Joan Nathan is an American cookbook author and newspaper journalist. She has produced TV documentaries on the subject of Jewish cuisine. She was a co-founder of New York's Ninth Avenue Food Festival under then-Mayor Abraham Beame. Nathan has written ten cookbooks, winning numerous awards for them. Six are about Jewish cuisine and two on Israeli cuisine. Her goal is to preserve Jewish traditions by interviewing cooks and documenting their recipes and stories for posterity. In 1985, An American Folklife Cookbook won the R.T. French Tastemaker Award (now the James Beard Award). The New American Cooking won the James Beard and IACP Awards for Food of the Americas and Best American Cookbook. She was guest curator of Food Culture USA at the 2005 Smithsonian Folklife Festival, which was based on the research for her book. Two decades later, in 2005, Jewish Cooking in America won the Julia Child Award for Best Cookbook of the Year, and the James Beard Award (again) for Food of the Americas.
Joan Nathan
Studios
Van Zorn (formerly Kirby)
Joan Nathan worked in the Van Zorn (formerly Kirby) studio.
Constructed thanks to a bequest from Sarah L. Kirby, Kirby Studio was the last new building to be erected during Mrs. MacDowell’s leadership (1907-1951). The load-bearing masonry walls were laid by local mason Augustus Beaulieu atop a fieldstone foundation. A 1995 renovation preserved the brick fireplace with wooden mantel and…