Barbara Kafka (August 2, 1933 - June 1, 2018) was a food columnist and cookbook author. [1] [2]
Born Barbara Joan Poses in Manhattan, she was the only child of Lillian Shapiro Poses and Jack I. Poses. Her mother was the first woman to graduate from the New York University School of Law who worked for several New Deal agencies under FDR. Her father was one of the founders of Brandeis University, the founder and president of perfume manufacturer Parfums D’Orsay and the vice chair of the New York City Board of Higher Education. [1]
Kafka attended Radcliffe College after graduating from the Dalton School. While at Radcliffe, she met Ernest Kafka, whom she married. When he went to medical school in St. Louis, she went with him and worked editing medical journals. When they returned to New York, she began working as an editor at Mademoiselle. It is because Leo Lerman suggested she write and the fact he networked with Allene Talmey of Vogue that she became a food writer. [1]
Because of their love of art, the Kafka would spend the summer in Provincetown, Massachusetts which was called “Summer Center of Abstract Expressionism.” [3]
She died at her home in Manhattan due to complications from Parkinson’s. [1]
She has been described as a “sometimes pugnacious cookbook author.’. [2] Despite never using a microwave until 1984, she championed their use. Her first book on the subject, The Microwave Gourmet was published in 1987. Other titles included The Opinionated Palate: Passions and Peeves on Eating and Food in 1992, in 1995 Roasting: A Simple Art and in 2011, The Intolerant Gourmet: Glorious Food Without Gluten & Lactose. [1]
The James Beard Foundation bestowed upon her the Cookbook Hall of Fame award as well as two Lifetime Achievement Awards. [1]
Barbara Wertheim Tuchman was an American historian and author. She won the Pulitzer Prize twice, for The Guns of August (1962), a best-selling history of the prelude to and the first month of World War I, and Stilwell and the American Experience in China (1971), a biography of General Joseph Stilwell.
Jeffrey L. Smith was the author of several cookbooks and the host of The Frugal Gourmet, a popular American cooking show. The show began in Tacoma, Washington, as Cooking Fish Creatively on local PBS station KTPS, where it aired from 1973 to 1977. It then moved to WTTW in Chicago, and finally to KQED in San Francisco where it aired from 1984 to 1997. From 1972 to 1983, Smith was the owner and operator of the Chaplain's Pantry Restaurant and Gourmet Shop.
Sara Moulton is an American cookbook author and television personality. In an article for The New York Times, Kim Severson described Moulton as "one of the nation’s most enduring recipe writers and cooking teachers...and a dean of food television and magazines".
Ruth Reichl, is an American chef, food writer and editor. In addition to two decades as a food critic, mainly spent at the Los Angeles Times and The New York Times, Reichl has also written cookbooks, memoirs and a novel, and been co-producer of PBS's Gourmet's Diary of a Foodie, culinary editor for the Modern Library, host of PBS's Gourmet's Adventures With Ruth, and editor-in-chief of Gourmet magazine. She has won six James Beard Foundation Awards.
Laurie Colwin was an American writer who wrote five novels, three collections of short stories and two volumes of essays and recipes. She was known for her portrayals of New York society and her food columns in Gourmet magazine.
Barbara Tropp was an American orientalist, chef, restaurateur, and food writer. During her career, she operated China Moon restaurant in San Francisco and wrote cookbooks that popularized Chinese cuisine in America. China Moon's accompanying cookbook is credited with being one of the first fusion cuisine cookbooks. She was the 1989 recipient of the Who's Who of Food & Beverage in America James Beard Award. Tropp was called "the Julia Child of Chinese cooking."
Clementine Paddleford was an American food writer active from the 1920s through the 1960s, writing for several publications, including the New York Herald Tribune, the New York Sun, The New York Telegram, Farm and Fireside, and This Week magazine. A Kansas native, she lived most of her life in New York City, where she introduced her readers to the global range of food to be found in that city. Her 1960 book How America Eats was an influential discussion of American cooking and eating habits.
Sheila Lukins, was an American cook and food writer. She was most famous as the co-author, with Julee Rosso, of The Silver Palate series of cookbooks, and The New Basics Cookbook, a very popular set of food guides which introduced many Americans to Mediterranean and Eastern European cooking techniques and ingredients and popularized a richer and very boldly seasoned style of cooking to Americans in sharp contrast to the health-food movements of the 1970s. Together, their books sold more than seven million copies.
Jane Grossman Stern and Michael Stern are American writers who specialize in books about travel, food, and popular culture. They are best known for their Roadfood books, website, and magazine columns, in which they find road food restaurants serving classic American regional specialties and review them. Starting their hunt for regional American food in the early 1970s they were the first food writers to regard this food as being as worthy to report on as the haute cuisine of other nations.
Cecilia Hae-Jin Lee is a Korean American writer, artist, photographer and chef. She works in installation, photography, painting and drawing. She has written for magazines, newspapers and online publications.
Judith Lynn Ferguson, aka Judith Ferguson-Foreman, is an American–British author and chef. She is the author of 65 food-related books, mostly focused on North American regional cuisine and microwave cooking.
Irena Chalmers-Taylor was an author and food commentator/essayist, teacher and culinary mentor. Named "the culinary oracle of 100 cookbooks" by noted American restaurant critic and journalist, Gael Greene, Chalmers was recognized as the pioneer of the single subject cookbook. Her life story revealed an unlikely journey to becoming a James Beard Foundation "Who's Who" of Food and Beverage in America 1988 Award Recipient.
Marion Cunningham was an American food writer.
Pamela Sheldon Johns is the author of seventeen cookbooks specializing in Italian traditional and regional ingredients. Her career, for more than twenty years, has included teaching, food photography/food styling, cooking school administration, food writing, innkeeping, and agriculture. She lives at Poggio Etrusco, her organic farm and Bed & Breakfast in southern Tuscany, and produces an extra-virgin olive oil called "Pace da Poggio Etrusco."
Gladys Eleanor Guggenheim Straus was an American heiress who became an expert on food and nutrition.
Barbara Ketcham Wheaton, born in Philadelphia in 1931, is a writer and food historian. Since 1990, she has been the honorary curator of the culinary collection at the Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe College, one of the largest collections in the United States of books and manuscripts relating to cooking and the social history of food.
Janice Longone was an American food historian, Curator of American Culinary History at Special Collections, Hatcher Library, University of Michigan. Julia Child, James Beard, and New York Times food editor Craig Claiborne were all early fans of Longone's out-of-print cookbook collection. Their enthusiasm prompted her to create The Wine and Food Library in 1972, which offers books by mail order or private appointment and remains one of the most important antiquarian culinary resources in the world.
Claire Saffitz is an American food writer, chef, and YouTube personality. Until mid-2020, she was a contributing editor at Bon Appétit magazine and starred in several series on the Bon Appétit YouTube channel, including Gourmet Makes, in which she created gourmet versions of popular snack foods by reverse engineering them. Since leaving the company, she has published two cookbooks, Dessert Person and What's for Dessert, which both became New York Times Best Sellers. She has continued work as a video host on her own YouTube channel and as a freelance recipe developer, including for New York Times Cooking.
Barbara Heine Costikyan, born Barbara Virginia Fatt, was an American food writer.
Louisa Shafia is an American chef and cookbook author. Her 2009 cookbook Lucid Food focuses on local and sustainable eating. The New Persian Kitchen (2013) features traditional Persian dishes as well as reinterpretations.