Raquel Pelzel is the Editorial Director of Cookbooks at Clarkson Potter where she edits culinary icons including Ina Garten, Giada De Laurentiis, and Michael Symon and rising stars including Bon Appetit’s Claire Saffitz, Vilailuck “Pepper Thai” Teigen, cinema star Danny Trejo, Vallery Lomas, Rick Martinez, Jenny Rosenstrach, pitmaster Rodney Scott, and James Beard award-winning chef Maneet Chauhan among many other incredible chefs and food writers. Prior to joining the team at Clarkson Potter in 2017, Raquel was a cookbook author and collaborator on more than two dozen cookbooks including four cookbooks of her own, most recently Umami Bomb published by Workman in 2019; her work has garnered awards and nominations through the James Beard Foundation and IACP. Raquel went to Johnson + Wales culinary school and The School of Natural Cookery in Boulder before becoming a pastry chef at Barbara Lynch’s No. 9 Park in Boston; she was also an editor and recipe developer at Cook’s Illustrated and the food editor at Tasting Table. Her first IACP conference was Providence, Rhode Island in 2000.