The Fine Chocolate Industry Association has honored seven chocolate makers and chocolate companies at its first ever Recognition of Excellence Ceremony.
Winners included the late Dr. Robert Steinberg, co-founder of Sharffen Berger Chocolate, for Innovation in Fine Chocolate Products, Fran Bigelow of Fran's Chocolates for Outstanding Fine Chocolatier; North America (Obama is apparently a big fan of her stuff; I'm obsessed with her salted caramels), Alexander Morozoff, publisher of Cocoaroma magazine for Outstanding Fine Chocolate Literature (a worthy new genre, I think), Gary Guittard of Guittard Chocolate and E. Guittard for Lifetime Achievement, Valrhona for Outstanding Fine Chocolate Maker/Manufacturer; Europe (food writer and Iron Chef America judge Jeffrey Steingarten never travels without several bars of Valrhona's bittersweet), Norman Love of Norman Love Confections for Innovation in Fine Chocolate Presentation (check out his rainbow-colored Black chocolate collection), and Robert Linxe founder of La Maison du Chocolat for Outstanding Fine Chocolatier; Europe.
Rishi took home seven first place awards at the recent World Tea Expo. They are definitely doing something right, and I personally recommend their Jade Cloud tea.
It turns out that the flavinoids in tea may actually help ease symptoms of neurodegenerative diseases, and there seems to the possibility that flavinoids in tea may help repair the damage, not just stop it.
Teaware geeks will enjoy this write up by MattCha about Korean style gimhae tea bowls, complete with a brief history of this teaware style and several pictures of some very nice bowls.
This is a great article on gongfu tea tables, with in-depth comparisons that you really won't find anywhere else. It's very cool of the author to share all the info collected while on his own quest for hte perfect gongfu tea table. Bookmark this one if you ever want to get into gongfu tea preparation!
Finalists for the James Beard Award, one of the most prestigious prizes in the food industry, were announced on Monday. Awards are given in a number of categories, including Outstanding Restaurateur, Outstanding Chef, Outstanding Restaurant, Best New Restaurant, and Rising Star Chef of the Year, Cookbook of the Year, and Outstanding Service Award.
Here are a few highlights:
Nominees for Outstanding Restaurant: Boulevard and The Slanted Door in San Francisco, Campanile in Los Angeles, and Gramercy Tavern and Jean Georges in New York.
Nominees for Outstanding Chef: Grant Achatz of Alinea in Chicago, Jose Andres of Minibar in Washington, DC, Dan Barber of Blue Hill in New York, Suzanne Goin of Lucques in Los Angeles, and Frank Stitt of Highlands Bar & Grill in Birmingham, Alabama.
The James Beard Foundation, a world-renowned not-for-profit organization based in New York City, held their annual awards gala earlier this week and named their choices for the best of the best in the culinary world. Since there are simply far too many recipients to list them all here, I've just chosen a few from select categories, but you can view the list in it's entirety at their website.
LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT AWARD: Barbara Kafka
BOOK AWARDS CATEGORIES:
Cookbook of the Year: THE LEE BROS. SOUTHERN COOKBOOK by Matt Lee and Ted Lee
Baking: FROM MY HOME TO YOURS by Dorie Greenspan
Asian: CRADLE OF FLAVOR by James Oseland
Cookbook Hall of Fame: MOOSEWOOD COOKBOOK by Mollie Katzen
Wine & Spirits: ROMANCING THE VINE by Alan Tardi
Read on after the jump to find out the winners in the Chef and Restaurant categories.
An email I received from Jessica's Biscuit pointed out that the nominees for the International Association of Culinary Professions Awards (IACP) and the James Beard Foundation Awards were both announced yesterday. For those unfamiliar, both awards are akin to receiving an Oscar within the food community. Both recognize outstanding cookbooks, journalism and professionals in the food world, and while there is some overlap, the list of nominees for Beard Foundation Awards is far lengthier. Beard nominees for best food-related website include Leite's Culinaria, Epicurious and Dr. Vino's Wine Blog. There are also categories for webcasts, weekly newspaper sections, magazines, and a diverse array of awards chefs and cookbooks. The IACP is presenting a Lifetime Achievement Award to Knopf VP and editor Judith Jones (who helped launch Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking) and a Humanitarian Award to Frontera Grill's Rick Bayless. Go check out both sites and see if any of your favorites have made the lists of nominees.
Nominations are now closed and the official judges have used some as-yet undefined criteria to cull through the nominated blogs and choose five for each category. The process is actually a bit akin to the academy awards, where the most popular blogs sometimes - but not always - make the final cut, and others that are less well known end up on the ballot. That being said, the process is what it is and all of the blogs that are up for the awards really do deserve to be there, as do all of the nominated blogs, though they haven't all been officially recognized.
So if you want to see if your own favorite blog made the cut, or just check out some new ones, head on over to WellFed and peruse all of the categories vote for your top choice in each. I'm not going to attempt to influence you opinion in any category but one because Slashfood is nominated for the best group blog category. Now, there's no pressure to vote for us, but if you have nothing better to do for the next 5 seconds or so, feel free to cast a vote.
In addition to the ceremony, there is a huge banquet - and we always look forward to hearing about what was served. This year, the three-course menu included a mosaic of salmon and scallops with Kalix bleak roe; herb-baked saddle of lamb, mashed potatoes and Jerusalem artichokes, olive oil-glazed vegetables and port wine sauce; and pineapple parfait with caramelized pineapple salad and mint. The wines served included Pommery Grand Cru Vintage 1996 Champagne, Veenwouden Classic 2002 Paarl and Château Haut-Bergeron 2003 Sauternes.
The Brown Brothers Patricia Noble Riesling is a botrytized, late harvest wine from Milawa in Victoria, Australia. The ultra-ripe Riesling grapes give it a deep rich gold color with a smooth and luscious body. The aroma is full of fresh and preserved apricots and peaches. The taste has a great balance of acidity to sweetness, full of flavors including plum, buttery toffee, vanilla, and candied citrus, with a strong botrytis character. It is rich, and smooth with a long, sweet/tart finish. This is a mighty tasty sticky (Aussie for sweet dessert wine) that isn't too sweet and has good acidity leaving you wanting just another sip, and another.
The Brown Brothers Patricia Noble Riesling's have won numerous awards and medals over the past few years. The 2000 vintage is no exception, with a whole slew including the 2002 Gold Canberra Wine Show, 2002 Gold Sydney Wine Show, 2002 Gold Hobart Wine Show, and the Willmes Trophy Canberra 2002 for Best Sweet Table Wine. It retails for around $18-25US.
Blogger and food writer Ed Levine was at the annual James Beard Foundation Awards dinner last night and, very luckily for all of us who couldn't attend, photoblogged the whole thing! The event is often called the culinary equivalent of the Oscars and when the nominees are announced, there is a sense of aniticipation for the ceremony. Unfortunately, just like the Oscars, not everyone can win, no matter how much it seems that each person deserves to. Thanks to Ed, we got a sneak peek at the winners last night, even though the offical press release has yet to be seen just came out. I'll mention right now that this list is not complete, but a full list is now available at the James Beard Foundation website, or by following the links after the jump.
Lifetime Achievement - Judith Jones
Best Cookbook - Sunday Suppers at Lucques, by Suaanne Goins
Best Television Food Show - How to Cook Everything (on PBS)
Best Webcast - Spatulata.com (Isabella, 10, and Olivia Gerasole, 8, prepare a dinner's worth of recipes every two weeks. They are the youngest recipients in the history of the awards)
Best New Restaurant - Modern in NY
Best Restaurant - The French Laundry
Best Restaurant Service - Gary Danko
Best Chef - Alfred Portale of Gotham Bar & Grill
Best Restaurateur - Daniel Boulud
Best Food Section, large circulation - SF Chronicle
Best Food Section, small circulation - Denver Post
Last Friday, the winners of the 2006 Brewers Association World
Beer Cup (aka "the most prestigious beer competition in the world") were announced in Seattle. This year's
event was the largest on record, with over 2,000 entries coming in from almost 60 different countries. Beers were judged
in 85 different categories, from "non-alcoholic malt tonic" to "fruit and vegetable beer" to
"barley wine-style ale." A complete list of winners is available here.
Food & Wine magazine has announced its list of Best New Chefs of 2006. The 10 chefs come from across the
country--and surprise-- there's even a chef from New Hampshire, the first time a chef from the Granite State has
appeared on the list. The chef is Mary Dumont from the Dunaway Restaurant
at Strawbery Banke. Past chefs chosen in the Best New Chef category include Thomas Keller, Daniel Boulud and Nobu
Matsuhisa. Eater has the full
release.
Cathal Armstrong Restaurant Eve, Alexandria, VA
Christopher Lee Striped Bass, Philadelphia, PA
David Chang Momofuku, New York, NY
Douglas Keane Cyrus, Healdsburg, CA
Jason Wilson Crush, Seattle, WA
Jonathan Benno Per Se, New York, NY
Mary Dumont The Dunaway Restaurant at Strawbery Banke, Portsmouth, NH
The International Association of Culinary Professionals (IACP) recently announced
the finalists for their yearly cookbook awards. Awards will be given for roughly a dozen categories including food
reference and technical writing, health, photography and styling, chefs and restaurants and literary food writing.
Winners will be announced at the IACP's annual conference, which begins March 30 in Seattle. I was glad to see that
Hungry Planet, of of my favorite food books of the last year, made the list. A full list of finalists is available here.
The Independent Food Festival and Awards is an
online event dedicated to the idea that people should share their favorite foods and food experiences to help rekindle
a love of and interest in food in general. Judging by the fact that the event seems to be several times the size
of last year's festival, this second annual event
seems to be a success so far.
You may have seen their logo on some of your favorite food blogs last year, when 30 well-known blogs were selected
to act as jury members and contribute a favorite food-related thing to the online festival. Every jury member creates
their own award and awards it as they see fit. The bloggers' awards are being announced over the course of five
days, since there are quite a few more participants than last year. Since all the categories and awards are
independently generated, it is difficult to say what you might expect to find amongst the nominees, but it is certain
to be something delicious judging from the entries so
far.
Kate just announced the
2005 Food Blog Award winners on her new site. Congratulations to all the nominees
and thanks to everyone who voted. Without further ado, the winners are:
The Accidental
Hedonist has just announced that the voting is now open for the 2005 Food Blog Awards. The polls
will be open from January 5th through January 18th, with the winners to be announced sometime shortly thereafter.
The list of finalists was compiled from large lists of nominees by a panel of judges, who selected their favorites.
The favorites were compared and narrowed down even further in a second round of judging until there were five finalists
in each category. Each blog that made it to the finals is excellent, though many of the nominated blogs are
at least equally good, so review all the nominees if you have a
chance.
Finalists for the James Beard Award, one of the most prestigious prizes in the food industry, were announced on Monday. Awards are given in a number of categories, including Outstanding Restaurateur, Outstanding Chef, Outstanding Restaurant, Best New Restaurant, and Rising Star Chef of the Year, Cookbook of the Year, and Outstanding Service Award. 
The James Beard Foundation, a world-renowned not-for-profit organization based in New York City, held their annual awards gala earlier this week and named their choices for the best of the best in the culinary world. Since there are simply far too many recipients to list them all here, I've just chosen a few from select categories, but you can view the list in it's entirety 
An email I received from 
The Brown Brothers Patricia Noble Riesling is a botrytized, late harvest wine from Milawa in Victoria, Australia. The ultra-ripe Riesling grapes give it a deep rich gold color with a smooth and luscious body. The aroma is full of fresh and preserved apricots and peaches. The taste has a great balance of acidity to sweetness, full of flavors including plum, buttery toffee, vanilla, and candied citrus, with a strong botrytis character. It is rich, and smooth with a long, sweet/tart finish. This is a mighty tasty sticky (Aussie for sweet dessert wine) that isn't too sweet and has good acidity leaving you wanting just another sip, and another. 
Blogger and food writer 
Last Friday, the winners of the 2006 Brewers Association 
Food & Wine magazine has announced its list of Best New Chefs of 2006. The 10 chefs come from across the
country--and surprise-- there's even a chef from New Hampshire, the first time a chef from the Granite State has
appeared on the list. The chef is Mary Dumont from the 
The International Association of Culinary Professionals (
The 
Kate
The Accidental
Hedonist
What Can I Get You Folks? - Server Revenge
Reality-Show Celebrities Serve Up Chef Curtis Stone's 'Hundred-Dollar Burger'
Foods Celebrity Chefs Hate
