Meet Karen
I’m Karen! I’m so glad you’re here.
I’m Karen Tedesco, a professionally trained chef and cookbook author of Family Style: Shared Plates for Casual Feasts.
I’ll confess: I’m pretty much always thinking about food — what to cook, what to eat next, how to make something taste better. It’s been that way my whole life, and it’s what drives everything on this site.
Read more about Familystyle Food here.
My expertise
- Professional training: Early in my career, I worked my way into top-tier restaurant kitchens — which is where I developed the technical foundation that still shapes how I develop and test recipes today.
- From 2007–2014, I cooked for private clients and taught cooking classes, creating everything from elegant dinner parties to practical weeknight meals for families. That work taught me how to make recipes that perform reliably outside a professional kitchen.
- Food journalism and editorial experience: As a contributor to national magazines and newspapers, and a former food editor at the Village Voice, I learned to develop recipes for a broad audience and write about food with clarity and precision — an approach I bring to every post on this site.
- Photography: I photograph every recipe myself, in my home kitchen, using natural light. What you see on this site is the actual food from the recipe — no food styling tricks, no artificial enhancement.