loveFOOD editor wins Food Book award, hurrah!
`Winner Webb' is what we shall call him from now on. For loveFOOD editor Andrew Webb has won the Guild of Food Writers' Food Book of the Year Award!
Andrew’s Food Britannia – in a nutshell, a gastronomic guide to British regional dishes, traditional recipes, ingredients and local producers – beat both Catherine Brown’s Scottish Seafood and Richard Johnson’s Street Food Revolution at the snazzy awards do at Fishmongers Hall, London last night (May 30). He was awarded his trophy by world-renowned cookery writer Claudia Roden, who herself received the Guild’s prestigious Lifetime Achievement Award (both pictured above).
It was in spring 2009 (before his loveFOOD days) when Andrew first put pen to paper, and by Christmas 2010 Food Britannia with its giant slab of beef on the front cover was published by Random House. It took months of travelling round the country to research the jam-packed 545 page book, sampling everything from Whitby’s lemon buns to West Yorkshire’s after eight mints and Mrs Tee’s wild mushrooms in Hampshire.
Plus there’s loads of top foodie facts along the way, a few of which are revealed on the blurb… did you know that clotted cream, that typically Devonshire delicacy, was probably invented in the Middle East? Or that Alfred Bird invented his famous custard powder because his wife couldn’t eat eggs? No, nor did I; which is why I bought Andrew’s book before starting this paragraph, for the bargainous price of £16.25. That’s… just shy of three pennies per page.
But enough of Andrew (pictured here with his head chopped off), lest all this attention goes to his head. Who else won? Well, alongside Claudia Roden, Tim Hayward got the double-whammy, with both the Food Journalist Award and the Award for Food Magazine with Fire and Knives; the Cookery Book Award went to William Curley’s Couture Chocolate; The New Media of the Year Award went to thefoodiebugle.com; and in a new category, the Food Blog of the Year Award went to Emma Gardner for her blog poiresauchocolat.net. There were loads more awards dished out too, all of which you can see on the Guild of Food Writers Awards website.
So what does winner Andrew have to say for himself? He’s sitting right next to me, so I’ll ask him now. “Writing this book was hard work but immense fun. I’d like to thank all the people featured in it who gave up their time to talk to me. It’s a real celebration of British food! Watch out for loveFOOD at next year’s awards…” He later added that the best thing he ate when researching Food Britannia was a scotch egg from The Handmade Scotch Egg Company, based in Herefordshire.
Want to know what all the fuss is about? You can read the first 70 pages for free here.
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