Aidells, Bruce 1944–

PERSONAL: Born November 17, 1944; son of Louis (an accountant) and Cecelia (a bookkeeper; maiden name, Schnierow) Aidells; married Nancy J. Oakes (a chef), June 21, 1990. Education: University of California, Berkeley, B.A., 1967; University of Rochester, M.S., 1969; University of California, Santa Cruz, Ph.D., 1974. Politics: "Left-wing hippie radical capitalist." Hobbies and other interests: Jazz and gospel music.

ADDRESSES: Home—618 Coventry Rd., Kensington, CA 94707. Office—Aidells Sausage Co., 1625 Alvarado St., San Leandro, CA 94577. Agent—Martha Casselman, P.O. Box 342, Calistoga, CA 94515.

CAREER: Imperial Cancer Research Fund, London, England, research fellow, 1974–77; National Institute of Health, Bethesda, MD, research fellow, 1977–78; Poulet Deli, Berkeley, CA, founder and chef, 1979–83; Aidells Sausage Co., San Leandro, CA, owner and chef, 1983–. KCBS-Radio, host of radio program; guest on radio and television programs; restaurant consultant and new business adviser.

MEMBER: International Association of Culinary Professionals, Western State Meat Association, San Francisco Professional Food Society.

AWARDS, HONORS: Award for best cookbook on a single subject, International Association of Culinary Professionals (IACP), 1991, for Hot Links and Country Flavors; award of excellence, International Association of Culinary Professionals, for Barbecuing, Grilling, and Smoking.

WRITINGS:

NONFICTION

Great Meals in Minutes: Salads, Time-Life (New York, NY), 1985.

(With Goodman, Harlow, Wise, and others) Regional American Classics, Ortho Books (San Francisco, CA), 1987.

(With Ron Clark) Barbecuing, Grilling, and Smoking, Ortho Books (San Francisco, CA), 1988.

(With Denis Kelly) Hot Links and Country Flavors, Knopf (New York, NY), 1990, revised edition published as Bruce Aidells's Complete Sausage Book: Recipes from America's Premium Sausage Maker, Ten Speed Press (Berkeley, CA), 2000.

(With Denis Kelly) Real Beer and Good Eats: The Rebirth of America's Beer and Food Traditions, Knopf (New York, NY), 1992.

(With others) Classic American Cooking from the Academy, Cole Group (Santa Rosa, CA), 1993.

(With Clark and Carole Latimer) Barbecuing, Grilling & Smoking at the Academy, California Culinary Academy (Santa Rosa, CA), 1994.

(With Denis Kelly) Flying Sausages: Simple, Savory Recipes for Creating and Cooking with Chicken and Turkey Sausages, Chronicle Books (San Francisco, CA), 1995.

(With Denis Kelly) The Complete Meat Cookbook: A Juicy and Authorative Guide to Selecting, Seasoning, and Cooking Today's Beef, Pork, Lamb, and Veal, Houghton Mifflin (New York, NY), 1998.

(With Lesa Weiss) Bruce Aidells's Complete Book of Pork: A Guide to Buying, Storing, and Cooking the World's Favorite Meat, HarperCollins (New York, NY), 2004.

Author of column, "Budget Gourmet," for the San Jose Mercury News. Contributor to periodicals, including Gourmet, Food and Wine, and Bon Appetit.

SIDELIGHTS: Bruce Aidells never had any formal training in the food industry, yet he has become known as an innovative chef and an authority on meat. He began making sausage at a part-time job he held while doing postdoctoral research in endocrinology. His sausages, which feature unusual flavorings and unique recipes, soon became so popular that he started a business supplying them nationwide to restaurants and specialty food stores. Eventually Aidells wrote several influential cookbooks, including Barbecuing, Grilling and Smoking, Real Beer and Good Eats: The Rebirth of America's Beer and Food Traditions, and Hot Links and Country Flavors.

Aidells has cowritten several of his books with Denis Kelly, a food and wine consultant. In Hot Links and Country Flavors, Aidells and Kelly provide more than two hundred recipes for regional sausages, including boudin, tasso, and oyster sausage. Hot Links and Country Flavors was later revised as Bruce Aidells's Complete Sausage Book: Recipes from America's Premier Sausage Maker. This edition was praised by a Library Journal reviewer as being "an excellent book." Aidells and Kelly teamed up again for a celebration of down-to-earth pleasures in Real Beer and Good Eats. Touring small breweries across the United States, the coauthors offered commentary on various microbrews, recipes made with beer, and recipes for foods that are especially compatible with beer.

In Bruce Aidell's Complete Book of Pork: A Guide to Buying, Storing, and Cooking the World's Favorite Meat, the coauthors offer recipes and information "on just about every part of the pig anyone would ever want to cook," according to Judith Sutton in the Library Journal. In addition, there are listings for suppliers of unusual cuts of meat, organic meat, and other specialty meat products, and a section on the proper methods for preserving pork. Ethnic traditions are thoroughly examined, and the recipes range from those that might prove challenging even for experienced cooks to those suitable for those with beginning culinary skills.

In The Complete Meat Cookbook: A Juicy and Authorative Guide to Selecting, Seasoning, and Cooking Today's Beef, Pork, Lamb, and Veal, Aidells and Kelly address the preparation of all sorts of meat. Health concerns have led meat producers to breed and sell cuts of meat that are much leaner than those commonly found years ago, and since fat provides flavor, today's beef, while perhaps more healthful, is less flavorful than meat used to be. Aidells and Kelly offer suggestions for cooking today's meat in flavorful ways, in a book that is "terrific," according to Epicurious reviewer Irene Sax. She noted that in addition to the store of valuable information, this book also contains some "great reading," as the authors' evident passion about their subject "transfers to the page."

Recounting the start of his career, Aidells told CA: "I should have known that I was to become a writer when my high school English teacher told me I was the poorest writer she had ever taught. With such encouragement in mind, I chose a career for myself in the sciences, thinking that I wouldn't have to write much. When I finally began doing research, attempting to advance my career, I learned the meaning of the phrase 'publish or perish.'

"After five years and twenty papers, I perished, not so much because I couldn't do the writing, but because I realized that my first love was cooking. I became a chef and soon discovered that I was a better cook than I was a scientist. In order to pass some of my knowledge on to others, and to create publicity for myself, I taught cooking classes. Eventually, I was given the opportunity to write articles for a local newspaper and some magazines.

"I have received no formal training as a chef. I learned how to cook by watching Julia Child on television and by devouring every cookbook I could get. The most influential books (after Child's) were those in the Time-Life series 'Food of the World.' From these books, I could cook food from all over the globe and never have to repeat the same dish twice. I love to eat something different.

"Eventually, I started a small sausage company to supply hard-to-get specialty American sausages to other chefs. The business grew, and I became known as a resident expert on sausage in American cooking. With this reputation and some good recipes, it was not hard to sell the idea for an American sausage cookbook to Alfred A. Knopf. Ironically, this gave me an opportunity to work with Judith Jones, first Child's editor and mentor, and now mine. The success of the first book made it easy to convince Judith to let me write a second book on another favorite subject of mine: beer."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Booklist, December 15, 2000, Mark Knoblauch, review of Bruce Aidells's Complete Sausage Book: Recipes from America's Premier Sausage Maker, p. 770; September 1, 2004, Mark Knoblauch, review of Bruce Aidells's Complete Book of Pork: A Guide to Buying, Storing, and Cooking the World's Favorite Meat, p. 35.

Entertainment Weekly, September 4, 1992, Sada Fretz, review of Real Beer and Good Eats: The Rebirth of America's Beer and Food Traditions, p. 67.

Library Journal, December, 1998, Mary A. Martin, review of The Complete Meat Cookbook: A Juicy and Authoritative Guide to Selecting, Seasoning, and Cooking Today's Beef, Pork, Lamb, and Veal, p. 146; February 15, 2001, review of Bruce Aidells's Complete Sausage Book, p. 195; September 15, 2004, Judith Sutton, review of Bruce Aidells's Complete Book of Pork, p. 78.

Nation's Restaurant News, August 27, 1990, Michael Schrader, review of Hot Links and Country Flavors, p. 85.

Publishers Weekly, July 20, 1992, review of Real Beer and Good Eats, p. 254; October 19, 1998, review of The Complete Meat Cookbook, p. 74; August 2, 2004, review of Bruce Aidells's Complete Book of Pork, p. 67.

Time, August 20, 1990, John F. Stacks, review of Hot Links and Country Flavors, p. 70.

Whole Earth, winter, 1999, review of The Complete Meat Cookbook, p. 52.

ONLINE

Aidells Web site, http://www.aidells.com/ (January 2, 2005).

Epicurious, http://www.epicurious.com/ (January 18, 1999), Irene Sax, review of The Complete Meat Cookbook.