"celebrity cookbooks" news and stories

Three very different celebs have released cookbooks in recent weeks, each one with a unique spin. Rocker Sheryl Crow's If It Makes You Healthy: More than 100 Recipes Inspired by the Seasons has a personal narrative and get-fit message, while Eva Longoria's Eva's Kitchen: Cooking with Love for Family and Friends is built around homey recipes the actress has collected over the years. And although Gwyneth Paltrow has taken a bit of teasing for the highbrow tone of her book, My Father's Daughter: Delicious, Easy Recipes Celebrating Family and Togetherness, it's clear she loves food and wants to pass on her enthusiasm. Which book suits your style?

Vote for your pick after the jump.

If you ever get the chance to cook with Eva Longoria, you should probably bring a lemon.

The television actress recently released a cookbook, titled Eva's Kitchen: Cooking with Love for Family and Friends, and, as she told the AP, "I put lemon in everything, on everything." And she means everything: "It's really great for sauces, for dressings, for fish, for meat. I love lemon."

The cookbook is a homey collection of family recipes and dishes she's made over the years. The 36-year-old actress plays a former model on the ABC series "Desperate Housewives," but says her home life is a far cry from the stylized life of her character. Longoria says she cooks daily, although she tends to play fast and loose with ingredients. She told the AP that it was tough to translate her "a little of this and that" dishes into hard-and-fast recipes.

"I'm a natural cooker, and I cook by instinct, so if I want salt I'll put salt and if I don't I don't, so I felt really bad telling people to put, you know, a quarter-cup of cheese if they didn't want it," she told the AP. "You know, I'm like, `Or not! You don't have to!'"

Read the whole story at The Huffington Post.

They make us laugh, they make us cry . . . and they make great lasagna. Actors, it seems, can't get enough of cooking, and writing about it. In celebration of National Cookbook Month, the editors over at YumSugar decided to pay tribute to the unsung genre of the celebrity cookbook by whipping up a quiz. Ok, we're supplying a clue for Alicia Silverstone's ode to the vegan lifestyle. But we're not telling you if Eat Well with Patti LaBelle is an actual title; all we'll say is: Who knew that voice could also come up with something called "Over the Top, Top, Top Macaroni and Cheese?

Test Your Knowledge: Can You Match the Cookbook to the Celebrity?

Photo: Kat Kinsman.

It would seem that Zero Mostel was a sucker for foot jelly -- a veritable fiddler on the hoof. And it must be said that there's a tremendous visceral appeal in having a trotter all a-bubble on the stovetop for the better part of a day. For goodness sakes, many a savory pie or festive aspic demands it, and heaven forfend that boeuf go sans gelée.

It's the "pleasant gas" part of this recipe that perplexes. Sure, Sammy Davis Jr. was all peppy for petrol in this early '60s Shell Oil ad, but it's not especially likely that the Candy Man was tapping out "What a Gas!" in celebration of cholodetz. Seeing as I had a Styrofoam tray full of cow feet in the freezer on this past, rain-drenched Saturday, it seemed written in the stars -- or by the stars assembled by Ms. Dinah Shore in her 1966 "The Celebrity Cookbook" -- that I find out for myself.

Read on for highlights from 'The Celebrity Cookbook' and see how the Calf's Foot Jelly recipe turned out after the jump.