Watch our lunchtime conversation here.
Program synopsis: Anne Willan’s long career as expert culinary educator, bibliophile, and culinary historian uniquely positions her to reflect on the contributions that women cookery writers have made to the American foodscape. In her most recent book, Women in the Kitchen: Twelve Essential Cookbook Writers Who Defined the Way We Eat, from 1661 to Today, Anne profiles twelve of these women–from Hannah Woolley in the mid-1600s to Fannie Farmer, Julia Child, Edna Lewis, and Alice Waters. In a conversation with CHNY president Cathy Kaufman, Anne discussed the lives and works of these women, whose important books have defined cooking over the past three hundred years. Highlighting their historical contributions and most representative recipes, she showed how they created the canon of the American table.
Using Anne’s adaptations of Julia Child’s ratatouille and Edna Lewis’s Plum Tart, members of the audience literally tasted history.