Alex Guarnaschelli is booked and busy. As a mom of one and a well-adorned Food Network chef, Guarnaschelli is in high demand — but don’t worry, she’s making sure she’s enjoying the warm weather like the rest of us. “The summer is a time when Ava recharges from the school year and we hang out and we do a lot of cooking — and we do a lot of really spontaneous cooking,” the Ciao House judge explained about spending summer with her daughter, Ava. The mother-daughter duo even have a cookbook coming out this September!
Image via Penguin Randomhouse
Cook It Up: Bold Moves for Family Foods, by Alex Guarnaschelli and Ava Clark, will highlight family friendly recipes inspired by social media trends and the duo’s favorite meals. The Chopped judge explained, “We often, like they say in kindergarten, kids parallel play. They don't interface a lot, but they play side by side with one another.” Guarnaschelli continued that mom and daughter will eat together, but the chef may take care of the roast chicken while Ava creates a salsa verde and bakes a loaf of bread. As a result, “the cookbook ends up having this kind of really diverse repertoire from an avocado toast to a layered cake.”
Alongside Cook It Up, Guarnaschelli partnered up with Ziploc Endurables for tasty exclusive recipes that the whole family can enjoy (like this Bistro Chicken Breast with Basmati Rice). She said, “You can literally put a bunch of ingredients in the bag and just steam cook them or roast them…It's like little meals, and they're not dinners that someone else cooked for you. You made the food yourself.” Guarnaschelli explained that her Ziploc collaboration will forever be associated with her newest cookbook due to the timing of it and the moments she spent cooking with Ava.
With cooking most certainly on the brain, I wanted to know what ingredient the Food Network star advises you keep in your pantry at all times — red wine vinegar. It’s a kitchen must due to its “punchy” and “delicious acidity.” According to Guarnacsheeli, the vinegar can be thrown into barbecue sauce, apple pie filling, salad dressing, a braise or sauce, and even a cocktail that requires a simple syrup — but only using a splash! With red wine vinegar being a common Italian ingredient, the television personality went on to detail her time recording the first season of Ciao House and the biggest mistake you're making with pasta.
“People don't salt the water because they don't want to…they think that they're salting the pasta water and that’s all the salt they're adding," Guarnachelli elaborated. Salted pasta water adds necessary flavor and allows the grain to stick to the sauce. What was her favorite pasta she tasted on Ciao House, you ask? Surprisingly, it was a classic pasta bolognese, made by contestant Corey Becker. At first the cookbook author was skeptical of a competitor presenting such a traditional dish — but it turns out, it was love at first bite.
“We [her and co-host Gabe Bertaccini] ate some of it while we were judging.” Guarnaschelli laughed. “And then when Corey walked away, we were, like, eating the rest of it because we didn't want him to see us literally licking the bowl.” We can’t say we wouldn’t do the same—especially when it comes to eating pasta bolognese in the Tuscan hills. Guarnaschelli’s judging criteria changes based on the cooking show she is filming. For Ciao House, the television personality wanted contestants to have a sense of the ingredients and environment around them to generate delicious meals. For Chopped, Guarnaschelli is looking for imagination, risk, and taste.
She added, “I never think about whether I like an ingredient or not, because I don't think that inserting your personal opinions is part of being a judge.” Now that we’re upping our cooking game with salted pasta water and red wine vinegar, you may even see ME competing on the next Chopped season...a girl can dream, right?!
Cook It Up: Bold Moves for Family Foodswill be available on September 5. Until then, sign up for our email newsletter to keep up with all the latest recipes!
Header image via Ziploc
