Al Roker and His Daughter Talk About Food, Family and Building a Cookbook From Memories and Love (Exclusive)

Al Roker is many things: a journalist, a weatherman, an author, a TV personality—and a dad. That last role is front and center in his newest project, Al Roker's Recipes to Live By: Easy, Memory-Making Family Dishes for Every Occasion, the cookbook he wrote with his daughter, Courtney Roker Laga .

Courtney, a trained chef and recipe developer, was the perfect person to collaborate with her dad on the cookbook, which puts the focus on recipes with strong connections to the Roker family. To put together the 100 recipes in the book, Courtney had to interview family and friends and become a "forensic recipe detective," as Al describes it, as she tried to reverse engineer recipes from her memories of the dishes—or just their descriptions.

The book, which drops today, was a true labor of love for the pair and a great way to share their favorite family recipes with the world. There's oxtail and dumplings from Al's parents and the legendary potato salad from Deborah Roberts ' mom (Deborah is Al's wife since 1995). From the younger generation, there's Courtney's Shrimp Tikka Masala, her sister Leila's signature sangria and her brother Nick's famous scrambled eggs.

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Parade recently sat down with the duo to talk about how the cookbook came to be, how Al and Courtney divide and conquer in the kitchen, and why Al always and forever buys too many bagels.

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Parade : I'd love to start at the beginning. Where did the love of food start for both of you?

Al Roker: Well, I think for me it's the parental influence. I watched my mom and dad cook a lot. I hung around the house and just watched this magic happen—here's the stuff that you take out of a bag, and a couple of hours later there's food on the table. And you know, food is love, so I just really gravitated to that.

Courtney Roker Laga: I think as I was getting older, cooking just started calling to me more. And I saw my dad cooking a lot, too.

I was very torn. I didn't really know what I wanted to do in my career. And you know, like I said, food has always been there. And I spoke to my dad, and I said, "You know, I think I just want to go to culinary school and learn more." So I went to culinary school, then worked in the cooking industry for a number of years. I work in recipe development now and am currently a personal chef for a company called Tiny Spoon Chef. I do cook for clients, but they're my own recipes. I'm very happy where I am right now.

Al: It's like that Star Wars thing. When Darth Vader says to Obi-Wan, "I was the student. Now I am the master." My daughter, who grew up watching me cook, is a better chef than I am. Not to say that we butt heads in the kitchen, but you know the old saying—too many cooks in the kitchen. These days, the détente is one of us makes the main course and the other one makes the side, but it's still a little crowded.

Related: Al Roker Reveals His Bold Go-to Move When He’s Ready for a Party to End

Speaking of working together, how did you two decide to write a book together and who did what?

Courtney: Well, the idea first came up during the pandemic. My dad was doing a lot of cooking videos with my little brother Nick online, and they just kept getting likes and comments saying, "When's a cookbook coming out? Is there gonna be a show?"

And I thought it was the perfect opportunity to do a cookbook. He did a couple of books a few years ago ...

Al: More like 25 years ago ...

Courtney: So I figured we needed something new, bright and family-oriented. And because I'm a recipe developer, I felt like I could take that on. So I brought up the idea. And he was a little hesitant.

Al: Yeah, because I know how much work it is to do a cookbook. I mean, back then it was easier, because a cookbook might have an insert of 4 or 5 pages of pictures and that was it. Today, every recipe in the cookbook has to have a picture. I was stunned. It was like, 'Oh, that means we'd have to do that, too.'

So I was little more hesitant because I know how much work it is, but Courtney was really convincing. And she said, "Look, I'm doing the recipes, you just have to worry about the headnotes, so I said, 'Okay great.'"

And then we had to come up with the recipes. How many recipes did we winnow it down from?

Courtney: It was like 150, or 130.

Al: You know, we were talking about recipes that I grew up with, that Courtney grew up with, that other family members and friends cooked. And then she went and talked to people in our circle to find out about the recipes. What did Nana make? What did her mom make? What did Deborah's mom make?

And I'm hard to wrangle, so I would keep putting her off. Finally, she was like, 'We've got to do this,' and so we took a couple of hours, cut it down to a hundred recipes, and then went from there.

Were the recipes on recipe cards, scribbled on pieces of paper, or just in people's heads?

Courtney: It was mostly all in people's heads. We had pretty much nothing written down. There were some recipes that my dad developed, like a chili recipe and stuff like that, and there were some that came from our chef friends. But when it came to recipes from my mother or my grandmother or Deborah's mother, all that stuff had to come from memory, or from taste I had to figure out. Okay—potato salad. I tasted onion. I tasted relish. I'd make it and keep having to test it. So it was definitely a process.

Al: She was like a forensic recipe detective. I was really impressed. When she would make a dish I was like, "Wow, this is what I remember. Yeah."

Related: Al Roker's New Orleans-Style Shrimp Moves a Classic Dish To the Grill

Was there one recipe—or perhaps several—that you remember being especially hard to crack?

Courtney: Probably the pineapple upside-down cake. I did my own interpretation of it. There's sour cream in the cake and I don't know if his grandmother put sour cream in it. I also added buttermilk, so not everything is to a T, but I did my best.

Al: But the great thing that she did was take stuff—and I don't want to sound snobbish—but she kind of elevated certain things, but also left other things as-is. Take the pineapple upside-down cake. My mother used to make it with canned pineapple. And we kept the canned pineapple because that was really part of what made it taste the way it did.

Courtney: Somebody today might insist that you have to use fresh pineapple, or you have to sous vide the pineapple first, or something. But sometimes you need to leave the classics as classics.

How are your cooking skills and sensibilities similar? How are they different?

Al: Well, Courtney is a classically train trained chef. I'm kinda haphazard. I've learned more recently, though. Take mise en place. Actually lay out your ingredients before you start cooking, as opposed to searching for things while you're cooking? What a concept!

Courtney: I like to look for all of the ingredients the night before and write a list. I think I'm very organized when it comes to cooking.

Al: She's more classical music. I'm jazz.

Reading through the book, it seemed like every family member has cooking interests or skills. How does that work when everyone's together?

Al: People just kinda do it. There's no hierarchy. It's almost who gets to the kitchen first.

Courtney: But I feel like during the holidays, it's me and you. Deb will sometimes make a side.

Al: Yeah, but during the summer, if we're having friends and family over for backyard grilling, they expect 2 things from Deb: her mojitos and her potato salad, which is her mother's potato salad, which is a recipe that's in the book.

Nick's good at eggs, and so that's his thing. So you know, everybody's got a little something. My other girl, Leila, loves to bake, but also loves making a huge pitcher of sangria. It's really good.

Speaking of the entire family, does the baby [Sky, Courtney's daughter] have any food preferences?

Courtney: Oh, Sky's very open-minded. She had eel sushi the other day. She likes chicken, salmon, any type of fish.

Al: She's very savory-oriented.

Courtney: Yeah, she eats ice cream, but she's like, "Alright, ice cream. Not that big of a deal."

Al: That reminds me of one of those full-circle, dad-granddad moments. When Courtney was growing up in Westchester, there was this lovely little mom-and-pop sushi restaurant. They gave all their regulars their own chopsticks. You had your own personal set of chopsticks in a rack, and Courtney was given a pair of Hello, Kitty! chopsticks when she was 3.

Courtney: And then my best friend gave my daughter a pair of Hello, Kitty! chopsticks a couple of months ago.

It's so fun to have those family traditions.

Al: Speaking of traditions, every Columbus Day-Indigenous People's Day, we go apple-picking at this orchard near our house. They have great apples, but they bring out this machine where they make hot apple cider donuts dredged in this brown sugar cinnamon mixture. They're just fantastic.

You over-index on them, obviously. As my mother used to say, "Your eyes are bigger than your stomach." So you'd get like 3 dozen and after you eat three of them you've got a lead weight in your stomach.

So they sit there and like three days later you have all these stale donuts. One time I said to Courtney, "Is there anything we can do with these?" She said we should make a bread pudding out of them—and so that recipe is in the book and it's fantastic!

This seems like a theme for you, Al. I remember in the book you also mentioned over-buying bagels.

Courtney: Oh, yeah, for the lox and everything. You can make bagel strata if you overbuy bagels. That recipe is in the book, too.

Al: Well, growing up my parents instilled this thing in me that it was a cardinal sin if there wasn't enough food. They were products of the Depression. In our basement, we had this chest freezer and my dad would go and buy stuff in bulk, which made sense when there were 6 kids and 2 adults at home. But when we all moved away, that freezer was still fully stocked.

At one point my mom said, "My electric bill is so high!" And I said, "Mom, you've got a chest freezer down there that you can keep 5 bodies in! That's why your electric bill is so high." My dad said, "Well, you know, in case you kids come by for dinner." I said, "Dad, there are grocery stores."

Do either of you have any favorite cooking tips or tricks?

Courtney: For me, it would be to prep everything before you start cooking. Some people like to do it halfway through, and then get frazzled. For example, you're searing the meat, but you haven't chopped the onions. Or you're cutting the onions and now the chicken's burning. If you just start with everything already prepped, it just makes life so much easier.

Al: Mine is that I'm a big believer in the vacuum sealer. For example, most years I'll buy a lot of fresh fruit and produce, and then vacuum seal it. Sometimes I'll cook it off a little, like I'll grill corn and then cut it off the cob and just vacuum seal it and freeze it so you can have it later in the season.

People often ask about favorite recipes from your cookbook, which I think could be an unfair question ...

Al: Well, I've already got mine. My two favorite recipes are the oxtail stew with dumplings and the pineapple upside-down cake. That's it. I'm done.

Hahaha. I was going to ask your ideal meal using recipes from the book, so you can go either way, Courtney.

Courtney: Okay, mine would be the blood orange Aperol spritz to drink, the chicken cacciatore over Tuscan polenta for the main, and the shortbread banana pudding for dessert.

Anything else you think I should know?

Al: I don't think so. Wait, I just want to recommend people buy three copies of the book—one to have, one to keep and pass on to a loved family member, and one to give as a gift.

Hahaha. OK. We'll be sure to let everyone know!

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