Gourmet on a Hot Plate

Without formal culinary training, Judy Alter has cooked her way through life, feeling family and friends at everything from casual dinners al fresco to elaborate meals for twenty. An award-winning author and publisher, she jokes she'll come back in another life as a chef.Today Alter finds herself cooking in a four-by-six kitchen where zoning laws forbid built-ins but allow anything that plugs in. So she cooks with a hot plate, a toaster oven, and a large refrigerator/freezer. Given these limitations, she has developed a new approach to food, one that she says lets her get in touch with the food itself. By choice, she does not have an Insta-Pot, an air-fryer, a microwave. Her menu choices are dictated by her cooking facilities-and she loves it. She shares her tiny kitchen tips and recipes, developed over the past couple of years, in Gourmet on a Hot Plate.