How A Psychic Inspired Andy Murray To Write His New Cookbook - Exclusive

It doesn't matter what your background is, how picky your palate is, or what your culinary experience looks like –- there's just nothing quite as good as a family recipe shared around the table. They don't have to be chef-approved or push the bounds of cuisine. Most of the time our favorite family recipes are simple and, quite frankly, super old-school, passed down from a time when people dined differently, and arguably valued the experience with a little more reverence than we hold in today's world of multitasking, to-go meals, and rapidly revolving TikTok recipe trends.

That's why opening a copy of chef Andy Murray's new cookbook, "Eat, Drink and Be Murray: A Feast of Family Fun and Favorites," almost feels like coming home. It's a warm hug of a book that transports you to another era. Particularly that of Murray's childhood, which involved growing up with eight other siblings, including famous actor Bill Murray. The book shares pages and pages of fascinating and heartwarming stories from the entire Murray clan, highlighting the importance of family and the memories that can be made around the dinner table, especially when mom is cooking up one of her signature recipes, like fried chicken or pork roast.

You won't want to stop flipping through the pages of anecdotes and family photos that accompany the recipes that Murray has gathered over the course of a lifetime. In an exclusive interview with Mashed, Murray opened up about what inspired him to finally do something official with his vast collection of family recipes. You might have guessed that this project was a long time coming for the chef, but truth be told, it was actually some paranormal prodding that pushed Murray to finally publish a cookbook. Murray shared all the details exclusively with Mashed, in a story you surprisingly won't find printed in the cookbook.

If it were up to chef Andy Murray alone, his family cookbook may have never come to be. "I hadn't really thought about writing a book," Murray admitted to Mashed. But thankfully, the right people put the idea in his mind, and it stuck. There may or may not have also been some supernatural intervention along the way as well.

Murray said the idea for the book was first floated a few years ago by a family friend who caught his attention. "I was cooking Thanksgiving dinner at my brother's house in Charleston ... and this really attractive woman came in and was watching me cook in the kitchen." Who was this mystery woman? It was none other than "Karen Duffy, who was the VJ on MTV a while back," says Murray. 

As he tells it, Duffy was so impressed with the holiday meal he prepared, she told him he should write a cookbook. Murray put it off, saying "It's too crazy now. Let's talk after the new year." Well, that new year happened to be 2020, and it doesn't take a psychic to guess the rest. "Right after that, the pandemic happened, and this got put off," Murray said.

However, clearly, some force in the universe knew that the Murray family recipes needed to be shared with the public. Murray told Mashed that one of his friends "for a Christmas present, [gifted] me a psychic reading." He said he went to visit the mystic, and "the woman told me I was going to write a cookbook." Murray clearly saw that as a sign that he should pursue the project after all. So he said he "called Karen Duffy back. I said, 'Do you think that agent still might be interested?' She said, 'Yeah.' I started working on it then."

Click here to learn more and purchase a copy of Andy Murray's new family cookbook, "Eat, Drink and Be Murray: A Feast of Family Fun and Favorites."