Knife Drop: Creative Recipes Anyone Can Cook

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DiGiovanni: It is interesting. It's been interesting for me also — and I'm sure [for] many people — to watch how the whole space is evolving. What do you think about all of it, the fact that TV is not fizzling away, but it's different than it used to be? But that’s not to say those recipes are necessarily bad or failures by any means. And despite a couple maybe not quite hitting the same theme as the rest of the book, I consider the book on the whole quite a success. Thiessen: I have a good question for you. If you could cook for anybody, who would it be that you haven't cooked for yet? I know you've cooked for a lot of celebrities and stuff. As for the recipes themselves, I’m quite pleased to report that the vast majority of them look like something I’d actually like to cook and/or eat. Obviously everyone’s tastes are different so no cookbook ever manages to be 100% for anyone (except perhaps its own author), but this one is closer aligned to my tastes than most. And I particularly like a book that combines some sophisticated classy recipes with some that are more comfort food. And I have to admit, what really caught my eye is that this book even includes a recipe to make your own home-made dino nuggies. I’m pretty sure that means this is an author who knows what his audience wants. DiGiovanni: Which is funny. But another part of it, as a kid — and I'm sure you've dealt with this, having kids — is I would literally reach into the pantry and take handfuls of sugar and eat the sugar. I just wanted sugar. I found early on that if I gave my mom an ingredient list of stuff to make a lemon meringue pie that I would share with the family, sugar's got to be on the list, and I was getting my sugar fix that way.

DiGiovanni: You should look into it. It's actually currently held by someone — I live in Boston; it's held by someone from Massachusetts — but you might be able to — The author is apparently some kind of social media star, delivering cooking videos to legions of fans. I admit, I didn’t know his work prior to reading this book. But when I stumbled across the book itself, I found it rather intriguing. The theme here seems to be interesting, creative, restaurant-quality types of dishes, but which can be (relatively) easily prepared by home cooks in a home kitchen. Thiessen: I like the stories that go along with the food. You can see I have rooms of cookbooks all throughout my house; it's not just in the kitchen. I love buying cookbooks, because they're almost like coffee table books to me, to a certain degree, but also, I like reading the stories of where the food or the recipe came from. I read them like a normal book. I do know there's a lot of people out there — I know they're not all like that — but that's what cookbooks do for me. Tip:You should always bake your bacon. It makes for a far better final product. No more stovetop bacon please, unless absolutely necessary. Tuna Melt- The tuna was runny from too much mayo and pink from so much paprika. Also it called for sharp cheddar but the cheese in the picture was white. The finished product was super bland.DiGiovanni: The dough melted off the dumpling. It was horrible. We tried to make this big contraption with a big box that was a steamer, and it was going to be a 50- to 75-pound dumpling, and then it melted.

It was a teaching to my children and also my husband, because he always had this analogy of "leftovers are gross," and I wanted to show him that they're not. You can do really cool things with leftovers. That's the gist of the book, showing how many things you can do with buttermilk, how many things you can do with the bottom of the pretzel bag. [If] there's a little bit left, you can do something with it, and I can show you how to do it. DiGiovanni: The things that I do with food now are so all over the place. I'm sure the same for you — it's been funny ... [a] kind of all-over-the-place path. DiGiovanni: Mine would often be dinner — cooking dinner or making the meals, which everyone was very happy about. Eventually, most people in my family caught on to the fact that it didn't feel like a chore for me, and then I would get looped into the garbage and looped into cleaning the dog's bed out and that kind of thing, but that was great for a while. I got away with that being my chore. On that note of speaking to his audience, this might also be the perfect cookbook for the social media age because not only is the author apparently a social media cooking star of some sort, but he’s also included QR codes throughout the book leading the reader to videos demonstrating how to prepare some (not all) of the recipes.Thiessen: Yeah. Well, it's where it started for me too. It was all the women — they were always in the kitchen, and I wanted to be with all the cool women in my family cooking. For the sandwich: Place the tomato slices in a single layer on a work surface and season with salt and pepper to taste.

DiGiovanni: Well, I was going to tell you — you have a lot of cookbooks in your house. They have a record for most cookbooks. Thiessen: Was that your first love of getting into cooking — the chore that you had to actually cook? Thiessen: It's called "Here We Go Again." This will be, actually, my second cookbook. I haven't even gone from all that.

DiGiovanni: If I could cook for anybody, I'd probably cook for my grandmother. I'd probably cook for my dad's mom.