Remembering Cara De Silva A Zoom Presentation

The culinary history community lost a luminary when Cara De Silva passed away on December 7,  2022.  A lifelong New Yorker, Cara was a journalist and food historian who explored some of the lesser-known byways of food studies in articles for Newsday as well as the New York Times, Saveur, and other publications. She lectured and reported widely on Jewish foodways, immigrant foods in New York City, and, most recently, on the food of the Roma.

She is particularly known as the editor of In Memory’s Kitchen: A Legacy from the Women of Terezin, a collection of recipes—or rather, memories—gathered by a woman in the Nazi concentration camp Terezin from her fellow prisoners, women who were starving, of foods they had made before the war and would probably never taste again.

Fred Plotkin, Jane Dystel, Peggy Katalinich, Anne Mendelson, and Lynne Rossetto Kasper, some of Cara’s longtime friends and colleagues, will offer their memories and appreciations in a panel moderated by Andrew Smith.

Fred Plotkin is known for his authoritative knowledge of the performing arts—especially opera—and of everything relating to Italy. The author of ten books (eight on food) and countless articles, he has appeared in dozens of broadcasts on NPR and the BBC and  has lectured at major academic institutions. He and Cara De Silva were close friends for nearly 40 years.

Jane Dystel, president of Dystel, Goderich & Bourret LLC, has been a literary agent since 1986. After working at the publishing houses Bantam Books, Grosset & Dunlap, and World Almanac Publications, she joined the agency that would soon become Acton and Dystel Inc. In 1994, she founded Jane Dystel Literary Management, now Dystel, Goderich & Bourret.

Peggy Katalinich was food editor at the Minneapolis Star for four years before moving to Newsday in 1979 as the food editor, where she directed reporting on the foods of Long Island, resulting in an award-winning cookbook. In 1994, she joined Family Circle as the food director, editing several cookbooks including Eat What You Love and Lose. She was Cara’s colleague at Newsday and a steadfast friend for 40 years.

Anne Mendelson is a freelance food journalist, editor, culinary historian, and a founding member of the Culinary Historians of New York. Her books include Stand Facing the Stove, Milk, Chow Chop Suey, and most recently, Spoiled: The Myth of Milk as Superfood, an investigative history of the modern drinking-milk industry. She and Cara De Silva were close friends for many years, drawn together by a shared love of (among other things) English literature.

Lynne Rossetto Kasper was co-creator (with producer Sally Swift), writer, and host of American Public Media’s The Splendid Table® as part of a 50-year career as a food writer, teacher, researcher, and speaker. Her first book, The Splendid Table: Recipes From Emilia Romagna, was the first book to win the Book of Year Award from the James Beard Foundation and the Julia Child IACP Award. After she and Cara met at an Oxford Symposium, they began 40 years of daily phone calls, adventures, and the love of two sisters.

Andrew F. Smith is the author or editor of 32 books and the editor for the Edible series and the Food Controversies series at Reaktion Books in the United Kingdom. He has taught food studies courses at the New School in New York since 1996.