Hollywood recipes well beyond their sell- by date
Former movie critic resurrects some of the favourite dishes of dead celebrities and compiles them into an offbeat cookbook
Not only are they dead, they’re dead Hollywood celebrities.
It took the former movie critic with The Daily Show with Jon Stewart to “dig up” some favourite recipes of dead Hollywood stars and make a cookbook out of it. The title is dead on. He calls it The Dead Celebrity Cookbook.
He published it last year and his publisher sent an email, with a nudge, nudge, it’s Halloween, don’t you know?
“I like to say that the book you’re holding contains recipes that the stars are dying for you to make,” Frank Decaro says in his intro. “Please don’t bury it in your cupboard.”
Now as a host on Sirius XM Satellite Radio and contributor to TV Guide and The New York Times, Decaro combines his love of food and pop culture in cookbooks. His next, in time for an altogether different Christmas, will be Christmas in Tinseltown: Celebrity Recipes and Hollywood Memories from Six Feet Under the Mistletoe.
They’re actual recipes from famous people who are now deceased that Decaro has been collecting for some time. “Having scoured flea markets and yard sales and eBay for decades, I have stacks of out- of- print celebrity cookbooks,” he says. Recipes also came from musty biographies, vintage magazines, dusty giveaway pamphlets from supermarkets and corporations.
“I learned there was a time when you bought a microwave ( oven), you received a free cookbook from the guy who played Mel Cooley on The Dick Van Dyke Show.”
If you are dying to share a meal with dearly departed celebs, the cookbook includes Liberace’s Sticky Bun, Michael Jackson’s Sweet Potato Pie, Don Ho’s Soup, Alfred Hitchcock’s Quiche Lorraine, Dean Martin’s Burgers and Bourbon, Andy Warhol’s Stuffed Cabbage, Mae West’s Fruit Compote, John Wayne’s Favourite Casserole, Humphrey Bogart’s Coconut Spanish Casserole, Johnny Cash’s Pan- fried Okra and Gloria Swanson’s Potassium Broth. There’s a bunch of celebrities who have never crossed my radar, too.
“I’ve always wanted others to share my fantasy of feasting on Frank Sinatra’s Barbecued Lamb, lunching on Lucille Ball’s Chinese- y Thing, diving ever- so- neatly into Joan Crawford’s Poached Salmon, and wrapping my lips around Rock Hudson’s Cannoli,” he writes
And, I ask you, who in their right mind hasn’t?