Do You Know Which Award is Known as the "Oscars of Food"*?

If your answer is the James Beard Foundation Award, you are absolutely right!  The James Beard Foundation (JBF) has issued awards covering all aspects of the American culinary industry since 1990. Awards are given each year in the Spring for chefs and restaurateurs, cookbooks, culinary journalism and broadcasts, and restaurant design. From 2007 to 2014, the annual awards ceremony was held at the Lincoln Center in New York City. However, this year's ceremony will take place on May 4th at the Lyric Opera in Chicago,

The James Beard Foundation Award medallion

The Foundation and its eponymous awards are named after James Beard, the "Dean of American cuisine."** Beard was born in 1903 in Portland, Oregon and died in 1985. A big baby (14 pounds at birth!) he grew to be a big man tipping the scales at over 300 pounds. He was a showman and a died-in-the-wool champion of American cuisine. He hosted America's first television cooking show, I Love to Eat, which first aired (live no less) in 1946. He was also a prolific author who wrote 20 cookbooks, many of which are still available.

James Beard

The Lexington campus Library and Learning Resource Center has several of Mr. Beard's books, and all of them may be borrowed from the library.

James Beard's American cookery by James Beard; with illustrations by Earl Thollander. 
641.5 B368ja

Beard on Bread by James Beard.  641.815 B368b

The Armchair James Beard by James Beard. 641.5 B368a

A-List Food

Last week, we featured the Academy Awards, which everyone knows as the “Oscars.” What follows the Oscar awards ceremony? An Oscar party, of course. One can’t have an Oscar party without food, and one can’t have an A-list party without award-winning food.  To help you with your A-list party, today’s post features award-winning cookbooks.

The International Association of Culinary Professionals annually gives awards to chefs, culinary schools, non-culinary professionals who have advanced the field, and to cookbooks. The IACP has given cookbook awards since 1986, and, as of 2015, the awards for cookbooks are given in a whopping 22 different categories.

The library has some of the IACP award-winning cookbooks, and we will highlight just a few of them for you. If you want to borrow any of these books, or if you want to find out what other IACP books that the library has, simply ask a librarian to help you.

• Book of Tarts: Form, Function, and Flavor at the City Bakery by Maury Rubin; 641.865 R896b

• Culinary Birds: A Complete Guide to Buying and Serving Savory Poultry by John Ash; 641.665 A819c

• Hiroko’s American Kitchen: Cooking with Japanese Flavors by Hiroko Shimbo; 641.5952 S556h

• The Italian Baker: The Classic Tastes of the Italian Countryside--Its Breads, Pizza, Focaccia, Cakes, Pastries, and Cookies by Carol Field; 641.815 F453I

• One Soufflé at a Time: A Memoir of Food and France by Anne Willan; 641.5092 W689o

Information for this post retrieved from the IACP website on 8 January, 2015.

http://www.iacp.com/award/more/iacp_awards_categories

http://www.iacp.com/award/more/cookbook