Catching Up with Victoria Granof
Q & A with the food stylist and author of 'Sicily, My Sweet'; plus her recipe for an alluring almond cookie with a gruesome backstory
WELCOME to Buona Domenica, a weekly newsletter of Italian home cooking and baking. I’m a journalist, cooking teacher, occasional tour guide, and author of eight cookbooks on Italian cuisine.
This week’s newsletter features Q & A with creative director and food stylist Victoria Granof, author of the new cookbook Sicily, My Sweet; plus, for paid subscribers, her recipe for Occhi di Santa Lucia, a rich almond cookie with a candied orange pupil and a macabre backstory! I am also giving away a copy of the cookbook to a lucky paid subscriber. Details to enter are in the body of the newsletter.
We have Buona Domenica prints available! Daniela and I have chosen three of her newsletter illustrations to offer as prints. They are printed in Italy on high-quality paper and make great holiday gifts. (Scroll down for details).
REGISTRATION IS OPEN FOR FOOD WRITERS IN PIEMONTE, FALL 2025: Join Kathy Gunst and me next October for our second Food Writers in Piemonte workshop. Please send me an email at domenica@domenicacooks.com for more information.
Click here to browse through the newsletter archive. If you’re looking for a particular recipe, you’ll find all Buona Domenica recipes—176 and counting—indexed here, ready to download and print—a function for paid subscribers. If you are able to do so, please consider supporting my work by becoming one.
Every once in a blue moon I come across a cookbook that makes me go, “Dang, I wish I’d written that!”
Sicily, My Sweet, by Victoria Granof, is one such book. It is a deep dive into the almond paste-pistachio butter-candied citrus-sugar-honey-grape must and ricotta cream-soaked world of Sicilian confections. Opening the book is like entering a Sicilian fever dream. The pages are filled with riotous photos and collages blaring the same colors you see in the decadent pastries of the island: the lurid pistachio, candied orange peel orange, maraschino cherry red, toasted almond. There is history, there is lore, both sacred and profane; there are personal stories from the author; and there are recipes.
The book covers the spectrum of Sicilian sweets, from basic crumbly breakfast cookies to creamy frozen treats in flavors like almond milk, coffee and cardamom, and lemon leaf; and from ricotta-stuffed fritters to sweet yeasted buns. There is casssata, there are cannoli. There are also preserves and liqueurs, including homemade Sambuca—a batch of which I have steeping at this very moment.
Of course I could not have written this book. Like the best cookbooks, Sicily, My Sweet is a passion project, an expression of Victoria’s love affair with the island of her ancestors.
Victoria and I “met” on Instagram, though we have yet to meet in person. She is well known in the world of food—a James Beard Award finalist, and one of the 100 most inspiring women in food, according to Cherry Bombe magazine. I’m delighted that she agreed to participate in a Q & A about her gorgeous new book.
PAID SUBSCRIBERS: Victoria’s publisher, Hardie Grant, is providing a giveaway copy of Sicily, My Sweet. To enter the giveaway, please leave a comment telling us about your favorite Sicilian sweet (or your favorite sweet in general—even if it’s a chocolate chip cookie). I’ll choose a winner at random and announce that lucky person in next week’s newsletter. (Giveaway open to U.S. and Canada residents only.)
BUONA DOMENICA: Thank you for participating in the Q & A, Victoria. First, tell us a bit about yourself. You have had quite a career, both as a pastry chef and a food stylist!
VICTORIA GRANOF: I was born in Los Angeles. I started my career with a degree in visual arts, which was just a way to do art projects while I figured out what I really wanted to do. I backed my way into working as a pastry cook, which is to say I lied my way in (!) then worked my way into chef. Then a blind date with a food photographer introduced me to food styling.
I was working as a pastry chef in the original Smashbox Studios, making soap and at the time crazy wedding cakes on the side. I was one of the first to use fondant and in fact I had to make my own fondant from scratch because it hadn't yet become commercially available. During this time Bon Appetit [magazine] would send me back and forth to New York to shoot their covers with New York photographers. It was on one of those trips that I decided to stay. That was 25 years ago and I'm still here.
BD: What is your connection to Sicily? In your introduction, you mention that you had ancestors who came from the island long ago.
VG: Yes, my immigrant story is a bit different than most Sicilians. My Mother's family are Sephardic Jews, originally from Sicily, which was then part of the Spanish Empire. We were expelled during the Spanish Inquisition (three days before Columbus set sail to discover that shortcut to India). Like other exiles, we took our language, food and culture with us. Of these, the food changed the least. Although we settled in the Ottoman Empire, some of the foods we eat today are unchanged from foods you'd find in Sicily. Takes more than 500 years to breed it out of us!
BD: How would you describe Sicily to someone who has never been? In the book you use the phrase “If you’re here, you’re in the game.” What do you mean by that? How does the island differ from the rest of the country? What are some of Sicily’s charms? Some of its challenges?
VG: Oh gosh. Where to begin? When I say "If you're here, you're in the game," I'm referring to the way Sicily has of drawing you in. You simply cannot sit by and observe it passively, the way you can in other parts of Italy. You are beckoned by her intensity of color, flavor, weather, aroma, music, day-to-day life; the humor, the superstitions, the mystery, the drama - everything!
The other thing I like to say is that Sicily can tend to toss you around a bit before it lays jewels at your feet. This last trip, we got caught in a narrow street in Catania going the wrong way, the street signs were confounding and just as we were about to murder each other, a police officer waved us into a break in the traffic - to join a parade of about 100 vintage Fiat Cinquecenti driving right through the pedestrian piazza!
BD: Sicilian baking is unlike anywhere else in Italy. It is a true expression of history and geopolitics dating to 2000 years ago. With every invasion and occupation of the island came new ingredients. Can you tell us about some of these ingredients and how they are used in Sicilian pasticceria?
VG: Yes, this is what fascinates me - the way the Sicilian pasticceria is a living, edible form of cultural anthropology, of history, religion, politics and the land.
The salt flats near Trapani originated with the Phoenicians 2700 years ago; Greeks in the 5th century brought honey, ricotta, grapes, almonds, pistachios and wheat. But it was the Romans that came afterward who made a business out of the wheat. After all, they had an entire empire to feed. The Arab occupation brought with it iced desserts, floral essences, citrus and spices, Normans brought a fondness for butter, and the Spanish brought chocolate. Austrians and French and Swiss chefs introduced babàs, bigné and brioche, the latter of which are a staple breakfast item, filled with or dunked in granita.
BD: Were there any particularly memorable moments you would like to share from your travels around the island as you researched this book?
VG: Every moment is memorable in Sicily, but I love the crazy ones best. One of the places we stayed in—and photographed in—was a 17th century baglio, a fortified agricultural complex with two-story perimeter walls, built during feudalism. We locked the keys in by accident and in no time the story got around; it seemed as if the whole neighborhood came out to "help". (Mostly they gossiped and laughed about how impossible it was going to be to get back in.) My skinny little teenaged son finally volunteered his parkour skills to scale the wall like Spiderman, let us in, and before we knew it, the neighbors came back with homemade wine and biscotti FOR MY SON, who thereafter was greeted as a town hero—as if he'd turned water into wine—and invited to join the old men who sat on the benches out front.
And waking up in Noto to the tinny sound of the fruit and vegetable seller driving down the street, chanting his offerings in a sing-song voice that sounded like a muezzin calling the faithful to prayer, was both annoying and somehow joyous. We were definitelv in the game.
BD: Your book covers everything from humble breakfast cookies to fancy filled cookies, and everyday cakes to yeasted buns filled with creams and ricotta. There are also spoon sweets and gelati flavored with almond milk, spices, rose water, and citrus. I know it’s hard to choose, but do you have any favorites among them that you’d like to mention?
VG: It IS hard. But I love biscotti ricci and fior di mandorla [two almond-based cookies]. And biscotti al latte dunked in milky coffee for breakfast. And cotognata [quince paste]. In fact, I just made a batch this week with the most fragrant quince from a farm Upstate.
BD: Thank you, Victoria. Congratulations and ‘in bocca al lupo’ for your book!
RECIPE: Occhi di Santa Lucia | Eyes of St. Lucy
I had a hard time deciding which enticing recipe to make from Victoria’s book. There are many that feature ground almonds, an essential ingredient in Sicilian baking and one I adore. In the end, I chose these Almond Eyes of St. Lucy, not only for their chewy-crumbly texture and candied citrus “pupils,” but also the alluring gaze they fix on you as they sit there looking pretty on a plate or in a tin. You would never know it, but these cookies are accompanied by a rather gruesome backstory, which of course makes them all the more alluring.
The Festa di Santa Lucia, or St. Lucy’s Feast Day, is celebrated on December 13 in many parts of the world. But it is an especially important holiday in Sicily, where the patron saint of the blind was born at the turn of the 4th Century AD.
There are many versions of Saint Lucy’s rather gruesome story. In one, her eyes are gouged out as as punishment for not renouncing her Christian faith during the Diocletianic Persecutions. In another, it is Lucy who gouges out her own eyes to prevent herself from being distracted from her devotion to her faith by any would-be suitors.
The Feast of St. Lucy is also known as the Festival of Light. According to legend, as part of her devotion to Christianity and to the poor, Lucy would bring food to those hiding in the Roman catacombs, wearing a candle-lit wreath on her head to light her way.
In Sicily and beyond, eye-shaped cookies are baked to celebrate the martyred Saint Lucy on her Feast Day. Many recipes for “occhi di Santa Lucia” are simple wine cookies shaped into tiny, sugar-coated rings, like sweet taralli. But these almond-based confections, from cookbook author Victoria Granof, are different. They are similar to amaretti, with a crispy-chewy texture, and each “eye” is garnished with a candied orange “pupil.” Victoria says they are based on ones she tasted at Amandorla Marciante, a pastry shop in Syracuse. Recipe from Sicily, My Sweet, by Victoria Granof.
Makes 8 pairs of “eyes” (16 large cookies)
Click on the button for the full, printable recipe, available to paid subscribers:
BUONA DOMENICA PRINTS!
Three of Daniela’s beautiful Buona Domenica illustrations are now available as prints!
As most of you know, this newsletter has been graced by Daniela’s artwork since the first issue was published back in February 2022. Since then, I’ve heard from many of you who have loved her stylish and whimsical contributions. So we’re really thrilled to be able to make three of our favorites available for purchase. They are:
TORTA CAPRESE
BOMBSHELL SPAGHETTI
RADICCHIO
(Click on the titles above to see the original posts with which the prints are associated.)
DETAILS
QUANTITY: We are offering limited quantities (25) of each print
SIZE: Each print is 12 x 15.75 inches (30 x 40 cm), including the white border. They are printed in Italy on high-quality paper.
PRICE: $50 (USD) per print, plus $10 shipping, but paid subscribers receive a $10 discount ($40 plus shipping).
HOW TO ORDER
For now, prints are available to those residing in the U.S. or Canada, though we hope to expand availability. The prints will eventually be available to buy online through my Domenica Cooks website, which is hosted on Squarespace. This will simplify the transaction process.
For the time being, simply send me an email (domenica [at] domenicacooks.com) if you are interested in ordering prints, and I will reply directly to arrange the purchase. We accept payment through PayPal, Venmo, or check.
The colors of these prints are as vibrant as they appear in the photos above. They are truly beautiful and will make wonderful and unique holiday gifts!
As always, thank you for reading, subscribing, and sharing.
Alla prossima,
Domenica
There's a reason cannoli are Sicily's most famous dessert...they're my favorite. I love the contrast between the crispy shell and the creamy filling. My Apulian family never made dessert, but always had a box of delightful Italian pastries from their favorite bakery. I always grabbed a cannoli first.
Even thought she is Sicilian, most of poor Saint Lucy is here in Venice https://www.santuariodilucia.it/en/project/sanctuary/