Jennifer McLagan is one of Canada’s most sought-after food stylists. In recent years, she has also developed a second and parallel career as a widely read food journalist, which allows her to work sitting down.
Australian by birth, McLagan left behind a degree in economics and politics early on in order to train in the food business.

She began her professional life in the kitchens of the old Southern Cross Hotel in Melbourne. Work as a chef soon took her from Australia to England, where she practiced her trade at Prue Leith’s highly regarded restaurant in London and then in the kitchens of Winfield House, home of the U.S. ambassador to the Court of St. James. Love and marriage brought on yet another long-distance move — this time to Canada, where she has lived with her sculptor husband, Haralds Gaikis, for the past 28 winters.

Years of styling other people’s recipes, ultimately motivated her to sit down and create her own. A Proustian moment with a plate of bones in Paris inspired the subject for her book, Bones: Recipes, History and Lore (Morrow 2005).

In her first book, Jennifer embarked on a singular mission to bring back the bold flavours of cooking with bones. In addition to being a useful and informative cookbook, Bones is immensely readable, filled with fascinating historical facts, traditions and lore, it is valuable as a work of reference. Bones was published in the United Kingdom in October 2006, by Grub Street Publishing under the title Cooking on the Bone.
Bones has received much critical and popular acclaim. It won a James Beard award as best single subject cookbook of 2005 and was winner of the best single subject book in the U.S. in the Gourmand World Cookbook Awards. It was also a finalist in the IACP cookbook awards for 2005. Bones was also the subject of a front-page feature for the New York Times Dining and Wine section.

Ten Speed Press in the USA and McClelland & Stewart in Canada published Jennifer’s second book, Fat: An Appreciation of a Misunderstood Ingredient with Recipes, this September. Aurum in the UK will publish it in March 2009. Fat was the first book to be featured on the New York Times Mark Bittman’s blog, inspiring many readers to write odes and haiku to bacon.

In 2007, Jennifer was invited to present at the highly prestigious Melbourne Food and Wine Festival Master Class Series and has twice been a presenter at the Epicurean Classic in Traverse City, Michigan. She is a regular contributor to Food & Drink and Fine Cooking magazines and is a regular guest on the Australian radio show, Overnights with Trevor Chappell.

Jennifer survives life in the frozen north by escaping with her husband, as often as possible, to Paris. On either side of the Atlantic, she maintains a close friendly relationship with her butchers, who put aside their best bones and fat for her.
She has a website www.jennifermclagan.com and perhaps more au courant a blog
http://jennifermclagan.blogspot.com that she tries hard to contribute to at least once a week.