Ant's World of Pastry: Extra! Extra! (Virgin) Read All About It!!

Things have been kind of crazy around here - but in a good way. Alison Attenborough, the AMAZING food stylist I worked with for Johnny Iuzzini's cookbook, called me and asked if I'd be interested in working on another cookbook.

This was for Gabiele Corcos and Debi Mazar's (Yes, from Entourage) first cookbook. I was enthralled! They have a wonderful show on the Cooking Channel (Make sure you check it out!) featuring mouth-watering recipes created by Gabriele. The show is fun and the recipes are simplistic and feature authentic Tuscan cuisine.

As an assistant food stylist, I was responsible for preparing the components for each recipe. I work with Alison, the photographer (Eric Wolfinger, who deserves a blog post of his own. Super talented, super cool guy!) and Gabriele and Debi to ensure we're all on the same page and that everything goes smooth. Along with Jo, Alison's other assistant, we banged out over 10 recipes a day.

One of the dishes I styled.

Sometime shoots can be chaotic and stressful, but this was the total opposite. We were like a well-oiled machine, everyone working in harmony. Eric's assistants Ally and Nicola were awesome, too. Aside from being a lot of fun to hang with, they were always in the kitchen helping us out.

Gabriele made us coffee every morning.

As far as Gabriele and Debi, they're just amazing. The treated us like family and I am honored to call them friends. They are extremely passionate about food and have stories linked to all the recipes. The food is RIDICULOUSLY GOOD! (We got to eat everything for lunch and sometimes dinner.) If you love Italian food - good Italian food - you NEED THIS BOOK! It should hit shelves in the spring of 2014. Don't worry, I'll remind you!