Zora O'Neill

Zora has been in the kitchen since she was 3, and has the bacon-fat burns to prove it. But she really taught herself to cook in her early 20s, and that skill has proved far more useful than anything she learned in grad school.

When Zora moved to New York City (from New Mexico via New Jersey, Indiana, Holland and Egypt) in 1998, she chose where to live based on the 24-hour produce stands in lovely Astoria, Queens. When she's not home in the neighborhood cooking Sunday Night Dinner with Tamara Reynolds, she picks up new flavors on the road, in her work as a guidebook author for Rough Guides, Lonely Planet and Moon. She pays special attention to street carts, produce markets, and local culinary specialties. The finds wind up in her guidebooks, and on her home table.

As a way of sharing the amazing survival skill that is cooking, Zora produces the podcast Cooking in Real Time (www.cookinginrealtime.com). She also writes about her cooking and travels on the blog Roving Gastronome (www.rovinggastronome.com).