Weekend Cooking- Chef Alex Guarnaschelli at Random House Open House

This post is part of Beth Fish Reads' Weekend Cooking.  If you have anything related to food, cookbook reviews, novel or non-fiction book reviews, recipes, movie reviews, etc., head over to Beth Fish Reads and add your post. Or, if you want to read food related posts, head over to read what some interesting people have to say about food.

I have never watch Food Network's Chopped (I know, don't yell at me), but I have seen chef Alex Guarnaschelli on TV talking about her new cookbook, Old-School Comfort Food- The Way I Learned to Cook, and found her very interesting.

She made an appearance at Random House Open House last week, and her conversation with Huffington Post Food Editor Carey Polis was so enjoyable. Guarnaschelli has a deadpan, low key sense of humor and she had us all laughing with her funny asides. I liked her cool, biker-chick wardrobe too.

She wanted to write a book "that readers could cook from", using ingredients we all can find. Poking fun at crazy recipes that call for ".7 grams of leather extract", she asks "Where do I find that? Do I melt down a coat? Scrape a shoe?".  She said "you don't have to buy eye of newt to make my food".

Comfort food to her is food that you grow up eating. Her mom, a cookbook editor, made classic French recipes, and so Guarnaschelli says that she found it "interesting to redefine comfort food in my own way" in this book. She says she feels she "let down the mac and cheese set" as that recipe will not be found here. Some of her favorite recipes are for coffee cake, melon soup, arugula and strawberry salad.

One of her biggest take-aways is that "being a spectator to cooking before you cook is highly underrated." She learned a lot watching her mother cook, and says that much like learning how to play basketball, you first have to watch how it is done and practice before you start. I never thought about cooking that way, but it makes sense.

She talked a little bit about her process for appearing on Iron Chef. Before her appearances on the competition show, she practices "between 9- 23 recipes" in her head. She said everyone should have a repertoire of dishes you can make "no matter what." These should include "a cake, salad dressing and a basic sauce", things you can build upon. Her goal is to win Iron Chef, something that has eluded her thus far.

The discussion ended with a recitation of Guarnaschelli's favorite foods- "Oreos, Twizzlers, Bugles, Funyuns, Cool Ranch Doritos, Munchos, frozen yogurt with lots of fruit and chocolate, cinnamon donuts from the box with three kinds of donuts, unfrosted strawberry Pop-Tarts, Dr. Brown Black Cherry soda and Dr. Pepper, and bologna." No one saw that coming!

If Guarnaschelli decides to leave the chef world, she would make a terrific stand-up comic. She had a lot to say about her mother (whom she lovingly and laughingly compared to Darth Vader at one point) her dad ("the greatest guy in the world"), and her curious 5 1/2 year-old daughter. I picked up a copy of her cookbook and she graciously signed it for me. I'll have a review in a future post.

Me and Alex Guarnaschelli at Random House Open House

Alex Guarnaschelli's website is here.

Lauren Graham at Random House Open House

Actress Lauren Graham, known mainly from TV's Gilmore Girls and Parenthood (one of my favorites). has written a book, Someday, Someday, Maybe, and she was at Random House's Open House last week discussing it with her editor Jennifer Smith.

They began with Graham joking about "blowing through every deadline", which Smith did not find as humorous as Graham. Graham later said that now she knows the process better, she would be better with deadlines on her second book, though she said "I think I already missed one- oh, was it two?", when Smith quietly said that it was in fact two. Everyone laughed, Smith less than the rest of us.

Someday, Someday, Maybe is a novel about a young actress trying to make it in NYC. Graham didn't want to write a memoir, fearing that "it might degenerate into a 'tips for teens' from the Gilmore Girls' mom." She and Smith talked about how some people might not believe that Graham actually wrote the book, and Graham was shocked that people put their names on books they didn't write, asking "wait, is that even a category?" Sadly, Smith said it is.

She had the core characters in mind, wrote it and sent it to her agent, who sent it out to publishers before Graham realized it; "I didn't even spell-check it yet." Now she had the aforementioned deadlines to meet.

Graham spoke about how working on Parenthood, with its large ensemble cast, allowed her to spend much of her downtime working on the novel. It was difficult trying to balance the humor with character and story. She said "the voice I use on a talk show is not sustainable for 350 pages."

Now that Graham is on her 40s, she wanted "to do something new I hadn't done before. It's empowering." In talking about her writing process, she spoke about trying to write 1000 words a day, something she called "a reasonable, but challenging amount." She encouraged the audience to write, saying that "there's nothing stopping you from putting words to paper."

When asked about writers she liked, Graham mentioned Carrie Fisher, saying "she is a super underrated writer", and that she has read Postcards from the Edge many times. She also read Bridget Jones' Diary "a million times". She likes Sophie Kinsella, Carol Rifka's Tell The Wolves I'm Home, and of course, her editor Jennifer Smith's YA This Is What Happy Looks Like. 

Her second book takes place in Los Angeles, with the same characters.  She said that the second book is funnier because people in Los Angeles are funnier. (I don't she meant that as a compliment though.) Graham said that the final draft was due on January 3rd, which was tough because she had a huge family holiday celebration in Montana, which prompted a wry reply from Smith: "Actually, it was due in July." That drew huge laughs from the crowd.

Graham later signed copies of her book for the crowd, and it is one book I'm looking forward to reading. She was very kind and gracious to everyone, taking time to speak and listen to each person who had a book signed.

Me and Lauren Graham

Books In The City posted a terrific review of Someday, Someday, Maybe, and she has a giveaway of the book if you head over to her website here.

Weekend Cooking- Lunch at Random House Open House

This post is part of Beth Fish Reads' Weekend Cooking.  If you have anything related to food, cookbook reviews, novel or non-fiction book reviews, recipes, movie reviews, etc., head over to Beth Fish Reads and add your post. Or, if you want to read food related posts, head over to read what some interesting people have to say about food.

Yesterday I attended the second Random House Open House in New York City. I went to the first one last December and enjoyed it so much, I was happy to see that they planned a second one.

There were several panel discussions and we heard from such wonderful authors as Lauren Graham, from TV's Gilmore Girls and Parenthood, who has written a well-received novel Someday Someday Maybe, R.J. Palacio (the hit young readers book Wonder that many adults love as well), a panel discussion from the publishing team of William Landay's third novel Defending Jacob, authors Colum McCann, Marisha Pessl and Karin Slaughter discussing books and Food Network star chef Alex Guarnaschelli talking about her new book Old School Comfort Food. More on Alex in a future Weekend Cooking post.

One inventive thing they do at this Open House concerns their lunches. They create lunch sandwiches and wraps using recipes from Random House author's cookbooks. Such a clever idea! I chose the Roast Turkey Breast with Lemon and Sage Brown Butter from handsome chef Curtis Stone's book What's For Dinner? (I did not choose that because he is so hunky, I just really like turkey.) It was quite tasty.

Other options included a Hummus Veggie Wrap from Bobby Deen and Melissa Clark's book, From Mama's Table to Mine, a book filled with comfort food recipes at 350 calories or less, a BBQ Pulled Pork inspired by A Feast of Ice & Fire: The Official Game of Thrones Companion Cookbook and a Mexican Lentil Wrap from Lucy Danziger's Drop 10 Diet Cookbook, whom we saw at December's Open House.

There are recipe cards available from the books for the sandwiches, which I think is terrific. I picked these three.

At the end of the sessions, there was a mixer with wine and a lovely dessert table that had many of us buzzing around it like bees on flowers. It was filled with cookies from Sara's Snackers, which I love. They had the Lemonade Cookies, Chipn'etzels, my favorite until I tasted the Dark Chocolate Drizzled Chipn'etzels. They are bite sized cookies with pretzels and potato chips inside and are too good for words.

They also had chocolate and butterscotch puddings from an upcoming cookbook Puddin' by Clio Goodman (October 2013), that was so smooth and creamy and delicious. Goodman owns a sweet shop in NYC. 

I will have a wrap-up of the Random House Open House as soon as I go through my copious amount of notes.

Curtis Stone's Roast Turkey Breast with Lemon Sage Brown Butter recipe is here. 

Clio Goodman's Puddin' website is here.

More information on Random House cookbooks is here.

Last year's post about Marcus Samuelsson at Random House Open House is here.