Peanuts in Cheerwine?

Here in the sultry section of summer, apparently attention has turned to two Southern traditions: Peanuts in Co'Cola (or RC, or Dr Pepper, or Pepsi), and boiled peanuts.

First, Serious Eats has a blog post up about the great summer treat of pouring salted peanuts in your bottle of soda. They reach a few conclusions: Yes, it has to be a soft drink in a glass bottle; yes, it has to involve pouring in salted, roasted peanuts; and yes, people from areas other than "around here" find this behavior puzzling. Read it here.

Just as we were absorbing that, along came the James Beard Foundation's blog, Delights and Prejudices, featuring a recipe from Charlotte's Marc Jacksina (formerly of Lulu, currently of Halcyon) for boiled peanuts made with Cheerwine, Tabasco and some Asian touches such as star anise and mirin. Here's the blog post, and the recipe is below. (Seaweed in boiled peanuts, chef? I don't even want to know what gave you that idea.)

Cheerwine Boiled Peanuts

From Marc Jacksina of Halcyon Flavors of the Earth, for the James Beard Foundation.

4 cups raw (unroasted peanuts) in the shell
1 (3 by 5 inch) sheet kombu (dried seaweed)
2 tablespoons kosher salt
2 whole star anise
2 cups Cheerwine or other cherry soda
1 teaspoon mirin
1 teaspoon white soy sauce
2 dashes Tabasco

Combine the peanuts, kombu, salt and star anise in a large pot. Cover with water. Bring to a gentle boil and cook for 2 to 3 hours, adding more water as necessary to keep the peanuts covered.

Strain and shell the peanuts. (Discard the kombu and star anise.) You should be left with about 2 cups of peanuts.

In a clean medium pot, combine the shelled peanuts with the Cheerwine, mirin, white soy sauce, and Tabasco. Bring to a boil, reduce to a simmer and cook for 30 to 40 minutes, stirring often, until the liquid has reduced to about 2 tablespoons. Lay the peanuts on a parchment-lined sheet tray and cool. Store in an airtight container for up to 2 weeks.

Summer reading list: Food edition

The committee that runs the James Beard Foundation's book awards just released a new list, "Fourteen Great Reads for Food Lovers," a collection that focuses on food writing. Following the committee's earlier lists of great books, including 2010's Baker's Dozen, 13 great cookbooks on baking, this one covers memoirs, essays and fiction.

The books were picked by the current committee, including Andrea Weigl of the Raleigh News & Observer; authors Naomi Duguid, Grace Young and Martha Holmberg; food writers Carol Mighton Haddix and Irene Sax; book sellers Matt Sartwell and Ellen Rose; and wine writer Tara Q. Thomas.

The list:
1. "The Art of Eating," M.F.K. Fisher (John Wiley & Sons).
2. "Between Meals: An Appetit for Paris, by A.J. Liebling (North Point Press).
3. "Blood, Bones & Butter," by Gabrielle Hamilton (Random House).
4. "Day of Honey: A Memoir of Food, Love and War," by Annia Ciezadlo (Free Press).
5. "A Debt to Pleasure," by John Lanchester (Picador).
6. "An Everlasting Meal: Cooking With Economy and Grace," by Tamara Adler (Scribner).
7. "The Fortune Cookie Chronicles: Adventures in the World of Chinese Food," by Jennifer 8. Lee (Twelve).
8. "Heat: An Amateur's Adventures as Kitchen Slave, Line Cook, Pasta-Maker and Apprentice to a Dante-Quoting Butcher in Tuscany," by Bill Buford (Vintage).
9. "Home Cooking: A Writer in the Kitchen," by Laurie Colwin (Vintage).
10. "The Man Who Ate Everything," by Jeffrey Steingarten (Vintage).
11. "Oranges," by John McPhee (Farrar, Straus & Giroux).
12. "The Oysters of Locmariaquer," by Eleanor Clark (Ecco Press).
13. "Simple Cooking," by John Thorne (North Point Press).
14. "The Tummy Trilogy," by Calvin Trillin (Farrar, Straus & Giroux). (Of course, that last one actually counts as three books -- it's really three of Trillin's earlier books, "Alice, Let's Eat," "American Fried" and "Third Helpings.")


What do you think? It's there a book of great food writing that they left off the list?

James Beard Awards weekend: The Fab 4

The annual James Beard Foundation Awards weekend is over, with the usual and the unusual. (The usual: Anthony Bourdain's snippy tweets criticizing things he wasn't there to see.)

I'd rather remember the highlights:

First, that picture at the top. In honor of the 25th anniversary, the foundation released a cookbook, "The Best of the Best," featuring the outstanding chef winners over 25 years. To celebrate, there was a small cocktail party Sunday night at the Beard House on West 12th Street. The guest list was small - the house is so tiny, you have to take a deep breath to turn around - but it was select. Standing out on the second floor landing, I snapped a picture of a remarkable foursome: Thomas Keller, Alfred Portale, Patrick O'Connell and Jeremiah Tower, with foundation president Susan Ungaro (right).

Next, Charlotte sightings: Chef Joe Bonaparte of the Art Institute's International Culinary Program was hanging out late Sunday night at the Chef's Night Out event at the Chelsea Market. And in the sequin-to-satin sardine-tight crowd at the chef stations after the awards gala, I shuffled past Mark Allison, dean of culinary affairs, and Patricia Del Bello, both of Johnson & Wales University Charlotte.

The best Southern hugging and eating: Since the Beard Awards presentation goes on for hours while you wait to get something to eat, members of the Southern Foodways Alliance have a tradition of gathering at Alex Guarneschelli's restaurant Butter to eat and drink as much as possible to sustain us through the long night. It's such a good time that chef Bill Smith of Crook's Corner, who wasn't even going to the awards, still flew up to New York for the weekend just to enjoy the lunch.

Carolinas nominees were in short supply this year. But Hugh Acheson of 5 & 10 in Athens and Linton Hopkins of Restaurant Eugene in Atlanta scored a shared win: There was a tie for Best Chef Southeast. Andrea Reusing of Lantern in Chapel Hill, last year's winner, was cooking at the gala, and Ashley Christensen of Poole's Dinner/Beasleys/Chuck's in Raleigh was around at a bunch of events, even pulling the pork shoulders at a Derby Party in Park Slope given by Kat Kinsman of CNN and Eatocracy.com.

Female winners were not in short supply, I'm happy to say. Maricel Presilla of the delightful restaurant Cucharamama in Hoboken, N.J., won Best Chef: Mid-Atlantic; Christini Tosi of Momofuku Milk Bar won Rising Star Chef (particularly nice to see a pastry chef get treated like a "real" chef) and Mindy Segal of Mindy's HotChocolate in Chicago won for pastry chef.

And yes, after a four-day weekend of chef events, awards shows and food, this is my new slogan (right). Maybe I'll make it my new Twitter profile picture.


Get the full list of winners of all the awards, including the Book, Broadcast and Journalism awards given Friday, at www.jamesbeard.org.

And in disclosure: After serving as a member and then chair of the James Beard book awards, I was asked to stay on to chair the JBF Leadership Awards, announced in the fall, which honor food sustainability and food policy. As a chair, I'm also a member of the awards committee that oversees all the awards events.

What are you doing New Year's?

I was flipping through the James Beard Foundation's December events guide when I spotted a familiar face: Tony Coturri, the maker of organic wines in California who's been a favorite at farm-to-fork dinners around here for several years.

Then I spotted another familiar face on the same page: Joe Bonaparte, at the International Culinary School at the Art Institute of Charlotte.

It turns out Bonaparte is leading a lineup of AI instructors (Walter Leible of Phoenix, Larry Maston of Dallas and Michael Nenes of Texas) to cook dinner at the James Beard House for New Year's Eve.

It isn't cheap: $200 for foundation members, $250 for nonmembers. But the menu is luxe, including foie gras, rabbit, lobster, caviar, scallops, pork belly and duck breast. What really amused me was the toast at midnight: Shelton Vineyards Blanc de Blanc with a truffle from the Secret Chocolatier here in Charlotte. Nice to see attention for local food makers.

If you're planning to be in New York and that's your kind of price and experience, go to www.jamesbeard.org for details and tickets.

Who's leading American food?

Put aside the news about food-safety outbreaks and obesity numbers for a minute and think about something positive: The people doing incredible work to improve sustainability and fairness in America's food policy.

I got to play a small part in that last week. Two years ago, I was stepping down after 10 years on the committee that oversees the James Beard Foundation's book awards. I was literally at my last meeting in New York when the committee that oversees all of the foundation's awards started talking seriously about finding a way to honor American food beyond the glitz and glamour of the yearly restaurant and chef awards.

The foundation was starting a yearly conference that would bring together the best minds to highlight great work being done. In addition, the foundation wanted to include some kind of an award. What kind, they didn't know. They just knew there was a lot of important work being done in areas of food availability, sustainable agriculture and food policy.

That's where I came in: Since I knew how to write bylaws and set up committee procedures from my work with the book awards, the foundation asked if I would stay on as a volunteer to figure out how to make a new set of awards. We wanted to honor a long list of criteria, everything from hunger relief to school gardens.

The result was the James Beard Foundation Leadership Awards: A list of honorees who will be named every year for the work they're doing right now. The first honorees were named last week in New York, at the second JBF Food Conference: Sustainability on the Table.

As a journalist, I can't vote on things that I might need to cover. So the Leadership Awards were arranged so I don't have to: We have a prestigious advisory committee that picks the nominees and votes.

The initial advisory committee: chefs Dan Barber and Rick Bayless, Scott Cullen of the GRACE Communication Foundation, Hal Hamilton of the Sustainable Food Lab, culinary historian Jessica Harris, Robert Lawrence of the Center for a Livable Future at Johns Hopkins, nutrition and public health professor Marion Nestle, Eric Rimm of Harvard, Gus Schumacher of the Wholesome Wave Foundation, Debbie Shore of Share Our Strength, Naomi Starkman of Civil Eats, and Arlin Wasserman of Sodexo.

My role is gatekeeper -- I make the train run on time. I helped to write the award definition and criteria, ran the conference calls and set up the schedule. But the work that was honored last week is so important, I'm proud to play even that small role.

Here are the first honorees, and a little about them. Yes, there are some names on this list you may not expect, like Unilever and Costco. But it takes all kinds of work to make a sustainable food supply. It's not all Saturday morning farmers markets, folks:

Will Allen, (below) founder of Rainbow Farmer's Cooperative, the last remaining farm within the Milwaukee city limits, and founder of Growing Power, a 2-acre urban agriculture model that works with children and adults to grow food in inner cities.

Fedele Bauccio, Bon Appetit Management Company, an innovative food-service company that pioneers things like a Low Carbon Diet program. Bon Appetit also works with the United Farm Workers and Oxfam to support social-justice in the harvesting of food.

Debra Eschmeyer, (left, with her husband Jeff) co-founder of Food Corps, which works with AmeriCorps to match young adults with school-based food organizations in high-obesity, low-resource communities.

Sheri Flies, assistant general merchandise manager for Costco. Yes, Costco: Flies oversees the sourcing of limited-resource commodities for the Kirkland Signature label, making sure the products are environmentally sustainable and making sure workers get fair treatment and health care.

Jan Kees Vis, global director of sustainable sourcing for Unilever. A big company like Unilever makes a lot of products that use palm oil. Vis changed the way palm oil is grown and harvested to make it sustainable.

Fred Kirschenmann, Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture at Iowa State University of president of the board of the Stone Barns Center for Food and Agriculture. Fred has a farming background and a visionary's imagination.

Michelle Obama, for her work on childhood obesity and the Let's Move campaign. The first lady doesn't officially accept awards, but the White House sent advisor Sam Kass in her place.

Janet Poppendieck, sociology professor at Hunter College and author of "Sweet Charity," an examination of food relief programs, and "Free for All: Fixing School Food in America."

Alice Waters, for her advocacy of sustainable agriculture and her work with the Edible Schoolyard program.

Craig Watson, vice president of Agriculture Sustainability for food-service giant Sysco Corp. Sysco's Integrated Pest Management program includes 921,000 acres and 30 local food programs.

You can find more on the Leadership Awards, including video from the conference sessions, at www.jamesbeard.org.