Stephen and Evie Colbert offer a cookbook that’s also a window on their lives – The Mercury News

By Mark Kennedy | The Associated Press

Many years into their marriage, Stephen and Evie Colbert suddenly became co-workers. And that is why, in a roundabout way, we have their first cookbook.

During the pandemic, Evie helped keep her husband’s “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert” on the air at CBS while the couple hunkered down in their South Carolina home.

“Evie was my crew and my only audience and my only guest. And it turned out we worked together well,” Stephen Colbert says. “We said, ‘We’ve always wanted to do something together. I think the thing to do would be a cookbook.’”

What emerged is “Does This Taste Funny?: Recipes Our Family Loves,” a collection of tried-and-true Colbert clan dishes like Spicy Lemon Chicken Thighs or Panfried Spot Tail Bass that also opens a window into their lives.

“It had to be a personal story because we’re not professional cooks. It’s all about our personal experience,” says Stephen Colbert.

The dishes range from a simple teriyaki-flavored pork loin — good for busy parents on a weekday for dinner — to an extravagant Beef Wellington, a fillet steak with mushrooms and prosciutto, wrapped in puff pastry, then baked.

It is a cookbook that also charts a love affair, celebrates extended family and rejoices over places visited — idiosyncratic and yet universal. There are four different recipes for fudge — each boasts it is the definitive one — submitted by the Colbert siblings.

A trip to a San Francisco restaurant in late 2007 inspired the recipe in the book for a clam chowder that is brothy, vegetable-forward and has plenty of clam meat.

“I don’t even know if the soup was as good as I remember it. We were just young parents with a moment away and big frosty glasses of sancerre,” says Stephen with a laugh. “Everything was tasting pretty good.”

Friends and family were tapped for their favorite dishes, like deviled eggs from Evie’s dad and chicken l’orange from Stephen’s mom. There are also photos and stories of their three children.

“For Stephen’s career, we purposefully kept our children out of the limelight, and when we sat down to do this, we realized, ‘Oh, we’re involving a lot of family. How do we feel about that?’ And it felt like a wonderful way to be personal,” says Evie. “It felt very much like a collective project that way.”

Many of the dishes lean on the South, which is natural since both grew up in Charleston, S.C. There are Lowcountry recipes for pickled shrimp, pork belly sliders and red rice, a dish Stephen says he enjoys making the most.

“At my little elementary school growing up, we had it just about every day. And it was fantastic. And this recipe comes closest to that really jammy, salty, smoky red rice I grew up with.”

Going back even further is Stephen’s Kindergarten Soup, which he learned to make helping the cook at Martin Luther Kindergarten. It calls for celery, carrot, onion, tomato, okra, corn, butter beans, green beans, peas and beef. The cookbook includes a photo of 5-year-old Stephen’s drawn recipe.

“It is the first recipe I ever learned. And my mom did hang up that recipe in her kitchen and take it down and make it every so often,” he says. He now laughs at its plainness, a yesteryear where it was “iceberg lettuce and salt and pepper for flavor.”

The Colberts have upped their sophistication levels since then, of course, including in the cookbook a recipe for duck breast with fig-orange sauce.

“People are afraid of duck, but it is really, really simple. Start in a cold pan, render it out. Save that duck fat for the potatoes you’re going to want with this later. Throw in some fig jam or any jam in with a little orange juice. It’s fantastic,” Stephen says.

Making the cookbook reconnected the couple to their roots. “It put us back in touch with all the food we grew up with and the people who taught us how to make these recipes,” says Evie, who still refers to recipes as receipts, the way her mother did.