Events: Italian Family Cooking, M.F.K. Fisher, Food Styling

With summer over, culinary centers around the city are unveiling some exciting offerings. M.F.K. Fisher is being celebrated at the New School; Laura Schenone, author of a new cookbook on Italian family cuisine, will speak at the James Beard House; and noted food stylist and former Food Network producer, Georgia Downard, will talk about how to add style and glamor to your food presentations.

Beard on Books
Sponsored by James Beard House

Explore traditions of Italian family cooking with Laura Schenone, author of The Lost Ravioli Recipes of Hoboken: A Search for Food and Family

Time: Wednesday, September 17 2008, 12 – 1 p.m.

Location: The James Beard House Dining Room, 167 West 12th Street (between 6th and 7th Avenues)

Cost: Students: free; all others: suggested donation, $20

Tastings by Laura Schenone, sweets provided by Three Tarts

To register please call: Colleen Vincent, Reservations Manager, 212 627 2308

M.F.K. Fisher: Poet of the Appetites Symposium
Sponsored by The New School Food Studies Program
Monday, September 22, 6:00 p.m.
Wollman Hall, Lang Building, 5th Floor, (enter at 66 West 12th Street)
Admission $8; free for all students and New School faculty, staff and alumni
Tickets: 212 229-5488 or boxoffice@newschool.edu

In the year of the centennial of her birth, a panel of distinguished guests celebrate the life of Mary Frances Kennedy Fisher, master food writer, and discusses her relationships with other American food celebrities, including Julia Child, James Beard, and Alice Waters.

Panelists include Amanda Hesser, editor, New York Times and author of the foreword to M. F. K. Fisher Among the Pots and Pans: Celebrating Her Kitchens; Judith Jones, author of The Tenth Muse: My Life in Food; Joan Reardon, author of M. F. K. Fisher, Julia Child, and Alice Waters: Celebrating the Pleasures of the Table; Poet of the Appetites: The Lives and Loves of M. F. K. Fisher, and M. F. K. Fisher Among the Pots and Pans: Celebrating Her Kitchens; and Kennedy Golden, Associate Dean, Mills College, and the daughter of M.F.K. Fisher. Andrew F. Smith, editor of the Oxford Companion to American Food and Drink, moderates.

Presenting the Plate: An Introduction to Food Styling: A Lecture and Demonstration by Georgia Chan Downard

National Arts Club

Tuesday, Sept. 16, 8 p.m.

15 Gramercy Park South

New York, NY

212 475 3424

The club’s culinary Arts Committee welcomes food stylist Georgia Chan Downard, who will reveal the secrets that professionals use to arrange and prepare food for photography. For cookbooks, magazines, and television, an unstyled plate is as unthinkable as an unstyled model. Georgia Downard will explain and demonstrate the basic principles of food styling, along with a few simple tricks that anyone can use to make plates and platters look as attractive and appetizing as possible.

Georgia Downard has styled food for such publications as Gourmet, Food & Wine, Bon AppÃ©tit, Vogue, and New York Magazine. A former culinary director of the TV Food Network, she earlier served as the managing producer for shows such as The Essence of Emeril, Sara’s Secrets, and Cooking Live, and is the author or co-author of over half a dozen cookbooks.