Dana Cowin, Mastering my Mistakes in the Kitchen
Dana Cowin has been the Editor of Food and Wine magazine for 20 years. I started to get Food and Wine in my monthly mailbox about 27 years ago. Needless to say I have always been a fan of the magazine and have watched it evolve thru several iterations
I was in London about 5 years ago eating dinner and I noticed that Dana was sitting a few tables from Fred and me with someone. I wanted to be sure it was her so I got out my phone and did a quick image check. Of course I knew it was her, I had seen her smiling face every month for the past 20 years. I felt like a total stalker but I couldn’t help myself. On the way out I stopped by the table and introduced myself and told her what a Food and Wine fan I was. She said that she knew of me and my blog and couldn’t have been nicer. I left the restaurant on air. I was so excited.
Fast forward, through a friend, both Kate Krader and Dana ask to have dinner with me. Are you kidding? Of course! 5 years later Dana and I have become good friends (Kate too) and we have been out for dinner with Dana and even her charming husband too. We get together a few times a year just solo.
I knew about this book before there was a book. Just because you are an editor of a food magazine does not necessarily mean you know how to cook like a pro. And there you have it, Dana does not but she does now as she got advice from the 65 great chefs around the world who were happy to give her a few tips and spend some time in the kitchen with her.
The book is great. The recipes are too (I happen to know she tested every single one herself until it was perfect) and the commentary is refreshing.
Great cookbook to pick up and actually read. Highly recommend. BTW, she is fun to follow on Twitter too.
Comments (Archived):
I wanted to be sure it was her so I got out my phone and did a quick image check.I did that once when I was on vacation (Grand Canyon) and in the same hotel I thought I saw the head of the NTSB (Deborah Hersman) in the breakfast room (was a small hotel). I did an image search to try and triangulate by finding pictures of her and her husband. The man who was her husband by a web search looked pretty old but the man she was with looked maybe 15 years younger. I concluded it wasn’t her (also she looked shorter than on TV).Anyway as she was passing by with her children I said “you know you look like Deborah Hersman of the NTSB” and she said “that’s because I am Deborah Hersman”. Her husband’s name was Niel Plummer and the one in web pictures was someone else apparently.http://www.npr.org/blogs/th…http://en.wikipedia.org/wik…Wanted to add that she was glad someone recognized her. Nobody else there (this was right after the Asiana crash that she was on TV about) said anything to her at all.
brilliant, she took all the failure feedback and produced a book