Cooking with Mr. James Beard
When delving into American food history, certain names tend to pop up again and again. As a nubie foodie I don’t know the half of them. Alice Waters, Wendell Barry, Michael Pollan…it’s usually around here my knowledge starts to wane. Unless I start roll calling Food Network personalities. I wonder how American culinary history will remember Paula Deen?
So in an effort to learn more about the man, the myth, the legend, the food, this post is an homage to the one and only James Beard. First a little about him and then we eat!
James Beard was born in 1903 in Portalnd Oregon. His parents were far from foodies by trade – mom ran a boarding house and dad worked at Portland’s custom house. Beard chose to attend Reed College at age 18, but it wasn’t soon after he started that he dropped out and took off with a roving theatrical troupe. After many years traveling the nation and world acting, Beard, at the age of 32, tried unsuccessfully to crack into the NYC theater scene. It was only then that Beard, with a close friend, started up his own catering company. You have to love late bloomers – which for the record include Julia Child and Paula Deen. From there came a cookbook and, most influentially, the first-ever televised cooking show on NBC in 1946.
It is through his show that Beard is credited with being the first to bring French cuisine to the masses in the 1950s. With Beard, America gained never-before respect as a new player in the culinary world scene. He was also one of the first to champion cooking good wholesome food with local American ingredients. This in spite of his later endorsements of certain major processed food brands like Green Giant. Beard’s legacy lives on with the James Beard Foundation which bestows scholarships to deserving young chefs as well as being the home to the James Beard Awards.
In honor of James Beard and all of his contributions to the American culinary vernacular, here is just one of many James Beard recipes, adapted from the fabulous new website Cookstr.
