Frank DeCaro - The Dead Celebrity Cookbook Presents Christmas in Tinseltown: Celebrity Recipes and Hollywood Memories from Six Feet Under the Mistletoe

Praise for The Dead Celebrity Cookbook...

God, is it brilliant!

Ted Allen, Chopped

These are the stars I grew up watching and they deserve to be remembered even if they were more talented on screen than they were in the kitchen.

Rosie ODonnell

One of our ten favorite pop culture cookbooks... most enticing...

Flavorwire, Huffington Post

Dead tasty!

Marie Claire

While Halloween might come only once a year, theres never a bad time for The Dead Celebrity Cookbook.

bonappetit.com

Flip on a movie channel and get cooking! Required reading.

Billy Heller, New York Post

A veritable whos who of Hollywoods Golden Age.

Sara Bonisteel, epicurious.com

Celebrities like Elizabeth Taylor and Andy Warhol may be gone, but their favorite dishes will never be forgotten. Try one tonight!

oprah.com

We hear Rock Hudsons Cannoli is delicious!

Entertainment Weekly

The perfect gift for your favorite cook.

Amy Scattergood, LA Weekly

Chow down on your favorite dead stars recipes. Come on, it wont kill you!

Michael Musto, The Village Voice

Health Communications, Inc.

Deerfield Beach, Florida

www.hcibooks.com

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

ISBN 13: 978-0-7573-1614-2 (paperback)

ISBN 10: 0-7573-1614-X (paperback)

ISBN 13: 978-07573-1641-8 (ebook)

ISBN 10: 0-7573-1641-7 (ebook)

2012 Frank DeCaro

All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the written permission of the publisher.

HCI, its logos, and marks are trademarks of Health Communications, Inc.

Publisher: Health Communications, Inc.
3201 S.W. 15th Street
Deerfield Beach, FL 334428190

Cover image GettyImages.com
Cover design and interior illustrations by Larissa Hise Henoch

Interior design and formatting by Lawna Patterson Oldfield

CONTENTS

N o one makes a bigger deal out of holidays than we do at our house and no ticketnot even for Book of Mormon is harder to secure than a seat at our Christmas Eve table. We dont care about religious beliefs; we just insist our guests be totally enthusiastic. We demand they commit themselves 110 percent to the celebration. Like a certain reality competition, we have voted friends off Christmas Island. Its rough at our place on December 24, but its worth it.

Every year brings a new theme to our festivity. We choose them as much as five years in advance and start collecting ornaments, glassware, china, tabletop decorations, linens, and anything that fits the motif were going for. If the producers of Hoarders ever want to do a Christmas special, Im their man.

So far weve done a hot pink and chartreuse color scheme (what I called Laugh-In Christmas), a candy theme we referred to as Operation: Gumdrop, and an all-Hawaiian holiday dubbed Mele Kaliki-Tiki. We did a TV-and-movie-star-obsessed Pop Culture celebration one year, a royally resplendent Purple-and-Gold motif another, a sophisticated Black-and-White look, a Chanukah-inclusive Blue and Silver design, and Bells, Bells, Bells, which was just what it sounds like. This year, its going to be Merry and Bright. Next year, its Felt. The year after that is Peppermint Twisted. Im thinking stripes.

I told you, we plan ahead.

So when it came time to do a new volume of The Dead Celebrity Cookbook a book that became something of an international sensationit seemed only natural to create a holiday edition. After all, Christmas may be the most wonderful time of the year, but it can leave a host or hostess wondering what to serve that he or she has never served before.

Thanks to the book youre holding, you can create a holiday celebration thats retro but completely new: Christmas the way they did it in Hollywood back when the phrase celebrity chef meant a singer or actor who was also handy in the kitchen, not some hotsy-totsy cook with a cable show.

This year, whip up Peggy Lees Holiday Halibut Casserole on Christmas Eve, an especially appropriate dish if you traditionally dont eat meat that night. On Christmas Day, make Joan Blondells Buffet Ham, and then use the leftovers in Nat King Coles Baked Ham Loaf to feed all your return-happy mall-crawlers on the 26th. Instead of just watching Miracle on 34th Street this year, cook up a batch of Natalie Woods Beef Stroganoff to savor while you view. If youre more of a Pee-wees Playhouse Christmas Special type, theres Dinah Shores Fruitcake. The best thing about these easy recipes is that you can make them without roasting your chestnuts on an open fire. Theres no stress here.

With Christmas in Tinseltown , you can put the kitsch back in your kitchen and lend that tired holiday ham some much-needed glam. In the pages that follow are more than 60 recipes for appetizers, main dishes, sides, and desserts from such beloved stars as Bing Crosby, Burl Ives, Bea Arthur, and the Grinch himself, Boris Karloff. All are linked to Christmas in some special way. For years, Ive been collecting stars recipes via out-of-print cookbooks and musty biographies that I picked up at flea markets, old appliance manuals, tattered giveaway pamphlets and vintage magazines that I found on eBay, newspaper clippings forwarded to me by listeners of my Sirius XM radio show, and more.

In this books themed chaptersIts a Wonderful Lunch, Eat Meat in St. Louis, and Munch of the Wooden Soldiers, to name a fewyoull find a variety of recipes, such as James Stewarts Barbecued Ribs, Vincente Minnellis Chicken, Oliver Hardys Baked Apples, Jimmy Durantes German Cole Slaw, Barbara Stanwycks Kipfels, and a Christmas Cup worthy of Santa himself from Edmund Gwenn. None appeared in The Dead Celebrity Cookbook , by the wayall are exclusive to this volume. These celebrities may be six feet under the mistletoe, but their culinary prowess lives on.

I hope youll think of this book as your guide to the best food, music, movies, and TV shows that the holidays have ever had to offer. I say holidays because theres a New Years Eve chapter in Christmas in Tinseltown as well. It didnt seem right to do a book that celebrated stars gone by without including Dick Clark and Guy Lombardo. For decades, they made our holidays bubblier. My wish is that the recipes and the viewing and listening suggestions contained in Christmas in Tinseltown will do the same for you for many years to come.