Anne Willan Inducted into the James Beard Cookbook Hall of Fame

Untitled-3Please raise a glass with me in celebration of my induction into the James Beard Cookbook Hall of Fame for “body of work”. It is an honor to be celebrated for my lifelong career as a chef, cooking teacher and author by my friends and peers at the James Beard Foundation. Each year, the Cookbook Hall of Fame recognizes an individual whose work has influenced the way we think about food and cooking. Past inductees of the Cookbook Hall of Fame include Jane Grigson, Marcella Hazan, Elizabeth David and Julia Child, among others. What company!

Spring Gratin

Spring Gratin of Baby Vegetables with Cheese and Mustard Sauce

  As a way to present vegetables, enhanced but not hidden by their golden brown crust, a gratin seems to me ideal. Even when dressed in a white sauce, the color and shapes of the vegetables still show through, and nuts, chopped herbs and other flavorings only add to the riot of color. The special

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The Cookbook Library Awarded at IACP!

The Cookbook Library 613x800 pixelsI am so happy to announce that my most recent book, The Cookbook Library: The Cooks, Writers, and Recipes That Made the Modern Cookbook (University of California Press 2012), has received  the Jane Grigson Award for distinguished scholarship and depth of research and the Culinary History Cookbook Award. Both are from the International Association of Culinary Professionals (IACP). It is an honor to receive not one, but two awards from the IACP. The Cookbook Library has been a labor of love for me and my husband Mark. We’ve been collecting cookbooks for all the nearly fifty years of our married life. To win this award is one of the greatest achievements of my career.

A New Article on Zester Daily

Zester DailyI’m on a campaign to revive white sauce! A wonderful and delicate thing that seems to have been lost in the 21st century.  Many thanks to Corie Brown, General Manager of Zester Daily, for allowing my rant onto her site.

You can find my thoughts on white sauce here.

The Times of Northwestern Indiana Features “The Cookbook Library”

“For food historians and even those just appreciative of a good meal, the book is fascinating…I wonder about covering a dinner where birds flew out of towering pastries, seals were served and eels baked into pies…” — Jane Ammeson in The Times of Northwestern Indian

I was delighted to see this article in the Times of Northwestern Indiana. It’s a wonderful reminder of TCL and of our gastronomic past.

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