Florence Fabricant's Delicious Rise

The food writer Florence Fabricant  is netrnched in the New York Times Over the decades she has contributed some amazing articles and recipes. Now there's her version of how she became a writer for the world's most prestigious newspaper. Her new autobiography and its a delciousread.

The Times published  an excerpt former new book Salty Not Sweet Running Press Adult) in yesterday;s New York Times Wednesday Food section.  Her career didn't;t start with the Times but with a Hamptons newspaper.It was 1967 and she and her young family rented a cottage in Wainscott New York, a quiet historic Hamlet that's part of the ever trendy East Hampton. She wanted something more .Her time in New York City was spent teaching Haitian kids to speak English. She considered getting a doctorate in French but after that  - what next - teaching. yet; she;d have to learn another language for a PhD.in French. That was a daunting consideration since New York University required it couldn't;t be a Romance language.Law school was off the table too. However another thought entered her mind.It had to do with her love of cooking and abiding passion for food  plus her mother's influence.Ms Fabricant because a food authority amongst her circle of friends. They loved her dinner parties and her advice on ,local produce stands.She knew where to get the best Cole slaw and roasted duck.

She was also becoming annoyed when seeing other home chefs buying heads of bland i  ceburg lettuce wrapped in plastic and pale pink tomatoes that looked more like tennis balls. She wanted to set supermarket shopper straight, introduce them to stands of freshly picked corn ,tomatoes and peppers. She saw that the weekly newspaper The East Hampton Star didn't not provide a food column. This provided the perfect opportunity to write about a local farm to table movement decades before there eas an actual farm to table movement..Her letter to the paper's editor, Everett Rattray proved to be successful. SHe would write a weekly column plus a recipe. She wasn't;t going to do it for free.There had to  be some kind of payment. Her first column was four hundred words and she was paid  twenty-five dollars.That was in May of 1972.By October of the same year she was featured in a Times interview by Alden Whitman. Even the Times resident food critic and recipe provider Craig Claibrne noticed her.Mr. Whitman;s wife Joan also noticed her and that opened the floodgates. Why? She was editor of the Times food pages. The rest is history.

It took a weekly column in a local paper to make Florence Fabricant a household name and a powerhouse food writer. Her recipes are replicated the world over. What started as a small job became one that is forever connected with the New York Times