Food Archives - Infinite Women

Nina Zagat

Co–founder of the eponymous Zagat guide

As Dawn M. Blackman Sr. tells the story, “I was a city girl … I did not know a thing about gardening. Then, in 2003, I started gardening with 10 neighborhood children.” That project, started in her 50s, grew into Randolph Street Community Garden.

Florence Simpson

Florence Simpson came to the WAAC having worked with the Women’s Legion, an Army-sanctioned women’s volunteer unit tasked with cooking for the troops. By the end of 1915, the 41-year-old Simpson had risen to Commandant of Cooks for the Legion and was hard at work establishing business-like practices.

Norma Shirley

Jamaican chef Norma Shirley built a reputation in the U.S. serving “New England food with Jamaican flair” at her Massachusetts restaurant in the late 1970s. But as she told Essence magazine, “It’s my dream to open another restaurant in Jamaica where Blacks would be the majority clientele.”

Madhur Jaffrey

Indian actress and chef

Marcella Hazan

Long after her 2013 death, her legacy lives on in the recipes that younger generations of cooks continue to live—and eat—by.

Buwei Yang Chao

In 1945, Chinese immigrant Chao Yang Buwei published How to Cook and Eat in Chinese. It introduced both the term and technique now ubiquitous in many American kitchens: stir-fry.

Grace Zia Chu

Grace Zia Chu is credited with introducing countless Americans to Chinese cooking and cuisine through her popular books The Pleasures of Chinese Cooking (1962) and Madame Chu’s Chinese Cooking School (1975).