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“Every girl needs a little chick-lit brain candy once in a while,” my friend Erin wrote, passing to me her advance copy of “Deep Dish,” which came out Feb. 26. “And since it's all about cooking, I thought of you.”
I'm glad she did �" as I'm not the book snob my pal had me pegged for, I dove in and found that author Mary Kay Andrews has the recipe for another best seller in “Deep Dish.” Her last book, “Hissy Fit,” spent some time on the New York Times Best Seller List.
“Deep Dish” ($24.95, HarperCollins) tells the story of Gina, a shadow-swearing, pork-rind sneaking, somewhat-naïve host of a public television cooking show. She's a young up-and-comer in the food world, having edited a major newspaper's food section before moving to TV. But when her producer-boyfriend gets her show canned she faces losing her career, her lovelife and worse, her freedom, if she has to sell her condo and move home with Mama and Daddy and her hard-partying sister Lisa.
When Gina gets an audition for a spot on the national cooking network, the potholders come off. But in the midst of a fight for her professional life, Gina's looks take a hit thanks to her usually skillful esthetician D'John, pronounced, I assume, like the mustard. Will she wind up with the hot job and the hotter man, her competition: a tasty outdoorsman named Tate?
“Deep Dish” isn't a cookie-cutter romance novel, nor is it over-processed. It's as real as the cream in the gravy.
Andrews took pains to make it so. She visited Paula Deen's set to see firsthand how a cooking show is made.
She is also well-schooled in human behavior and that comes through in her vivid descriptions: Her characters don't simply answer their cell phones, they roll onto one hip and fish the phones from their pockets before flipping them open. They don't merely sweat when they're nervous; perspiration beads in the small of their backs. Peppering the dialogue is a little “language” that Southern belles would scold but the text isn't overly salty.
Andrews knows cooking �" what's more she knows from sharing kitchen space with her husband how sparks can fly when two hard-headed cooks get in each other's way. “Deep Dish” isn't the first time she has drawn a plot from personal experience. Nor is it the first time food has played a role her novels.
In “Deep Dish”, food is in the spotlight.
And that's where Andrews is a tease. She whetted my appetite for more than the three recipes included at the back of the book. Her descriptions of shrimp remoulade, Granny Smith apple and mint slaw and lemon pound cake had hungrily flipping to the back of the book to find them not there. Instead Andrews serves up grilled peaches and Brunswick stew, barely mentioned in the story, and a chocolate tomato soup cake.
Nonetheless, “Deep Dish” is a delicious diversion. But if you can't stomach the thought of people finding out about your indulgence, just tell them you only read it for the recipes.