The Dead Celebrity Cookbook: A Resurrection of Recipes from More Than 145 Stars of Stage and Screen

If you've ever fantasized about feasting on Frank Sinatra's Barbecued Lamb, lunching on Lucille Ball's "Chinese-y Thing," diving ever-so-neatly into Joan Crawford's Poached Salmon, or wrapping your lips around Rock Hudson's cannoli – and really, who hasn't? – hold on to your oven mitts! 
    
In The Dead Celebrity Cookbook: A Resurrection of Recipes by 150 Stars of Stage and Screen, Frank DeCaro—the flamboyantly funny Sirius XM radio personality best known for his six-and-a-half-year stint as the movie critic on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart—collects hundreds of recipes passed on from legendary stars of stage and screen, proving that before there were celebrity chefs, there were celebrities who fancied themselves chefs.
   
Their all-but-forgotten recipes—rescued from out-of-print cookbooks, musty biographies, vintage magazines, and dusty pamphlets—suggest a style of home entertaining ripe for reexamination if not revival, while reminding intrepid gourmands that, for better or worse, Hollywood doesn't make celebrities (or cooks) like it used to.

Starring
Elizabeth Taylor's Chicken with Avocado and Mushrooms
Farrah Fawcett's Sausage and Peppers
Liberace's Sticky Buns
Bette Davis's Red Flannel Hash
Bea Arthur's Good Morning Mushroom Tomato Toast
Dudley Moore's Crème Brûlée
Gypsy Rose Lee's Portuguese Fish Chowder
John Ritter's Famous Fudge
Andy Warhol's Ghoulish Goulash
Vincent Price's Pepper Steak
Johnny Cash's Old Iron Pot Family-Style Chili
Vivian Vance's Chicken Kiev
Sebastian Cabot's Avocado Surprise 
Lawrence Welk's Vegetable Croquettes
Ann Miller's Cheese Soufflé
Jerry Orbach's Trifle
Totie Fields's Fruit Mellow
Irene Ryan's Tipsy Basingstoke
Klaus Nomi's Key Lime Tart
Richard Deacon's Bitter and Booze
Sonny Bono's Spaghetti with Fresh Tomato Sauce

And many others from breakfast to dessert.

Frank DeCaro, author of The Dead Celebrity Cookbook, is heard each weekday morning on his own live national call-in program, The Frank DeCaro Show, on Sirius XM Satellite Radio, which now boasts more than 25 million subscribers. His radio guests have run the gamut from Justin Bieber to Ernest Borgnine, and his following across North America is as loyal as it is diverse. Known as both a writer and a performer, DeCaro pens the "Icons" column on vintage television for CBS's Watch! magazine. For years as a fashion editor, he wrote the "Style Over Substance" column for The New York Times. A graduate of Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism, DeCaro has written for myriad publications including The New York Times Magazine, Martha Stewart Living, Newsweek, Vogue, and TV Guide. As a performer, DeCaro has appeared on the ABC sitcom Cougar Town, The Rosie O'Donnell Show, The Joy Behar Show, and numerous talking-head programs. He is best known for his six-and-a-half-year stint as the movie critic on The Daily Show and a forty-episode run of the game show I've Got a Secret. In 2010, he cocreated the YouTube sensation "Betty White Lines," a rap tribute to the Golden Girls star which was featured on the Today show, Showbiz Tonight, and dozens of blogs, and got more than 100,000 hits in its first week online. In addition, the award-winning DeCaro is the author of the groundbreaking A Boy Named Phyllis: A Suburban Memoir, which Vanity Fair called "hilarious" and The Advocate credited as opening the door for David Sedaris and "the gay American humorist as everyman." His follow-up work, a coffee table biography called Unmistakably Mackie: The Fashion and Fantasy of Bob Mackie, earned a B+ in Entertainment Weekly. DeCaro lives with his husband, writer Jim Colucci, in New York City and suburban New Jersey. Visit the author at deadcelebritycookbook.com.