Knife Drop: Creative Recipes Anyone Can Cook

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Thiessen: I know you're a man, and it's hard to understand that. But every woman would understand if they've had a child.

The author is apparently some kind of social media star, delivering cooking videos to legions of fans. I admit, I didn’t know his work prior to reading this book. But when I stumbled across the book itself, I found it rather intriguing. The theme here seems to be interesting, creative, restaurant-quality types of dishes, but which can be (relatively) easily prepared by home cooks in a home kitchen.DiGiovanni: That is such a funny thing to say as my food fail, but that was probably my latest food fail.

Thiessen: My challenges are very different cooking now for a family than they were when I was in my twenties cooking for myself or for friends or whatever. It was very, very different. I felt like I was able to laser-focus into a recipe and do pretty well with that. There's always fails of turning the corner and not paying attention, but nowadays, it's all about multitasking in the kitchen. I'm cooking dinner, but I'm still having to help my child with their homework and my husband's needing something, so my biggest challenge is making sure I get it done in time for dinner. In a large mixing bowl, cream together cubed butter, brown sugar, and sugar for 4 minutes or until creamy. On that note of speaking to his audience, this might also be the perfect cookbook for the social media age because not only is the author apparently a social media cooking star of some sort, but he’s also included QR codes throughout the book leading the reader to videos demonstrating how to prepare some (not all) of the recipes. DiGiovanni: Which is funny. But another part of it, as a kid — and I'm sure you've dealt with this, having kids — is I would literally reach into the pantry and take handfuls of sugar and eat the sugar. I just wanted sugar. I found early on that if I gave my mom an ingredient list of stuff to make a lemon meringue pie that I would share with the family, sugar's got to be on the list, and I was getting my sugar fix that way. I appreciate the scope of this cookbook, and I look forward to sharing this book with my soon-to-graduate children to have references for successful cooking later in life.Admittedly, some of the recipes live up to that promise a bit better than others. To be sure, there are several recipes in here that look just as impressive as anything you might find in a Michelin-starred restaurant, but with relatively simple ingredients and techniques accessible to home chefs. But there are also a couple that don’t quite hit that “impressive” mark or which might be a bit more intimidating to the home cook. But that’s not to say those recipes are necessarily bad or failures by any means. And despite a couple maybe not quite hitting the same theme as the rest of the book, I consider the book on the whole quite a success.

Using a pastry brush, lightly coat one side of each slice of bread with mayonnaise, about 1/2 tablespoon per slice. DiGiovanni: If I could cook for anybody, I'd probably cook for my grandmother. I'd probably cook for my dad's mom. DiGiovanni: They're very fun. We recently did our ninth one. It's not out yet or anything, but that was our best planned-out one so far. We felt really good with the whole thing. It looked perfect. We were very, very happy with it. We just did our ninth one. We're definitely getting better at getting all the planning in place. Thiessen: It's called "Here We Go Again." This will be, actually, my second cookbook. I haven't even gone from all that. Tuna Melt- The tuna was runny from too much mayo and pink from so much paprika. Also it called for sharp cheddar but the cheese in the picture was white. The finished product was super bland.

Tip:You should always bake your bacon. It makes for a far better final product. No more stovetop bacon please, unless absolutely necessary. Thiessen: Was that your first love of getting into cooking — the chore that you had to actually cook? DiGiovanni: Well, I was going to tell you — you have a lot of cookbooks in your house. They have a record for most cookbooks. DiGiovanni: It is interesting. It's been interesting for me also — and I'm sure [for] many people — to watch how the whole space is evolving. What do you think about all of it, the fact that TV is not fizzling away, but it's different than it used to be? DiGiovanni: Absolutely. My mom certainly could use a crash course — she'd be upset to hear this — on how to treat your leftovers well. My dad, too, makes a lot of jokes about the leftovers we had growing up, but at the same time, it's one of those things that made me appreciate food every time we had it. Now, that makes me so conscious about all this stuff.