About

Domenica Marchetti

Benvenuti! Welcome to Domenica Cooks. I am happy to share the news that my latest cookbook, The Glorious Pasta of Italy, is scheduled for release this June. This is my third cookbook and my third collaboration with Chronicle Books, and once again my publisher has done an outstanding job. From the layout and design to the gorgeous, portrait-like images by award-winning photographer France Ruffenach, this is a beautiful book (with lots of great recipes). Click here to read more about the book, and here if you would like to pre-order a copy.

I am also the author of The Glorious Soups and Stews of Italy (Chronicle Books, 2006) and Big Night In: More Than 100 Wonderful Recipes for Feeding Family and Friends Italian-Style (Chronicle Books, 2008), and I’m honored to say that Big Night In was named one of the 25 best cookbooks of the year by the editors of Food and Wine.

Speaking of Food and Wine, you can find my recipes and techniques for making perfect ravioli, published in the October 2010 issue of the magazine, online here. I am a contributor to the Washington Post’s food section and group blog, All We Can Eat, and my articles and recipes have also appeared in Cooking Light, Fine Cooking, on Leite’s Culinaria, and on NPR.org’s Kitchen Window, among other publications. You can find more of my published writing here.

Before I was a cookbook author and food writer, I was a newspaper reporter. I wrote about all kinds of things: school board meetings, the latest fitness craze, or how billionaire philanthropists like to give away their money. I hardly ever wrote about food, even though it was what I thought about most. Years after I had graduated from Columbia School of Journalism and worked at numerous newspapers, it finally struck me that I could and should be writing about food.

I grew up in an Italian family. At the dinner table we spent more time debating what we should eat tomorrow night than politics or the news of the day. My mother is a native of Chieti, a picturesque hilltop city in Abruzzo, not far from the Adriatic coast. She had my sister and me shaping gnocchi and ravioli by the time we could see over the kitchen counter.

We spent our summers in Italy with my mother’s three sisters (all great cooks); each year my father planned trips around the peninsulaguided by where the best local food and wine were to be found.

Italian home cooking is my first passion in the kitchen. Food is at the center of Italian family life and I have probably spent half my life inkitchens and around dinner tables, cooking, eating, talking, arguing, and socializing. If I’m exaggerating, it is not by much. The food I cook is the food I love to eat and feed others: simple, honest dishes that reflect my heritage and the seasons.

In truth, though, I love all kinds of home cooking. Living in Virginia for the past 15 years, I have come to appreciate my adopted state’s illustrious culinary history, from the many contributions of Thomas Jefferson (check out the beautiful restored gardens at Monticello) to the coastal cuisine of the Chesapeake Bay and Eastern Shore, to the simple southern comfort food best exemplified by the recipes of cookbook author and Virginia native Edna Lewis. These days, I am almost as likely to have a pot of Brunswick stew or Chesapeake Bay chowder simmering on the stove as a good ragù or lentil soup.

When I’m not in the kitchen testing recipes, I can usually be found in my office entering said recipes into my computer, browsing through my favorite cookbook of the moment (it changes frequently) or, more than likely, shuttling my kids to and from various activities. If there’s any time left over I swap out my wooden spoon for a tennis racquet and hit the courts. Like any working mom, I have a full plate—but I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Thanks for stopping by. I hope you will find lots to whet your appetite and that you will visit my kitchen often.

Buon Appetito,

Domenica