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Celebrity chef Sunny Anderson has put her travels in Europe and Asia to good use in her first cookbook, Sunny’s Kitchen, by combining unusual ingredients she discovered while living and working abroad with comfort food.
Anderson’s taste for global cuisine dates back to her childhood in Germany, where her father was posted with the US Army for three years. She continued her travels after joining the US Air Force as a broadcast journalist and radio disc jockey while stationed in Seoul, South Korea.
After leaving the military Anderson moved to New York City, opened a catering company, and landed a television cooking show, Cooking for Real on the Food Network.
The 38-year-old who was born in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, spoke to TVWeekly about her passion for food, adding personal stories to her recipes and tips to jazz up her dishes.
She said: “The kitchen was the heart of the house as I was growing up. I know it was my mum’s laboratory. When she was in the kitchen, you’d leave her alone so she could work her magic. Then all of a sudden she would say, ‘It’s time to eat’. I heard that every night.
“When we went out to eat, it wasn’t for mummy to take the night off, if was for her and daddy to try something new. For me, the kitchen is really important, mostly because it was the same everywhere we moved. When we moved, it was the first place we would unpack because it was the most important. Growing up and sitting at the dinner table, the conversation was usually about the food.”
She believes soups and stock are the most under-used ingredients in the home kitchen. “There are a lot of recipes that call for water. But when you have pasta that has tightened up after sitting in the fridge, you could loosen it up with stock. Why use water? I think stock is everything. If you don’t have anything to marinate, you could marinade some chicken in chicken stock, which is made with vegetables and aromatics,” Chef Sunny said.
She hopes people will take away as many useful hints from her book as they do from her TV appearances. “It’s simple,” she said. “It’s not intimidating. The reason why I told a little personal story with every recipe is that every time you eat (you should) think about life and make it a moment.”
Chef Sunny knows all about grabbing the moment and working hard to achieve her dreams. She explained: “I wanted to chase down this career in food, but I wasn’t getting jobs in food. I was getting offers from radio. It took a lot for me to say no.
“I did a lot of side jobs. I worked at a kennel and at a loan company. I did those things because I knew they would make me totally uncomfortable. They would make me focus on what I really wanted to do.
“It’s a cliché but you have to be willing to do it for free. You are asking people to take a chance on you. You’ve got to show you believe in yourself.”
