chef

This Is the Best Celeb Chef Pasta Recipe

By Amanda M. Rye 1 week ago

Carbs of any kind are major comfort food to us, but the ultimate comfort food has to be a bubbling casserole dish of baked pasta. The golden cheesy top is browned to perfection, the pasta that hides underneath is perfectly cooked and coated in creamy sauces, and let’s not forget about those crispy edges of pasta that the cheese didn’t quite cover. Talk about a plate of heartwarming goodness for dinner!

After I cooked three different celebrity chef pasta recipes from Ina Garten, Alex Guarnaschelli, and Guy Fieri, the top dish was a complete surprise. The pick for the number-one spot was based on three simple factors: how easy the recipe was to follow and make, how easy the ingredients were to acquire, the look of the pasta coming out of the oven, and the overall taste.

Here are the recipes I tested, ranked from good to best. And for

… Read More

Chef Alon Shaya helped Holocaust survivor re-create lost recipes

By Amanda M. Rye 1 month ago

And so began the process of Shaya trying to re-create the tastes of Fenves’ happy prewar childhood, using recipes translated by Fenves from Hungarian that were not very specific and sometimes only included ingredients with no oven temperatures or measurements. The men have never met in person due to COVID-19, but with help from the museum they coordinated talks over Zoom and even did a Facebook Live where Fenves tasted the food of his childhood for the first time in over 75 years.

“The tastes, the smells, the very look of particular foods, trigger memories,” Hasia R. Diner, professor of American Jewish History at New York University told TODAY Food. “Perhaps more than any other aspect of culture, recollections of foods eaten take us all back to who we were, where we came from, what we have lost.”

“It’s been one of the most powerful and most important things I’ve

… Read More

Star chef Alon Shaya helped a Holocaust survivor recreate recipes from his prewar youth

By Amanda M. Rye 1 month ago

(JTA) — Visiting Yad Vashem a decade ago, Alon Shaya got to see some of the Jerusalem Holocaust museum’s culinary artifacts that aren’t always on display to the public.

It was the James Beard Award-winning chef’s introduction to the fact that concentration camp inmates distracted themselves by recalling and secretly writing recipes — on scraps of hidden paper and cloth — from their prewar lives.

“Food is such a big part of everything I do. It really moved me that people who were trapped, who were facing almost certain death, were helped by these memories of food. It reminded me of the power of food,” Shaya said. “They would not have spent their last moments documenting this if they did not think this was important.”

The Israel-born Shaya was raised in Philadelphia and now lives in New Orleans, where he and his wife, Emily, own Pomegranate Hospitality. The

… Read More

Chef Sunny Anderson Dishes On Her Easy-To-Follow Cooking Style

By Amanda M. Rye 2 months ago

Sunny Anderson doesn’t have your typical chef credentials. A self-taught cook, the Food Network star began whipping up dishes while living abroad as an Air Force member and later, while working as a hip-hop radio DJ. 

Whether it’s spicy Southern classics or comfort food bites, her recipes rely on ingredients you typically already have in your pantry. This time of year, that means Superbowl snacks of “dippable stuff” like chips and pretzels, she says, with “guacamole being a must!” 

Article continues below advertisement

You’ve been a host on Food Network for over ten years now. What’s your greatest memory? 
It always goes back to the first time, when I was a guest on Emeril Live in 2005. I was a caterer in NYC, and he was using one of my recipes, and I didn’t know if I would get to cook with him or just sit at that little side

… Read More