Paula Wolfert
Paula Wolfert (b. 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. Background Wolfert was born April 7, 1938, in Brooklyn, New York, daughter of Sam and Frieda Harris. She attended Columbia University in New York between 1956 and 1959, earning a degree in English. During that time, her mother gave her a series of six lessons with Dione Lucas, an English chef who ran a cooking school in New York. "I loved it," she said. "I loved it better than school. I grew up on cottage cheese and melon, and my mother was on a diet her whole life. She had no interest in food." Wolfert has traveled extensively in the Mediterranean, including in France, Turkey, and Morocco.