Cooking Channel Announces What’s Cookin for 2010

Breaking Celebrity News: When did you start experimenting and cooking in the kitchen?

CR: My mother is kind of a hippie.  She’s a surreal oil painter.  So, she was very supportive of a little kid thinking, “Hey, I want to make Martha Stewart berry muffins from scratch and make a huge mess in the kitchen!" She would go and get all the ingredients for me and I would go crazy cooking.  It was really great to have that freedom and for her to let me play. But, I didn’t cook as a career at first.  I actually did other careers and finally I was like, “I want to do what I love most,” and quit my whole life and chased my dream.

Food Network Tastes Glamorous Life: Private Chefs of Beverly Hills

Breaking Celebrity News: How did you get the idea for 5 Ingredient Fix?

CR: I went to France, actually and it was really fascinating because in Southwest France, there’s nothing.  There are no grocery stores.  There are no little markets.  There’s nothing.  There is a farmer’s market on Saturdays and if you don’t hit that, you’re not going to have anything. So I had my little bicycle and I would go and knock on doors.  We’re talking the houses are way far apart because it’s all farmland.  It’s all agricultural.  So, I would go and knock on these doors with my little basket on the front of my bicycle and try and find somebody that had chickens and they’d go wring a chicken’s neck in the back and bring it to me. But, what was incredible was they were just eating the most simple dishes and it all kind of derived from peasant dishes that turned into recipes that now we love. It was really fascinating because they were using so few ingredients and just really amazing quality ingredients.  Coming out of culinary school and private chefing in New York City where there’s a hundred million things in your recipes, it was more of like, “Oh, yeah.  This is how most of the world eats.” If you’re not living in a big city, you’re using what you’ve got.

Worst Cooks In America

Breaking Celebrity News: What are your favorite ingredients to work with?

CR: Oh, gosh.  The ingredients I use a lot of, you’ll notice, is bacon.  I love bacon. It makes everything better.  But, it’s not just the flavor of it.  It’s really, really versatile.  It’s one of those things that I think people forget how many uses it has. For example, if you’re grilling something or you’re roasting something; things that tend to dry out normally like pork tenderloin—if you put some bacon on top, it will naturally baste the meat. And you can even take the bacon off before you serve it, but it will just keep everything nice and moist because it will almost melt and just continuously baste the meat. I also love to render the fat and then cook in that because a little bit of bacon fat isn’t going to kill you and if I can get somebody to eat Brussels sprouts; toss a little bit of bacon fat on some fresh Brussels sprouts, throw it in the oven to crisp a little bit – oh, that is so good.