Domenica Marchetti, a former Detroit News reporter, has made a name for herself with her food writing.
Now comes this: Serious Eats -- a highly regarded website that Time magazine once ranked #17 of the 50 Best Websites-- has named Marchetti's book, "The Glorious Vegetables of Italy," one of five essential Italian cookbooks. In all, she is the author of six books on Italian cooking.
Marchetti, thrilled about the news, posts this Wednesday on Facebook:
This is not a #humblebrag, this is a straight-out brag. Serious Eats has named The Glorious Vegetables of Italy one of five essential Italian cookbooks. I am absolutely beaming and thrilled to be in such excellent company.
Domenica Marchetti
Serious Eats says this about her book:
While Domenica Marchetti has written a whole canon of gorgeous Italian cookbooks, it's The Glorious Vegetables of Italy that you should add to your collection first. Don't be deceived by the title, though: it's vegetable-focused without being vegetarian. While she keeps vegetables at the forefront, Marchetti still divides the book into chapters based on usage and occasion, with soups in one section, and pastas and main courses in another.
The resulting recipes are inspired by traditional dishes and flavor combinations, some of which, like Summer Risotto with Zucchini Blossoms, are downright classic in their approach. But Marchetti also plays with the rules, reimagining classic flavors into new combinations, the way she does for a sandwich of fried zucchini blossoms with tomato, basil, and mozzarella. Even where she plays with form, though, the flavors are resolutely Italian: eggplant, cauliflower, artichokes, shelling beans, peppers, rapini, and no shortage of garlic and extra virgin olive oil.
"The Glorious Vegetables of Italy" is a place where imagination reigns: the fragrance of warm olives and citrus zest, lightly roasted with rosemary and served with snow white ricotta salata cheese, or capricci pasta boiling away on the stove, about to be sauced with a rose-colored slump of cherry tomatoes stewed with thyme and cream. Cannelloni with Italian sausage are nice, but Marchetti's version, delicate crepes nestled against one another, napped with balsamella and barely containing a filling of porcini and zucchini, are even more appealing.
Marchetti lives in suburban D.C. with her husband N. Scott Vance, a former reporter and editor at The Detroit News, who is now an editor at the Washington Post.
