Catching up with Kathy Gunst
A Q & A with my Food Writers in Italy partner; and a recipe for Piemontese hazelnut cake
Benvenuti! Welcome to Buona Domenica, a weekly newsletter of inspired Italian home cooking and baking. I’m a journalist, cooking instructor, occasional tour guide, and author of eight cookbooks on Italian cuisine.
This week’s recipe for Torta di Nocciole (hazelnut cake) is for all subscribers, with a printable version available to paid subscribers. Check out the entire Buona Domenica archive here, and the full index of recipes—205 and counting—here. All archived recipes are accessible to paid subscribers. If you are able to, please consider upgrading your subscription to support this newsletter.
And if you enjoy reading this newsletter, please click at the little heart at the top of this post. This helps to bring visibility to Buona Domenica and our Italian food-loving community. Grazie!
Over the last several months, I’ve posted short blurbs and reminders about Food Writers in Italy, the workshop and tour I co-host with Kathy Gunst. A few days ago, while Kathy and I were talking on the phone, conducting a postmortem of sorts on our most recent workshop, it occurred to me that I’ve never really given you the full lowdown on Food Writers in Italy. And I’ve never officially introduced you to Kathy, who leads the writing portion.
Kathy and I held our first workshop in 2022 in Cilento, south of Naples, in collaboration with art historian and founder of Feast Travel
. Our second took place on the Italian Riviera, in collaboration with Beautiful Liguria—the small company with whom I also collaborate on culinary tours. Beautiful Liguria was also our collaborator for our most recent workshop last month in Piemonte.With Food Writers in Piemonte still fresh in our minds, I thought this would be the perfect opportunity to “interview” my partner and talk about what we do and what it means. And don’t worry if you didn’t make it to May’s workshop. There are more Food Writers in Italy events planned, including a second gathering in Piemonte this coming fall (Oct. 3-8).
Let’s start with Kathy Gunst, whose name might be familiar to you if you keep up with the world of food writing or if you are a public radio listener. Kathy is the “resident chef” for the NPR news program Here and Now. She appears weekly on the show to talk about food trends and seasonal ingredients. Kathy is also the author of 16 books, including Notes from a Maine Kitchen and, most recently, Rage Baking: The Transformative Power of Flour, Fury, and Women’s Voices (to which I contributed a recipe). In 2015 Kathy won a prestigious James Beard Award for food journalism.
Kathy and I met in Maine, at a dinner hosted by a mutual friend. We met again a few years later at a coffee shop in Kittery (ME), where I was on vacation with my family. By that point, I had attended a session she taught at a food professionals conference on pitching cookbook and food story ideas, and I had seen first hand how well she connects with and works with writers. I asked her if she was interested in collaborating, and Food Writers in Italy was born. Our aim is to conduct these workshops in lesser-traveled areas throughout Italy.
We work well together; I am the host and resident Italian expert, and Kathy is our fearless writing coach who manages, with guidance and gentle persistence, to get students of all levels to write open up on the page. Here’s a condensed version of our conversation the other day:
Buona Domenica: It’s been nearly a month since Food Writers in Piemonte, and yet one thing that is clear to me is that we are both still on a high from the workshop. Why?
Kathy Gunst: I’ve never heard from so many people after a workshop. Everybody who showed up shares several passions. They love to eat, they are interested in wine, they are very interested in Italy, and they’re very interested in learning about writing. Those are four very distinct things, but they overlap, and we all have them in common. That, and a love of travel. We all shared this common ground. And I think people felt that. It doesn’t always happen, but sometimes these groups bond to the point of friendships that linger.
BD: We’ll get back to the workshop in a minute, but I want to talk a little about you. How did you get your start in food writing?
KG: I left college after my freshman year because I felt that I didn’t know what I was doing there. I ended up going to the Cordon Blue in London. I took a condensed, five-month course, where I earned a certificate as a professional. I learned knife skills and sauces and all the rules and the minute I got out of there I broke them all because that’s my MO.
I went back to New York, where I grew up, and I and got a degree in literature at the New School. While I was finishing school, I started working at Diversion magazine. I had a conversation with the editor-in-chief that was really major. I said I want to be a writer. He said, “What are you skilled in?” I said, “I just went to cooking school.” He said, “Write about food.” I said, “No, I want to write about important things. I want to be a writer with a capital W.” But he gave me an opportunity. This was in 1978, at the beginning of the gourmet food trend. I wrote an article on mustard. I went to all these stores and tasted all kinds of mustard. I researched the history of mustard, and I quickly discovered that writing about food is writing about so many things. I was learning about anthropology and sociology and religion and family and all of a sudden I realized that food was this unifying thing that tied all of humanity together and I was hooked.
One of my assignments was to go to Bologna with Marcella Hazan and it was life-changing. While I was there I met Bill Rice, who was a food editor in Chicago and was about to be named food editor at Food and Wine magazine. He asked me to come in for an interview, and, long story short, I got the job of culinary editor. It was a pretty big job for someone in their mid-twenties, an incredible opportunity. I edited, I wrote, I traveled. It was kind of a dreamy job.
But it was the exact year that my then-boyfriend [now-husband], John, wanted to leave the city. We decided we would move to Maine for one year, and we ended up staying. I got a contract to write my first book, called Condiments, following up on that first article. It was a really cool little book. I left Food and Wine. I was giving up a great apartment, a great job. Everyone thought I was giving up a great career. But I don’t know if I would have become the writer I became if I had stayed in New York, given the amount of stimulus and distractions there.
BD: At some point, you pivoted to radio. How did that come about?
KG: About 21 years ago, there was a new radio show starting in Boston called “Here and Now.” They were interested in having somebody talk about food. I auditioned, got the job, and I started talking about food and telling food stories on food radio. Now it’s 2025 and I am still doing that. It is one of the great joys of my life. The thing about radio is, you don’t have to worry about how you look or how the food looks. It’s storytelling, oral history, trying to make people hungry and trying to make people want to cook what you’re talking about. I’m really aware of the role sound plays in food and in storytelling. It’s just something I love so much.
BD: How did you get into teaching?
KG: During COVID, I co-authored a book called Rage Baking with my friend Katherine Alford. Someone asked if we would be interested in co-teaching an online class. Ten years ago I would have said, no, it’s not my thing, I’m not good at it. But I tried it. This was working with students, listening to them first tell me they weren’t really writers, they didn’t have the confidence. And I remember watching these people blossom on screen. Within an hour, two hours, they were putting their heart on the page. I wanted more of it.
I’ve now taught workshops in Italy, France, and in New England. And I can say that while you may not become a finished, polished writer within the course of a day, or four days, you will become a better writer. Even in a one-day class, from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. I have seen writers become different people by the end of the day.
BD: What is it about Food Writers in Italy that seems to jell so well?
KG: I hesitate to use this word but we create a safe atmosphere. Whether you’ve written books, or you’re writing a memoir, or compiling your grandmother’s recipes, there is room for everyone in these classes. You would think that the diversity of experience might create a dissonant group or a group where some people go too fast and others can’t keep up. But the way we structure the classes makes it work. We cover many facets of what makes a good food writer. And I think the exercises we do make it approachable for people—breaking it down into small pieces that are digestible.
Think about Suzanne [one of the women in our Food Writers in Italy workshop]. She’s a graphic artist, and she told us more than once that she was not a writer. And yet she wrote a piece about eggplant parmesan that was really about her mother that had us all in tears. Food writing is so merged with memory. There are no stories that are separate from who we are, where we came from, who our grandparents were. It’s all woven together.
At the same time, we are not writing all day every day so that everyone gets burned out. There is this balance of delving into your writing life but also exploring Italy off the beaten path that, to me, is a winning combination.
BD: Let’s talk about Hazelnut Day because this was a favorite day for everyone in the group. We visited a family hazelnut farm and learned about a specific variety of hazelnut—Tonda Gentile delle Langhe—for which Piemonte is famous. And then we had a cooking class in a 15th Century ciabot, a glorified stone farm shed of sorts, in which we made tajarin (egg noodles) and hazelnut cake. The weather did not cooperate at all—it rained for most of the day. And yet, this day resonated with everyone.
KG: It started the minute we got off the van. The family welcomed us with hugs and kisses! They were genuinely happy to welcome us to their farm, to show us what they do, the work they put into this one product. There was this atmosphere of fog and light rain as we walked through the groves, the hazelnut trees were a verdant green. And then we end up at this stone house, there’s a crackling fire, and a chef who teaches us how to make these beautiful egg noodles by hand and hazelnut cakes with nuts grown on the farm. After we’re done cooking, we walk up these little iron steps to a second room with this gorgeous round table that’s set for lunch. There’s wine, there’s the scent of smoke, of ragù, of cakes baking. It was an experience you can’t get on your own, and this is the beauty of what Emanuela [our partner at Beautiful Liguria] and you and I have put together. It was magical.
(The hazelnut cakes served at our luncheon at the farm, with zabaglione poured over)
BD: What else would you like people to know about Food Writers in Italy?
KG: It’s really about finding your voice. A strong clear voice is at the heart of all good writing, and when you give a writer confidence and when you give a writer the opportunity to explore who they are, what their voice is, what their strengths are, a strong voice emerges naturally and that is what we explore in every workshop.
If you are interested in joining one of our workshops, please email me at domenica@domenicacooks.com.
RECIPE: Torta di Nocciole Piemontese
Speaking of magical, the hazelnut cake we made at the farm was just that, composed of three or four ingredients. It had an airy texture and a deep toasted-nut flavor. The cake was served with zabaglione (egg and marsala custard) poured over the top (see video above). We brought leftover cakes back to our hotel, where the accommodating staff put them out for the next couple of days as part of our breakfast buffet. Each day, the cakes got better and better, even without the zabaglione cloak, becoming more moist, the hazelnut flavor rounding out and becoming even richer.
I’ve recreated the cake here, and for the sake of simplicity, I’ve left out the zabaglione, though you could make it if you’re feeling up to it. Instead, I just dolloped the cake with freshly whipped cream and sprinkled some crushed nuts on top. It went over well with the family, even if we weren’t eating it in a 15th century stone building warmed by a crackling fire.
A note about the hazelnuts: Yes, this cake will be better if you make it with Tonda Gentile hazelnuts from the Langhe hills of Piemonte. The nuts are prized for their crispy texture, warm redolence, and rich, buttery flavor. They are the nuts that Pietro Ferrara, a baker from Alba, mixed together with cocoa back in 1946 to create the spread that became known as Nutella. (The company now uses hazelnuts from around the world in its spread, but includes (a possibly nominal amount of) nuts from Piemonte.)
You can buy Piemontese hazelnuts online. My go-to source is Gustiamo. However, if you are not up to splurging, you can also make this cake with hazelnuts from Oregon, which you can find at Trader Joe’s. They are earthy and not quite as crispy or sweet as those from the Langhe hills, but they still make an excellent cake.
This recipe also calls for 2 tablespoons of pure unsweetened hazelnut paste, similar to this. You can substitute 2 tablespoons of melted butter, or a dollop of choclate-hazelnut spread, or simply omit it altogether, as the cake will bake fine without the extra fat.
Makes one 9-inch (23-cm) cake, to serve 8-10
INGREDIENTS
Butter for a 9-inch (23-cm) round springform pan
1 1/2 cups (200 g) hazelnuts, peeled & toasted
1 1/2 to 2 cups (150 to 200g) sugar (use the lesser amount for a slightly less-sweet cake)
6 eggs, separated and brought to room temperature
2 tablespoons unsweetened hazelnut paste; may substitute 2 tablespoons chocolate-hazelnut spread, or 2 tablespoons melted butter (optional)
1/4 teaspoon lemon juice
1/4 teaspoon salt
INSTRUCTIONS
Preheat the oven to 325° F (160° C). Butter the bottom and sides of the baking pan. Line the bottom with a round of parchment and butter the parchment.
Pulse the hazelnuts in a food processor with 2 tablespoons sugar until finely ground. Don’t overdo it or the nuts will start to release their oils. Pour into a bowl and set aside.
Combine the remaining sugar with the egg yolks and beat with a whisk or hand mixer until lightened in color. Beat in the hazelnut paste or melted butter. Gently fold in the ground nuts.
Put the egg whites in the stainless-steel bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the whisk attachment and beat on medium until frothy. Beat in the lemon juice and turn the speed up to high. When the whites start to mound, add the salt and beat until stiff peaks form.
Gently fold 1/3 of the egg whites into the yolk mixture to lighten it. Fold in another 1/3 of the whites, then gently incorporate the rest, folding until no more white streaks or splotches remain.
Scrape the batter into the prepared pan. Bake in the center of the oven for 35 to 40 minutes, until the cake has risen, is golden-brown on top, and a skewer inserted in the center comes out clean. The surface will have some undulations; this is fine.
Transfer the pan to a wire rack to cool for 10 minutes. Run a narrow, offset spatula or a thin knife around the inside edge of the pan to loosen the cake sides, then unclasp and carefully remove the ring. Let the cake cool for another 20 to 30 minutes. Gently invert the cake onto another rack, lift off the pan bottom and peel off the parchment. Let the cake cool to room temperature.
Transfer the cake, smooth (bottom)-side-up, to a serving plate and dust with confectioners’ sugar right before serving. Serve with whipped cream, vanilla ice cream, zabaglione, or custard sauce.
Click on the button below for a printable version, available to paid subscribers.
Thank you, as always, for reading, subscribing, and sharing.
Alla prossima,
Domenica
OMG!!!!! You are writing about our trip!!!!! So FABULOUS!!!! Such a highlight of my LONG life. Thank you for everything. I am right now working on my photobook from the trip.
My love to you and Kathy and all on the trip...so fun!!!!
This was fantastic to read - sounds like an amazing experience. I’m still on a pretty nice high from the incredible Liguria/Parma culinary tour we did in May! Definitely adding a future food writer’s workshop to my travel wishlist!