Amy Schumer's new Food Network show premieres Monday night
Chris Fischer and Amy Schumer star in Food Network's "Amy Schumer Learns to Cook." Credit: Food Network
In the first episode of the new at-home Food Network reality show "Amy Schumer Learns to Cook," premiering Monday, May 11, at 10 p.m., the Rockville Centre-raised comedian concentrates on breakfast — starting with booze.
"When you're having breakfast, you'd better have an old fashioned,” says Schumer, 38, in an alcove kitchen in what appears to be a rustic country house. She introduces her husband, chef and cookbook author Chris Fischer, 39, and "our amazingly brilliant and beautiful nanny, Jane," who doubles as cameraperson and presumably is isolating with them during the coronavirus pandemic. The comic then proceeds to mix the bourbon-based cocktail while kibitzing with her spouse.
Interspersed with comic asides the likes of Fischer: "Call me crazy." Schumer: "You're crazy," the James Beard Award-winning Fischer shows his wife how to poach an egg, fry bacon and make a celery and fennel salad. In a nod to her Jewish roots, Schumer also learns to make that standard potato-pancake dish, latkes. "Some people flip houses," Schumer quips. "We flip latkes."
The second half-hour episode in the show's back-to-back, hourlong timeslot features "Late Night Eats," in which Schumer makes the vodka and ginger-beer cocktail the Moscow mule, fried rice, chicken wings, peanut-butter cup cookies and what the network calls "her favorite snack to eat in bed — matzah with butter." Fischer says shooting that episode made it "my favorite day of quarantine."
Future episodes of the show, scheduled to run through June 1, include such comfort-food favorites as "Pasta Night," "Taco Night," "Movie Night" — with crispy potatoes, lamb sliders, Greek salad dip and martinis — as well as such staples as "Brunch" and "Leftovers."
"Listen, everything about what we're doing is unnatural," Schumer says in a moment of seriousness, reflecting on the world's self-isolation. "You guys are home. We're home. People are obviously having a really hard time." And yet, "There are beautiful, beautiful moments. I wouldn't have been able to spend this time with Gene," her and Fischer's year-old son, whom we see in a photo dressed in tiny chef whites and a toque. "I wouldn't have been able to see the first time he coughed. All these little moments, they're precious."
The couple said in a separate joint statement from Food Network, "Here goes nothing."
