NEW YORK — 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.