Sedaris dishes laughs with tips

On a sunny morning recently, Amy Sedaris is drinking chamomile tea at Mike's Pastry in the North End. The comedian, playwright, and actress often makes quirky cupcakes (she bakes them in her kitchen and sells them at the coffee shop Joe around the corner from her New York City apartment). At Mike's, with its cannoli and other Italian confections, she is only interested in tea. The night before, she explains, she had baklava for dinner, and too much sugar gives her a headache.

Sedaris was in town to promote "I Like You: Hospitality Under the Influence," a book about entertaining. She is known for playing the 47-year-old ex-con Jerri Blank on Comedy Central's "Strangers With Candy," for bit roles on shows like "Sex and the City," and for off-Broadway plays produced with her brother and author David Sedaris. Now Amy has taken on a new role as a sort of twisted anti-Martha Stewart.

But she makes it clear that "I Like You" is not a joke. She writes in the introduction that she doesn't like joke cookbooks "because I can't take them seriously." A former Brownie and Girl Scout, Sedaris, 45, is small, blond , and disarmingly funny. She loves disguises and seems willing to do anything for a laugh. In the book she appears slathered in whipped cream and sprinkles. "I should have used shaving cream," she says. "I smelled like feta cheese for days." And although she is allergic to shellfish -- it makes her face swell up -- she thinks the effect is so funny that sometimes at parties she eats shrimp cocktail. It makes her puffy, and then she dusts her face with powder, which makes people laugh.

Sedaris grew up with five siblings in Raleigh, N.C. , and speaks with a Southern twang. Every night her mother cooked for the family, and after dinner everyone sat around the table for a couple of hours and entertained each other. For the past 13 years, Sedaris has lived in a small rent-controlled apartment with a cockroach problem in the West Village . So she shops for food every day and cooks at home most nights.

"I like working in restaurants but not eating in them," she says. Until a few months ago, she waited tables at Mary's Fish Camp near her apartment a couple of nights a week. "It was more like playing waitress, than actually being a waitress, but I still made $300 a night," she says. "We could wear whatever we wanted to and I really got into the nautical theme." A recipe in her book for New Zealand cockles and razor clams with navy beans comes from Mary's Fish Camp.

In spite of her anti-Martha affect, Sedaris baked Lady Baltimore cakes on " The Martha Stewart Show" in October . As she and Stewart frosted the cakes, Stewart commented, "Where I try to make everything look like it should, you just tried to make it look like it does." Which is true. The food in Sedaris's book has the appearance of coming from the kitschy kitchen of a loopy 1950's housewife. And it is sometimes sloppy and overcooked -- there's grit on the baking sheets and dishes in the sink -- but you want to dig right into it. The photos were all shot in the author's apartment during the heat of summer. "It's why all the food is melting," she says.

There are plenty of Greek recipes, from spanakopita (Sedaris used to make them with her mom to sell) to koulouraki (Greek cookie twists). There are munchies like bananas dipped in Jell-O powder and popcorn popped in bacon grease. And tried-and-true classics -- what Sedaris calls her jackpot recipes -- like Southern fried chicken and manicotti with ricotta.

There are also tips on entertaining and etiquette. She offers zingers like filling the medicine chest with marbles, because "nothing announces a nosy guest more successfully." Blind date don'ts include: "If you are drunk, don't call him after he leaves." Among the other suggestions is this: "Change the decor of your apartment with every season so it seems like you have more homes."

Sedaris is obviously not a food snob. She says that she is intimidated by egg whites. "I like fake cakes," she says, referring to confections for display made with plaster of Paris, styrofoam rounds, and latex paint. "There are enough recipes for real cakes. In general back of the box recipes are the best." She is particularly proud of her cheese balls -- smoked gouda, cream cheese, butter, milk, steak sauce, and chopped nuts -- which she rolls before parties and rerolls for other parties if they aren't all eaten. The food in her book is the food she grew up on and still makes. "Everyone in my family cooks for themselves," she says. Her younger sister Tiffany went to culinary school and now lives in Somerville, where she makes mosaics. The " Chicken of the Taverns" recipe comes from her sister. On her own, Sedaris broils a shell steak for dinner and eats it with a salad and a baked potato. The potato gets butter, sour cream, and green onions. "I like it all the way," she says.

Sedaris will spend Christmas in France with brother David and his partner Hugh Hamrick and then begin work on an instructional video for the House Rabbit Society , an organization that rescues rabbits and teaches the public about rabbit care. Near the end of the entertaining book, in fact, there's a chapter about rabbits. Sedaris has a 4-year - old Mini Rex rabbit named Dusty. "Dusty is really soft, like a chinchilla," she says. Sedaris says that rabbits chew, but that you can train them to use a litter box just like a cat. "My apartment is like a psychiatrist's office -- no cords anywhere." Dusty gets dandelion greens, arugula, cilantro, and carrot tops from the health food store, though her own groceries come from the supermarket. "People who shop in health food stores never look healthy," she says.

Dusty, she writes, loves being scratched. On Valentine's Day, Sedaris went to a salon and had acrylic nails put on so she could give Dusty the "ultimate massage. To see a rabbit hop around is a joyful thing," she says.