Latest / Cookbook Love Podcast / Episode 401: The Stories Behind Italian Cookies with Domenica Marchetti

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Episode 401: The Stories Behind Italian Cookies with Domenica Marchetti · Cookbook Love Podcast

• 0:02
  Speaker: You are listening to the cookbook Love Podcast with
• 0:04
  Speaker: Maggie Greene, episode number four oh one.
• 0:11
  Speaker: Welcome to the Cookbook Love
• 0:12
  Speaker: Podcast, a podcast that
• 0:14
  Speaker: celebrates cookbook readers,
• 0:16
  Speaker: buyers, collectors, writers, and
• 0:18
  Speaker: clubs.
• 0:19
  Speaker: And now your host, cookbook
• 0:21
  Speaker: author, culinary dietitian, and
• 0:23
  Speaker: cookbook writing coach, Maggie
• 0:25
  Speaker: Greene.
• 0:31
  Speaker: Hi, everybody.
• 0:32
  Speaker: Welcome back to another episode of the cookbook Love Podcast.
• 0:35
  Speaker: How's everybody doing today?
• 0:37
  Speaker: We are having some absolutely perfect Kentucky weather.
• 0:44
  Speaker: I want to tell you, if you ever want to travel to Kentucky, come
• 0:51
  Speaker: around Mother's Day or the next weekend sometime before Memorial
• 0:57
  Speaker: Day, because Memorial Day can get really hot.
• 0:59
  Speaker: But this middle of May in Kentucky is absolutely gorgeous.
• 1:03
  Speaker: Everything is so green, the sky is so blue, and if there are
• 1:09
  Speaker: clouds in the sky, they are just puffy little white balls of
• 1:14
  Speaker: cloud and the humidity is low.
• 1:17
  Speaker: It is an absolutely gorgeous time to visit.
• 1:21
  Speaker: I may have said this on the show
• 1:22
  Speaker: before, but my grandfather on my
• 1:24
  Speaker: father's side was an immigrant
• 1:26
  Speaker: from Germany.
• 1:27
  Speaker: He came to the US and immigrated
• 1:29
  Speaker: into Chicago when he was
• 1:31
  Speaker: seventeen.
• 1:32
  Speaker: So my father was a first generation American, and my
• 1:37
  Speaker: grandfather would have his family come visit his mother or
• 1:40
  Speaker: his brothers or, um, their children come visit to Kentucky.
• 1:46
  Speaker: And he always had them come in May.
• 1:48
  Speaker: The second time would be October.
• 1:50
  Speaker: The middle of October is also very beautiful.
• 1:53
  Speaker: Um, but we're living in May now, so I thought I would mention it.
• 1:56
  Speaker: It's absolutely gorgeous.
• 1:57
  Speaker: It's a great time to visit and we had a great weekend
• 2:01
  Speaker: celebrating Mother's Day.
• 2:04
  Speaker: A couple of other things.
• 2:05
  Speaker: My daughter's getting married next June and we have been dress
• 2:09
  Speaker: shopping and she said yes to the dress last week.
• 2:12
  Speaker: So that was great.
• 2:13
  Speaker: We, um, it's really, really
• 2:15
  Speaker: special time to spend with her
• 2:17
  Speaker: and, um, her fiance's mother, we
• 2:20
  Speaker: were the only two that were
• 2:21
  Speaker: there.
• 2:22
  Speaker: It was really nice.
• 2:24
  Speaker: And then we have had get togethers with my husband's side
• 2:28
  Speaker: of the family for Mother's Day.
• 2:29
  Speaker: His sister and two brothers have
• 2:31
  Speaker: been in town, and we went to
• 2:33
  Speaker: Lexington to visit with them on
• 2:34
  Speaker: Saturday.
• 2:36
  Speaker: And then on Sunday they came up here and we hosted a barbecue.
• 2:41
  Speaker: We had cooked some pulled pork
• 2:43
  Speaker: and made a bunch of side dishes,
• 2:44
  Speaker: which is the best part of
• 2:46
  Speaker: barbecue, and enjoyed some
• 2:48
  Speaker: really nice time up here with
• 2:49
  Speaker: them.
• 2:50
  Speaker: So it's been a great weekend.
• 2:52
  Speaker: Okay, so today I have an
• 2:53
  Speaker: interview with cookbook author
• 2:55
  Speaker: and food writer Domenica
• 2:57
  Speaker: Marchetti, author of cookbooks,
• 2:59
  Speaker: including her newest release,
• 3:00
  Speaker: Italian Cookies.
• 3:02
  Speaker: She's known for her deeply researched approach to Italian
• 3:05
  Speaker: cooking and her bringing the stories, traditions, and people
• 3:08
  Speaker: behind the recipes to life.
• 3:11
  Speaker: Before we get started, though,
• 3:12
  Speaker: with the interview, I want to
• 3:13
  Speaker: let you know that the doors are
• 3:15
  Speaker: now open for a brand new
• 3:17
  Speaker: introductory program that I'm
• 3:20
  Speaker: offering for aspiring cookbook
• 3:22
  Speaker: authors called Cookbook Writing
• 3:24
  Speaker: Foundations.
• 3:26
  Speaker: So if you dream of writing a
• 3:28
  Speaker: cookbook, but you feel like you
• 3:30
  Speaker: don't have a clear plan or you
• 3:32
  Speaker: do not know where to start, and
• 3:34
  Speaker: perhaps you do not even know how
• 3:36
  Speaker: you want to get your book
• 3:37
  Speaker: published.
• 3:39
  Speaker: This book is this program is for you.
• 3:42
  Speaker: It's designed to help dietitians, chefs, food culinary
• 3:47
  Speaker: nutrition experts, and passionate home cooks.
• 3:50
  Speaker: I want you to pay attention to what Domenica says she is a.
• 3:55
  Speaker: She's a home cook and she has gone on to write cookbooks.
• 3:58
  Speaker: So you do not have to be a professional.
• 4:02
  Speaker: Um, home cooks.
• 4:03
  Speaker: This would be a great program
• 4:05
  Speaker: for you to help you move from
• 4:06
  Speaker: cookbook idea to getting a clear
• 4:08
  Speaker: direction.
• 4:10
  Speaker: I want to help direct you to
• 4:12
  Speaker: shape your concept, identify
• 4:14
  Speaker: your audience for your book,
• 4:16
  Speaker: organize your ideas, and create
• 4:18
  Speaker: your perfect path toward
• 4:19
  Speaker: publication, of which there are
• 4:21
  Speaker: three.
• 4:22
  Speaker: And that's exactly what I talk about, um, to help you because
• 4:28
  Speaker: the program is going to help you stop sitting on your dream, you
• 4:32
  Speaker: know, dreams that we have in our life of wanting to do something,
• 4:36
  Speaker: desiring to pursue a project.
• 4:40
  Speaker: They don't go away.
• 4:42
  Speaker: The dream is there because you're being called to a certain
• 4:46
  Speaker: type of work.
• 4:49
  Speaker: And the dream is there because it's probably something that you
• 4:53
  Speaker: need to do.
• 4:54
  Speaker: And I talked about this last week, and it's really a decision
• 4:58
  Speaker: to be willing to do what you're being called to do.
• 5:02
  Speaker: So if you're sitting on a
• 5:04
  Speaker: cookbook idea and you want to
• 5:07
  Speaker: begin it with someone who has
• 5:09
  Speaker: experience and with a community
• 5:11
  Speaker: of people who are going through
• 5:12
  Speaker: the same thing that you're going
• 5:13
  Speaker: through, whether you want to
• 5:15
  Speaker: preserve family recipes, share
• 5:17
  Speaker: your expertise, grow your
• 5:19
  Speaker: business, create something
• 5:20
  Speaker: meaningful to pass on to your
• 5:21
  Speaker: family.
• 5:22
  Speaker: Cookbook writing foundations will help you make decisions to
• 5:25
  Speaker: take the steps that move toward the cookbook project that you
• 5:29
  Speaker: want to create.
• 5:31
  Speaker: So if you head on down to the show notes, I'll put a link, but
• 5:35
  Speaker: it's w w w dot cookbook writers academy dot com slash.
• 5:42
  Speaker: MC and you can watch a few videos about it.
• 5:49
  Speaker: And then I have a link to the program.
• 5:52
  Speaker: The doors are closing very, very soon though.
• 5:54
  Speaker: So by the time you hear this podcast, there's not a ton of
• 5:57
  Speaker: time left to join.
• 5:59
  Speaker: So if a foundational basic
• 6:02
  Speaker: program for determining what
• 6:05
  Speaker: your book's going to be about
• 6:07
  Speaker: and helping you choose your
• 6:08
  Speaker: publishing path sounds like
• 6:09
  Speaker: something that you might be
• 6:10
  Speaker: interested in.
• 6:12
  Speaker: This foundational basic starter program is exactly for you.
• 6:17
  Speaker: And again, the link is down in the show notes.
• 6:20
  Speaker: Okay, so now on to today's episode.
• 6:22
  Speaker: Today on the show, I'm Dominique.
• 6:25
  Speaker: Dominique and I talk all about
• 6:26
  Speaker: how she researched cookie
• 6:28
  Speaker: traditions all across the twenty
• 6:30
  Speaker: regions of Italy, how she
• 6:32
  Speaker: visited bakeries to get travel
• 6:34
  Speaker: stories and learn cultural
• 6:36
  Speaker: traditions about Italian
• 6:37
  Speaker: cookies.
• 6:38
  Speaker: Her journey from newspaper journalism to becoming a nine
• 6:43
  Speaker: time cookbook author.
• 6:46
  Speaker: The role that food traditions
• 6:48
  Speaker: play in preserving culture and
• 6:49
  Speaker: community.
• 6:51
  Speaker: What aspiring cookbook authors
• 6:53
  Speaker: can learn from her decades of
• 6:56
  Speaker: writing and testing and
• 6:57
  Speaker: publishing cookbooks?
• 6:59
  Speaker: And of course, we talk about
• 7:01
  Speaker: Italian cookies, regional baking
• 7:03
  Speaker: traditions, and why dunking
• 7:06
  Speaker: cookies in your coffee in the
• 7:08
  Speaker: morning might change your
• 7:10
  Speaker: mornings forever.
• 7:12
  Speaker: That sounds like a great idea to me.
• 7:14
  Speaker: So without further delay, let's
• 7:15
  Speaker: dive into this interview with
• 7:17
  Speaker: Domenica Marchetti.
• 7:19
  Speaker: Hi, Domenica, welcome to the Cookbook Love Podcast.
• 7:23
  Speaker: Hi. Thank you for having me, Maggie.
• 7:25
  Speaker: Yes.
• 7:25
  Speaker: So excited to have you here today to talk all about your
• 7:29
  Speaker: beautiful new book.
• 7:30
  Speaker: But before we dive in, why don't
• 7:32
  Speaker: you tell everybody a little bit
• 7:33
  Speaker: about who you are and what you
• 7:34
  Speaker: do?
• 7:36
  Speaker: So, um, my name is Domenica Marchetti.
• 7:39
  Speaker: I am a food writer and cookbook author.
• 7:43
  Speaker: I split my time between, um, suburban D.C. in Northern
• 7:47
  Speaker: Virginia and Italy, where my family has a small house in, in,
• 7:53
  Speaker: um, the region of Abruzzo, which is where my family was from.
• 7:57
  Speaker: Um, so I grew up in an Italian household.
• 8:01
  Speaker: Uh, my mom was born and raised in Chieti in Abruzzo.
• 8:05
  Speaker: And, um, she came to the U.S. as
• 8:08
  Speaker: a young woman, met my dad on a
• 8:10
  Speaker: blind date.
• 8:11
  Speaker: He was an Italian American.
• 8:13
  Speaker: And so, um, I grew up, you know, in a one hundred percent Italian
• 8:18
  Speaker: household, but I didn't grow up in an Italian neighborhood.
• 8:20
  Speaker: This was suburban Princeton, new Jersey.
• 8:23
  Speaker: Um, but I grew up with great Italian food and spending my
• 8:28
  Speaker: summers in Italy.
• 8:29
  Speaker: We used to go back every summer to see my mom's sisters.
• 8:33
  Speaker: And, um, so I spent my summers, um, in Abruzzo and in Rome.
• 8:37
  Speaker: And so, you know, my love of Italy goes back a long way and
• 8:42
  Speaker: is quite deep.
• 8:44
  Speaker: Um. I actually am a trained reporter rather than food writer
• 8:51
  Speaker: or cookbook author.
• 8:53
  Speaker: But, um, so I spent years, you know, as kind of like a beat
• 8:57
  Speaker: reporter in various newspapers.
• 9:00
  Speaker: And then when I, my children
• 9:01
  Speaker: were young in the early two
• 9:03
  Speaker: thousand, I decided to go
• 9:05
  Speaker: freelance.
• 9:06
  Speaker: And I pivoted at that point and started writing about Italian
• 9:10
  Speaker: food because it was the thing I loved most in terms of, uh, you
• 9:15
  Speaker: know, subjects to write about.
• 9:17
  Speaker: And I had been amassing kind of
• 9:18
  Speaker: a collection of cookbooks over
• 9:21
  Speaker: the years since I, since my teen
• 9:24
  Speaker: years.
• 9:24
  Speaker: And I love paging through them
• 9:27
  Speaker: and reading them and trying
• 9:29
  Speaker: recipes.
• 9:29
  Speaker: And so that's just something I decided I wanted to do.
• 9:34
  Speaker: And so the freelance writing for newspapers and magazines
• 9:39
  Speaker: eventually led to the cookbooks.
• 9:42
  Speaker: And that's where I really found my true writing love.
• 9:48
  Speaker: Yes, because this is not your first cookbook.
• 9:51
  Speaker: Tell everybody how many cookbooks you've written.
• 9:53
  Speaker: Yeah, so it's hard to believe, but I've written nine.
• 9:57
  Speaker: My first book was called The
• 9:59
  Speaker: Glorious Soups and Stews of
• 10:00
  Speaker: Italy.
• 10:01
  Speaker: It was a lovely little book that
• 10:03
  Speaker: came out way back in two
• 10:05
  Speaker: thousand and six, so twenty
• 10:07
  Speaker: years ago.
• 10:08
  Speaker: So I've been at this for quite a while.
• 10:10
  Speaker: Um, and then I've written a succession of Italian cookbooks.
• 10:14
  Speaker: I wrote a book called The Glorious Pasta of Italy.
• 10:17
  Speaker: I wrote a book on Italian vegetables.
• 10:19
  Speaker: Um, in twenty fifteen, I wrote a
• 10:24
  Speaker: book called Preserving Italy,
• 10:26
  Speaker: which was all about Italian
• 10:27
  Speaker: preserving traditions in the
• 10:29
  Speaker: kitchen.
• 10:30
  Speaker: And, um, and then I've written a couple of Williams-Sonoma books.
• 10:35
  Speaker: And then finally this year, Italian Cookies was published.
• 10:39
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 10:39
  Speaker: And that's the one that just recently came out.
• 10:41
  Speaker: It's a beautiful book and we'll talk more about that book.
• 10:44
  Speaker: But before we start talking about the book a little bit, I
• 10:46
  Speaker: would love to talk to you about your career and your pivot into
• 10:52
  Speaker: from being a, you know, a, a reporter and, you know,
• 10:56
  Speaker: journalism and then having a family and making a decision to
• 10:59
  Speaker: pivot into writing about Italian food and Italian cooking, um,
• 11:05
  Speaker: based on the way you were, you know, your, your, your
• 11:09
  Speaker: upbringing, uh, the land that you learned to love through your
• 11:13
  Speaker: parents and what that pivot was like for you and what really
• 11:19
  Speaker: made the difference in terms of your ability to get some
• 11:22
  Speaker: traction in, uh, food writing.
• 11:26
  Speaker: Oh, gosh, that's such a good question.
• 11:29
  Speaker: And, um, sometimes I wonder how
• 11:32
  Speaker: it all unfolded and whether luck
• 11:34
  Speaker: was a big part of it more than
• 11:37
  Speaker: anything else.
• 11:37
  Speaker: But, you know, um, I did have newspaper, uh, uh, connections.
• 11:44
  Speaker: So, um, I think you and I talked
• 11:47
  Speaker: about this before we started
• 11:48
  Speaker: recording, but, you know, my
• 11:50
  Speaker: dirty little secret is that I
• 11:51
  Speaker: never went to culinary school,
• 11:53
  Speaker: so I'm.
• 11:53
  Speaker: I'm a home cook.
• 11:54
  Speaker: I'm definitely not a chef.
• 11:56
  Speaker: Um, and a home baker.
• 11:57
  Speaker: Um, but I did go to Columbia journalism school, so I spent
• 12:01
  Speaker: years working as a newspaper reporter and, um, you know, so
• 12:05
  Speaker: I've always brought those skills to my food writing.
• 12:08
  Speaker: And it was through a variety of
• 12:11
  Speaker: newspaper connections that I
• 12:13
  Speaker: started getting freelance
• 12:15
  Speaker: writing, um, gigs, writing about
• 12:17
  Speaker: food.
• 12:18
  Speaker: And when I first started, you know, the internet was quite
• 12:23
  Speaker: young or especially especially blogs and being someone who came
• 12:27
  Speaker: up during, you know, with print journalism, I really didn't pay
• 12:32
  Speaker: much attention to them, for better or for worse.
• 12:35
  Speaker: Um, so I stuck with newspapers for quite a long while.
• 12:39
  Speaker: And um, and then it was somebody
• 12:42
  Speaker: who um suggested that I check
• 12:46
  Speaker: out.
• 12:47
  Speaker: Do you remember the Greenbrier Food Writers Symposium?
• 12:50
  Speaker: Yes.
• 12:51
  Speaker: Yes.
• 12:51
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 12:52
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 12:53
  Speaker: And so I, um, I went to, I ended up going to maybe three of
• 12:59
  Speaker: those, I think over the years before they stopped, but I went
• 13:03
  Speaker: to one in, I think it was two thousand and four.
• 13:07
  Speaker: And that's where I connected
• 13:09
  Speaker: with some people from the world
• 13:11
  Speaker: of cookbooks.
• 13:12
  Speaker: And at that point, I had been
• 13:14
  Speaker: freelancing for maybe two or
• 13:16
  Speaker: three years and really wanted to
• 13:18
  Speaker: explore the idea of writing an
• 13:21
  Speaker: Italian cookbook.
• 13:22
  Speaker: And so the Green Bar, The
• 13:24
  Speaker: Greenbrier, is really where I
• 13:25
  Speaker: met some people who helped me on
• 13:28
  Speaker: that front.
• 13:29
  Speaker: And, um, yeah, so I think it was
• 13:32
  Speaker: a matter of just deciding which
• 13:35
  Speaker: way I wanted my journalism
• 13:37
  Speaker: career to go or how I wanted to
• 13:38
  Speaker: kind of transform it, and also
• 13:41
  Speaker: meeting people who were in that
• 13:44
  Speaker: world.
• 13:45
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 13:46
  Speaker: And I think decisions are so much a big part of this, just
• 13:50
  Speaker: deciding that you're going to go a certain way and, uh, digging
• 13:55
  Speaker: into that decision and sticking with that decision because
• 13:58
  Speaker: everything's kind of experimental in the beginning
• 14:01
  Speaker: anyway, and seeing what works and also leveraging the
• 14:03
  Speaker: connections that you had and did that turn original?
• 14:07
  Speaker: Did you do any blogging or were
• 14:08
  Speaker: you mostly doing food writing
• 14:10
  Speaker: for publications?
• 14:11
  Speaker: I know you wrote for The Washington Post, eating well,
• 14:14
  Speaker: fine, cooking food and wine, um, and other publications.
• 14:18
  Speaker: Was that your main source of leverage for people get to get
• 14:21
  Speaker: to know who you were?
• 14:23
  Speaker: Or was there any online work prior to Substack, which I know
• 14:26
  Speaker: you're doing now?
• 14:28
  Speaker: Yeah, I did have a blog, but I started it quite late after I
• 14:32
  Speaker: started writing the books.
• 14:34
  Speaker: and I have to be honest, I'm.
• 14:36
  Speaker: I was kind of a head in the sand person about that.
• 14:39
  Speaker: I sort of tried to ignore the
• 14:41
  Speaker: blogosphere as long as I
• 14:43
  Speaker: possibly could, just because I'm
• 14:45
  Speaker: not very technologically
• 14:47
  Speaker: inclined.
• 14:47
  Speaker: You know, I'm not great at
• 14:48
  Speaker: digital stuff and never have
• 14:50
  Speaker: been.
• 14:50
  Speaker: And, um, and I, you know, I was
• 14:53
  Speaker: comfortable in the world of
• 14:55
  Speaker: print.
• 14:56
  Speaker: And so, and in those early days, there were still a lot of
• 15:00
  Speaker: cooking magazines around.
• 15:02
  Speaker: So, um, so I had work, um, I
• 15:05
  Speaker: should also say, you know, I, we
• 15:07
  Speaker: had two young children, um, my
• 15:09
  Speaker: husband and I, and so I was, um,
• 15:12
  Speaker: you know, taking care of them,
• 15:14
  Speaker: although they did go to daycare
• 15:16
  Speaker: and I had a husband who was
• 15:18
  Speaker: gainfully employed.
• 15:19
  Speaker: So that allowed me to pursue the kind of, you know, work that I
• 15:25
  Speaker: wanted to do, even though it was not as lucrative as my, um, job
• 15:31
  Speaker: as a full time.
• 15:33
  Speaker: um, newspaper reporter.
• 15:34
  Speaker: So lucrative.
• 15:36
  Speaker: I mean, relatively speaking.
• 15:38
  Speaker: We're talking about print journalism here.
• 15:41
  Speaker: Um, so anyway, um, but, uh,
• 15:44
  Speaker: yeah, so I think, um, in
• 15:49
  Speaker: retrospect, I probably should
• 15:51
  Speaker: have paid more attention to, um,
• 15:53
  Speaker: the internet, but eventually I
• 15:56
  Speaker: got there.
• 15:56
  Speaker: Uh, I needed a website, kind of an online resume like so many of
• 16:01
  Speaker: us have now.
• 16:03
  Speaker: And I will say I never got into blogging, um, consistently.
• 16:10
  Speaker: I did not want to do sponsored
• 16:12
  Speaker: posts because of my background
• 16:14
  Speaker: in journalism.
• 16:15
  Speaker: I always felt a little funny about that.
• 16:18
  Speaker: And so I just kind of would post recipes on my website in the,
• 16:24
  Speaker: you know, in the blogging segment of my website.
• 16:29
  Speaker: And I did that for quite a few
• 16:31
  Speaker: years and had a rather niche
• 16:34
  Speaker: audience of people who loved
• 16:36
  Speaker: Italian cooking.
• 16:38
  Speaker: Um, but I think that, you know, these are people who found me
• 16:41
  Speaker: through my books.
• 16:42
  Speaker: And also once I started writing the books, I also started
• 16:47
  Speaker: teaching cooking classes and I was doing that in person.
• 16:51
  Speaker: And, um, as we used to do
• 16:54
  Speaker: traveling around to various
• 16:56
  Speaker: cooking schools, you know, when
• 16:57
  Speaker: we were, when I was, um,
• 16:59
  Speaker: promoting books.
• 17:01
  Speaker: So that's another way in which I became involved in the world of,
• 17:05
  Speaker: um, in the food world.
• 17:08
  Speaker: And yeah, so I just, uh, pivoted
• 17:11
  Speaker: to, you know, all of the things
• 17:14
  Speaker: that we need to do to keep doing
• 17:16
  Speaker: this work.
• 17:17
  Speaker: I mean, the cooking, uh, you
• 17:19
  Speaker: know, I've done online classes
• 17:20
  Speaker: now on my own and through Milk
• 17:22
  Speaker: Street.
• 17:23
  Speaker: Um, I do, uh, small group
• 17:28
  Speaker: culinary tours and food writing
• 17:30
  Speaker: workshops in Italy and
• 17:31
  Speaker: elsewhere.
• 17:32
  Speaker: And so it's I've sort of slowly
• 17:35
  Speaker: built this, um, work of many
• 17:39
  Speaker: parts.
• 17:40
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 17:40
  Speaker: And it's, it's truly a building process, I think.
• 17:43
  Speaker: I admire you a lot for your dedication to the topic and to
• 17:47
  Speaker: just sticking with it and iterating as times change and as
• 17:51
  Speaker: things change and, you know, less print more online.
• 17:54
  Speaker: And now with your weekly newsletter on Substack.
• 17:57
  Speaker: That's a iteration that a lot of people are pivoting to.
• 18:01
  Speaker: And, um, in some ways, people find your online resume through
• 18:05
  Speaker: your website, but that's probably the main way now you're
• 18:08
  Speaker: communicating with people through this newsletter.
• 18:11
  Speaker: Yes, absolutely.
• 18:13
  Speaker: So, and this is, uh, I've found
• 18:15
  Speaker: the consistency with my
• 18:17
  Speaker: newsletter that I wasn't able to
• 18:18
  Speaker: find for some reason with the
• 18:20
  Speaker: blog.
• 18:21
  Speaker: Um, so it is a newsletter called
• 18:23
  Speaker: Buona Domenica, which is
• 18:25
  Speaker: obviously a play on words and,
• 18:27
  Speaker: um, which means Happy Sunday and
• 18:30
  Speaker: also happens to be my name or
• 18:32
  Speaker: good Sunday, I guess I should
• 18:34
  Speaker: say.
• 18:34
  Speaker: Uh, so it comes out every Sunday and I basically share stories
• 18:39
  Speaker: and recipes from Italy.
• 18:42
  Speaker: Um, and it's a very of the moment, I would say newsletter.
• 18:49
  Speaker: I know that there are very organized people in the world of
• 18:53
  Speaker: newsletter writing who schedule things weeks or months out.
• 18:59
  Speaker: I'm very seat of the pants.
• 19:01
  Speaker: I have to feel what I'm writing about.
• 19:04
  Speaker: So I often, you know, as I'm publishing Sunday morning, I'm
• 19:09
  Speaker: often at that point thinking, okay, now what do I want to
• 19:13
  Speaker: write about next week?
• 19:14
  Speaker: So it's a very kind of immediate thing or as immediate as it can
• 19:18
  Speaker: be, but it almost always involves a recipe and a story of
• 19:22
  Speaker: some sort about, um, Italian people, Italian culture, Italian
• 19:27
  Speaker: cooking, my own um memories and and life in Italy.
• 19:32
  Speaker: And the more time I spend over there, the more I sort of, uh,
• 19:37
  Speaker: in a little bit of travel.
• 19:39
  Speaker: Um, and I really try to take people to places that are not,
• 19:45
  Speaker: um, what, you know, over trafficked, uh, that haven't
• 19:50
  Speaker: been written about ad nauseam.
• 19:52
  Speaker: Um, the part of Italy my family
• 19:53
  Speaker: is from, which is Abruzzo and
• 19:55
  Speaker: also Molise is, uh, these are
• 19:58
  Speaker: two lesser known known regions
• 20:00
  Speaker: of Italy.
• 20:01
  Speaker: They also, they used to be one region called La Abruzzi.
• 20:04
  Speaker: But in the sixties they split.
• 20:06
  Speaker: And so there's it's Abruzzo.
• 20:09
  Speaker: And if you think about a map of
• 20:11
  Speaker: Italy, um we're talking about
• 20:13
  Speaker: mid calf on the boot that is
• 20:15
  Speaker: Italy.
• 20:15
  Speaker: And so east of Rome you hit the
• 20:18
  Speaker: Apennine Mountains and Abruzzo
• 20:21
  Speaker: and Melissa both extend from the
• 20:23
  Speaker: Apennine Mountains out to the
• 20:25
  Speaker: Adriatic Sea.
• 20:26
  Speaker: And um, they're very the, the terrain is really diverse.
• 20:33
  Speaker: You've got the, um, the high
• 20:35
  Speaker: peak of the Gran Sasso mountain
• 20:37
  Speaker: range in Abruzzo, which is the
• 20:39
  Speaker: highest peak in Italy outside of
• 20:40
  Speaker: the Alps.
• 20:41
  Speaker: And then you've got the
• 20:42
  Speaker: foothills and the sloping hills
• 20:44
  Speaker: where um, you know, wine and
• 20:47
  Speaker: olive oil are produced and then
• 20:48
  Speaker: you have the Adriatic Sea and
• 20:50
  Speaker: all the wonderful seafood of the
• 20:52
  Speaker: Adriatic coast, and then the
• 20:54
  Speaker: mountains, the very hearty, um,
• 20:57
  Speaker: uh, fare like um pasta, uh, with
• 21:02
  Speaker: meat sauces and um wonderful
• 21:06
  Speaker: sheep's milk cheeses in Abruzzo
• 21:07
  Speaker: and Molise.
• 21:09
  Speaker: So two very the food of these
• 21:11
  Speaker: two regions is still very
• 21:13
  Speaker: genuine.
• 21:14
  Speaker: And a lot of restaurants are still run by families.
• 21:18
  Speaker: Um, and I just absolutely love spending time there.
• 21:23
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 21:23
  Speaker: And I think that then you now
• 21:25
  Speaker: for your newest book, which
• 21:26
  Speaker: we're here to talk about today,
• 21:27
  Speaker: the Italian cookies, authentic
• 21:29
  Speaker: recipes and sweet Stories from
• 21:32
  Speaker: every region.
• 21:33
  Speaker: You've taken your interest in
• 21:38
  Speaker: Italy, and you're talking about
• 21:39
  Speaker: something that I believe is
• 21:41
  Speaker: universally appealing, which is
• 21:43
  Speaker: cookies.
• 21:44
  Speaker: So tell us a little bit more about this book and what it
• 21:48
  Speaker: meant to you to write it.
• 21:49
  Speaker: And we're going to dive into talking about some of the
• 21:53
  Speaker: chapters and some of the recipes, but I want to hear kind
• 21:55
  Speaker: of like your reason for diving into this topic.
• 21:59
  Speaker: Yeah, it was actually kind of a surprise.
• 22:02
  Speaker: Some years ago, I wrote a small
• 22:03
  Speaker: book called Ciao Biscotti, which
• 22:05
  Speaker: was about the twice baked
• 22:07
  Speaker: cookies, those crunchy cookies
• 22:09
  Speaker: that the that are from
• 22:11
  Speaker: originally from Tuscany,
• 22:13
  Speaker: although there are many
• 22:13
  Speaker: variations now, the little
• 22:15
  Speaker: almond sliced cookies that are
• 22:17
  Speaker: crunchy and that are great for
• 22:19
  Speaker: dipping in Italy they call them
• 22:20
  Speaker: cantucci.
• 22:21
  Speaker: Here in the US we tend to call them biscotti.
• 22:23
  Speaker: And there's, like I said, many variations.
• 22:25
  Speaker: Um, but I grew up with Italian cookies.
• 22:30
  Speaker: You know, my mother used to make those really pretty waffle, um,
• 22:34
  Speaker: cookies from Abruzzo and she made a range, a small range of
• 22:39
  Speaker: other cookies as well.
• 22:41
  Speaker: She made these wonderful buttery hazelnut crescents and these,
• 22:45
  Speaker: um, cookies, these fried sort of cookie pastries called
• 22:49
  Speaker: chalcones, which are it's basically fried dough crescents
• 22:53
  Speaker: filled with jam and nuts.
• 22:56
  Speaker: She actually filled hers with nuts and honey, and we would
• 23:00
  Speaker: have them every Christmas.
• 23:02
  Speaker: And then as I grew older, my
• 23:04
  Speaker: sister and I, we started baking
• 23:06
  Speaker: cookies to add to our cookie
• 23:08
  Speaker: plate.
• 23:09
  Speaker: And we would, you know, go
• 23:11
  Speaker: through the gourmet magazine
• 23:13
  Speaker: that came out every December and
• 23:14
  Speaker: pick which cookies we wanted to
• 23:16
  Speaker: add to the collection and some
• 23:17
  Speaker: cookies we would jettison after
• 23:19
  Speaker: a couple of years and we'd bring
• 23:20
  Speaker: more in.
• 23:21
  Speaker: So I always loved baking cookies, but it wasn't until I
• 23:25
  Speaker: was traveling around Italy.
• 23:29
  Speaker: Um, so I started doing, um,
• 23:31
  Speaker: culinary tours in various parts
• 23:33
  Speaker: of Italy beginning in twenty
• 23:35
  Speaker: fourteen, but I really started
• 23:36
  Speaker: doing more of these in, um, I
• 23:39
  Speaker: teamed up with a small company
• 23:41
  Speaker: and we collaborate on tours in
• 23:44
  Speaker: Liguria, which is the north
• 23:46
  Speaker: western Mediterranean coast of
• 23:47
  Speaker: Italy, where Genoa and the
• 23:49
  Speaker: Cinque Terre and the Italian
• 23:51
  Speaker: Riviera are.
• 23:53
  Speaker: And then, um, also up in
• 23:55
  Speaker: Piemonte and parts of
• 23:56
  Speaker: Emilia-Romagna.
• 23:57
  Speaker: So it was around when I was
• 23:59
  Speaker: traveling, um, I started tasting
• 24:02
  Speaker: cookies and I tasted this one
• 24:03
  Speaker: cookie from a bakery in Genoa
• 24:06
  Speaker: that was a flower shaped butter
• 24:07
  Speaker: cookie.
• 24:08
  Speaker: And it was very plain, but I absolutely fell in love with it
• 24:12
  Speaker: from the first bite.
• 24:13
  Speaker: It just had this incredible
• 24:15
  Speaker: crispy, melty, tender texture
• 24:18
  Speaker: and this purity of flavor that I
• 24:21
  Speaker: really loved.
• 24:22
  Speaker: You know, there wasn't even lemon zest or vanilla.
• 24:25
  Speaker: It was just the purity of the butter and the eggs and the
• 24:28
  Speaker: sugar and the flour.
• 24:30
  Speaker: And I saw in the back of the package of cookies that they
• 24:34
  Speaker: were produced in a town outside of Genoa called Torriglia.
• 24:37
  Speaker: And the cookies are called Canestrelli dei Torriglia.
• 24:40
  Speaker: So I got in my car one day and drove to Torriglia to see if I
• 24:44
  Speaker: could learn more about them.
• 24:46
  Speaker: And I found that this cookie has a story that dates to the
• 24:49
  Speaker: fifteenth century, and in the last number of decades, the town
• 24:54
  Speaker: has just done a very good job of promoting this cookie.
• 24:58
  Speaker: It's a small town.
• 24:59
  Speaker: It's about a kilometer long, one
• 25:01
  Speaker: main street, you know, you drive
• 25:03
  Speaker: in, you drive up the street, and
• 25:05
  Speaker: then you drive out into the
• 25:06
  Speaker: hills.
• 25:07
  Speaker: And, um, but there are like
• 25:09
  Speaker: eight bakeries in this town that
• 25:11
  Speaker: now produce these canestrelli de
• 25:13
  Speaker: torriglia.
• 25:14
  Speaker: They distribute them throughout the region of La Guardia,
• 25:17
  Speaker: throughout Genoa to shops and, and, um, they've kind of put
• 25:22
  Speaker: this little town which in, you know, historically was a resort
• 25:26
  Speaker: town for the Genovese escaping the heat of summer.
• 25:29
  Speaker: They would come up into these towns in the hills.
• 25:32
  Speaker: But like a lot of Italian towns, it's seen a lot of people leave
• 25:37
  Speaker: over the decades, you know, people moving to the cities to
• 25:40
  Speaker: look for work, people moving out of Italy to look for work.
• 25:43
  Speaker: But this cookie is kind of revived.
• 25:45
  Speaker: The town, they have an annual festival, and that just draws
• 25:49
  Speaker: hundreds and hundreds of people from all over.
• 25:52
  Speaker: And the cookie has become quite popular.
• 25:55
  Speaker: So after this, um, I started
• 25:59
  Speaker: looking at other cookies and I
• 26:00
  Speaker: found that there are many towns
• 26:02
  Speaker: across northern Italy from
• 26:05
  Speaker: Liguria, all the way out to the
• 26:07
  Speaker: Veneto that are associated with
• 26:10
  Speaker: specific towns.
• 26:11
  Speaker: Um, there is a bunch of towns of
• 26:14
  Speaker: cookies, of amaretti cookie
• 26:16
  Speaker: cookies, almond cookies that
• 26:19
  Speaker: are.
• 26:19
  Speaker: There are Amaretti di Gavi, Amaretti di Saronno, which are
• 26:23
  Speaker: those crunchy ones that we all know amaretti di gallarati.
• 26:27
  Speaker: I mean, there there's just, I
• 26:30
  Speaker: don't know, a handful of
• 26:32
  Speaker: amaretti cookies associated with
• 26:34
  Speaker: specific towns.
• 26:35
  Speaker: And each one is a little bit different from the next.
• 26:38
  Speaker: Um, and I became interested in
• 26:40
  Speaker: how these cookies were made and
• 26:42
  Speaker: how the same three ingredients
• 26:44
  Speaker: almond, ground almonds, sugar
• 26:46
  Speaker: and egg whites could yield such
• 26:49
  Speaker: different results.
• 26:50
  Speaker: And then I started looking
• 26:51
  Speaker: towards central Italy and
• 26:53
  Speaker: southern Italy, and I went down
• 26:55
  Speaker: this rabbit hole, and it took me
• 26:57
  Speaker: through all of Italy's twenty
• 26:59
  Speaker: regions.
• 27:00
  Speaker: And by the end of it, I just had
• 27:01
  Speaker: so many stories and so many
• 27:03
  Speaker: cookie recipes.
• 27:04
  Speaker: It was it was really quite a revelation.
• 27:07
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 27:08
  Speaker: And all just because of Cookies because you.
• 27:12
  Speaker: So this book does something that you just mentioned.
• 27:15
  Speaker: It goes.
• 27:16
  Speaker: It's the whole country of Italy,
• 27:19
  Speaker: not just the region that you had
• 27:21
  Speaker: family in or that you connected
• 27:23
  Speaker: with.
• 27:24
  Speaker: And because of the cookies, it gets into history, into culture,
• 27:29
  Speaker: into law, family.
• 27:32
  Speaker: Like you said, even, you know, the economy of towns and bakers,
• 27:37
  Speaker: the, the people that actually bake the cookies, the bakers.
• 27:40
  Speaker: Yes.
• 27:40
  Speaker: All because of cookies.
• 27:42
  Speaker: So this book with the map in the front, I've referred to it a
• 27:46
  Speaker: couple times since we've been talking also, um, it's almost
• 27:50
  Speaker: like a travelogue in a way of looking at Italy through the
• 27:54
  Speaker: lens of cookies.
• 27:56
  Speaker: Yes, absolutely.
• 27:58
  Speaker: And this is the beautiful thing
• 28:00
  Speaker: about Italy for me is I've been
• 28:02
  Speaker: going there ever since I was
• 28:04
  Speaker: two.
• 28:04
  Speaker: You know, the older I get, the more time I spend there.
• 28:08
  Speaker: And yet every time I go back, I find these new revelations.
• 28:13
  Speaker: And, um, you know, I always thought that by the time I hit
• 28:18
  Speaker: middle age, which I am now, you know, like quite beyond, um, I
• 28:23
  Speaker: would have traveled more in the world, but really, I just am
• 28:28
  Speaker: interested in going back to Italy because although it's a
• 28:31
  Speaker: small country, every region is kind of vast in itself and
• 28:36
  Speaker: there's so much to offer.
• 28:37
  Speaker: And of course, this is due to
• 28:38
  Speaker: the Italy's history and the
• 28:40
  Speaker: many, you know, um, conquering
• 28:43
  Speaker: cultures that, that have come
• 28:44
  Speaker: through it through the
• 28:45
  Speaker: centuries.
• 28:46
  Speaker: And, um, and so there's always something new.
• 28:51
  Speaker: And by that, I mean often I mean something old that I didn't know
• 28:54
  Speaker: about to discover.
• 28:57
  Speaker: And that really was the case with these cookies.
• 29:01
  Speaker: Um, you know, I, I ended up going to some beautiful little
• 29:04
  Speaker: towns that are really just off the, radar off the beaten track.
• 29:10
  Speaker: And for me, it was this a wonderful way of, of seeing
• 29:15
  Speaker: Italy that not many people see because so many people stay on
• 29:21
  Speaker: the beaten path when they're in Italy, they go to Rome.
• 29:24
  Speaker: Florence, you know, Venice, the Amalfi Coast.
• 29:29
  Speaker: Uh, okay.
• 29:30
  Speaker: Now you can add in places like Naples that people, when I was
• 29:33
  Speaker: growing up, nobody wanted to go to Naples because they thought
• 29:36
  Speaker: it wasn't safe.
• 29:37
  Speaker: I had friends from Naples, so I knew what a fabulous, colorful,
• 29:40
  Speaker: vibrant city it it is.
• 29:43
  Speaker: But, um, you know, people are
• 29:45
  Speaker: expanding their horizons in
• 29:47
  Speaker: Italy.
• 29:47
  Speaker: But of course, if you have one, if you're only going to Italy
• 29:51
  Speaker: once, you want to see Venice, you want to see Florence, you
• 29:54
  Speaker: want to see Rome, you want to see the Amalfi Coast.
• 29:56
  Speaker: So I get that people are drawn to these places, but so many of
• 30:02
  Speaker: them are overcrowded now because of the popularity, the growing
• 30:06
  Speaker: popularity of Italy, and also because of the cruise ships,
• 30:08
  Speaker: which really just disgorge thousands and thousands of
• 30:12
  Speaker: people into these towns that really weren't built for this
• 30:16
  Speaker: kind of tourism.
• 30:18
  Speaker: So I really try to steer people in a different direction.
• 30:23
  Speaker: And so you your mention of travelogue is totally, um,
• 30:27
  Speaker: something that I, I wanted this book to be something of an
• 30:31
  Speaker: armchair travel, um, log.
• 30:34
  Speaker: And in the back of the book, I actually list all of the
• 30:36
  Speaker: bakeries that I went to throughout Italy, and some of
• 30:40
  Speaker: them are just little gems.
• 30:43
  Speaker: Um, and some of the towns are as well.
• 30:46
  Speaker: And you know, I'm happy to talk about details if you, um, at
• 30:51
  Speaker: some point want to get into that because they're worth seeing and
• 30:54
  Speaker: they're worth knowing about.
• 30:56
  Speaker: And you really get to experience
• 30:59
  Speaker: Italy in a different way when
• 31:01
  Speaker: you go to a place that It is a
• 31:05
  Speaker: town where people are still
• 31:06
  Speaker: living and, you know, living
• 31:08
  Speaker: their lives and buying their
• 31:09
  Speaker: food and going to work and, you
• 31:12
  Speaker: know, taking their kids to
• 31:13
  Speaker: school.
• 31:14
  Speaker: Um, it's a totally different place in many ways.
• 31:18
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 31:18
  Speaker: No, I would love to talk about if a town comes to mind that we
• 31:22
  Speaker: might dive into a little bit and the cookie that you, something
• 31:26
  Speaker: you found there, or what you discovered about the people and
• 31:30
  Speaker: about the town and about the bakeries that were there.
• 31:33
  Speaker: I think that would be a really fun way to do it, uh, for people
• 31:37
  Speaker: to hear about the depth of this book, because I think that for
• 31:40
  Speaker: my listeners that are really, uh, if you love cookies, first
• 31:43
  Speaker: of all, if you love to learn about food of different cultures
• 31:47
  Speaker: and you want to learn more about Italy, and also if you love to
• 31:50
  Speaker: read cookbooks, this is a beautiful book to do that.
• 31:53
  Speaker: So let's dive into a town.
• 31:54
  Speaker: I'll let you pick which one
• 31:56
  Speaker: comes to mind when you think
• 31:57
  Speaker: about, um, let's do a travelogue
• 32:00
  Speaker: sort of, um, interview here
• 32:02
  Speaker: based on your research and what
• 32:04
  Speaker: you learned by going to this
• 32:06
  Speaker: town.
• 32:07
  Speaker: I'm going to talk to you about a
• 32:08
  Speaker: couple of different towns,
• 32:09
  Speaker: because they really do
• 32:11
  Speaker: illustrate what what I'm trying
• 32:13
  Speaker: to say.
• 32:14
  Speaker: And one of them I want to tell
• 32:16
  Speaker: you about is the town of San
• 32:18
  Speaker: Pellegrino Terme.
• 32:19
  Speaker: I don't know if, um, folks will be able to see this.
• 32:23
  Speaker: Um, as a podcast or if it's just audio.
• 32:27
  Speaker: Um, yeah.
• 32:28
  Speaker: Just audio.
• 32:29
  Speaker: Okay.
• 32:29
  Speaker: Just audio.
• 32:30
  Speaker: So I'm not going.
• 32:31
  Speaker: Okay.
• 32:31
  Speaker: Tell tell them, tell them in case they have a copy of the
• 32:33
  Speaker: book, like what page it's on and then they can look it up.
• 32:36
  Speaker: So these cookies are called
• 32:38
  Speaker: biscotti di San Pellegrino
• 32:40
  Speaker: terme, and they're crescent moon
• 32:41
  Speaker: cookies from the town of San
• 32:43
  Speaker: Pellegrino Terme.
• 32:44
  Speaker: And they're very basic cookies.
• 32:46
  Speaker: They're made with butter, sugar, a little bit of milk, eggs,
• 32:49
  Speaker: vanilla, um, flour, baking soda, and an old fashioned leavening
• 32:54
  Speaker: ingredient called ammonium bicarbonate, which is, um, ooh.
• 32:59
  Speaker: If you take a whiff of that, it'll curl your eyeballs.
• 33:02
  Speaker: But it was.
• 33:03
  Speaker: It's been around since before baking soda and baking powder.
• 33:06
  Speaker: And Italian bakers still use it in some of their cookies.
• 33:09
  Speaker: And it produces a very kind of crispy, crunchy cookie.
• 33:14
  Speaker: And it helps in the browning process.
• 33:16
  Speaker: Um, it really does smell
• 33:19
  Speaker: terrible when you sniff it from
• 33:21
  Speaker: the jar.
• 33:21
  Speaker: I would suggest nobody do that.
• 33:23
  Speaker: But when you bake with it, that
• 33:26
  Speaker: odor dissipates in the oven and
• 33:28
  Speaker: you are left with this lovely
• 33:30
  Speaker: crunchy golden cookie in this
• 33:31
  Speaker: case.
• 33:32
  Speaker: And so, um, I had heard about this cookie.
• 33:35
  Speaker: I was staying in bed Bergamo in Lombardy.
• 33:37
  Speaker: So the north central of Italy
• 33:40
  Speaker: and San Pellegrino is about a
• 33:42
  Speaker: half an hour or so north of
• 33:44
  Speaker: Bergamo, Bergamo.
• 33:45
  Speaker: So I got in my car to drive to
• 33:48
  Speaker: town and it had been raining all
• 33:50
  Speaker: morning.
• 33:50
  Speaker: And as I'm driving this, I'm
• 33:52
  Speaker: driving by the Brembo river,
• 33:54
  Speaker: which is just rushing by me, and
• 33:57
  Speaker: the sun has come out and
• 33:58
  Speaker: everything is kind of all the
• 33:59
  Speaker: leaves and the trees are
• 34:00
  Speaker: sparkling as I'm driving up into
• 34:03
  Speaker: the mountains and I get to town
• 34:05
  Speaker: and there's this big sign
• 34:06
  Speaker: outside of town, San Pellegrino
• 34:08
  Speaker: Terme.
• 34:09
  Speaker: And, um, as I'm driving into
• 34:12
  Speaker: town, I pass this huge bottling
• 34:14
  Speaker: plant and I realized that I'm in
• 34:17
  Speaker: San Pellegrino Terme where the
• 34:19
  Speaker: water, your sparkling water
• 34:21
  Speaker: comes from.
• 34:21
  Speaker: And all of a sudden, you know, I
• 34:23
  Speaker: don't think the soda is produced
• 34:24
  Speaker: there, but this is, you know,
• 34:25
  Speaker: the the spring is there and it's
• 34:28
  Speaker: a spring.
• 34:28
  Speaker: The spring is a it's mineral, sparkling mineral water that
• 34:31
  Speaker: comes out of the spring.
• 34:32
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 34:32
  Speaker: Yes.
• 34:33
  Speaker: And so, um, and this town is spectacular.
• 34:38
  Speaker: It is a beautiful art deco town with spas, um, incredibly
• 34:46
  Speaker: beautiful ornate buildings.
• 34:48
  Speaker: Some of them are closed.
• 34:50
  Speaker: A couple have reopened.
• 34:52
  Speaker: I walked up to the top of this hill and there is an old casino,
• 34:57
  Speaker: um, and an old spa.
• 35:00
  Speaker: The casino is not open, and that's not running anymore.
• 35:02
  Speaker: But the spa has been reopened.
• 35:04
  Speaker: It's gorgeous.
• 35:05
  Speaker: There are people walking outside in the gardens, in Rome's.
• 35:09
  Speaker: They in robes.
• 35:10
  Speaker: They've just had these, you know, spa treatments.
• 35:14
  Speaker: And I felt like I was in a movie.
• 35:16
  Speaker: I mean, it was that beautiful.
• 35:18
  Speaker: So I went to this bakery and I sat down to taste this cookie.
• 35:22
  Speaker: And, you know, here I am in this gorgeous town, and it's probably
• 35:25
  Speaker: one of the plainest cookies you can come across.
• 35:28
  Speaker: You come across in Italy.
• 35:29
  Speaker: But the story behind it is wonderful.
• 35:32
  Speaker: Um, it's been open.
• 35:33
  Speaker: This bakery is called, um,
• 35:35
  Speaker: Biggio, um, named for Luigi
• 35:38
  Speaker: Biggio, the man who invented the
• 35:41
  Speaker: cookie.
• 35:42
  Speaker: And it opened in the nineteen thirties.
• 35:44
  Speaker: He was a traveling puppeteer, and so he used to put on puppet
• 35:48
  Speaker: shows, and he would give out these cookies to the kids who
• 35:51
  Speaker: came to his puppet shows.
• 35:53
  Speaker: And so now you can see his puppets on the wall of this
• 35:56
  Speaker: bakery in this spectacular town.
• 35:59
  Speaker: So I tell people, you know,
• 36:01
  Speaker: people always ask me for a
• 36:02
  Speaker: restaurant recommendations.
• 36:04
  Speaker: I tell them, you know, go to the
• 36:07
  Speaker: bakeries, go see where the local
• 36:09
  Speaker: people buy their breads, buy
• 36:10
  Speaker: bakeries.
• 36:11
  Speaker: I'm not just talking about
• 36:12
  Speaker: pasticceria where you get
• 36:14
  Speaker: cornetti and, you know, fancy
• 36:15
  Speaker: pastries.
• 36:16
  Speaker: I'm talking about the bread bakeries, the pani, the, um, the
• 36:20
  Speaker: forni, the old ovens, the wood fired ovens, because they also
• 36:24
  Speaker: produce cookies and they tend to be very rustic and in character,
• 36:28
  Speaker: and they tend to be very local.
• 36:29
  Speaker: So you really get, um, some local flavor if you're, if you
• 36:34
  Speaker: go to the bakeries, um, that's a really good way to, you know,
• 36:38
  Speaker: get to see, uh, something different in a town.
• 36:43
  Speaker: Um, another town that comes to mind.
• 36:46
  Speaker: There's a town in Lazio, um, called Monti.
• 36:50
  Speaker: Um, um, Monte Porzio Catone.
• 36:54
  Speaker: It's in the Castelli Romani.
• 36:58
  Speaker: So outside of Rome, Rome is
• 37:00
  Speaker: ringed with these Alban, Alban
• 37:02
  Speaker: hills.
• 37:02
  Speaker: And in these hills are various
• 37:05
  Speaker: towns that the Romans used to
• 37:06
  Speaker: escape to, to get away from the
• 37:08
  Speaker: city.
• 37:08
  Speaker: Um, you know, in, in the summer.
• 37:11
  Speaker: And so in one of these towns,
• 37:12
  Speaker: there's a little Pacifico, a
• 37:14
  Speaker: little bakery.
• 37:16
  Speaker: Um, it's more of a sundries shop.
• 37:19
  Speaker: You can buy pasta there and some groceries.
• 37:21
  Speaker: And in the back there's this
• 37:23
  Speaker: small kitchen area and there's a
• 37:25
  Speaker: woman, um, who, uh, has been
• 37:29
  Speaker: making cookies for just many
• 37:32
  Speaker: years.
• 37:32
  Speaker: I mean, she, I think she's the fifth generation, um, of bakers
• 37:37
  Speaker: to make, uh, to make these s shaped cookies and they're great
• 37:42
  Speaker: dunking cookies again.
• 37:43
  Speaker: They're sugar butter, a little bit of citrus zest, flour,
• 37:47
  Speaker: baking powder and salt.
• 37:49
  Speaker: And, um, you know, this this baker's name is Senora Graciela.
• 37:53
  Speaker: Her bakery is Egd.
• 37:55
  Speaker: And so she sits at this bench.
• 37:57
  Speaker: She's got braces on her arms or on her hands from, you know,
• 38:01
  Speaker: repetitive strain injury.
• 38:02
  Speaker: And she pulls pieces off these giant mounds of dough and shapes
• 38:05
  Speaker: them into these esses, puts them on baking trays.
• 38:08
  Speaker: And her son puts them in this big oven in this kitchen.
• 38:11
  Speaker: And they are some of the best cookies.
• 38:14
  Speaker: Again, very simple, but they're
• 38:16
  Speaker: perfect for dunking in your
• 38:18
  Speaker: morning cappuccino.
• 38:19
  Speaker: You know, Italian children often have dunking cookies in the
• 38:23
  Speaker: morning with their caffe latte.
• 38:25
  Speaker: So they have, you know, milk
• 38:26
  Speaker: with a little splash of coffee
• 38:28
  Speaker: in it.
• 38:28
  Speaker: And I just there's a whole
• 38:31
  Speaker: category of dunking cookies in
• 38:32
  Speaker: this book.
• 38:33
  Speaker: And I just have to tell people
• 38:35
  Speaker: that, you know, if you are not
• 38:37
  Speaker: dunking cookies in your morning
• 38:39
  Speaker: coffee or tea, you are missing
• 38:40
  Speaker: out.
• 38:41
  Speaker: It's just such a great little pleasure.
• 38:44
  Speaker: Um, and then finally, I want to
• 38:45
  Speaker: just talk about one more
• 38:46
  Speaker: biscotti, which is Cookie
• 38:48
  Speaker: Bakery.
• 38:49
  Speaker: This one is actually in Rome.
• 38:51
  Speaker: It's called biscotti Fico
• 38:52
  Speaker: Innocenti, and it's a family run
• 38:55
  Speaker: little cookie bakery, um, that
• 38:58
  Speaker: has been around for several
• 39:00
  Speaker: generations.
• 39:01
  Speaker: And it's in the heart of Trastevere, um, which is, uh,
• 39:06
  Speaker: across the Tiber River.
• 39:07
  Speaker: It's a very popular part of Italy now.
• 39:09
  Speaker: It's, um, you know, I think Italy's oldest neighborhood and,
• 39:14
  Speaker: um, this bakery is run by, um, uh, a wonderful woman.
• 39:21
  Speaker: Um, and I'm going to tell you her name Stefania.
• 39:25
  Speaker: And she's, uh, it was, she's
• 39:29
  Speaker: like the second generation to
• 39:30
  Speaker: run it and she bakes all these
• 39:33
  Speaker: cookies herself.
• 39:34
  Speaker: She's got this incredible giant conveyor belt oven that dates to
• 39:38
  Speaker: the early nineteen sixties.
• 39:39
  Speaker: Her mother bought it for the bakery.
• 39:41
  Speaker: Uh, and so this place has become popular in recent years, but to
• 39:47
  Speaker: her, it's a neighborhood bakery.
• 39:49
  Speaker: A lot of neighbors just pop in
• 39:52
  Speaker: when they're passing by, and
• 39:53
  Speaker: they'll sit down on a stool near
• 39:55
  Speaker: the counter, and they'll just
• 39:57
  Speaker: talk to her, and they just kind
• 39:58
  Speaker: of talk about neighborhood
• 40:00
  Speaker: stuff.
• 40:01
  Speaker: And so, um, it's just such a
• 40:03
  Speaker: pleasure to go in there and
• 40:05
  Speaker: spend time and look at her array
• 40:06
  Speaker: of cookies and see her interact
• 40:09
  Speaker: with the locals and think that
• 40:11
  Speaker: here you are in Rome, you know,
• 40:13
  Speaker: one of the most traveled cities
• 40:15
  Speaker: in the world at this bakery that
• 40:18
  Speaker: recently has become, you know,
• 40:20
  Speaker: they've got a good Instagram
• 40:21
  Speaker: following.
• 40:22
  Speaker: People know about them.
• 40:24
  Speaker: But to Stefania, this is still the heart of her neighborhood
• 40:27
  Speaker: and still a neighborhood bakery.
• 40:29
  Speaker: Um, and that's really one of the
• 40:31
  Speaker: things that makes it such a
• 40:32
  Speaker: beautiful place.
• 40:34
  Speaker: She is the heart of it.
• 40:35
  Speaker: She and that oven.
• 40:36
  Speaker: So of course, it's the bakers that and the bakers hands that
• 40:41
  Speaker: make Italian cookies so special.
• 40:43
  Speaker: Just about everywhere I went, there was the human touch.
• 40:47
  Speaker: You know, even if there there were cookies being extruded.
• 40:50
  Speaker: There's a cookie called that's made in Piemonte.
• 40:53
  Speaker: It's this really crunchy,
• 40:56
  Speaker: buttery cookie that's also great
• 40:58
  Speaker: for dunking.
• 40:59
  Speaker: And it's kind of shaped like an upside down mustache.
• 41:02
  Speaker: I believe it's supposed to be a homage to the mustache of King,
• 41:08
  Speaker: um, Umberto the First.
• 41:10
  Speaker: But, you know, these these logs
• 41:13
  Speaker: are extruded onto baking sheets,
• 41:15
  Speaker: and then a baker sits there and
• 41:17
  Speaker: just shapes them all into these
• 41:19
  Speaker: mustache, you know, upside down
• 41:20
  Speaker: U's.
• 41:21
  Speaker: And so this I feel like it's so
• 41:23
  Speaker: important that this human touch
• 41:26
  Speaker: is acknowledged because that's
• 41:27
  Speaker: what makes these cookies
• 41:29
  Speaker: special.
• 41:30
  Speaker: That's what these people who keep doing this work, because
• 41:34
  Speaker: they know how important it is.
• 41:35
  Speaker: They know that the community values what they do.
• 41:39
  Speaker: They've been doing it for generations.
• 41:40
  Speaker: It's it's in their blood.
• 41:41
  Speaker: It's what their families have done.
• 41:43
  Speaker: And they, um, they're proud of their work and they want to keep
• 41:49
  Speaker: these traditions going.
• 41:51
  Speaker: Um, so many of these cookies are tied to tradition, to tradition.
• 41:55
  Speaker: And I think that's the beauty of them.
• 41:57
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 41:57
  Speaker: It's amazing.
• 41:58
  Speaker: And I think, um, do you feel that any of this is at risk in
• 42:01
  Speaker: twenty twenty six?
• 42:03
  Speaker: Or is this something that communities in Italy are really
• 42:06
  Speaker: and families too, and people are really committed to?
• 42:10
  Speaker: That's such a good question.
• 42:12
  Speaker: And I would say probably a little of each.
• 42:15
  Speaker: Now look, there's there are mass produced cookies in Italy.
• 42:18
  Speaker: There's a brand called Mulino Bianco, which means White Mill,
• 42:22
  Speaker: um, like, you know, millstone.
• 42:25
  Speaker: And um, and they are in every supermarket in Italy.
• 42:29
  Speaker: They just, they're, they make so many, they take these
• 42:31
  Speaker: traditional cookies and they make, you know, they have mass
• 42:34
  Speaker: produced versions of them.
• 42:35
  Speaker: So they have mass produced
• 42:36
  Speaker: comedy and other types of
• 42:37
  Speaker: cookies.
• 42:38
  Speaker: And Italians love them.
• 42:42
  Speaker: But at the same time, these, um,
• 42:45
  Speaker: you know, independent little
• 42:46
  Speaker: bakeries still exist and still
• 42:49
  Speaker: persist.
• 42:50
  Speaker: I am sure that many have closed over the years.
• 42:53
  Speaker: You know, I'm sure that we've lost a lot of them, but I also
• 42:58
  Speaker: feel like Italians as a people appreciate these traditions,
• 43:03
  Speaker: these traditions live inside them, and they really want to
• 43:06
  Speaker: keep them alive.
• 43:08
  Speaker: You know, the way that religious traditions persist and festivals
• 43:13
  Speaker: persist and rituals persist.
• 43:16
  Speaker: Um, I think Italians really appreciate what they have.
• 43:20
  Speaker: Um, and children grow up
• 43:24
  Speaker: participating in these
• 43:26
  Speaker: festivals.
• 43:27
  Speaker: There's a cookie called Pastorelli di San Nicolo from a
• 43:32
  Speaker: beautiful medieval town in Umbria called Bevagna.
• 43:36
  Speaker: And um, every December sixth, I
• 43:40
  Speaker: believe it is the feast of San
• 43:41
  Speaker: Nicolo.
• 43:42
  Speaker: There's a. Somebody from town
• 43:45
  Speaker: dresses up as Saint Nicholas and
• 43:47
  Speaker: hands out these anise cookies to
• 43:49
  Speaker: the children at the gates of the
• 43:51
  Speaker: town.
• 43:52
  Speaker: And so children are still raised with these traditions.
• 43:55
  Speaker: And I think that's what helps keep them alive.
• 43:58
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 43:58
  Speaker: I mean, for sure, because when
• 44:00
  Speaker: you have those types of
• 44:01
  Speaker: traditions scattered throughout
• 44:03
  Speaker: the entire year and there's
• 44:05
  Speaker: different things associated with
• 44:07
  Speaker: it, or little towns are known
• 44:08
  Speaker: for different things, it does
• 44:10
  Speaker: keep it alive because it goes
• 44:12
  Speaker: from the children to the adults,
• 44:14
  Speaker: you know, through the
• 44:14
  Speaker: grandparents.
• 44:15
  Speaker: It's something that runs through the family and then it's
• 44:19
  Speaker: perpetuated through the family.
• 44:22
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 44:23
  Speaker: And it's the, you know, these towns, these traditions are the
• 44:26
  Speaker: souls of these towns.
• 44:28
  Speaker: And even if there are people who have left town for the city,
• 44:33
  Speaker: they often come back for these festivals and these annual
• 44:37
  Speaker: traditions because it's so important to them.
• 44:40
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 44:40
  Speaker: And I'm sure your parents even perpetuated some of them with
• 44:43
  Speaker: you growing up and being raised even in new Jersey.
• 44:47
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 44:48
  Speaker: For sure.
• 44:48
  Speaker: Yeah, yeah.
• 44:49
  Speaker: And the same for I bet everybody
• 44:51
  Speaker: that's listening has a story,
• 44:52
  Speaker: hopefully like that where
• 44:54
  Speaker: family, um, continued a
• 44:56
  Speaker: tradition.
• 44:57
  Speaker: Um, or there was a festival or,
• 44:59
  Speaker: you know, even here in Kentucky,
• 45:01
  Speaker: there's things around food and
• 45:02
  Speaker: things that happen that people
• 45:04
  Speaker: celebrate related to traditions
• 45:07
  Speaker: that we have related to food,
• 45:09
  Speaker: you know, country ham, fried
• 45:11
  Speaker: chicken, biscuits.
• 45:12
  Speaker: There's bourbon.
• 45:13
  Speaker: I mean, there's all kinds of things.
• 45:14
  Speaker: And I think that when you look
• 45:16
  Speaker: at a culture and you look at a
• 45:17
  Speaker: place and you look at their
• 45:20
  Speaker: food, so much of it is tied to
• 45:22
  Speaker: the tradition.
• 45:24
  Speaker: One hundred percent yes.
• 45:25
  Speaker: Study of these cookies and the traditions in Italy.
• 45:29
  Speaker: I mean, it's just fascinating.
• 45:30
  Speaker: And like I said, what an amazing
• 45:32
  Speaker: topic because you probably could
• 45:33
  Speaker: have written this book about
• 45:35
  Speaker: olive oil or and get the same
• 45:37
  Speaker: depth.
• 45:38
  Speaker: Like there's possibly traditions, uh, cultures.
• 45:42
  Speaker: You're looking through a different lens though.
• 45:44
  Speaker: I think that's the thing that makes this book neat.
• 45:47
  Speaker: And a lot of your books actually is your willingness to look at
• 45:50
  Speaker: Italy or a part of Italy through a certain lens, which is a
• 45:54
  Speaker: certain type of food.
• 45:56
  Speaker: Yeah, I think I, you know, I started with the soups and stews
• 46:00
  Speaker: book and I, I soup is probably my favorite food.
• 46:04
  Speaker: I absolutely love it.
• 46:05
  Speaker: You know, pasta and chicken broth was my first solid food
• 46:08
  Speaker: and it'll probably be my last solid food when I've lost all my
• 46:12
  Speaker: teeth, you know, but, um, or a Dunkin cookie, maybe because
• 46:15
  Speaker: that'll be nice and soft too.
• 46:17
  Speaker: But, um, I've always enjoyed exploring Italy through its food
• 46:22
  Speaker: and through these, you know, pasta, vegetables, um,
• 46:26
  Speaker: preserving that, that was another one that was full of
• 46:29
  Speaker: history and tradition.
• 46:31
  Speaker: But it's funny because of all my books.
• 46:35
  Speaker: I feel like this seemingly frivolous subject of cookies has
• 46:40
  Speaker: really been the deepest dive.
• 46:43
  Speaker: Um, and that was so surprising to me and so rewarding.
• 46:49
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 46:49
  Speaker: And I think that sometimes when we are willing to look at a
• 46:54
  Speaker: place through some, a new something that's almost new and
• 46:57
  Speaker: surprising, like you get in that bag of cookies when you were
• 46:59
  Speaker: traveling and just like, like opens your eyes to a whole new
• 47:03
  Speaker: way of seeing things.
• 47:05
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 47:05
  Speaker: And, um, let's talk to the people who are listening that
• 47:08
  Speaker: actually want to dive in as a baker in this book.
• 47:12
  Speaker: Um, yes.
• 47:13
  Speaker: So read, but let's, let's, um,
• 47:16
  Speaker: share with them, you, you shared
• 47:17
  Speaker: a couple of ingredients that
• 47:18
  Speaker: might be unique, some things
• 47:20
  Speaker: about the book, the cookies that
• 47:22
  Speaker: are actually sort of like, you
• 47:23
  Speaker: know, flour and sugar and
• 47:25
  Speaker: butter, but what else would you
• 47:27
  Speaker: like to tell someone that
• 47:30
  Speaker: actually wants to bake from this
• 47:33
  Speaker: book?
• 47:34
  Speaker: Yeah, I think this book will
• 47:36
  Speaker: teach you a lot of baking
• 47:37
  Speaker: techniques, and it will kind of
• 47:39
  Speaker: reveal some surprising things
• 47:41
  Speaker: about ingredients.
• 47:43
  Speaker: So like all of Italian cooking cookies are regional.
• 47:48
  Speaker: So in the north you have hazelnuts.
• 47:50
  Speaker: In the cookies, there's bocce di dama, which are very popular.
• 47:54
  Speaker: They're these buttery little buttons that are sandwiched
• 47:57
  Speaker: together with chocolate.
• 47:58
  Speaker: And you can either make them
• 48:00
  Speaker: with ground almonds or ground
• 48:01
  Speaker: hazelnuts.
• 48:01
  Speaker: And I make them with hazelnuts because that is what Piedmont
• 48:05
  Speaker: is, is really famous for these buttery crispy hazelnuts.
• 48:10
  Speaker: And um, and there are just almost like shortbread.
• 48:14
  Speaker: They melt in your mouth and they're so good.
• 48:16
  Speaker: And you get out to the Veneto and you find cornmeal in the
• 48:19
  Speaker: cookies because that's where corn is grown.
• 48:23
  Speaker: You head south and you find, um, less butter in the dough.
• 48:29
  Speaker: Olive oil starts to be in, you know, enter the picture as an
• 48:33
  Speaker: ingredient and also wine.
• 48:35
  Speaker: There are numerous cookies in this book that have wine in the
• 48:38
  Speaker: batter, in the dough.
• 48:39
  Speaker: And it, um, lends a fruitiness
• 48:42
  Speaker: and an underlying flavor to the
• 48:44
  Speaker: cookie.
• 48:44
  Speaker: But it also helps, I think, turn it nice and crisp.
• 48:47
  Speaker: Um, there's some really good
• 48:48
  Speaker: crunchy, crispy olive oil and
• 48:51
  Speaker: wine cookies.
• 48:52
  Speaker: And then, um, you see almonds throughout.
• 48:55
  Speaker: I mean, amaretti you find them
• 48:57
  Speaker: from Piemonte all the way down
• 48:59
  Speaker: to Puglia and Calabria, the toe
• 49:02
  Speaker: of the boot, and then out to the
• 49:04
  Speaker: islands.
• 49:05
  Speaker: But they are especially important in the cookies of
• 49:08
  Speaker: Sardinia and Sicily.
• 49:10
  Speaker: I mean, with the exception of
• 49:12
  Speaker: like, cannoli and a couple of
• 49:14
  Speaker: other, um, pastries, uh, almonds
• 49:18
  Speaker: are the base of almost every
• 49:19
  Speaker: confection and sweet in Sicily
• 49:22
  Speaker: and Sardinia, and cookies are no
• 49:24
  Speaker: exception.
• 49:25
  Speaker: And so there are several
• 49:26
  Speaker: amaretti and, um, almond based
• 49:29
  Speaker: cookies, and they differ in the
• 49:31
  Speaker: sense that, you know, either the
• 49:33
  Speaker: almond, you either start with
• 49:35
  Speaker: almond flour or you start with
• 49:36
  Speaker: ground almonds.
• 49:37
  Speaker: And then, you know, whether you
• 49:38
  Speaker: toast the almonds or not,
• 49:39
  Speaker: whether they're finely ground or
• 49:41
  Speaker: more coarsely ground, the ratio
• 49:43
  Speaker: of egg white to sugar to almonds
• 49:47
  Speaker: makes a difference in the
• 49:48
  Speaker: texture.
• 49:49
  Speaker: Whether you pipe them or roll
• 49:50
  Speaker: them into balls, it makes a
• 49:52
  Speaker: difference in the texture,
• 49:53
  Speaker: whether you add a little splash
• 49:55
  Speaker: of orange blossom water or some
• 49:57
  Speaker: orange or lemon zest makes a
• 49:59
  Speaker: difference in difference in the
• 50:00
  Speaker: flavor, how long you bake them,
• 50:02
  Speaker: and at what temperature you
• 50:04
  Speaker: know, it makes a difference in
• 50:05
  Speaker: the texture.
• 50:06
  Speaker: So technique really does play a big part in, um, in the way
• 50:11
  Speaker: these cookies turn out.
• 50:12
  Speaker: When I was going through the
• 50:14
  Speaker: table of contents and deciding
• 50:16
  Speaker: which cookies I wanted to
• 50:17
  Speaker: include, I thought, well, gosh,
• 50:19
  Speaker: you know, I have a lot of
• 50:21
  Speaker: amaretti recipes.
• 50:22
  Speaker: Do I really want all of those?
• 50:23
  Speaker: But it turns out they're all quite different.
• 50:26
  Speaker: Um, there's one from Abruzzo
• 50:28
  Speaker: from one of my favorite little
• 50:29
  Speaker: bakeries in this beautiful
• 50:30
  Speaker: mountain town of Scanno where
• 50:33
  Speaker: he, um, he makes big, fat,
• 50:34
  Speaker: rustic amaretti.
• 50:36
  Speaker: And he also makes a chocolate version where he puts cocoa
• 50:38
  Speaker: powder in it.
• 50:39
  Speaker: And so that makes it a completely different cookie.
• 50:42
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 50:42
  Speaker: So all of these things, um, I think bakers will find
• 50:46
  Speaker: fascinating and fun.
• 50:48
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 50:49
  Speaker: So to help people with the
• 50:50
  Speaker: travelogue part of the book and
• 50:51
  Speaker: then diving into the cookies,
• 50:53
  Speaker: that's how the chapters are
• 50:54
  Speaker: divided is by cookies of the
• 50:55
  Speaker: North, cookies of central Italy,
• 50:57
  Speaker: the South.
• 50:58
  Speaker: And you mentioned how the ingredients change based on
• 51:00
  Speaker: whether you're closer to the Alps or you're getting, you
• 51:03
  Speaker: know, further down into the toe of the boot, so to speak.
• 51:07
  Speaker: But you have one hundred recipes for cookies.
• 51:10
  Speaker: So you talk about an opportunity
• 51:11
  Speaker: to change what's on your cookie
• 51:13
  Speaker: plate.
• 51:14
  Speaker: Um, one hundred recipes, I mean, can make a cookie a week for the
• 51:19
  Speaker: next two years.
• 51:20
  Speaker: And just at that point, you
• 51:23
  Speaker: know, finish the cookies in this
• 51:25
  Speaker: book.
• 51:26
  Speaker: It's an incredible depth of information to.
• 51:28
  Speaker: And a variety of cookies.
• 51:30
  Speaker: But you have mentioned there are certain cookies that like the
• 51:32
  Speaker: amaretti, the biscotti that we see in many of the chapters and
• 51:38
  Speaker: from many different towns.
• 51:39
  Speaker: But I guess what you're saying then is that they change maybe
• 51:42
  Speaker: one ingredient, or they change the time that they bake it, or
• 51:46
  Speaker: they change the embellishment, or they change the oil that's in
• 51:50
  Speaker: it to make it a different cookie based on that town.
• 51:54
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 51:54
  Speaker: I mean, I think based on the town or the area or, you know,
• 51:58
  Speaker: and the ingredients, um, that, that they have in that area.
• 52:03
  Speaker: And the other thing is, you
• 52:04
  Speaker: know, you mentioned
• 52:05
  Speaker: embellishments.
• 52:06
  Speaker: So there are a lot of embellishments.
• 52:08
  Speaker: Um, in fact, there's a. So yes, you mentioned that the book is
• 52:12
  Speaker: divided into chapters, cookies in the north, cookies of central
• 52:15
  Speaker: Italy, cookies in south cookies of the islands.
• 52:18
  Speaker: And then there's a basics and embellishment chapter where I
• 52:21
  Speaker: have a recipe for a master pasta frolla, which is the basic
• 52:24
  Speaker: butter dough and a chocolate version of it.
• 52:28
  Speaker: But then also things like
• 52:29
  Speaker: candied orange peel or citrus
• 52:32
  Speaker: peel that you see in so many
• 52:33
  Speaker: Italian cookies.
• 52:35
  Speaker: There's several spice mixes, and
• 52:38
  Speaker: some of these date to medieval
• 52:39
  Speaker: times that are used in various
• 52:41
  Speaker: cookies.
• 52:43
  Speaker: And there's a spice mix that is called Pista Napoletano, which
• 52:47
  Speaker: is a Neapolitan spice mix.
• 52:50
  Speaker: And that's got, um, uh, cloves and star anise and coriander and
• 52:57
  Speaker: black peppercorn and cinnamon.
• 52:59
  Speaker: And then there's a spice mix from Sardinia called La Sapori.
• 53:03
  Speaker: Um, and although I believe it was originally um in Piedmont,
• 53:09
  Speaker: um it made its way out to Sardinia and that has aniseed
• 53:14
  Speaker: and caraway seed, which I found a really surprising ingredient,
• 53:18
  Speaker: whole cloves, coriander seeds and um, and nutmeg and
• 53:22
  Speaker: everything is kind of graded.
• 53:24
  Speaker: So, um, there's um an ingredient called mosto cotto, which is
• 53:29
  Speaker: grape must syrup.
• 53:31
  Speaker: So you start with, you know,
• 53:32
  Speaker: freshly pressed grape juice and
• 53:34
  Speaker: you just cook it down with
• 53:36
  Speaker: nothing added until it's this
• 53:38
  Speaker: syrupy consistent.
• 53:40
  Speaker: And that went into a lot of southern cookies before sugar
• 53:43
  Speaker: was a common ingredient.
• 53:45
  Speaker: So there's all of these, um, kind of regional touches that
• 53:50
  Speaker: really, um, are, are an expression of the territory and
• 53:55
  Speaker: that really, um, add to the great diversity of the cookies
• 54:00
  Speaker: in, in Italian baking.
• 54:02
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 54:03
  Speaker: Amazing.
• 54:03
  Speaker: And it's so nice to have that chapter at the end.
• 54:06
  Speaker: And then of course, it's in the beginning, you're talking about
• 54:10
  Speaker: ingredients people might want to have on hand because there are
• 54:12
  Speaker: some things that maybe would be a little bit different from
• 54:15
  Speaker: normal cookie baking.
• 54:16
  Speaker: You mentioned the aluminum bicarbonate.
• 54:18
  Speaker: I know you've mentioned cornmeal.
• 54:20
  Speaker: Uh, you've mentioned now these
• 54:21
  Speaker: embellishments that people can
• 54:23
  Speaker: actually make and keep on hand
• 54:24
  Speaker: to truly stock your kitchen in a
• 54:26
  Speaker: way that you could be an Italian
• 54:29
  Speaker: cookie baker.
• 54:31
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 54:32
  Speaker: Um, yes.
• 54:33
  Speaker: So I will say the one thing I splurge on is the nuts.
• 54:38
  Speaker: You can definitely make Baci di dama with Oregon hazelnuts that
• 54:42
  Speaker: you get at Trader Joe's.
• 54:43
  Speaker: You can certainly make, um, any
• 54:46
  Speaker: of the amaretti with, uh,
• 54:48
  Speaker: California almonds.
• 54:50
  Speaker: Um, that's, you know, I use a
• 54:52
  Speaker: little bit of almond extract to
• 54:54
  Speaker: enhance the almond flavor
• 54:55
  Speaker: because I love that flavor so
• 54:57
  Speaker: much, but I do often splurge on
• 55:00
  Speaker: Sicilian almonds because they
• 55:03
  Speaker: are distinct.
• 55:04
  Speaker: They have a distinctly pronounced almond flavor.
• 55:07
  Speaker: If you bite and chew up a
• 55:10
  Speaker: Sicilian almond, you taste that
• 55:13
  Speaker: sweetness.
• 55:14
  Speaker: You taste that bitterness.
• 55:16
  Speaker: You understand where that flavor of almond extract comes from.
• 55:20
  Speaker: They are not cheap.
• 55:22
  Speaker: I mean, you know, they you can get them online.
• 55:25
  Speaker: Um, I have sources in the book for where you can get them.
• 55:29
  Speaker: Um, some people splurge on fancy cars.
• 55:32
  Speaker: You know, I drive a thirteen year old Fiat five hundred and I
• 55:36
  Speaker: buy expensive nuts.
• 55:38
  Speaker: So. But, you know, you can for sure make these cookies with the
• 55:42
  Speaker: ingredients you have on hand.
• 55:43
  Speaker: I tested all of the recipes here in the US because obviously it's
• 55:47
  Speaker: important for people to be able to, you know, replicate these
• 55:50
  Speaker: recipes in their own kitchen.
• 55:52
  Speaker: Um, but I, I do, if you know, if you are up for a little splurge
• 55:57
  Speaker: every now and then, I urge you to try Sicilian almonds and
• 56:02
  Speaker: hazelnuts from Piemonte because, um, they're incredible.
• 56:08
  Speaker: And if you taste them side by
• 56:09
  Speaker: side, you see, you can taste a
• 56:11
  Speaker: real difference.
• 56:13
  Speaker: Yeah, I think that's neat to see in the resource section is um,
• 56:16
  Speaker: covers everything from where you can get the nuts.
• 56:18
  Speaker: Grape must leaf lard, which you use in some of the cookies.
• 56:23
  Speaker: Yeah, that's an old fashioned ingredient that not a lot, but
• 56:27
  Speaker: some cookies still use.
• 56:28
  Speaker: And yeah, in some recipes I substituted butter, but there
• 56:32
  Speaker: were a few where I really felt it was important to have the
• 56:36
  Speaker: lard at least as an option.
• 56:38
  Speaker: Yeah, for for sure.
• 56:39
  Speaker: That's wonderful.
• 56:40
  Speaker: And something that you've said a
• 56:42
  Speaker: little while ago when we were
• 56:43
  Speaker: talking about your Substack
• 56:45
  Speaker: newsletter and what that allowed
• 56:47
  Speaker: you to do was be consistent
• 56:49
  Speaker: consistently, uh, writing and,
• 56:53
  Speaker: and I believe that people that
• 56:54
  Speaker: are food writers that are
• 56:55
  Speaker: consistently writing are
• 56:57
  Speaker: probably also consistently
• 56:59
  Speaker: thinking about maybe the next
• 57:00
  Speaker: book.
• 57:01
  Speaker: I think it's one of the cornerstones of being a prolific
• 57:06
  Speaker: cookbook author is always immersed in whatever it is
• 57:09
  Speaker: you're cooking or baking or wanting to talk about, and on a
• 57:13
  Speaker: regular basis, producing some kind of content for people.
• 57:15
  Speaker: So how's your life built in routine?
• 57:18
  Speaker: Like your routines or your
• 57:19
  Speaker: habits around this consistency
• 57:21
  Speaker: for writing?
• 57:23
  Speaker: Oh gosh.
• 57:25
  Speaker: Um, so I, I guess I, I'm trying
• 57:30
  Speaker: to think if I write every day, I
• 57:33
  Speaker: would say I try to write a
• 57:34
  Speaker: little every day, but a lot of
• 57:37
  Speaker: the time I spend actually
• 57:40
  Speaker: thinking I, I know people think
• 57:43
  Speaker: if you're sitting there and not
• 57:44
  Speaker: doing anything, you're not
• 57:45
  Speaker: working.
• 57:45
  Speaker: But a lot of the process is mental.
• 57:48
  Speaker: And I've learned to accept that I have to spend a chunk of time
• 57:53
  Speaker: just thinking about things and working them out in my head,
• 57:57
  Speaker: what story I want to tell, what recipe I want to share.
• 58:00
  Speaker: You know, I read a lot.
• 58:02
  Speaker: Um, I think when I, I take long walks every day and I think when
• 58:06
  Speaker: I do those and, um, so that's a whole process for me.
• 58:10
  Speaker: And often by the time I sit down
• 58:13
  Speaker: to write towards the end of the
• 58:15
  Speaker: week.
• 58:15
  Speaker: I've written a lot in my head already.
• 58:18
  Speaker: So that's how my process goes.
• 58:20
  Speaker: Goes.
• 58:21
  Speaker: I know that everybody's process is a little bit different, and
• 58:25
  Speaker: some people write and revise, write and revise.
• 58:29
  Speaker: I tend to write a lot in my head and edit in my head, even before
• 58:34
  Speaker: I sit down to write.
• 58:35
  Speaker: And I've always been that way.
• 58:38
  Speaker: And I don't necessarily love it
• 58:40
  Speaker: as a, as a technique or a habit,
• 58:43
  Speaker: but it's just the way my brain
• 58:46
  Speaker: works.
• 58:47
  Speaker: And, um, it's just the way I,
• 58:51
  Speaker: you know, I need to get to a
• 58:52
  Speaker: certain point before I can
• 58:53
  Speaker: finally sit down and, and do the
• 58:54
  Speaker: writing.
• 58:55
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 58:55
  Speaker: And I guess I'm assuming if you're walking and thinking
• 58:58
  Speaker: you're not listening to an audiobook or you're not, you
• 59:01
  Speaker: know, listening to a podcast necessarily all the time, you
• 59:04
  Speaker: actually are leaving that space open to be able to think while
• 59:08
  Speaker: you're moving or maybe while you're in the car.
• 59:11
  Speaker: And then also you mentioned something called your reading.
• 59:13
  Speaker: I think that I've often heard the most successful and most
• 59:17
  Speaker: prolific writers are also reading a lot.
• 59:21
  Speaker: And some people may think, well, I shouldn't be reading other
• 59:24
  Speaker: things if I'm trying to write, because what if I copy?
• 59:28
  Speaker: Like, what if somehow an idea like pops into my head from
• 59:31
  Speaker: them, but it's not really mine?
• 59:32
  Speaker: But when we read a lot, that's just one way that we inform
• 59:37
  Speaker: ourselves about things.
• 59:39
  Speaker: And I always imagine it like everything's kind of going into
• 59:42
  Speaker: a blender in my mind, and kind of getting all churned up with
• 59:45
  Speaker: my own original thoughts.
• 59:47
  Speaker: And then what comes out in writing or in the way I talk is
• 59:52
  Speaker: it's truly mine.
• 59:53
  Speaker: It's a, um, and these recipes
• 59:56
  Speaker: that you're sharing, you didn't
• 59:58
  Speaker: develop all of these on your
• 59:59
  Speaker: own.
• 1:00:01
  Speaker: You're sharing, right?
• 1:00:03
  Speaker: There are many, they came about through many different ways.
• 1:00:07
  Speaker: Um, but yeah, I think the, um, the reading is, you know, I was,
• 1:00:13
  Speaker: I was an English major, so, um, in college and so, and I still
• 1:00:17
  Speaker: am a voracious reader.
• 1:00:19
  Speaker: I usually have two or three books going at a time.
• 1:00:22
  Speaker: You know, I read, print, I read Kindle, I read, I listen to
• 1:00:25
  Speaker: audiobooks, um, I all of it.
• 1:00:28
  Speaker: And I can never get enough.
• 1:00:30
  Speaker: And so, and they're not necessarily books about food.
• 1:00:34
  Speaker: Um, like, you know, I, I, I love fiction and, um, and so I tend
• 1:00:41
  Speaker: to read and listen to that.
• 1:00:44
  Speaker: Um, and then in terms of recipe development, yeah, some of these
• 1:00:49
  Speaker: I've known, you know, I've, I've known these recipes or recipes
• 1:00:52
  Speaker: similar to them for many years.
• 1:00:53
  Speaker: Some of them are classics like,
• 1:00:55
  Speaker: you know, the little piped
• 1:00:56
  Speaker: butter cookies, um, the Viennese
• 1:00:59
  Speaker: style cookies.
• 1:00:59
  Speaker: Those are classic Cantucci are classics.
• 1:01:03
  Speaker: Some I've got some old Italian
• 1:01:05
  Speaker: cookbooks that I use for
• 1:01:07
  Speaker: reference or as a starting
• 1:01:08
  Speaker: point.
• 1:01:09
  Speaker: I've gone online and looked at, you know, modern recipes.
• 1:01:13
  Speaker: Um, some recipes were my mom's,
• 1:01:15
  Speaker: some recipes were given to me by
• 1:01:17
  Speaker: the bakers.
• 1:01:17
  Speaker: And then I just kind of tested them and, and revised them, um,
• 1:01:22
  Speaker: you know, here in my kitchen.
• 1:01:23
  Speaker: And so it was just a process of, of all of those different ways.
• 1:01:28
  Speaker: Yeah, yeah.
• 1:01:29
  Speaker: And I think that that's the amazing thing about it because
• 1:01:31
  Speaker: then you pull it together into your body of work, surrounded by
• 1:01:35
  Speaker: the stories of these people in Italy and these bakeries in
• 1:01:38
  Speaker: Italy and the, you know, the, the, the culture of Italy, the
• 1:01:43
  Speaker: history of Italy all through this cookie lens.
• 1:01:46
  Speaker: What one other question I had about your work and your
• 1:01:49
  Speaker: research is tell us about the role of talking to people and
• 1:01:52
  Speaker: being willing to ask questions.
• 1:01:54
  Speaker: Because as a journalist, that's like a big part of it.
• 1:01:57
  Speaker: And I can see how that a skill
• 1:02:00
  Speaker: that you have would be an
• 1:02:01
  Speaker: advantage for writing a book
• 1:02:03
  Speaker: like this.
• 1:02:04
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 1:02:05
  Speaker: That was, um, Essential to this book, and in fact, it was
• 1:02:09
  Speaker: essential to cracking the code for the editorial.
• 1:02:13
  Speaker: That first butter cookie that I tasted.
• 1:02:16
  Speaker: Um, I had, um, there's a recipe for this cookie in one of my old
• 1:02:21
  Speaker: Italian baking books.
• 1:02:23
  Speaker: Um, the town of Torriglia
• 1:02:26
  Speaker: actually has a master recipe
• 1:02:28
  Speaker: that they, you can find it
• 1:02:29
  Speaker: online.
• 1:02:30
  Speaker: It's just four ingredients
• 1:02:32
  Speaker: flour, sugar, butter, and egg
• 1:02:34
  Speaker: yolks.
• 1:02:35
  Speaker: And it's just how you employ those ingredients.
• 1:02:39
  Speaker: That is what makes the cookie.
• 1:02:40
  Speaker: And so I interviewed some bakers from Torriglia, but I spent time
• 1:02:45
  Speaker: with one in particular.
• 1:02:46
  Speaker: Her family owns this lovely little great grocery in town,
• 1:02:50
  Speaker: and they've owned it since the end of the nineteenth century.
• 1:02:53
  Speaker: So it was, you know, started by
• 1:02:54
  Speaker: her grandfather or great
• 1:02:56
  Speaker: grandfather.
• 1:02:57
  Speaker: Um, and she so she is now the cookie baker, her mother, who
• 1:03:02
  Speaker: was quite elderly, runs the store of the shop, and she bakes
• 1:03:06
  Speaker: the cookies across the street in this bakery that she has this,
• 1:03:10
  Speaker: uh, working kitchen.
• 1:03:12
  Speaker: And, um, and so I was interviewing her one day and we
• 1:03:17
  Speaker: were talking and I was just observing her as she made the
• 1:03:21
  Speaker: dough for the cookies.
• 1:03:22
  Speaker: And she didn't share her recipe, which I was fine with.
• 1:03:25
  Speaker: No. Several of the bakers didn't
• 1:03:27
  Speaker: want to share their recipes, and
• 1:03:28
  Speaker: I have no problem with that
• 1:03:30
  Speaker: because this is their
• 1:03:31
  Speaker: livelihood.
• 1:03:31
  Speaker: And you know, as the baker and
• 1:03:33
  Speaker: told me, um, he never shares his
• 1:03:36
  Speaker: recipes because the bakery is
• 1:03:39
  Speaker: his livelihood.
• 1:03:40
  Speaker: It's going to be the livelihood of his three sons.
• 1:03:43
  Speaker: And, you know, I, I respect that and the same with this baker in
• 1:03:48
  Speaker: Torreglia also, um, you know what she does in her bakery?
• 1:03:52
  Speaker: Um, I can't replicate one hundred percent.
• 1:03:56
  Speaker: I try to get as close to it as I can.
• 1:03:58
  Speaker: But while I was observing her, I noticed the way she mixed the
• 1:04:02
  Speaker: The ingredients and the order in which you mix them.
• 1:04:06
  Speaker: When we make a butter cookie
• 1:04:07
  Speaker: dough here in the US, we tend to
• 1:04:09
  Speaker: cream the butter in the sugar
• 1:04:11
  Speaker: and then add the eggs and then
• 1:04:12
  Speaker: the dry ingredients with this
• 1:04:14
  Speaker: cookie.
• 1:04:15
  Speaker: She creamed the egg yolks and the sugar until it was very
• 1:04:20
  Speaker: light and foamy and fluffy.
• 1:04:23
  Speaker: And then she added the butter a little bit at a time, like
• 1:04:28
  Speaker: almost like a butter cream.
• 1:04:30
  Speaker: And then she added the dry ingredients.
• 1:04:32
  Speaker: And it was then, as I observed this technique that I realized
• 1:04:36
  Speaker: that is what contributes this crispy, crumbly, delicate melt
• 1:04:43
  Speaker: in your mouth texture.
• 1:04:45
  Speaker: And I was finally able to replicate them to my
• 1:04:48
  Speaker: satisfaction at home.
• 1:04:50
  Speaker: So it's those, you know, uh,
• 1:04:53
  Speaker: those skills of observing and
• 1:04:55
  Speaker: paying attention that were
• 1:04:58
  Speaker: really important to, um, to
• 1:05:01
  Speaker: making to executing these
• 1:05:04
  Speaker: recipes.
• 1:05:05
  Speaker: Well, um, yeah.
• 1:05:07
  Speaker: And, you know, going to these
• 1:05:08
  Speaker: places, talking to the bakers
• 1:05:10
  Speaker: and there were for sure bakers
• 1:05:12
  Speaker: who were happy to share their
• 1:05:13
  Speaker: recipes.
• 1:05:14
  Speaker: And so I would take their
• 1:05:16
  Speaker: recipes and then test them in my
• 1:05:18
  Speaker: kitchen and tweak them as
• 1:05:20
  Speaker: needed.
• 1:05:21
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 1:05:21
  Speaker: And when we're testing and
• 1:05:22
  Speaker: writing recipes, we observe our
• 1:05:24
  Speaker: own work and we pay attention to
• 1:05:26
  Speaker: what we're doing and we write
• 1:05:27
  Speaker: that down.
• 1:05:28
  Speaker: So it makes total sense that when you're looking at what
• 1:05:31
  Speaker: someone else is doing, just by watching them and paying
• 1:05:35
  Speaker: attention to what they're doing, how much we can learn from that.
• 1:05:38
  Speaker: For sure.
• 1:05:39
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 1:05:39
  Speaker: Just like going to a cooking class, you know, we might get
• 1:05:41
  Speaker: the printed recipe as part of the class, but the but, you
• 1:05:44
  Speaker: know, watching someone in person makes something, um, speaks
• 1:05:47
  Speaker: about it in a way that the written recipe hopefully will be
• 1:05:51
  Speaker: able to duplicate it.
• 1:05:53
  Speaker: But there's still something
• 1:05:54
  Speaker: about watching somebody in
• 1:05:55
  Speaker: person that kind of like, yeah,
• 1:05:57
  Speaker: you just see them do that little
• 1:05:58
  Speaker: thing.
• 1:05:58
  Speaker: You're like, oh my gosh, that
• 1:05:59
  Speaker: like opened up a whole new, um,
• 1:06:02
  Speaker: idea for me when I saw them
• 1:06:04
  Speaker: doing that.
• 1:06:04
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 1:06:05
  Speaker: And also people forget that they
• 1:06:07
  Speaker: are active participants in the
• 1:06:09
  Speaker: recipe.
• 1:06:10
  Speaker: You know, you are reading my
• 1:06:11
  Speaker: recipe, but you're making it in
• 1:06:13
  Speaker: your kitchen.
• 1:06:14
  Speaker: Your oven is different from mine.
• 1:06:17
  Speaker: Um, you know, I used a certain flour that I tested everything
• 1:06:21
  Speaker: with King Arthur flour, but then, you know, there's some
• 1:06:24
  Speaker: pastry flour in there as well.
• 1:06:26
  Speaker: And there are ingredients that
• 1:06:27
  Speaker: aren't going to be exactly the
• 1:06:29
  Speaker: same.
• 1:06:29
  Speaker: And so you may need to make little tweaks to get the recipe
• 1:06:33
  Speaker: to your liking.
• 1:06:34
  Speaker: Recipes are roadmaps.
• 1:06:36
  Speaker: And yes, baking is a precision, you know, form of cooking.
• 1:06:41
  Speaker: It's it's, it's a little bit different than cooking.
• 1:06:44
  Speaker: Um, however, the baker always
• 1:06:47
  Speaker: brings something of themselves
• 1:06:49
  Speaker: to the recipe and we tend to
• 1:06:52
  Speaker: forget that.
• 1:06:53
  Speaker: But, um, you know, you have to
• 1:06:55
  Speaker: use your intuition, uh, in, in
• 1:06:57
  Speaker: your own sense in, you know,
• 1:06:59
  Speaker: when you're creating these
• 1:07:01
  Speaker: recipes and you may decide you
• 1:07:02
  Speaker: want to do something a little
• 1:07:03
  Speaker: bit differently and that it
• 1:07:04
  Speaker: works better for you or that,
• 1:07:06
  Speaker: you know, the butter you're
• 1:07:07
  Speaker: using is, um, got more fat,
• 1:07:09
  Speaker: butter, fat or less water than,
• 1:07:11
  Speaker: than mine.
• 1:07:11
  Speaker: So these things, you know, can make little differences.
• 1:07:15
  Speaker: And, um, you just have to kind of, um, go with it.
• 1:07:19
  Speaker: I think people become better
• 1:07:22
  Speaker: bakers when they bring
• 1:07:23
  Speaker: themselves to it and they trust
• 1:07:25
  Speaker: themselves.
• 1:07:26
  Speaker: Yeah for sure.
• 1:07:27
  Speaker: That's great.
• 1:07:28
  Speaker: Well, you've given a lot of really, um, wonderful tips.
• 1:07:32
  Speaker: It's a beautiful book.
• 1:07:34
  Speaker: I think the photography is also very nice.
• 1:07:36
  Speaker: Tell me about the photographer or the photography for the book.
• 1:07:40
  Speaker: The photographer is a wonderful,
• 1:07:41
  Speaker: wonderful woman named Lauren
• 1:07:43
  Speaker: Valleau.
• 1:07:44
  Speaker: She also shot my book Preserving Italy.
• 1:07:47
  Speaker: And she, you know, with both books, she managed to conjure
• 1:07:51
  Speaker: Italy in a studio in New York.
• 1:07:54
  Speaker: And for this book, um, she brought on a fantastic prop
• 1:07:58
  Speaker: stylist named Maeve Sheridan.
• 1:08:01
  Speaker: And Maeve has a, you know, we used her studio in New York and
• 1:08:05
  Speaker: she's also got a prop shop, which is where she and Lauren
• 1:08:09
  Speaker: would go to just grab, you know, tiles and plates and all sorts
• 1:08:14
  Speaker: of props for the photo shoot.
• 1:08:16
  Speaker: And they just managed to create these lush, vibrant scenes.
• 1:08:22
  Speaker: And they, you know, they basically did a portrait of
• 1:08:25
  Speaker: every cookie I baked, every single cookie on the cover and
• 1:08:29
  Speaker: in the book.
• 1:08:30
  Speaker: So, um, my husband and I drove
• 1:08:34
  Speaker: up hundreds of cookies in
• 1:08:36
  Speaker: containers from Virginia up to
• 1:08:37
  Speaker: New York City and unloaded them
• 1:08:39
  Speaker: at the studio, you know, also
• 1:08:41
  Speaker: doughs that I had made and
• 1:08:43
  Speaker: frozen and utensils and, you
• 1:08:46
  Speaker: know, my irons and all this
• 1:08:48
  Speaker: stuff.
• 1:08:48
  Speaker: And so it was a four day photo shoot.
• 1:08:50
  Speaker: And, um, I'm just so thrilled the way it turned out it because
• 1:08:56
  Speaker: each cookie got its due.
• 1:08:58
  Speaker: I mean, they're just gorgeous.
• 1:09:00
  Speaker: And then you mentioned the
• 1:09:02
  Speaker: different chapters, all of the
• 1:09:03
  Speaker: chapter intros, um, have these
• 1:09:06
  Speaker: beautiful illustrations by a
• 1:09:07
  Speaker: young woman named Daniela
• 1:09:09
  Speaker: Bracco.
• 1:09:09
  Speaker: She's a graphic artist and she's, uh, she's originally from
• 1:09:13
  Speaker: Sicily, but she lives in Rome.
• 1:09:14
  Speaker: And she also illustrates my, my
• 1:09:17
  Speaker: Buena Domenica newsletter every
• 1:09:18
  Speaker: week.
• 1:09:19
  Speaker: And she is fantastic.
• 1:09:21
  Speaker: I mean, her, her illustrations are just kind of timeless and,
• 1:09:25
  Speaker: but modern and, um, and just whimsical and sassy.
• 1:09:31
  Speaker: I just love them.
• 1:09:32
  Speaker: So, um, between the photos and those illustrations, you know,
• 1:09:36
  Speaker: the, the, the publisher, which is Gibbs Smith just found a way
• 1:09:40
  Speaker: to seamlessly, uh, you know, integrate it all.
• 1:09:43
  Speaker: And I'm, I'm really grateful that they were able to do that.
• 1:09:46
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 1:09:46
  Speaker: I love to see the combination of
• 1:09:47
  Speaker: illustrations and photography in
• 1:09:49
  Speaker: a book.
• 1:09:50
  Speaker: It's, um, it's beautiful.
• 1:09:52
  Speaker: So and the cover is gorgeous.
• 1:09:53
  Speaker: Just how many different varieties of cookies are on the
• 1:09:56
  Speaker: cover, do you think?
• 1:09:57
  Speaker: I don't know.
• 1:09:58
  Speaker: What we did was at the end of the week, we had given away
• 1:10:01
  Speaker: pretty much all of the cookies every single day after after
• 1:10:06
  Speaker: shooting them, but we kept some of each kind just in case we
• 1:10:10
  Speaker: needed to reshoot.
• 1:10:11
  Speaker: And so we ended up with these trays of all of these cookies.
• 1:10:15
  Speaker: And so, um, we just decided we would take what was akin to a
• 1:10:19
  Speaker: group photo of them, you know, and it was like a group photo.
• 1:10:23
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 1:10:23
  Speaker: So Maeve and Lauren just put down this, these tiles and just
• 1:10:29
  Speaker: started placing cookies on them.
• 1:10:31
  Speaker: And, um, and we had an assistant stylist named Deborah Kim who
• 1:10:36
  Speaker: was also wonderful.
• 1:10:37
  Speaker: She would give each cookie its
• 1:10:39
  Speaker: little glow up before it was
• 1:10:40
  Speaker: photographed.
• 1:10:41
  Speaker: And so by the end, um, they had the cookies all arranged and
• 1:10:45
  Speaker: Lauren took the shot.
• 1:10:46
  Speaker: And when it appeared on her computer screen, we just all
• 1:10:49
  Speaker: knew that we wanted that to be the cover shot.
• 1:10:52
  Speaker: Um, and thankfully, the publisher agreed.
• 1:10:55
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 1:10:56
  Speaker: It's beautiful.
• 1:10:56
  Speaker: There's even a cookie that looks
• 1:10:57
  Speaker: like a woman with a hair, like a
• 1:11:01
  Speaker: hairdo.
• 1:11:01
  Speaker: And there's a couple little embellishments for her eyes and
• 1:11:04
  Speaker: her nose, and then some cloves across her chest.
• 1:11:06
  Speaker: It's a very unique cookie.
• 1:11:08
  Speaker: It's.
• 1:11:08
  Speaker: She's laying on the back top of the cover.
• 1:11:10
  Speaker: Yeah, that's the katana.
• 1:11:13
  Speaker: She's got quite a story.
• 1:11:14
  Speaker: She has three breasts.
• 1:11:16
  Speaker: Yes.
• 1:11:16
  Speaker: And the reason this, the, the, the, the legend goes that two
• 1:11:20
  Speaker: are for milk and one is for wine to keep the baby quiet.
• 1:11:24
  Speaker: Oh, that's a good one.
• 1:11:26
  Speaker: That's a Scotty is, you know,
• 1:11:28
  Speaker: the, uh, the wine comes from,
• 1:11:31
  Speaker: from the town of, from the area
• 1:11:33
  Speaker: around Frascati.
• 1:11:34
  Speaker: So I, I just loved that story.
• 1:11:37
  Speaker: It is.
• 1:11:37
  Speaker: Um, yeah, yeah.
• 1:11:39
  Speaker: And the color from the jimmies, the, the little sugar jimmies
• 1:11:43
  Speaker: and the colored beads.
• 1:11:44
  Speaker: And some of the dough is pink.
• 1:11:46
  Speaker: Not all of it, but there's just a, it's not Um, I always say
• 1:11:50
  Speaker: with cookies like this, this is not about the frosting
• 1:11:53
  Speaker: decorations on them.
• 1:11:54
  Speaker: This is about the cookie.
• 1:11:56
  Speaker: And then the embellishments
• 1:11:57
  Speaker: really do add a little bit of
• 1:11:59
  Speaker: color, but their beauty is in
• 1:12:01
  Speaker: their shape.
• 1:12:02
  Speaker: It's in, um, maybe the way the embellishments are placed and of
• 1:12:08
  Speaker: course in the flavor and in the texture and everything else that
• 1:12:11
  Speaker: goes into a cookie.
• 1:12:12
  Speaker: But you know, the ones that are
• 1:12:13
  Speaker: filled and rolled and then cut
• 1:12:15
  Speaker: like little flowers, it's just
• 1:12:16
  Speaker: gorgeous.
• 1:12:18
  Speaker: Thank you.
• 1:12:19
  Speaker: Yeah, I agree with you.
• 1:12:20
  Speaker: It's not about a lot of frosting.
• 1:12:23
  Speaker: It's not about using dyes.
• 1:12:26
  Speaker: You know, I see a lot of dye,
• 1:12:28
  Speaker: you know, food, food coloring
• 1:12:29
  Speaker: being used in Italian American
• 1:12:32
  Speaker: cookies.
• 1:12:33
  Speaker: And I see a lot less of that in Italy.
• 1:12:36
  Speaker: The pink you referred to is a liqueur called Alkermes.
• 1:12:39
  Speaker: It's a kind of pink red liqueur.
• 1:12:42
  Speaker: It it goes dates back to medieval times.
• 1:12:46
  Speaker: And it was originally medicinal and now it's used as a, you
• 1:12:49
  Speaker: know, as a soak for sponge cakes and also in cookies.
• 1:12:54
  Speaker: Um, but yeah, I really love that about Italian cookies is that
• 1:12:58
  Speaker: they can look very plain, but then you bite into them and
• 1:13:01
  Speaker: it's, you know, a whole world.
• 1:13:03
  Speaker: It's beautiful.
• 1:13:04
  Speaker: So as we're starting to wrap up, we start to talk now a little
• 1:13:07
  Speaker: bit about cookbooks outside of your Italian cookies cookbook,
• 1:13:12
  Speaker: uh, baking book.
• 1:13:13
  Speaker: But let's talk a little bit about your favorite cookbook,
• 1:13:16
  Speaker: um, one that's informed your cooking journey, your baking
• 1:13:20
  Speaker: journey and what that might be.
• 1:13:23
  Speaker: Oh gosh, that's a such a good question.
• 1:13:26
  Speaker: I think, um, one that has
• 1:13:29
  Speaker: informed my cooking for years,
• 1:13:32
  Speaker: I'm looking at my cookbook
• 1:13:33
  Speaker: shelves is, um, a book that used
• 1:13:36
  Speaker: to belong to my mom called E
• 1:13:38
  Speaker: Talismano della Felicita The
• 1:13:40
  Speaker: Talisman of Happiness by Ada
• 1:13:42
  Speaker: Boni, and I believe it was first
• 1:13:46
  Speaker: published in the early nineteen
• 1:13:48
  Speaker: hundreds.
• 1:13:48
  Speaker: My mom's edition is probably
• 1:13:51
  Speaker: from the nineteen forties or
• 1:13:52
  Speaker: 50s.
• 1:13:53
  Speaker: It was given to her by her mom when she got married.
• 1:13:56
  Speaker: And this is, um, a tome.
• 1:13:58
  Speaker: It is, you know, a, I don't
• 1:14:00
  Speaker: know, a thousand in some pages
• 1:14:02
  Speaker: long, very thick, very thin
• 1:14:04
  Speaker: paper.
• 1:14:05
  Speaker: And it's just recipe after recipe after recipe and
• 1:14:08
  Speaker: everything is in there.
• 1:14:09
  Speaker: Um, and so that has been one of
• 1:14:11
  Speaker: my go to resources for many
• 1:14:14
  Speaker: years.
• 1:14:15
  Speaker: Um, an English version was
• 1:14:17
  Speaker: published in the seventies, I
• 1:14:20
  Speaker: think, or maybe even the
• 1:14:21
  Speaker: nineteen fifties.
• 1:14:22
  Speaker: And it was a very small kind of, um, they are an Italian American
• 1:14:30
  Speaker: edition, I would say.
• 1:14:31
  Speaker: And it just kind of picked certain recipes, but it left
• 1:14:34
  Speaker: most of the book out.
• 1:14:36
  Speaker: Um, this past year there's been
• 1:14:39
  Speaker: a translation, a new translation
• 1:14:41
  Speaker: that was much more
• 1:14:42
  Speaker: comprehensive.
• 1:14:43
  Speaker: that basically takes a book and just translates it.
• 1:14:48
  Speaker: And, um, that's a very good resource for people who have
• 1:14:53
  Speaker: been interested in recipes but haven't been able to, um, gain
• 1:14:57
  Speaker: access to them.
• 1:14:59
  Speaker: But I, you know, love the Italian version.
• 1:15:01
  Speaker: And luckily I, you know, I understand it.
• 1:15:03
  Speaker: And so I've, um, used that book a lot over the years.
• 1:15:07
  Speaker: And you said the one that is the translation was just published
• 1:15:10
  Speaker: last year or like, yeah, yeah, maybe it was either even early.
• 1:15:14
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 1:15:14
  Speaker: I think the end of last year.
• 1:15:16
  Speaker: Last fall.
• 1:15:16
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 1:15:17
  Speaker: The talisman of happiness.
• 1:15:19
  Speaker: Nice.
• 1:15:19
  Speaker: So if you want a tome about
• 1:15:21
  Speaker: Italian cooking, that would be
• 1:15:22
  Speaker: I'll link to that in the show
• 1:15:24
  Speaker: notes.
• 1:15:26
  Speaker: All right.
• 1:15:26
  Speaker: Well, it's coming near the end.
• 1:15:28
  Speaker: It's been a terrific to talk to
• 1:15:30
  Speaker: you and talk all about your
• 1:15:32
  Speaker: book, but why don't you tell
• 1:15:33
  Speaker: everybody now a little bit about
• 1:15:35
  Speaker: how they might be able to
• 1:15:36
  Speaker: connect with you online or in
• 1:15:38
  Speaker: person as you're going out to
• 1:15:40
  Speaker: promote and talk about your
• 1:15:41
  Speaker: book.
• 1:15:42
  Speaker: Yeah, so my website is domenica cooks dot com.
• 1:15:46
  Speaker: And, um, I guess the social media platform I use most these
• 1:15:50
  Speaker: days is Instagram, where I can be found at Domenica Cooks and
• 1:15:57
  Speaker: also my weekly newsletter.
• 1:15:59
  Speaker: I mean, if people want to stay on top of where I am, I always
• 1:16:03
  Speaker: post my schedule.
• 1:16:05
  Speaker: I, I'm coming.
• 1:16:06
  Speaker: I'm heading up to New England at the end of this month.
• 1:16:09
  Speaker: I'll be in Portland, Maine on May twenty eighth at a wonderful
• 1:16:15
  Speaker: bookstore called print.
• 1:16:17
  Speaker: So I'll be in conversation with a fellow food writer, Kathy
• 1:16:20
  Speaker: Gunst, who lives up that way.
• 1:16:22
  Speaker: I'm really looking forward to
• 1:16:23
  Speaker: that, and I am finalizing some
• 1:16:26
  Speaker: plans to head out to the
• 1:16:28
  Speaker: Midwest, to Chicago and
• 1:16:30
  Speaker: Milwaukee.
• 1:16:31
  Speaker: So, um, I'll be posting that information soon.
• 1:16:34
  Speaker: That's also where people can
• 1:16:36
  Speaker: learn about, um, my food, my
• 1:16:39
  Speaker: culinary tours.
• 1:16:40
  Speaker: I do very small group tours.
• 1:16:42
  Speaker: I don't do any big tour buses.
• 1:16:44
  Speaker: And we stay away from, you know, over, uh, over traveled spots.
• 1:16:49
  Speaker: Um, so I would say my
• 1:16:51
  Speaker: newsletter, Buona Domenica,
• 1:16:53
  Speaker: which is currently housed on
• 1:16:55
  Speaker: Substack, is where you can find
• 1:16:57
  Speaker: me most of the time and most
• 1:16:59
  Speaker: consistently wonderful.
• 1:17:01
  Speaker: Well, I wish you nothing but the
• 1:17:02
  Speaker: best with your travels and your
• 1:17:05
  Speaker: work.
• 1:17:05
  Speaker: Domenica.
• 1:17:06
  Speaker: It's been a joy to talk to you,
• 1:17:08
  Speaker: and I highly recommend everybody
• 1:17:10
  Speaker: get your hands on a copy of
• 1:17:11
  Speaker: Italian Cookies, Authentic
• 1:17:13
  Speaker: Recipes and sweet Stories from
• 1:17:16
  Speaker: every region.
• 1:17:18
  Speaker: Thank you so much, Maggie.
• 1:17:20
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 1:17:20
  Speaker: Thank you.
• 1:17:20
  Speaker: It's been a pleasure to have you on the show and again, enjoy
• 1:17:24
  Speaker: meeting all the people.
• 1:17:25
  Speaker: And I'm going to have to dive into baking some cookies.
• 1:17:29
  Speaker: I hope you do.
• 1:17:30
  Speaker: Thank you so much.
• 1:17:32
  Speaker: Thank you.
• 1:17:34
  Speaker: Thank you so much for joining us today for this episode of the
• 1:17:37
  Speaker: Cookbook Love Podcast.
• 1:17:38
  Speaker: again.
• 1:17:39
  Speaker: All the links can be found in the show notes at w w w dot
• 1:17:42
  Speaker: cookbook dot co.
• 1:17:44
  Speaker: And if you are interested in
• 1:17:46
  Speaker: writing a cookbook of your own,
• 1:17:47
  Speaker: please check out the free
• 1:17:49
  Speaker: Cookbook Writing Masterclass
• 1:17:51
  Speaker: called How to Get Paid to Write
• 1:17:53
  Speaker: a Cookbook.
• 1:17:54
  Speaker: It is designed specifically for
• 1:17:55
  Speaker: food or nutrition experts, and
• 1:17:58
  Speaker: you can check that out at w w w
• 1:18:00
  Speaker: dot cookbook writers academy dot
• 1:18:03
  Speaker: com slash.
• 1:18:05
  Speaker: So that's it for today's episode of the Cookbook Love Podcast.
• 1:18:08
  Speaker: This is your host, Maggie Green.
• 1:18:10
  Speaker: And until next time, have a
• 1:18:12
  Speaker: great day and keep loving your
• 1:18:14
  Speaker: cookbooks.
• 1:18:19
  Speaker: Thanks for listening to the Cookbook Love podcast.
• 1:18:22
  Speaker: You can find out more information at w w w dot