Paula Deen Celebrates!

By JULIETTE ROSSANT Many chefs incorporate holiday recipes into their cookbooks, but for those chefs who want to churn out a timely gift for their fans to buy, they bundle up recipes with family stories that go with them into the holiday cookbook genre. Nigella Lawson wrote Feasts, Emeril Lagasse produced Every Day's a Party and even Mario Batali has penned Mario Batali's Holiday Food. No surprise that fellow Food Network bigwig Paula Deen has one too. Get Paula Deen Celebrates! (Simon & Schuster 2006) if you enjoy listening to her stories of friends and family in Savannah and the South. How do Food Network stars manage to write cookbooks when they are so busy with their TV projects and more? Paula herself is mighty busy these days with a new magazine, the aptly named Cooking with Paula Deen, two Food Network shows, and product lines for which she is on tour, to be writing a cookbook. So Paula asked Martha Nesbit, a Savannah-based cookbook writer and journalist to write one with her. Nesbit also co-wrote one of her previous books, Paula Deen & Friends Martha and I see eye-to-eye on a great many things, and Martha has been testing recipes for twenty-five years. I know her and I trust her. She has taken my favorites , like chicken potpie and she has made sure the recipes will work for you like they work in my kitchen for me 'cause you know I have a tendency to add a little of this and a little of that and by the time I get through with it I don't know what''s in it!. (p. 2) If there recipes work, then, it is because Martha Nesbit is a good cookbook writer. The book starts off with New Years' Eve Brunch and ends with Christmas. In between are are a year's worth of holidays like Elvis's Birthday (p. 23), Big Easy Mardi Gras (p.49), Paula's own wedding aniversary (p. 63) and "May Day Pink and White Party." Sprinkled through out are Paula's Pearls of Wisdom, like this choice morsel from Valentine's Day: Don't forget to get dolled up! He'll think you're better than a June bride in a feather bed! (p. 33) Paula is the Dr. Phil of cooking, and this book is full of her earnest advice -- there is spicier stuff in the recipe heads. The recipes for Valentine's Day focus on surf 'n turf: The Lady & Sons Crab Stuffed Shrimp (pp. 34-5), Shrimp and Lobster Bisque (p. 36) flavored with creole seasoning, and Stuffed Beef Tenderloin (p. 37). If you have room after all that for dessert, Paula has a recipe for Chocolate Bundles with Chocolate Sauce (p. 41), which is essentially puff pastry filled with Snickers, Chocolate Kisses or other candy and serced with chocolate sauce. Paula admits that she is sick of turkey and ham by the time Christmas rolls around, so she makes Standing Rib Roast (p. 202) or Soy-Rubbed Tenderloin (p. 208) with Twice Baked Potato Casserole (p. 209) followed by Coconut Pound Cake with 7-Minute Frosting (p. 211) for Christmas. Her recipes, one asumes under Martha's influence, are moving away from depending on packaged foods and prepared mixes to using more fresh products and even some exotics --like soya sauce--though she does not seem to distiguish ordinary soya sauce from mushroom and other dark varieties better suited to marinades. There are plenty of snap shots of Paula and her family, including one terrific one (p. 123) of Paula as a cheerleader complete with buffant hairdo and plaid mini-skirt. Fans of Paula will find a concentrated dose of her version of Southern charm. Happy Holidays! Book details: Publisher Amazon.com Barnes & Noble Previous articles: Exclusive Interview: Paula's Party Rossant on Rachael Ray's Competition Paula Deen: Egg Muffin Machine Jamie and Bobby Deen: Road Tasted Paula Deen & Friends [Cookbook Reviews - complete] Technorati Tags: superchefblog, Juliette Rossant, super chef, celebrities, chefs, food, restaurants, cooking, branding, cuisine, blogging, food blogging, cookbooks, cookbooks superchefblog, cookbooks rossant --> back to superchefblog