Sara Moulton

Sara Moulton
Born February 19, 1952
New York City, United States
Education   University of Michigan (1974)
  Culinary Institute of America (1977)
Spouse(s) Bill Adler[1]
Website
saramoulton.com

Sara Moulton (born February 19,[2] 1952) is an American chef, cookbook author and television personality.

She was the on-air food editor for Good Morning America, a morning news-and-talk show broadcast on the ABC television network, from 1997 through 2012. She was the chef of the executive dining room at Gourmet for 20 years, a stint that ended only when the magazine ceased publication in 2009.

Between 1996 and 2005, she hosted Cooking Live (19972002), Cooking Live Primetime (1999) and Sara's Secrets (20022005) on the Food Network, becoming one of the original stars of that cable- and satellite-television channel during its first decade.

Moulton is the author of several cookbooks and videos including Sara Moulton Cooks at Home (2002), Sara's Secrets for Weeknight Meals (2005) and Sara Moulton's Everyday Family Dinners (2010).

In 1982 she co-founded the New York Women's Culinary Alliance.

Since 2008, Moulton has been the host of Sara's Weeknight Meals, a cooking show distributed by American Public Television.

Early life and education

Moulton was born in New York City, and attended The Brearley School in New York City.

The idea of channeling her childhood passion for food into a career did not occur to Moulton until after she graduated from the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, Michigan,[3] with a major in the history of ideas in 1974.

Moulton enrolled at the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, New York in 1975 and graduated with highest honors in 1977,[4] winning a scholarship from Les Dames D'Escoffier in the process.

Career

She began working in restaurants immediately, first in Boston, Massachusetts, and then in New York City, taking off time only for a postgraduate apprenticeship with Master Chef Maurice Cazalis of the Henri IV Restaurant in Chartres, France, in 1979. Between 1981 and 1983 she was the chef tournant at La Tulipe, a three-star restaurant in New York City.[5]

In 1982, Moulton co-founded the New York Women's Culinary Alliance,[6] a still-functioning "old girl's network" designed to help women working in the culinary field.

In the interest of starting a family, she left restaurant work and began devoting herself instead to recipe testing and development. Moulton worked for two years as an instructor at Peter Kump's New York Cooking School (now known as the Institute of Culinary Education), where she discovered her love of teaching.

In 1984, she took a job in the test kitchen at Gourmet.[7] Four years later she became chef of the magazine's executive dining room.[8]

Television

In 1979 Moulton's television career began when she was hired to work behind the scenes on Julia Child & More Company, a cooking program on PBS. Her friendship with Julia Child led eventually to Moulton's job at Good Morning America,[9] where what started as another behind-the-scenes position ripened in 1997 into on-camera work.

By then she had begun hosting the Food Network's Cooking Live. Six years and over 1,200-hour-long shows later, that show ended on March 31, 2002.[10] Sara's Secrets, which began the next day, ran until 2007.[11] “Sara Moulton is a chef, and one of the few people knowledgeable enough to field live phone-in queries, the basis of her show," wrote The New Yorker's Bill Buford.[12]

The fourth season of "Sara's Weeknight Meals" began airing on public television in June 2014. The show was nominated for a James Beard Award in 2013, while Moulton herself has been nominated three times as Outstanding Personality/Host, most recently in 2014.[13]

The Written Word

Her first cookbook, Sara Moulton Cooks at Home, was published by Broadway Books in October 2002,[14] and was meant to counter America's disastrous love affair with fast food by encouraging everyone to cook delicious and healthy food at home and to dine with family and friends.[15] "While rooted in classic French technique, the book also accommodates the American hunger for convenience, novelty and freshness," wrote Mike Dunne for The Sacramento Bee.[16]

Moulton's second cookbook, Sara's Secrets for Weeknight Meals, was published by Broadway Books in October 2005. It was reviewed by Michelle Green in People magazine, who wrote: "Sara has a gift for creating quick, accessible fine cuisine. Why suffer to make a gorgeous meal?"[17]

Her third cookbook, Sara Moulton's Everyday Family Dinners, was published by Simon & Schuster in April 2010.[18] Blogging for StoveTop Readings in November 2010, Greg Mowery wrote: "If there is a less pretentious, more accessible, and creative cookbook that gets great food on the table in good time with the least amount of fuss, I haven't seen it this year….This new book belongs in every family kitchen."[19]

In August 2012 Moulton began writing a weekly column entitled "The Healthy Plate" for the Associated Press.[20]

Awards

Personal life

Moulton lives in New York City with her husband, Bill Adler, an American music journalist and critic, and their two children, Sam and Ruth.[1]

Bibliography

Videography

See also

References

  1. 1.0 1.1 Tannenbaum, Kiri, "Celebrity Chefs at Home: Sara Moulton", delish.com, Hearst/MSN
  2. Sara Moulton biography on International Movie DataBase IMDB.
  3. Hoffman, Emily (Winter 2003). "The Kitchen Shrink  Sara Moulton '74". Michigan Today. Retrieved January 4, 2010.
  4. Sara Moulton Alumni Profile on the website of the Culinary Institute of America, http://www.foodislife.org/cia-alumni-profiles/sara-moulton-77-food-network-personality/
  5. Mimi Sheraton, “Romantic Bistro in the Village,” New York Times, July 6, 1979, http://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1979/07/06/112111331.html
  6. “NYWCA History: How It All Began” on the website of the New York Women’s Culinary Alliance, .
  7. See listing under Food Department on the masthead for the July 1984 issue of Gourmet, on which Moulton is identified as one of three editors.
  8. See masthead for the August 1988 issue of Gourmet, in which Moulton is identified as "Executive Chef."
  9. Staff (October 5, 2004). "Sara Moulton". ABC News. Retrieved January 5, 2009.
  10. List of 1297 "Cooking Live" recipes posted on the website of the Food Network, .
  11. List of 44 “Sara's Secrets” recipes posted on the website of the Food Network, .
  12. Bill Buford, “TV Dinners: The Rise of Food Television,” The New Yorker, October 2, 2006, http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2006/10/02/061002fa_fact?currentPage=all.
  13. “The Complete 2014 JBF Award Nominees,” http://www.jamesbeard.org/blog/complete-2014-jbf-award-nominees
  14. Depiction and description of “Sara Moulton Cooks at Home" on amazon.com, http://www.amazon.com/Sara-Moulton-Cooks-at-Home/dp/B005Q69TTG/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1330727658&sr=8-1
  15. “I think it’s vital…to counter the fast-fooding of America,” from the Introduction to “Sara Moulton Cooks At Home,” p.xii.
  16. Dunne, Mike. The Sacramento Bee. December 25, 2002.
  17. Green, Michelle. People. November 21, 2005.
  18. Depiction and description of “Sara Moulton's Everyday Family Dinners” on amazon.com, http://www.amazon.com/Sara-Moultons-Everyday-Family-Dinners/dp/1439102511/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1330727900&sr=1-1
  19. “Stovetopreadings’ Best Cookbooks of the Year,” stovetopreadings blogspoot, November 26, 2010, .
  20. Press Release: "Food authority Sara Moulton to write column for AP," Associated Press, August 1, 2012, .
  21. Press release (January 25, 2001). "Sara Moulton Is CIA Chef of the Year". Culinary Institute of America.
  22. “The James Beard Foundation's Who's Who of Food and Beverage in America,” http://www.jamesbeard.org/index.php?q=node/100.
  23. Brion, Raphael, ”Winners of the IACP Cookbook Awards 2011 Announced,” eater.com, June 3, 2011, http://eater.com/archives/2011/06/03/iacp-cookbook-awards-2011.php.

External links