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Judith Jones is one of the last of the GREAT editors and I am honored to be one of her authors or “girls” as someone called me when I walked in a room behind Julia Child and Claudia Roden, an authority on Middle Eastern cooking. It wasn’t always so…

I sent my first book proposal to Judith in 1979 and she rejected it, suggesting that I find another publisher. I did and published “Classic Chinese Cuisine” with Houghton Mifflin. Judith, it turned out, had already started working on a book with Irene Kuo. It would be twelve or more years later before I would get to work with Judith and since then (2 books later) we have become fierce collaborators. Each book is almost a war, BUT the final result is somehow worth the effort. She pushes a writer to do their best, but it is not an easy process. Writing never is.

The Tenth Muse: My Life in Food at Amazon.com

Steve’s Production notes:
Nina shot this video on a Nokia N93 and I edited it together with QuickTime Pro and uploaded to blip.tv, where it was converted to Flash. You can watch the original MP4 version here.