Paula Wolfert (born 1938) is an American author of nine books on cooking and the winner of numerous cookbook awards including what is arguably the top honor given in the food world: The James Beard Foundation Medal For Lifetime Achievement. A specialist in Mediterranean food, she has written extensively on Moroccan cuisine including two books, one of them (The Food of Morocco) a 2012 James Beard Award winner. She also wrote The Cooking of South-West France, and books about the cuisine of the Eastern Mediterranean, slow Mediterranean cooking and Mediterranean clay pot cooking.
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That is what you can get on Wiki and it is excellent information. But I am compelled to write about my personal experiences with both her work and her. In my memoir, “No Experience Necessary, the Culinary Education of Norman Van Aken” there is this passage from my time cooking with Charlie Trotter in 1984.
“But perhaps more than any other cookbook at that time it was Paula Wolfert’s, “The Cooking of Southwest France” that caused us the most study. In the works of Girardet and Senderens there was little background or philosophy. You read the recipes and gazed at a few pictures. Back then pictures were not deemed so important. In fact there were no pictures in some! Ms. Wolfort’s books had none either but she was a writer and an incredibly good one. She could make you “taste” the food and understand the goals of the region. The book was dense with information and we pored over it like Talmudic scholars. We deepened our understanding of Escoffier and learned of the lamentably unknown and wrongfully overlooked of chef and teacher Andre Guillot. In a short single 18-line paragraph his method of making sauces, which he called “stratification” forever changed our views on this ancient art. We had already banished roux, (well nearly…I did still use them for béchamel but I hid it from the other cooks for fear they would want to use them in other sauces where they no longer belonged). Instead we followed the scripture therein! We would, as Ms. Wolfert guided, start with an acid, follow with a rich protein and finish we some fat through a series of “rapid reductions” to arrive at lighter, more clearly defined and complementary sauces than the hoary old sauces of days gone by. And so that winter we made Cassoulet from her “recipe” which included head notes that ran five pages of text! We loved this woman! We made duck confit and a replication of the Toulouse sausages and we obtained the very beans Paula Wolfert advised us upon and we obtained them from the mighty purveyor list she so generously shared in the back of this epic work. She quoted the legendary French gastronome that went under the pseudonym of “Curnonsky”, a man, it has been said of, “was to be found wherever imagination triumphed over conformity”. Curnonsky himself said, “A great dish is the master achievement of many generations”. The sacrifices and the efforts required for any “achievements” were and an endorphin rush for us! We made “Ragout of Duck Legs with White Onions and Prunes”, “Roast Shoulder of Lamb with Anchovies”. Charlie prepared a “Cold Confit of Pork with Green Beans and Cabbage”, Ed made Barbecued Spareribs on our wood burning grills but he followed her recipe and did them in the style of the Languedoc.”
Not many years later I was asked to fly to Houston to do a cooking demo for a large convention. As I took the stage and was just beginning. I looked down and there in the first row sat two familiar faces, the great and genial California chef Mary Sue Milliken and next to her… Paula Wolfert. I nearly lost my nerve to go on. But … Paula smiled broadly at me and I did my class. A day later it so happened I ran into both of them with Janet by my side at the Houston airport. We were in a food court area. I wondered what the world traveler would find to sate her appetite. I asked her if she found anything good. She pointed to a sign and said, “That place”. I was tickled to see it was a hot dog seller. So we went and got some ‘dogs’ before we got on the plane back to Florida. Languedoc style? Not a chance. But tasty.