In a new interview with HuffPost Live, TV personality and cook Rachael Ray dished on renewing her wedding vows to celebrate her 10th anniversary. She also revealed how to make the perfect spinach gnocchi, a recipe that can be found in her new cookbook, Everyone Is Italian on Sunday, out now.
Ray, 47, and her husband, John Cusimano, returned to the same castle in Tuscany where they originally wed to renew their vows on Sept. 19. One-hundred of their closest family and friends were in attendance, including one special guest.
“My pitbull was there this time,” Ray revealed of beloved pet Isaboo. “She walked me down the aisle. It was great!”
“All I want for a 10th anniversary is to bring everyone that I love with us, and he’s always been very supportive of that,” Ray said of Cusimano, 48. “We just wanted to really have that moment where we were all celebrating each other and the fact that we’d all been together for so long and it was great.”
At the ceremony, Ray and Cusimano decided to recite poems to one another instead of exchanging vows again. The TV cook chose to read Charles Bernstein’s “All the Whiskey in Heaven” to her husband.
“Everybody calls him Johnnie Walker because he loves scotch,” Ray said, laughing. “I joke that his blood runs more scotch to platelets, depending on the hour of the day. So I did a Charles Bernstein poem for him. It basically says, ‘I love you more than all the whiskey in heaven.’”
Ray recently published her 22nd cookbook, Everyone Is Italian on Sunday, which contains more than 400 of her signature Italian recipes, from small appetizers to hearty meals to indulgent desserts. She explained that one of the book’s recipes — spinach gnocchi — isn’t as difficult to make as it may seem.
“I joke in the headnote of the [recipe], ‘Gnocchi is gno-big deal,’ but it really is just a feel thing, like pasta,” she explained. “It depends on how starchy the potato is and what the moisture in the air is.”
Ray went on to explain that she starts off by making a “well” of dough, which she then rolls together into the shape of gnocchi. To test it out, she makes a single gnocchi and drops it into simmering water to see if it floats. If it does, then you’re good to go!
“It is a little time-consuming, but it freezes beautifully,” she said.
Although Ray has been hosting cooking shows on Food Network for years, she stated that she doesn’t feel comfortable with being referred to as a “chef” because she didn’t go to culinary school, like many of her peers. Instead, she sees herself as a “cook” and an “artist.”
“I do consider myself an artist,” she said. “I love to take pictures, I love to write, I love to write recipes and books, and I work very hard every day at that. I keep notebooks with me all day. I think it is my form of self-expression.”
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