The actor’s table: The greatest Hollywood cookbooks
There are really two types of celebrity chef. The first is a trained cook first and an entertainment personality second – think Delia Smith, Anthony Bourdain, and Gordon Ramsey. The second is an entertainment personality first and a chef second. This latter camp includes celebrities who, passionate about food from an early age, have decided to use their star status to launch a supplementary career as a professional foodie.
Morgan Freeman, Reese Witherspoon, Stanley Tucci: countless actors have published cookery books over the years. While some are merely publicity tools with a few recipes thrown in for good measure, a lot of Hollywood cookbooks are actually pretty damn interesting, providing insight into the actor’s life and career as well as delicious recipes.
From Stanley Tucci’s Italian-influenced family cookery to the economical ’70s gastronomy of Vincent Price and his wife Mary, each of these books offers something different. What unites them is the passion of their authors and the hunger they will inevitably induce.
A Treasury of Great Recipes – Mary & Vincent Price (1965)
Though best known for his portrayal of Hammer Horror villains, Vincent Price was also a respected art historian, TV chef and cookery writer. In the 1970s, he filmed a cookery show for British television titled Cooking Price-Wise, which saw the Witchfinder General prepare cream-laden recipes on the cheap in an era of calorie counting and spurious claims concerning the dangers of fat.
Frequently cited as one of the first celebrity cookbooks, this dense tome was co-written by Price’s wife, the celebrated costume designer Mary Grant Price. Nestled somewhere between cookbook, travel memoir and family scrapbook, A Treasury of Great Recipes does far more than says on the tin, offering a peak inside some of the world’s most illustrious restaurants, lessons in napkin folding and more. We would also heartily recommend the book version of Cooking Price-Wise, which features an account of the Price family’s life in food stretching back four generations.
The Tucci Table – Stanley Tucci (2014)
Anyone who has read Stanley Tucci’s memoir My Life In Food or watched his TV series Searching For Italy will know that the Italian-American actor is quite simply crazy about food. The relationship between cooking and family defined his directorial debut, Big Night, which tells the story of a failing Italian restaurant in ’50s America. This book, The Tucci Table, is equally fixated on the role food plays within a family.
Tucci became associated with all things gourmet following the success of Big Night and Julie & Julia, the latter of which stars Meryl Streep as American TV chef Julia Child. Of course, his obsession with food stretches back to his childhood, during which he spent a year living in the Italian city of Florence. In The Tucci Table, the actor and revered foodie combines recipes born from his Italian roots as well as those of his wife, Felicity Blunt. The result is a family cookbook par excellence, which places the importance of high-quality ingredients at the very centre of the table.
Caribbean Cooking for A Cause – Morgan Freeman & Friends (2006)
In 2004, Hurricane Ivan devastated the Carribbean, tearing a hole through the island of Grenada and leaving countless inhabitants homeless. Shortly after the disaster, Morgan Freeman decided to establish the Grenada Relief Fund in an effort to bring life back to the island. The support of his friends in the entertainment industry was overwhelming, giving birth to Caribbean Cooking For A Cause.
Featuring an array of celebrity anecdotes alongside recipes from some of the most revered chefs on the island, the book is a celebration of life and Caribbean cooking. In 75 recipes, Freeman and a host of celebrities capture the distinct flavours of the Caribbean islands while recounting their fondest memories of the area. There aren’t many books in which recipes for cracked coconut ice cream and breadfruit fritters rub up alongside stories from the shoot of Pirates of The Caribbean, but it’s all here in this unique book.
My Cookbook – Gérard Depardieu (2005)
French actor Gérard Depardieu has a rather tactile relationship with food. “I delight in touching things with my bare hands,” he told The Guardian. “I prefer to eat with my fingers rather than to use a knife and fork, to feel immediately the tenderness of a cut of meat or the crispness of a vegetable. Somehow things taste different if I touch them.”
What Depardieu lacks in table manners, he more than makes up for in knowledge and skill. In 2005, the Jean de Florette actor published My Cookbook, a guide to the art of domestic French cooking. Within the book’s six chapters, covering everything from salads, soups and starters to fish, meat and poultry, Depardieu comments on the importance of knowing the source of one’s ingredients. “I want to tell the stories that lie behind the recipes as well,” he said of the book in 2005. “The ingredients are naturally very important, but so too are the people who raise the animals, who bake the bread and make the cheese.”
Pearl’s Kitchen: An Extraordinary cookbook -Pearl Bailey (1973)
Best known for performances in 1959’s Porgy and Bess and St Louis Blues, in which she starred opposite Nat King Cole, Pearl Bailey was an institution in herself. In 1973 she published Pearl’s Kitchen, which is actually more of a memoir than a cookery book. That being said, the book contains more than a hundred of Pearl’s favourite recipes alongside those of her esteemed friends.
Pearl’s Kitchen spans countless cuisines, offering instruction on how to make warming Chinese noodle dishes, macaroni cheese and southern fried chicken. Each recipe offers Pearl the chance to deliver a heartwarming anecdote about her family or life in show business. If you like a cookbook that doubles up as a fireside companion, this is the one for you.
