary experiments that led to the publication of COOKING UNDER PRESSURE by William Morrow in 1989.

COOKING UNDER PRESSURE sold briskly from the start and has been back to press 28 times, claiming  best-seller  status. With almost 250,000 copies in print, COOKING UNDER PRESSURE is considered the bible on the subject and Lorna is considered the person largely responsible for the pressure cooker’s comeback.  A twentieth anniversary revised edition will be available in paperback this October.

Lorna followed COOKING UNDER PRESSURE with GREAT VEGETARIAN COOKING UNDER PRESSURE, and THE PRESSURED COOK. In 2005, William Morrow published Lorna’s PRESSURE PERFECT, her definitive work on pressure cooking.  This latest volume contains over 200 recipes and divulges all of the cooking secrets Lorna has developed over almost two decades of cooking under pressure.

For many years, Lorna was a vegan.   She recognized that a vegan approach to food created a much smaller carbon footprint decades before anyone was writing about it.  During nineties she wrote numerous vegan cookbooks, including RECIPES FROM AN ECOLOGICAL KITCHEN (now called LORNA SASS’ COMPLETE VEGETARIAN KITCHEN in the paperback edition), LORNA SASS’ SHORT-CUT VEGETARIAN (soon to be re-titled SHORT-CUT VEGAN), THE NEW SOY COOKBOOK, and THE NEW VEGAN COOKBOOK.

Her fourteenth cookbook, WHOLE GRAINS EVERY DAY, EVERY WAY,  was published by Clarkson Potter in November 2006 and was recently awarded the prestigious James Beard Award in the “healthy focus” category, reflecting her passion for an organic, health-promoting, sustainable way of eating. It is already in its third printing!  Her latest cookbook, WHOLE GRAINS FOR BUSY PEOPLE, focuses under quick-cooking recipes for cooks on the go.

Lorna’s food articles have been published in dozens of newspapers and magazines, including The New York Times, The Washington Post, Gourmet, Bon Appetit, Vegetarian Times, and Metropolitan Home.  She has written a monthly food column for the newsletter of www.localharvest.org and published numerous essays on the TVFN web site. Lorna is a member of Slow Food and the Women’s Culinary Alliance and an alumna of Les Dames des Escoffier.

For further information, visit www.lornasass.com.

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