Benvenuto, Agosto! Please click on the headline at the top of this post to read it in its entirety. And while you’re there, tap the little heart. Thank you!
This week, I’m teaming up with my friend and fellow cookbook author , who writes the newsletter Colu Cooks. Colu and I have devised a late-summer menu starring recipes from our cookbooks, and we think you’re going to love it: Prosciutto with Quick-Pickled Melon; Battered Pecorino Cutlets with Sungolds and Crushed Olive Salsa; Summer Squash Salad with Toasted Pine Nuts and Blue Cheese; and Sbrisolona, a giant crumbly cookie meant for breaking into pieces and sharing (bonus: it’s extra delicious with a scoop of vanilla ice cream on top!).
Below you’ll also find my Q & A with Colu. Be sure to click over to Colu’s newsletter to read her Q & A with me.
If you’re new to Buona Domenica, you can browse the newsletter archives here, and the full index of recipes (278 and counting!) here. A paid subscription gives you access to all archived newsletters and recipes, as well as The Winelist, a monthly column by Scott Vance. We appreciate your support.
For those of us who love to cook, August is the best time to be in the kitchen, crazy as it sounds. It’s a chance to get creative, to showcase the wealth of ingredients that this month has to offer—tomatoes, melons, summer squashes and much more—and an opportunity to share that wealth with our friends and family. Right now I’m on a break from recipe testing. My goal for August is this: cooking for fun and for the creative satisfaction it brings.
And what better way to get creative in the kitchen than to team up with a creative cook? My friend is that cook, and she and I have put together a four-course late-summer Italian menu for you. You might already know Colu—she is a fellow food writer and author of the popular newsletter Colu Cooks here on Substack. She’s also the author of three cookbooks, including her most recent, Better at Home, a collection of simple but sophisticated dishes for entertaining.
Colu and I met nine years ago when her first book, Back Pocket Pasta, was published. I had the pleasure of interviewing her at an event in D.C. I wrote above that Colu is a food writer, and she is, but she has been many things—a barista, a cocktail waitress, a cabaret singer (!), fashion and restaurant PR person. These days she splits her time between Hudson, N.Y. and rural Nova Scotia, where she and her husband are restoring a farmhouse.
Coincidentally, both Colu and I had new books published this past spring—Better at Home for her and Italian Cookies for me. Naturally, we turned to each other’s books for inspiration for our menu. I chose a main dish and a side from Better at Home, and Colu chose dessert from Italian Cookies. To round out the meal, we added an appetizer from an earlier book of mine, Williams-Sonoma Rustic Italian.
We also gave each other four questions to answer, to provide a little insight into our creative cooking process. My Q & A with Colu is below. And be sure to click over to Colu Cooks to read her Q & A with me.
You’ll find links to all the recipes following the Q & A. Hopefully we’ve inspired you to bring friends together for some easy entertaining with some delicious summer food.
COLU AND DOMENICA’S SUMMER MENU
ANTIPASTO: Prosciutto with Quick-Pickled Melon
MAIN DISH: Battered Pecorino Cutlets with Sungolds and Crushed Olive Salsa
VEGETABLE: Summer Squash Salad with Toasted Pine Nuts and Blue Cheese
DESSERT: Sbrisolona ~ a big crumbly cornmeal cookie for sharing
WINE PAIRINGS: The Winelist’s recommends Vermentino from Liguria, a dry white wine with crisp acidity and flavors of citrus, peaches and green herbs, for the antipasto and main courses; and for the Sbrisolona, an Italian passito, made with partially dried grapes, such as Recioto della Valpolicella from the Veneto, or Vin Santo, from Tuscany.
Links to all the recipes follow the Q & A.
Q & A WITH COLU HENRY
BUONA DOMENICA: Most cookbooks (the best ones, anyway, IMO) come about organically. Meaning there is an idea, or a seed that plants itself inside your head and flourishes until it really can’t be ignored. At least that’s how it seems to work for me. I don’t know if this is true for Better at Home, but it feels that way to me in that the recipes seem beautifully aligned. They’re at once casual but also creative and a little special, and together they create a lovely aesthetic for easy entertaining. I’m wondering what your inspiration was for the book.
COLU HENRY: Better at Home did indeed come about organically. It is a reflection of where I primarily spend my time (Hudson and Nova Scotia) and the friends that sit at the table. The title came out of real conversations Chad and I would have about what to make for dinner. What did we want, were there any cravings that needed satiating or did we want to go out? And, for the most part, always coming back to the concept that it’s just “better at home.” Don’t get me wrong, I love going out to dinner. I grew up working FOH in restaurants and it’s magic, but at the end of most days, I’d rather be cooking in my kitchen and know who’s coming through the door. The recipes followed from there, the A Lobster Dip Welcome I make people when they arrive at the cottage, the Sweet Corn and New Potato Chowder I made after a long day trip with my friend Deanne, and of course, A Christmas Lasagna, which I make every year with our friends Dan and Helen. Most of the dishes in the book tell a story, and if they don’t, I want readers to be able to create their own with whoever they are cooking with or for.
BD: In the beginning of the book you present a pared down yet really eclectic list of pantry items that make repeated appearances in the book. Talk about some of your favorite pantry ingredients and how you make this limited pantry strategy work in your (the cook’s) favor.
CH: I love my pantry! Back Pocket Pasta was a pantry book at heart, albeit an elevated one, and I’m still a firm believer that if you shop seasonally and keep a well-stocked pantry, you can pull together something beautiful. I kept this section of this book tightly edited because I want cooks to get more than one use out of an ingredient; it just gives you more options to make more recipes from the book.
I’ll admit I lean on Castelvetrano olives, ‘nduja, and sesame seeds a lot. I know this, but I also think they each add something wonderful to the recipes they’re called for. If I had to name a few more pantry staples, they’d be dried mint (wildly underrated), anchovies, Calabrian chile paste, lemons, fish sauce, fried shallots, and miso. OK fine, soy sauce and sesame oil too. Oy, I do have a problem. But, they do all add lovely flavor components to meals. I can’t tell you how many times I’m cooking and tasting and reaching for one of these to add a bit more oomph to what I’m making. They take good meals to great ones.
BD: You are named for your great-grandmother Maria Nicola, who was from the province of Avellino, in Campania. Your Italian background was evident in your first book, Back Pocket Pasta. The influence also shows up in Better at Home, but in a different, maybe in a less obvious way. Can you tell us about how your Italian side has influenced your palate and cooking?
CH: Cooking with Italian ingredients is something that comes naturally to me as they are how I first got comfortable in the kitchen and are flavors I grew up with. Sometimes, I’ll begin cooking something and then instinctually start adding a bit of pancetta here or some ‘nduja there and all of a sudden I realize “there she goes again!” I think it’s muscle memory at the end of the day. With Back Pocket Pasta, the Italian ingredients were front and center. In Better at Home, the ingredients are used more thoughtfully and woven into dishes that aren’t necessarily Italian at all.
A good example is the Italian Shrimp Toast. I love dim sum and thought it could be a fun play on the Cantonese dish to make it Italian-American and I was pretty pleased with myself about that. When I get to be playful and creative about it is when it really feels satisfying.
BD: What are your three desert island dishes/foods?
CH: This is a tough one. I thought I knew, but then I read yours and I would happily be eating Spaghetti alle vongole, Eggplant Parmesan and Key lime pie (all my favorites, I ate Parm and pie last night actually) with you on your island! But for the sake of both our newsletters, I will say with no rhyme or reason…
Fried Chicken
Pork Wontons in Chili oil
Cold Sesame Noodles
With lots of Tavel rosé and Oregon Pinot Noir to drink, of course.
I love all those dishes, and the wine pairings. Grazie, Colu!
* * * * * * * *
Readers: what are your three desert island dishes?
COLU AND DOMENICA’S MENU
ANTIPASTO: Prosciutto with Quick-Pickled Melon
Marinating ripe melon balls in a sweet and sour brine spiked with chile pepper turns the classic combination of prosciutto and melon into something fresh and new. This is especially welcomed on a sweltering late summer afternoon or evening.
Click on the button below for a link to the full printable recipe:
Prosciutto with Quick Pickled Melon
MAIN DISH: Battered Pecorino Cutlets with Sungolds and Crushed Olive Salsa
From Colu Henry’s headnote in Better at Home:
Chicken cutlets are upgraded and battered in an egg and cheese mixture that is almost Francese-like and deeply savory. The cutlets shallow-fry until they are golden, and the bright tomatoes and olive salsa that they’re topped with gives them a nice jolt of acidity. I call for Sungolds here, which are readily available in the summertime. If you find yourself in another season, grape or cherry tomatoes will also work well.
Click on the button below for the full printable recipe:
Colu's Battered Pecorino Cutlets
VEGETABLE: Summer Squash Salad with Toasted Pine Nuts and Blue Cheese
From Colu Henry’s headnote in Better at Home:
One of my favorite ways to entertain this time of year is to make a number of vegetable salads such as this that can be served at room temperature. When guests arrive, all you need to do is fire up the grill and cook one thing, be it fish, steak, or otherwise and let the sides steal the show. They’ve waited all year to do so, so let them enjoy their time.
Click on the button below for the full printable recipe:
DESSERT: Sbrisolona
This giant crumbly cookie is a specialty of Mantua, in Lombardy.
Also known as torta sbrisolona, the name of this cookie roughly translates to “crumbly cake.” The cookie was once upon a time prepared by farmers using simple ingredients that they were likely to have on hand—flour, cornmeal, sugar, a little lard or butter, and almonds. It was eaten as a snack to revive them after a long morning of work. Once baked, is customary to break this cookie into irregular pieces for serving, though you can cut it with a knife for a neater presentation. The cornmeal gives it an appealing crunch and warm, toasty flavor. Enjoy as is, or top with a scoop of pure vanilla ice cream.
Click on the button below for the full printable version of the recipe:
Enjoy August, amici. Daniela and I will be back next week with fresh art and a new recipe before our summer break. Thanks, as always for reading, subscribing, cooking, and sharing.
Alla prossima,
Domenica
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