Dec / Jan 2008
VOLUME 5 • NUMBER 6

Cover Story
December / January 2008

By Dena Coleman
"I love feeding people. I think food makes people feel happy,” professional chef and author of Boy Eats World!- A Private Chef Cooks Simple Gourmet- David Lawrence, told me. “Even the most jaded adult can’t help but smile at the idea of a chocolate chip cookie right out of the oven.”

With recipes such as pistachio-crusted salmon filets, baked alaska lemons and prosciutto-wrapped grilled plums with gorgonzola and rosemary, it sure does look like people would love to devour Lawrences creations just as much as he enjoys inventing scrumptious meals. These recipes look, taste and sound very impressive and elegant, yet are so simple to make and are 100 percent fool proof.
“All of the recipes in my book are really simple and the ingredients are so easy to find. The recipes are not too exotic and are pretty quick. Most of the recipes can certainly be finished within an hour,” Lawrence said.

Surprisingly, being a professional chef was not Lawrence’s goal, in fact, it was all about acting and being on television since the time he was about five-years-old.

“I wanted to be the seventh Brady child,” Lawrence confessed. In 1996, Lawrence moved to the Los Angeles area from Sacramento to pursue acting and fell into cooking professionally as a way to make ends meet. While working as a personal chef for a family in Beverly Hills, his love for cooking and entertaining became revived.
Lawrence, now a resident of the Santa Clarita Valley, first learned that he had culinary skills in his mothers kitchen. His mother always enjoyed cooking and entertaining while Lawrence would help. “Years before the food network, my mom always watched cooking shows and she would clip recipes out of magazines and newspapers. She had this fearlessness about trying new things and I think she kind of instilled that fearlessness in me. I learned a lot by helping her when she would throw parties. This was during the 1970’s when it was all about crock pots, fondues and all those fun things so I have a real fondness for those recipes and a lot of them are in my cookbook.”
Lawrence’s earliest memories of cooking is when he was eight-years-old. The first dishes he remembers making were Top Ramen and scrambled eggs. “From there, my cooking graduated to things like cookies and brownies and things that I think kids get into first,” Lawrence explained. “By the time I was 12-years-old, I was cooking dinner for my family almost every night as a way to get out of doing other chores.”

About three-years-ago, Lawrence wanted to preserve family recipes from his mother, aunt and grandmother and started to write a book containing family recipes as well as his own concoctions. When he finished his book, he wanted to have it published and turned to the same publishing house who published Rachael Ray’s 30 Minute Meal books.

“I had just finished writing the manuscript for Boy Eats World! and wanted it published but had no idea of how I was going to do it. I read somewhere that in the mid 1990’s when Rachael Ray was banging on every publisher’s door and nobody would give her a shot, everybody turned her down. There was one boutique publisher in New York called Lake Isle Press who specialized in cookbooks and they gave her a shot. I read that and literally at that moment I Googled Lake Isle Press and found their website. As crazy as this sounds, I picked up the phone and I called them. This woman answered the phone and I introduced myself and I said, ‘Hi I’m Dave Lawrence and I wrote this book called Boy Eats World!,’ and I probably didn’t shut up for like five minutes. When I finally took a breath, she said to me, ‘That’s really interesting, I’m Hiroko Kiiffner, the publisher of Lake Isle Press by the way,’ and I just about dropped the phone because I assumed I was talking with a receptionist and this publisher answered her own phone. I was really embarrassed and kind of flustered. We joke about it now- I know she thought I was crazy-but she was just charmed by my unorthodox approach enough to ask me to send my manuscript.”

About one year later, Lake Isle Press published Boy Eats World! The manuscript, once a dream and a way to sustain family recipes, transformed into a cookbook which contains 150 recipes filled with contents such as appetizers, main courses, desserts and a mixology chapter for mixed drinks.

The best part of this cookbook is that with a few ingredients and a short amount of time, we all have a professional chef lurking inside of us and Lawrence can show us the way to fast and easy gourmet cooking.

“I don’t think that food needs to be complicated or intimidating or that you have to spend three hours in the kitchen to turn out a good meal,” Lawrence says. “Also, food is a great leveler. We all have to eat, so without sounding cheesy, food brings people together and it’s a connection that we all have no matter who you are or where you come from. A lot of stories are told through food and a lot of traditions are passed on through food. Those things are fascinating to me.”

For more information on David Lawrence, visit his website at www.chefdavidlawrence.com.