It’s been said that the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach, and “Queer Eye for the Straight Guy” food and wine connoisseur Ted Allen knows this old adage firsthand – he and the rest of the Fab Five have been helping straight guys since 2003. Now, Allen is ready to share his recipes with the masses in literary form with The Food You Want to Eat: 100 Smart, Simple Recipes. If you fall into the category of “can’t boil water to save your life” or would like to step up your culinary prowess a couple of notches, Allen’s cookbook provides recipes that run the gamut from comfort foods to delicacies sure to tantalize your taste buds.

The Gay & Lesbian Times spoke with Allen, who was enjoying a break from filming on the “Queer Eye” set, and he dished about his book, the show that made him a household name and, of course, food. Along the way there were even some special guests.

Gay & Lesbian Times: Where do your culinary interests stem from?

Ted Allen: I’ve loved to cook since I was a kid. My mom is a great cook, and all my family is from the South. So, naturally, there was lots of stuff like fried chicken, and ham and green beans cooked until you could eat them without teeth – wonderful comfort food, stuff like that. And I got a little more serious about it when I was working as an editor at Chicago Magazine, which is kind of the food bible for that city; the restaurant bible for Chicago. I ended up sitting in on a bunch of restaurant reviews, while people were reviewing restaurants and passing plates around, and got exposed to so much great food and great wine, and really became passionate about it. I became a critic myself for awhile, started cooking a lot at home, and one thing led to another.

At this point, our first special guest, fellow “Queer Eye” Carson Kressley, wanders into earshot. Allen asks if I’ve interviewed Kressley (I haven’t), or if I’ve made out with him (again, I haven’t), or had a dirty M4M with him online (strike three). I switch gears, asking Allen to relay to Kressley that I received his children’s book, You’re Different and That’s Super, as a gift for Christmas. Allen asks if I’m 12 and Kressley asks if I’m at a third-grade reading level. Kressley wants to switch the focus of the interview and talk about his book. Allen replies that Kressley’s book is “no good for food, unless you want to cook a pony.” Kressley counters that “chickens are no fun to ride.” Allen begs to differ, saying there is “a niche community that might disagree” with him. And then we realize that we have digressed and decide to dig back into the interview.

TA: Just like on the show, I’m thinking about somebody who’s not an expert in the kitchen yet. It’s kind of a range: There’s some really simple recipes in there and some that are a little more in depth. Everything is explained very thoroughly, and I don’t use any ingredients that are too weird that you can’t find. … I wanted it to be very approachable, while at the same time, hopefully, interesting. So I take some comfort food classics and try to put a little spin on them, and then I’ve got some other foods; there’s really a lot of stuff from all over the place.

TA: I agree with you. I think that the gayest one I’ve recently been saddled with was [when] we had one of the wedding episodes that we aired a few weeks ago. Then, Thom Filicia called me on it. We were talking about the buffet; it was going to be a buffet line. For some reason, I said – I was talking about the lettuce that we were using – “on deeve” instead of endive. And Thom Filicia said, “Well Ted, maybe gay people say ‘on deeve,’ but the rest of the world says endive.’”

TA: One thing I’ve been thinking about for this Valentine’s Day is there’s a huge trend in artisanal champagnes… there’s a whole bunch of tiny little wineries making unique champagnes that you just can’t find everywhere. And I think that could be kind of a fun, romantic thing to maybe get three half bottles and taste some crazy, interesting champagnes.

Anything artisan and handcrafted, like artisan chocolates, is another really good thing. Instead of getting a giant heart-shaped box from the drugstore, there’s a real resurgence in the craft of making amazing chocolates… it’s a little more special. I mean, getting that heart-shaped box is great, but, you know, it’s kind of nice to get something that’s different.

Being into food is kind of like show and tell. If you’re really passionate about it, you’re out in markets, you’re seeing what’s new, like what has someone come up with. You get [it] and you bring it home to your guests, and you say, “Hey, look what I found! Isn’t this cool?” And, then you sit there and wait for them to tell you how great it is, so it’s really generous and needy at the same time.

You also want to try to be relatively traditionalist about Valentine’s Day. Of course, it’s all about romance and thinking about what your partner is into, not just what you like. Of course, you can’t go wrong with candles and roses and bubble bath.

TA: Well, for me, when I’m throwing a party it’s very important that a lot of 27-year-old Latin men come, preferably shirtless [laughs]. Your job is to make sure everyone’s having a great time. So you’ve got to think in terms of the food and wine; you want to make sure you have a nice range of stuff, so that there’s something for everybody… part of being a great host is making sure that everybody feels special… and there’s the standard classic rules, like it’s great to have dimmers on your light switches, so you can set mood lighting, have candles around, and make sure the music never quits – iTunes is great for that. … I’m not really big into theme parties. To me, the theme is: Hey, my friends are coming over and we’re going to eat and talk and hang out. It’s going to be great. Or play naked Twister.

TA: It’s a predominantly straight female audience, and I thought it was going to be mostly gay men and really sophisticated urban women in big cities. And I couldn’t have been more wrong. I think the gay audience likes us and is really nice to us, and has always been nice to us. Which is kind of amazing, ’cause we eat our own in the gay community, and I haven’t seen much of any cattiness about us. God knows you could; there’s plenty you could attack us with. I think it’s really cool; a huge part of our audience has been Middle America.

GLT: What is your favorite recipe in the book?

TA: It is the pan roasted salmon with sweet tomato vinaigrette on page 102…. What I love about it is you can literally cook it in 25 minutes. It’s super-fast and super-delicious…. You can be, like, a super-busy executive or a soccer mom or a hard-working drag queen and get home and throw this together so quickly. That’s the kind of recipe I really wanted in the book, ’cause everybody’s busy, and that doesn’t mean you can’t eat good food.

Ted Allen will be speaking about and signing copies of The Food You Want to Eat: 100 Smart, Simple Recipes on Sunday, Jan. 29, at 3:00 p.m. at Claire De Lune, located at 2906 University Ave. Only books purchased at Clare De Lune will be signed.