|
Alice Medrich
Author, pastry chef, and teacher, Alice Medrich is one of the country’s foremost experts on chocolate and chocolate desserts. She is the only three-time cookbook of the year award winner. Her 5th book, Bittersweet: Recipes and Tales from A Life in Chocolate (Artisan, 2003) was named IACP Cookbook of the Year in 2004, and she won the James Beard Cookbook of the Year award for both Chocolate and The Art of Low-Fat Desserts (1994) and for Cocolat: Extraordinary Chocolate Desserts (1990), which also won the Julia Child Award for the Best First Cookbook.
After opening her renowned dessert company, Cocolat in Berkeley, California in l976, Gourmet Magazine said, "Cocolat is to chocolate what Tiffany’s is to diamonds". Medrich sold Cocolat in 1990, but continues to influence chefs, chocolate makers, and home cooks, by writing, teaching and consulting. She appeared in the Television Food Network "Chef de Jour" and "Baker's Dozen" series and with Julia Child in the PBS series, “Baking with Julia”. Alice’s newest book is Pure Dessert: True Flavors, Inspiring Ingredients, and Simple Recipes (Artisan 2007).
|
|
Brad Kintzer
Brad Kintzer, a cacao bean expert, oversees chocolate development for Scharffen Berger Chocolate Maker. He develops the award-winning line of Scharffen Berger Chocolates from bean to bar. He tastes chocolate many times each day and takes note of the way flavors interact and change over time.
Kintzer—who earned a degree in Botany from the University of Vermont with a concentration in tropical plant studies—first fell in love with cacao while visiting the Botanical Gardens in Montreal and observing the unusual way in which cacao pods grow directly from the trunk of cacao trees.
Now he often travels the world to find the finest raw ingredients to use in the development of Scharffen Berger chocolates. His firsthand experience working on a variety of plantations throughout Central America and Brazil has allowed Brad to develop long-term relationships with suppliers and support the chocolate industry in the promotion of sustainable, responsible cacao farming.
|
|
Lisa Schiffman
Lisa Schiffman is the founder of TuttiFoodie—a weekly column covering artisanal, adventurous and delicious foods. She spends many of her days in search of interesting flavors and products and heads to the kitchen where she and the other food adventurers sample, experiment and explore. Her stove is a testament to the notion that trial and error is an inherent part of culinary discovery.
Schiffman—who earned a degree in social anthropology from Oxford University with a concentration in the meaning of food—spent several years in Asia, where her palate awakened to the excitement of unfamiliar ingredients and the merging of sweet and savory in one mouthful. She is especially interested in the way a single exotic ingredient can change the familiar into something surprising.
|