{"id":61352,"date":"2026-06-17T08:44:00","date_gmt":"2026-06-17T00:44:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/?p=61352"},"modified":"2026-06-17T08:44:00","modified_gmt":"2026-06-17T00:44:00","slug":"how-an-american-pastry-chef-has-reinvented-the-hotpot-with-immigrant-inspired-twists","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/?p=61352","title":{"rendered":"How an American pastry chef has reinvented the hotpot with immigrant-inspired twists"},"content":{"rendered":"


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Most people who have spent time in a kitchen will tell you that baking and cooking are fundamentally different crafts: the former tends to follow strict formulas that require absolute precision while the latter is largely adaptable and often intuitive.<\/p>\n

But New York-based Natasha Pickowicz, a four-time James Beard Award-nominated American pastry chef and cookbook author, argues the two are more alike than many think, citing similarities between making artisanal pastries and Chinese hotpot.<\/p>\n

Born in San Diego to Li Huai, a visual artist from Beijing, and Paul Pickowicz, a European\u2011American Chinese film historian, Natasha Pickowicz was raised on \u201cvery culturally specific foods,\u201d a background that shapes her cross\u2011cultural culinary perspective.<\/p>\n

She says her mother is \u201ca phenomenal cook\u201d who works instinctively and influenced her own \u201cconfidence and free-form nature\u201d in the kitchen.<\/p>\n

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\"Pastry<\/div>
Pastry chef and cookbook author Natasha Pickowicz was born and raised in San Diego, California, and is now based in New York. Photo: Alex Lau<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Pickowicz never planned to become a chef. After graduating with a degree in English Literature from Cornell University in New York state, she moved to Montreal, Canada, where she got a job as a baker through a friend.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n


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Most people who have spent time in a kitchen will tell you that baking and cooking are fundamentally different crafts: the former tends to follow…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":61353,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[295,809,4665,24888,9098,14480,7859],"class_list":["post-61352","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bored-interesting","tag-american","tag-chef","tag-hotpot","tag-immigrantinspired","tag-pastry","tag-reinvented","tag-twists","wpcat-33-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61352","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=61352"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61352\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/61353"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=61352"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=61352"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=61352"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}