Chef Boyardee's Niece Writes Family Cookbook

Anna Boiardi, the niece of founders of Chef Boyardee Co. has written an Italian cookbook, though for better or worse don't expect to see any recipes for canned beefaroni or mini-dinosaurs with meatballs. Instead, the cookbook titled Delicious Memories: Recipes and Stories From the Chef Boyardee Family will feature classic Italian dishes such as tortelli with butter and sage sauce and potato gnocchi with pesto. The cookbook also "tells the story behind the Chef Boyardee brand, a tale of Italian immigrants creating a successful food business in America."

Boiardi, 37, (the name is spelled Boyardee on the cans because it was easier for Americans to pronounce) runs an informal cooking school out of her New York City kitchen and hopes to expand it, as well as pitch a TV show and work on a second book.

Epicurious calls the book "pleasantly surprising" while Josh Ozersky finds the recipes "all too familiar."

They may be familiar, but they sound a lot better than the Chef Boyardee can of spaghetti and meatballs Ozersky describes:

It was much worse than I had remembered: the spaghetti is as soft as cottage cheese, or rotted fruit, and the dark orange sauce tastes like nothing on earth. I like industrial meatballs, but even by the standards of industrial meatballs these things are weird. I always wondered what Canner-grade meat tasted like, and now I guess I know...Feh!

Boiardi isn't the one to blame for Ozersky's less-than-pleasant experience. Her great uncle sold the company in 1944, and Chef Boyardee is currently owned by food giant ConAgra.