JAMES BEARD FOUNDATION ANNOUNCES PAULA WOLFERT AS 2018 LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT HONOREE
Wolfert’s career in food began in the 1950s, when on the advice of her mother, the newly married Columbia graduate took up cooking classes. She learned from and eventually worked for Dione Lucas, the first woman to have a TV cooking show, in addition to working for James Beard, himself. In 1959 she moved to Tangiers, where her love of Mediterranean and Moroccan cooking began and would be translated into nine books during her career. Her first book, Couscous and Other Good Food from Morocco, was published in 1973 when a tagine was foreign to the majority of Americans. With 1994’s The Cooking of the Eastern Mediterranean, Wolfert highlighted delicious recipes that represented the healthful diet of the Mediterranean, an early champion of the benefits to eating the Mediterranean way. This book earned her a James Beard Award, one of five she has received, including the M.F.K. Fisher Distinguished Writing Award in 1996 for a feature titled “My Old Moroccan Home” in Saveur, and the Cookbook Hall of Fame in 2008.
