Fra Noi Embrace Your Inner Italian
Seven-time James Beard-nominated chef Cathy Whims published her first cookbook, “The Italian Summer Kitchen: Timeless Recipes for La Dolce Vita,” in the spring.
Whims owns Nostrana, an Italian restaurant that celebrated its 20th anniversary this year in Portland, Oregon. Her cookbook features some of the restaurant’s most beloved dishes, along with some of her own from travels abroad, Axios reported.
Recipes include fluffy potato gnocchi, zucchini Parmigiana, tuna-caper pâté, grilled shrimp with herbed remoulade, fennel Alfredo pasta, eggplant caponata and Nostrana’s famous Caesar salad. All are focused on “simple, veggie-forward Italian cooking.”
“I think that’s a real tenet of Italian food, and it took me a long time to learn that,” she told Axios. “Anything that would intimidate people in making these recipes in their own kitchen I really tried to steer away from.”
Instead of including photos of the recipes, the cookbook is full of colorful illustrations, because Whims didn’t want people “to be obsessed with everything looking perfect.”
Whims’ favorite cookbooks — “A Taste of Tuscany” by Leslie Forbes and “Honey From a Weed” by Patience Gray — inspired her to give her book a “sense of place” and strong storytelling, Axios said.
