Al Roker and Chef-Daughter Courtney Honor Family Memories with New Cookbook

What makes a dish or a meal something we treasure? For many of us, it is the memories we collect and honor with our families and friends. Longtime NBC Today weather anchor Al Roker knows spending time with loved ones in the kitchen and at the table creates wonderful recipes for life.

“As you get older, you realize how much food is part of your memory, almost like your muscle memory. You can remember certain dishes associated with certain things,” Al says. “And then you grow up, and you have a family and those meals around the table, first with Courtney, and then with her sister Leila and brother, Nick, those are the memories that you hope you are forming for your kids with the meals you make.”

The veteran television host teamed up with daughter Courtney Roker Laga, an experienced chef, to capture the best of their family food memories and adventures in a new cookbook, “Al Roker’s Recipes To Live By: Easy, Memory-Making Family Dishes for Every Occasion.”

“Food brings people together. I think that’s some of the best memories I’ve had of being in the kitchen with my parents and eating with my grandmother. I don’t remember cooking with her too much, but I remember eating in her kitchen. Always good memories surrounded by food,” says Courtney, who is grateful for the time spent in the kitchen with her family

Giving Life to Al Roker’s Recipes To Live By

The fond memories of cooking and sharing meals with her family gave Courtney an idea. What if she and her dad worked together on a new cookbook featuring his greatest kitchen hits and favorite family recipes?

“I’d written a couple of cookbooks 25 years ago. It was fun, but I didn’t really think I had much to offer as far as cookbooking,” Al admits.

The beloved TV personality has authored more than six best-selling books since joining the “Today” show 28 years ago. “Al Roker’s Big Bad Book of Barbecue” came out in 2002, and “Al Roker’s Hassle-Free Holiday Cookbook” in 2003.

His daughter convinced him he still had more to offer about cooking for and with family and friends. She nudged him into giving life to “Al Roker’s Recipes to Live By,” released by Legacy Lit’s Hachette Book Group on October 15.

“I got sick a little more than a year and a half ago. She knows how much I love food and she goes, ‘Maybe this will give him something to look forward to,’” Al acknowledges.

The Emmy Award-winning journalist was hospitalized in 2022 and underwent multiple surgeries for blood clots and ulcers. He overcame the critical health issues with the support of his wife, ABC News senior national affairs correspondent and “20/20” co-anchor Deborah Roberts, and his children, Courtney, Leila and Nick.

Courtney expresses how her dad’s illness impacted their cookbook project. “Honestly, I was thinking about putting the book on hold for a little bit or not even doing it anymore. But he gradually got better, and we just kept pushing through with it. I think that’s why I hold this even closer to my heart, because of the road I was going on to do this book.”

The culinary school graduate, who has worked in two Michelin-starred restaurants, motivated Al to tackle the new cookbook with a surprise announcement. He laughs and talks about the joy of that moment. “The other thing that she said to me that gave me something to hold onto and get better for was that she was pregnant with my grandchild. In a period of time, she was going to birth a baby and a book!”

Al raves about the creative energy his chef-daughter poured into “Al Roker’s Recipes To Live By” while carrying her daughter, Sky. Developing the content was exceptionally challenging because her famous father, his mother, and Courtney’s mom, Alice Bell, Roker’s ex-wife, never measured ingredients or wrote down recipes.

“She kind of put on a journalist’s hat because she had to interview family members and me and do a reverse engineering, a recipe detective kind of thing,” he points out.

Courtney developed, tested and wrote the 100 recipes in the new cookbook. Some were no more than a memory of flavor, like her grandmother’s peas and rice. “I had to go back and think of the flavors in that. I made that dish like six times in a row. I had a lot of leftovers, and I was pregnant, so I was eating for two. So it was great,” says the chef.

Another dish she recreated from Roker’s family recipes is his grandmother’s pineapple upside-down cake. He suggests everyone had a grandma, auntie or somebody they knew who made the dessert in the 1950s and 60s. His daughter wrote the new recipes for that old-school dish and other homemade hits from the past.

“And what was amazing was that she nailed them. I was impressed with that in itself,” Al emphasizes. “All this time, she could still remember those flavors and those tastes. But even more impressively, replicate them.”

His eldest daughter also styled the food for “Al Roker’s Recipes To Live By” and hired a photographer to take colorful images of dishes from family, friends and prominent chefs. Al stresses that it took a lot more work than publishing his earlier cookbooks. “There was a centerpiece of six or seven or at most ten pages of pictures, and the rest was text. Today, almost every recipe has to have a picture.”

Crafting Al Roker’s Easy Recipes for Every Occasion

The celebrated book author and documentary producer wrote the introduction, head notes and pro tips in “Al Roker’s Recipes To Live By.” He is pleased that the new cookbook contains recipes representing precious moments in his life and food traditions familiar to just about everyone.

“I think almost everybody has a variation of something in that book. I don’t care what ethnic background you come from. There’s a version of something in there. For the most part, it’s things you remember,” Al maintains.

The recipes range from easy preparations for any time of day to slow-cooked dishes that require more time and ingredients. “There is a simple, seared chicken thigh with salt, pepper and poultry seasoning. For more seasoned chefs, there’s the 24-hour chicken. You brine it for 24 hours and cook it off. And then short ribs, which cook for three hours. There’s something for everybody in there,” Courtney adds.

The book showcases chosen favorites from Roker and his wife Deborah’s families, people Courtney grew up with, her mom and her dad’s chef friends, such as New York City’s Marcus Samuelsson and Daniel Boulud and the late Judy Rodgers of San Francisco’s Zuni Café.

Al’s close buddy Alexander Smalls does the Roker family’s annual Christmas party. Chef Smalls is an example of the diversity of cuisine in the new cookbook. His “Contemporary African Kitchen also comes out in October as well.

“He’s a huge proponent of the African diaspora, which is really American cuisine now,” Al adds. “The fact of the matter is, we ran the kitchens and that has fed into our country’s cuisine. Just like jazz and R&B was the basis for rock and influenced everybody from the Elvis Presley to the Beatles to Mick Jagger and the Rolling Stones, so has our cooking.”

Recipes for Italian, Indian, Latin and Mediterranean cuisine are presented along with the dishes most familiar to African American cooks, like the oxtail stew, McRoker pancakes and Deborah’s potato salad that Al favors.

“My goddaughter’s chocolate chip cookies are a huge crowd favorite. The pork chop is really good. I’m happy with all of them,” says Al.

What recipes do Courtney like best? “Probably, the baked mac and cheese and the shrimp tikki masala. There’s Tuscan polenta. There’s a place called Fresco in New York City that we go to a lot. It’s inspired by that place. Obviously, All of my grandmother’s recipes.”

Home cooks can try out anything from your garden frittata, brown butter seared scallops, lemon meringue crumb crust pie, or the Christmas morning cinnamon rolls. Al advises starting with simple dishes made special with a little more effort, like his son Nick’s scrambled eggs.

“I don’t think there is anything in this cookbook that would intimidate anybody. The more comfortable you get as you cook, you can find everything you want in this book,” advises Al.

The seasoned cook insists that people who have not tried cooking with loved ones don’t know what they are missing. “It’s those moments that happen spontaneously that you can’t plan, a blown recipe or a dropped egg or something very silly that you can’t plan. It’s almost like improv. You don’t know what is going to happen,” he says.

Al thinks the worst thing that could happen is that a dish doesn’t turn out right, and you must try again. Sometimes, a cook’s mistakes still produce a satisfying outcome, such as the time Courtney measured out ingredients for her dad’s YouTube video with his former NBC colleague, Katie Couric. “The recipe for the cornbread called for a quarter cup of sour cream. Well, she had combined the sour cream that was going to be for the chili and the cornbread,” Al recalls.

“He put all of the sour cream in the cornbread!” Courtney replies. Al continues, “Guess what? It turned out fine. Here’s the deal. If you follow the recipe 80%, it’s still going to be fine.”

Inheriting Al Roker’s Joy of Cooking

Good food, good times and good vibes are the hallmarks of family life in the Roker kitchen. Al experienced it growing up with a fascination for how different ingredients can produce something extraordinary.

Courtney inherited her dad’s love of cooking and food adventures. “I feel like I was always around food. If we’re not going out to nice restaurants, he’s always cooking,” she recalls. “That was our time together, right? So, I’m there on weekends, and I looked forward to him cooking in the kitchen or grilling. He’s a big barbecue grilling guy. That brings back really great memories.”

Al and his daughter celebrated their cooking joy while working on the cookbook together. They laughed a lot, but Courtney cracked the whip when they needed to meet deadlines, even with other projects Al had going. “I’m a little more loosey-goosey. ‘It’s going to happen. Don’t worry about it.’ I think the more loosey-goosey I got, the crazier she got,” says the 70-year-old weather anchor.

Father and daughter jokingly declare their collaboration a rewarding experience. “I think we mesh very well together in the kitchen. There were good times, right?” she says. Al responded, “All good! Nobody got hurt.”

Courtney’s journey into becoming a professional chef began after she went off to college and later realized cooking is her true passion. She worked in the restaurant industry for 14 years before becoming a recipe developer.

After finishing “Al Roker’s Recipes To Live By” and giving birth to Sky, she joined the company Tiny Spoon Chef. “I have about eight clients I cook for personally every day. But I am still very much interested in development and food styling. I’ll do some content online or on social media,” says the personal chef.

Her dad named Courtney’ Queen of Sides’ because of her contributions to the family barbecue dinners. “She’ll do these lovely, arranged grilled vegetables, a charcuterie board or these salads with five or six different things. I don’t have the patience.”

Al indeed recognized Courtney’s kitchen skills when he observed her chiffonade herbs into thin ribbons while looking at him the whole time. “As a parent, all of a sudden, there is this moment of pride that my kid is really good at what she does. She knows what she is doing. That’s all you want. You want your child to be healthy and happy as a person but also good at what they do,” he says.

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Savoring Life with Al Roker’s Recipes to Live By

The release of “Al Roker’s Recipes To Live By” gives the father-daughter duo more opportunities to appreciate each other and what they accomplished together. “There aren’t a lot of cookbooks where the chef not only developed the recipes but also wrote the recipes and styled the food. She did a terrific job on all counts,” Al exclaims. “Thank you! This is the first time I’m hearing this,” Courtney answers.

Al and his daughter are proud of the new cookbook’s potential to inspire people to cook and share meals at home. “I think it’s less difficult than you think. You don’t have to provide a three-star meal for your family. You just have to provide yourself and your time. You and your family are the main ingredients, and then everything else is gravy,” Al comments.

For Courtney, it’s all about doing what you love and sharing it with others. “If I enjoy eating so much and I love the food I eat, I want to make other people happy. And I feel like during the holidays when you have family come over, seeing people you haven’t seen in a while and everyone is smiling makes me happy,” she says.

Looking forward to exploring food with his granddaughter Sky makes Al happy. “It’s very funny to see. She has a very sophisticated palette. She likes eggs. She likes vegetables. When she was six or seven months old, I gave her half a lemon, and she kept sucking on it. Courtney laughs and says, “She likes savory and sour.”

The two cookbook authors have created a record of recipes that mean something to their families and can be passed on to future generations. Courtney gets emotional thinking about cooking some of the dishes in “Al Roker’s Recipes To Live By” with Sky when she gets older.

But most of all, she cherishes the time in the kitchen with her father. “There were a lot of hurdles and challenges and emotional things going on. And the end result is awesome. Not just the book being awesome, but his health. He’s back to normal. It’s a full-circle moment for me. And then with my daughter, it’s just all positivity!”

“Al Roker’s Recipes to Live By: Easy, Memory-Making Family Dishes for Every Occasion” is available online at Amazon. You can watch Al on NBC’s “Today” or follow him on Instagram @alroker. Check out Courtney Roker Laga’s website or stay connected on social media @ouichefroker.

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This story originally appeared in Cuisine Noir Magazine