"jamesbeard" news and stories

In breaking food news, the James Beard Foundation is announcing the 2009 JBA Nominees live on Twitter.

Follow them at twitter.com/beardfoundation or watch this post, and we'll update as the announcements roll in.

The 2009 inductees into the Who's Who of Food & Beverage are: David Burke, John T. Edge, Dorothy Cann Hamilton, Betty Fussell, Clark Wolf

Journalism Awards Nominees:

Multimedia: Ruth Reichl (Gourmet.com): Gourmet Cookbook Club and The Test Kitchen; Mike Sula (Chicagoreader.com): Whole Hog Project

Web Site Focusing on Food, Beverage, Restaurant or Nutrition: Chow.com, Epicurious.com and Gourmet.com

Food Blogs: The BA Foodist (Bonappetit.com), Hunter Angler Gardener Cook (Honest-food.net), Our One-Block Diet (Oneblockdiet.sunset.com)

Writing on Spirits, Wine, or Beer: Jon Bonné (San Francisco Chronicle), Jay McInerney (Men's Vogue), Alan Richman (GQ)

Food-Related Columns: Dorie Greenspan (Bon Appétit), Corby Kummer (The Atlantic) and Laura Shapiro (Gourmet.com)

Nutrition/Food-Related Issues: Barry Estabrook (Gourmet), Mark Adams, et al (New York Magazine), Rachael Moeller Gorman (EatingWell)

Restaurant Reviews: Jonathan Gold (LA Weekly), Adam Platt (New York Magazine) and Tom Sietsema (The Washington Post)

Magazine Feature Writing w/o Recipes: Alan Richman (GQ), Patricia Sharpe (Texas Monthly), Monique Truong (Gourmet)

Magazine Feature with Recipes: Edna Lewis (Gourmet)*published posthumously, David Dobbs and John Ash (EatingWell), James Peterson (Saveur)

Magazine Feature Writing about Restaurants and/or Chefs: Ruth Reichl (Gourmet), Alan Richman (Departures), Anya von Bremzen (Food & Wine)

Newspaper Food Section: Chicago Tribune, San Francisco Chronicle and The Washington Post

Newspaper Feature w/ Recipes: Rebekah Denn (Seattle Post-Intelligencer), David Leite (New York Times), Kathleen Purvis (Charlotte Observer)

Newspaper Feature w/o Recipes: Monica Eng (Chicago Tribune), Kristen Hinman (Riverfront Times) and Craig LaBan (The Philadelphia Inquirer)

Newspaper Feature about Restaurants and/or Chefs: Monica Eng/Phil Vettel(Chicago Trib), Katy McLaughlin (WSJ), Tom Sietsema (The Wash Post)

MFK Fisher Distinguished Writing Award: Celia Barbour (O, The Oprah Magazine), Aleksandra Crapanzano (Gourmet), Alan Richman (GQ)

Restaurant, Cookbook and Media Awards nominees are after the jump.

I'm not gonna pretend that this picture is pretty, or in the least bit appetizing, but I will note that the results are disturbingly delicious. The heart of the matter is that I went to a cookout a few weekends ago and was offered a grilled chicken heart by a friend who has yet to serve me anything that is less than madly tasty. Emboldened by this, I picked up a package of chicken hearts on a shopping jaunt this week, and started perusing my favorite recipe sites for marinades. It didn't take me long to find a 1956 James Beard recipe suggesting that these would make a dandy appetizer for a group of 25. Twenty-five of whom, I'm not entirely sure, 'cause even as staunchly carnivorous as my pals tend to be, few of 'em dig getting their offal on as much as I do, and I wouldn't subject them to it. There are exceptions, though.

Some friends came over this afternoon to serve as panel members for AOL Food's upcoming Hot Dog Taste Test. As I tended the grill between rounds, one of them began holding forth about how methods of barbecuing and grilling really were born of the necessity to bring greater flavor to cheap and previously discarded cuts of meat, and how folks were getting way too fancy-schmancy with the whole thing these days. I left my post at the flames, walked him to the fridge, pulled out the plastic container full of marinating hearts and started putting them on bamboo skewers.

He shut up and started eating.

James Beard's 1956 Grilled Chicken Hearts Recipe on Epicurious

(Note: In the above pic, I was out of sherry and subbed in brandy, which proved perfectly yummy.)

First printed in 1940, James Beard wrote his first book, Hors d'Oeuvre and Canapes, in just six short weeks. He was able to write it so quickly because he had plenty of experience to draw on. Before he became a cooking instructor and food personality, he and a friend ran a catering company that specialized in appetizers and tidbits for parties and events. He went on to write more than 30 volumes about food, cooking and eating.

According to the introduction that appeared in the original volume, Hors d'Oeuvre means food that appears "outside the meal." He states that these bites of food that are served prior to the main event should be designed to "enchant the eye, please the palate and excite the flow of the gastric juices." While this book on its own isn't particularly stimulating, as it was published in 1967 and is a musty-smelling trade paperback, the food described within its pages is enough to make my gastric juices run.

Many of the recipes aren't exact, calling for enough mayonnaise to bind or moisten the ingredients, but I find that to be appealing, as it means that he trusted his readers and believed them to have an understanding as to how their finished food should look and taste. One incredibly useful section is the one in which he offers several pages of lists of spreads and fillings for sandwiches. While they would be wonderful as appetizers, many of them offer terrific inspiration for any mealtime.

I had a great-aunt who's hobby it was to prepare appetizers and canapes. She often had several dozen tucked into her basement chest freezer. As I've flipped through this book, I've noticed recipes for several of her most famous items in its pages. We never knew that she was ripping off James Beard!

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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.

For a full list see the James Beard Foundation's website.

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An essay in today's New York Times Magazine muses on the cookbooks of James Beard, the pioneering American chef and food writer.

There seem to have been two Beards, writes Aleksandra Crapanzano - the sophisticated gastrophile with a taste for sea urchin mousseline, who awakened mid century Americans to the pleasures of fresh, high-quality ingredients, and the shameless crowd-pleaser and businessman, writing recipes for tomato soup cake and signing countless endorsement deals for kitchen products.

A new edition of "Beard on Food" loses the bad Sloppy Joe recipes found in Beard's seminal "American Cookery," and is instead full of the exuberant eater's musings - tales dining of pheasants in Provence, a digression on the history of fondue in Switzerland, Crapanzano writes.

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