Paula Wolfert at The Paris Review
by Emily Kaiser Thelin
Apr 11, 2017
3 minutes
I met Paula Wolfert in 2008, when sent me to Morocco to profile her. She never had a restaurant, a TV show, or any of the other contemporary markers of culinary success—but over nearly four decades, from 1973 to 2011, her cookbooks and writing on the traditional foods of the Mediterranean had an incalculable influence on American grocery shelves and our approach to cooking. Paula helped popularize foods we now take(Syrian red pepper–nut spread), sumac, pomegranate molasses, and mild red-pepper flakes—Aleppo, Marash, and Urfa—of the Middle East. With her curiosity, her rigor, and her vision, she legitimized a reverence for place that all good chefs now embrace.
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