Cooking up a post-movie career.

Nora Ephron's "Julie and Julia" is not only one of few female-driven mainstream films this summer, it's one of very few directed by a woman. (Kathryn Bigelow, of course, being another with the phenomenal "The Hurt Locker.") Directing remains, overwhelmingly, a boys club, so it was heartening to stumble upon what a female filmmaker who's been out of the limelight for a while has been cooking up (rimshot!) lately on the Tamra Davis Cooking Show. Here's Davis mixing margaritas on "Late Night With Jimmy Fallon": Fans of Davis' stoner comedy "Half Baked" will notice the disappointing lack of brownie recipes, but the director of "Billy Madison" and "Gun Crazy" (and wife of Beastie Boy Mike Diamond) has been using her camera to impart tips on making Hijiki salads and red velvet cupcakes since 2007. According to her bio on the Huffington Post, where her recipes are regularly featured, Davis "temporarily...

Nora Ephron’s “Julie and Julia” is not only one of few female-driven mainstream films this summer, it’s one of very few directed by a woman. (Kathryn Bigelow, of course, being another with the phenomenal “The Hurt Locker.”)

Directing remains, overwhelmingly, a boys club, so it was heartening to stumble upon what a female filmmaker who’s been out of the limelight for a while has been cooking up (rimshot!) lately on the Tamra Davis Cooking Show. Here’s Davis mixing margaritas on “Late Night With Jimmy Fallon”:

Fans of Davis’ stoner comedy “Half Baked” will notice the disappointing lack of brownie recipes, but the director of “Billy Madison” and “Gun Crazy” (and wife of Beastie Boy Mike Diamond) has been using her camera to impart tips on making Hijiki salads and red velvet cupcakes since 2007. According to her bio on the Huffington Post, where her recipes are regularly featured, Davis “temporarily retired to have children” after directing the odd double bill of Britney Spears’ “Crossroads” and the extreme sports doc “Keep Your Eyes Open” that played CineVegas in 2002.

It shouldn’t come as a surprise that the light touch Davis applied to comedies like the underappreciated coming-of-age tale “Skipped Parts” is now being used to make a different kind of comfort food, and like “Valley Girl” director Martha Coolidge, who has demonstrated more than a passing interest in riding Paso Finos on the side, Davis has stayed active helming the occasional episode of TV. Here’s her breakfast burrito recipe, which she demonstrates in the company of Edward Burns and Christy Turlington: