In addition to writing some of cinema's most iconic movie scenes -- think Meg Ryan faking an orgasm in a busy New York deli and biting into a post-coital sandwich afterwards -- the late filmmaker Nora Ephron also wrote a self-published cookbook.
Ephron, who was able to parlay her love of food into her film Julie & Julia, was well known for being a passionate foodie who loved to cook and entertain, which she wrote about in Nora's Cookbook, reports the Los Angeles Times, a collection of recipes in 174 pages.
In keeping with Ephron's appreciation for simple, wholesome foods, recipes aren't fussy or ostentatious, but include dishes like chicken salad, monkey bread, pot roast and even "cherry cola mold."
Ephron died Tuesday at the age of 71, but the post-mortem accolades and tributes continue to pour in for the filmmaker, essayist and journalist, perhaps best known for chick-flick movies like Sleepless in Seattle, When Harry Met Sally and You've Got Mail.
The cookbook was written and compiled for friends, bound simply by spiral wire, says the LA Times, written in her signature, wry humor. Between recipes for "The Breakfast Pancake Thing You Make in the Oven," and "Cornbread Pudding Made of Horrible Ingredients," Ephron doles out pearls of entertaining wisdom and salvos.
For example, Ephron points out that couples are never broken up at California dinner parties, for fear that a husband is seated next to someone else's young girlfriend.
"But dinners with couples seated next to one another are always deadly dull, which is why there are almost no good dinner parties in the entire state of California."
In Julie & Julia, which weaves the stories of US TV chef Julia Child and blogger Julie Powell into one film, Ephron indulges her passion for food with pornographic close-ups of chocolate cake, hollandaise sauce and boeuf bourguignon.
