Dishing: Great Dish -- and Dishes -- from America's Most Beloved Gossip Columnist

by Liz Smith

A collection of favorite celebrity recipes, culled by the entertainment editor for Cosmopolitan magazine, includes Elizabeth Taylor's and Richard Burton's Judge's Jailhouse Chili, Diane Sawyer's Cherry Pie, and Dan Jenkins's Chicken Fried Steak. By the author of Natural Blonde. 100,000 first printing.

Genres: Nonfiction

256 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2005

About the author

Mary Elizabeth "Liz" Smith is an American gossip columnist, nicknamed "The Grand Dame of Dish."

On February 16, 1976, Smith began a self-titled gossip column for the New York Daily News. During a 1979 newspaper strike, her Daily News editors asked her to appear daily on WNBC-TV's Live at Five, and she stayed with the program for eleven years. Her exposure on television made Smith a popular figure on the Manhattan social scene and provided fodder for her column which had, by then, been syndicated to nearly seventy newspapers. She won an Emmy for her reporting on the hot hit Live at Five for WNBC in 1955.

In 1991 Smith, hot off her exclusive interviews with Ivana Trump during her divorce from real estate tycoon Donald Trump, moved to Newsday, where she stayed until 1995. Smith then signed on to the Murdoch-owned New York Post. She worked for Fox News for 7 years and is today on Fox and Friends.

In April 2005, Smith left Newsday, over a contract dispute. The official discontinuation of her column came after several months of dispute among Smith, her lawyer David Blasband, and Newsday management. Lawyers for Newsday focused on a misstep and refused to renew her contract, the highest-paid in newspaper history. Blasband says, "Yes, Liz missed the date, but Newsday still had four months before the contract ran out." The matter was settled out of court and Smith continued at the New York Post where her column still appears. It also appears two days a week in Variety and in many other newspapers.

Reviews

[Liquidlasagna · Rating 3 out of 5]

You'll find Katherine Hepburn's brownies recipe in here. Though Ann Hodgeman in her Just Beat It series of two books, thought it was the boring Girl Scout's recipe and Hodgeman did a great tortured path to figure out how to make some of the best brownies around.

Liz Taylor has her chili recipe, and she used to be a fan of Chasen's chili which basically stood out for the high quality Mexican cumin and the rough grind of the hamburger to make it stand out over the others, a good 70 years ago... When liz was in Italy filming, she would have quart jars from Chase's delivered to her....

and well, if you're curious about Julia Roberts eats, when she's not high-strung as a sometimes kindly prima donna, peek here.

the crappy part of this book is this

"It is as much a collection of stories about celebrities and their dining habits as it is a cookbook"

but then again, I've got the Frank Sinatra cookbook where he gets every one of his friends to donate their variations on horses's head.

Mind you, people have moved on from Patsy's in the 1960s (Frank's favorite and I don't think he smashed any ketchup bottles on the wall here) to Rao's in the 2000s, though it was quite the place where you could wait one or two years to get a reservation

and only Beverly Sills from the Metropolitan Opera and Woody Allen could get a seat, oh and Al Pacino

Yeah, Sinatra was not exactly a cool cucumber, but once when that happenned at dinner, Don Rickles asked, "Frank, could you please pass the Ketchup?"

and he got a laugh

[Sunny · Rating 1 out of 5]

Not great. Read through the first part of the book, but skimmed through the rest. Just not interested in what celebrities are doing.

[Suzi · Rating 2 out of 5]

I loved Liz but this doesn't do gossip or cooking or recipes justice. Self-promotion mostly.

[Jane]

Probably if you liked celebrities and/or cooking more than me, you'd like this a lot. I liked it fine, but then, I like almost anything that talks about Texas and/or has a picture of Ann Richards. !Que mujer!

[Erin · Rating 3 out of 5]

Full of name/location-dropping. Some decent-sounding recipes.

[Althea · Rating 3 out of 5]

Got a couple of good recipes and some great recommendations for restaurants in NYC which I hope to try out. Also got some inside dope on a few celebrities.