Domenica Marchetti – Foodie Profile
Today we are joined by Italian-American food writer and cookbook author, Domenica Marchetti. Her latest release, Italian Cookies is her ninth cookbook. In our q&a Domenica shares a little bit more about Italian Cookies, how her heritage has influenced her work, a personal recommendation for exploring and eating in Italy, her recipe for canestrelletti cookies and much more.
1. You’ve written extensively about Italian cuisine. How did your Italian heritage shape your path as a food writer and cookbook author?
It was hugely influential. My mother, who was from Abruzzo, was a wonderful home cook. She cooked dinner every night, but more than that, she enjoyed cooking. She loved it—she saw it as a creative pursuit—and she passed that love on to me. Before I started writing cookbooks, I was a newspaper reporter. I earned my graduate degree in journalism at Columbia University, in New York. I feel so lucky that I was able to combine both of these avenues and make a career.
2. Looking back at your earlier cookbooks, is there one that feels especially defining for you, and why?
They were almost all defining in some way. My first book was The Glorious Soups and Stews of Italy. I have loved soup ever since I was a young child—pastina in chicken broth was my first solid food. I could eat it every day. Writing a book centered on it felt natural. The Glorious Pasta of Italy, which came later, gave me the opportunity to do a deep dive into pasta—this was back in 2011. It was a book before its time. So was The Glorious Vegetables of Italy, which was published in 2013, well before the current trend of celebrating vegetables. Preserving Italy was a more personal book because it was inspired by my maternal grandmother. She used to make big jars of amarena sotto spirito—sun-dried sour cherries preserved in alcohol—every year. She died when I was still pretty young, but the memory of those boozy cherries remained so strong. She never wrote down the recipe, and so I set out to to try to recreate them. That’s how the book was born.
3. Each of your books explores a different side of Italian cuisine. Was there a particular moment, recipe, or memory that sparked the idea for Italian Cookies?
My mom often baked pizzelle, those pretty patterned waffle cookies from Abruzzo, but she also made buttery hazelnut crescents and fried cookies filled with ground almonds and honey. Baking cookies at Christmas time was a huge affair in our house. My mom would sit my sister and me at the kitchen table when we were little and hand us each nutcrackers. We would shell piles of almonds and walnuts and hazelnuts for the cookies she baked. As we got older, we started baking cookies ourselves, especially the ones featured in the December issue of Gourmet magazine. Still, it wasn’t until about 2018, when I tasted a pretty but plain flower-shaped butter cookie from Liguria that I had an “Aha” moment. It was the best butter cookie I’d ever tasted, and I wanted to learn more about it. I soon realized that the story and history of Italian cookies needed telling.
4. In Italian Cookies you feature cookie recipes spanning Italy’s 20 regions. Is there a region where the cookies stood out, and what were some of the recurring ingredients or techniques?
I have to preface this by saying that every region has its standouts. No matter where I went, there was a cookie for me to fall in love with. However, it was while I was in Liguria, where it borders Piedmont, that I realized that there is this swath of northern Italy that is populated by what I call “cookie towns”—which is to say cookies named for the towns in which they originated. Let’s take amaretti (almond cookies) as an example. Between Piedmont and Lombardy there are amaretti di Gallarate, amaretti di Gavi, amaretti di Voltaggio, amaretti di Saronno, and more. And although these are all made with the same ingredients—ground almonds, sugar, and egg whites—each one is different from the next. It all depends on technique: how finely the almonds are ground, whether the egg whites are whipped or not, how much sugar is added, the temperature at which they are baked. Just three ingredients and the variety is astonishing.
5. You visit Italy regularly for work. What is your favourite city or region and could you recommend a must-try dish in that area?
It’s hard to pick a favorite anything in Italy. Every region is different and has its own distinct attributes. However, if pressed, I have to say my favorite region is (of course) Abruzzo, where my family is from. It’s where I spent my summers growing up and where I live part-time. It is not overrun with tourists, and it is spectacularly beautiful—about one-third of it is protected national or regional parks. It extends from the Apennine mountains to the Adriatic coast, so you have everything from snow-capped peaks and gentle foothills to vineyards, olive groves and the blue Adriatic Sea. As for must-try dish: If you’re in the mountains, you must have arrosticini, small lamb skewers that are cooked on a special narrow grill. They are seasoned only with salt, and they are out of this world, especially if you are enjoying them on the mountain surrounded by views. If you’re on the water, you must try brodetto—an aromatic made with a mix of Adriatic fish and seafood, all cooked in tomato sauce broth spiked with both chili peppers and dried sweet peppers. And grilled bread moistened with good olive oil to mop up the saucy broth.
6. Italian society and daily life is laced with unspoken rules and steeped in traditions and rituals. Do you have any favourites that you grew up with or adopted/discovered as you got older?
One of my favorites is bar loyalty. Everyone has a local neighborhood bar that they go to for their morning cappuccino and cornetto, an afternoon espresso, or an aperitivo before dinner (or digestivo after). Once you pick a bar, you remain true to it and they always have your back.
One that drove me nuts when I was a child was the rule that you had to wait three hours (!) after pranzo before you could go swimming. My parents did not give much credence to this rule, so on hot summer afternoons after lunch, I would be dying to go into the water with my friends, but I had to wait until their parents gave them the OK.
7. Can you share a favorite recipe from Italian Cookies and the story behind it?
Let’s go back to the canestrelletto di Torriglia, the cookie that inspired the book. It’s a pretty but plain flower shaped cookie made with four ingredients: butter, sugar, eggs, and flour. Yet, from my first bite I was smitten. The texture was unforgettable: crispy, crumbly, delicate, butter-rich. I drove 45 minutes from Genoa into the hills to the town of Torriglia to find out more about this cookie. Turns out it has a long history—an historian in town has traced its origins to the 15th Century. Even more impressive is what the cookie has come to mean to modern-day Torriglia. Over the last few decades, the Canestrelletto di Torriglia Cultural Association, an organization created to revive the town’s flagging economy, has revived interest in this cookie. There are now eight bakeries devoted to baking canestrelletti, according to a strict set of criteria devised by the Association and distributing them throughout Genoa and other parts of Liguria. There is a Canestrelletto di Torriglia festival every June that draws people from all over. As one Torriglia baker told me, “For us, the canestrelletto is more than a cookie.” [Get the recipe here].
8. In a world of viral recipes and food trends, what do you think the importance is of documenting traditional recipes and maintaining their legacy?
The best recipes, in my opinion, are more than a list of ingredients and a how-to, or a viral reel or social media video. The best ones tell a story. They are of a time and place; they connect us with the people in our lives, with our past, and with the past in general. There is no better way to learn about a culture than to study its food. You can so much about a place’s history by looking at ingredients in its recipes. Quick example: Take Sicily. Almonds, honey, sesame seeds, citrus—all ingredients that figure prominently in the cookies of the island—were brought over during Arab rule in the 9th Century AD. There is history baked into these recipes.
9. Do you have any new or future projects you can tell us about?
I have a few ideas rattling around in my brain but nothing certain yet. Stay tuned.
Website: https://www.domenicacooks.com/
Domenica’s weekly newsletter: https://buonadomenica.substack.com/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/domenicacooks
Order her latest release, Italian Cookies, here: https://www.domenicacooks.com/cookbooks/italian-cookies
