Devour! Chefs & Shorts: Food, Film & Wine

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By Geneva Anderson

Jetting out of Halifax is rarely simple for Devour! The Film Food Fest co-founders, Lia Rinaldo and Chef Michael Howell.  As they headed for the 25th edition of the Sonoma International Film Festival, they were schlepping 400 Sober Island Oysters and several bottles of Domaine de Grand Pré’s prized sparkling Champlain Brut.  The special cargo was for Chef Howell as he organized his own appetizer while juggling the details of numerous other participants in the eagerly-awaited SIFF | Devour! “Chefs & Shorts Culinary” Event Honoring Chef Jacques Pépin.

Michael Howell and Lia Renaldo. Photo courtesy Devour!

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BREAKING BREAD ACROSS BORDERS + Recipes

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By Joyce Goldstein

A-Sham celebrates the food of the Levant (Israel, Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon) in a three-day event where Arab and Jewish chefs cook their traditional foods together, sharing family recipes and culture.

 

BREAKING BREAD, a new documentary by Beth Elise Hawk focuses on the annual A- Sham Arabic Food Festival in Haifa, a city with a healthy cultural life enjoyed by both Arabs and Jews.

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SHOW BIZ and JUST PLAIN WEIRD VALENTINE’S DAY CARDS

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We did a random “Vintage Hollywood Valentines” Google search and came up with a treasure trove of images.  And if you click on any given image it enlarges with several new images to the right.

Can you name the stars?

But we have gone further. If it is true that the way to a lover’s heart is through the stomach, check out some vintage food cards. Why stop there. We cover growing up, comics and animation and the really bizarre “Vinegar Valentines.”

Plus several renditions of the classic song, “My Funny Valentine” by Frank Sinatra, Kim Novak. Ella Fitzgerald, Miles Davis and more.

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Cooking Middle Eastern With Joyce

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Joyce Goldstein has written 28 cookbooks, been a chef at Chez Panisse and her own Mediterranean restaurant Square One in San Francisco. Currently she is a consultant to restaurants and for product/recipe development. Her recipes present the foods of Italy, Spain, France, Greece, Turkey, the Middle East and North Africa.

She has selected some recipes for our readers from two of her books, The New Mediterranean Jewish Table and Saffron Shores.

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IT ALL STARTED WITH A HOT PLATE

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By Joyce Goldstein

Julia McWilliams had an idyllic childhood in Pasadena California, raised in a conservative family with conventional American food.  When World War two broke out she enlisted and went to work at the OSS hoping to become a spy but ending up as a clerk typist. 

How did this start lead to being one of the world’s most beloved chefs?

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Two Virtual Sessions to Watch Now–About Food and Film

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Two fascinating video sessions occurred in November, 2021. We have obtained these recording for your viewing pleasure. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Gregory Bezat, San Francisco producer/director of a film in production, M.F.K. Fisher:The Art of Eating, was on a terrific panel on Food Luminary Documentaries such as Julia Child and James Beard.

Allen Michaan told tales of saving and operating the Grand Lake Theatre movie palace in Oakland in a wide-ranging conversation about the joys of saving a place that has meant so much for nearly a of century of moviegoers..  

Both can be watched below.

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RECIPES FROM JULIA CHILD

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To celebrate the opening the new documentary Julia EatDrinkFilms is pleased to offer our readers four of Julia Child’s favorite recipes: Coq au Vin, Gratin Dauphinois and for dessert, La Tarte des Demoiselles Tatin. Plus one of her most famous dishes, Boeuf Bourguignon. We have some videos of Julia cooking on her own show and on David Letterman, the SNL spoof which Ms Child loved and more. Bon Appetit.

Julia opens exclusively in theaters throughout November, 2021. For more information go to the Official Website.

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DIANA KENNEDY: NOTHING FANCY—INDEED

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By Patricia Unterman

To tell you the truth, my dear film buffs, I’m a reader, not a moviegoer, and I only read fiction.  If I watch a movie, it has to be in a movie house on a big screen and it has to promise a good story, ideally involving sex.   Documentaries, for me, are a bore.

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But despite all odds, I was mesmerized by a new documentary on the life of Diana Kennedy, the grouchy, 97-year-old writer of regional Mexican cookbooks, by first-time movie director Elizabeth Carroll.  The film felt novelistic to me—nuanced, revealing, true.  It picked me right up from a desk chair in front of my little computer screen and dropped me in the upland forests of Michoacán. Continue reading →