Some Real Winners

Hometown chef Rick Bayless took the Julia Child Cookbook Award’s best cookbook of the year honors last week at the International Assn. of Culinary Professionals convention here. And “Rick Bayless’s Mexican Kitchen” (Scribner), written by Bayless with his wife, Deann Groen Bayless, and JeanMarie Brownson, was named best chef’s cookbook.

In other awards: “Spirit of the West,” by Beverly Cox and Martin Jacobs (Artisan), won best American cookbook; “Baking With Julia,” by Dorie Greenspan (Morrow), best baking book; “Cocina!: A Hands-On Guide to the Techniques of Southwestern Cooking,” by Leland Atkinson (Ten-Speed Press), best reference book; “1,000 Vegetarian Recipes,” by Carol Gelles (Macmillan), best special diet book; “Jacques Pepin’s Kitchen: Cooking With Claudine,” best general cookbook; “Foods of Sicily, Sardinia and the Smaller Islands,” by Giuliano Bugialli (Rizzoli), best international book; “The Debt to Pleasure,” by John Lanchester (Henry Holt), best literary cookbook; “Fish and Shellfish,” by James Peterson (Morrow), best single-subject cookbook; and “A Wine and Food Guide to the Loire,” by Jacqueline Friedrich (Henry Holt), best wine book.

Several special awards were also given. “Tukka: Real Australian Food,” by Jean-Paul Brunetear (HarperCollins, Australia), was named best-designed book; “The Food of Paradise: Exploring Hawaii’s Culinary Heritage,” by Rachel Laudan (University of Hawaii Press), won the Jane Grigson Award for distinguished scholarship; and “Curried Flavors: Family Recipes From South India,” by Maya Kaimel MacMillan (Abbeville Press), won the Julia Child Award for best first book.