Damon Lee Fowler

Tomorrow is my birthday, and ushers in the last year of my sixties.

It's a milestone I suspect none of us is ever ready to face, and is coming at an especially difficult time for my family and for our country. Consequently, that need for comforting soup in my household hasn't lessened; if anything, it's only gotten more pronounced.

Whenever that need becomes acute, the soup that provides it best isn't, oddly enough, one I grew up on, but a classic Italian minestrone. True, it's a kissing cousin of my grandmother's vegetable soup, but its comfort isn't rooted in childhood memories as are most other "comfort foods." When I was traveling to teach a lot, Read More 

In my later years, the end of summer has become bittersweet. Not because I love it so much that I hate seeing it pass; actually, autumn is my favorite time of year and by the end of July I'm eager for it to come. What's bittersweet about summer's waning is that it makes me keenly aware that my own life's summer is waning—and a lot faster than I'd like.

I'm not, of course, alone in this. Recently an email newsletter landed in my in-box with a link to an article warning of twenty-five things we should NEVER eat once we pass our fiftieth birthday.

Yes, they said never. The lion's share of the list was processed food, which ought not to be the dominant part of anyone's diet. Predictably, the bad-boy contents of most of the foods and drinks on this list were Read More 

When most of us use the words "comfort food" we usually mean something that warms us both inside and out, wrapping us up physically and emotionally. But during the dead heat of summer, when the humidity turns the air into hot mayonnaise, the sun turns the pavement into a short-order griddle, and we're all, as old-guard southern ladies persist in calling it, "glistening," comfort turns ice cold and is served in tall, frosted glasses and chilled bowls.

The irony is not lost on me that two of my own ultimate comfort foods are soups that are at their best in that dead heat, when their key ingredients are at their peak: my grandmother's vegetable beef soup Read More 

While I've been out in the jungle we call the back garden, hacking away at the briars that have surrounded our sadly neglected greenhouse like Sleeping Beauty's castle, Lent has crept up on me.

For those who don't observe the Christian calendar, Lent is a penitential season of spiritual fasting modeled on the forty day fast that Jesus took to prepare for his ministry. Well, since he retreated to the wilderness for that one, in a way it seems appropriate that my Lenten observance began out in our own little wilderness.

Many who observe Lent focus on what they're not doing (most often what they're not eating and drinking). But a proper spiritual fast is less about the abstinence that marks it outwardly than the introspection and contemplation that ought to be going on inwardly. To that end, there's been a trend over the last few years to shift the focus from "giving things up" to "taking things on" as a spiritual discipline.

Perhaps rescuing our sadly neglected garden could be thought of as spiritual, but then again, so can everything we do. With that idea in mind, these days  Read More 

For twenty years, fully half the time that Savannah, Georgia, was my home, aside from writing cookbooks and traveling to promote them, I also wrote a cooking column for the daily paper. The challenge at the beginning was adjusting to tight deadlines and keeping the copy short and to the point. But that was nothing to the challenge that came a few years in: coming up with fresh ideas and recipes that had not already been done to death. That was especially challenging during the winter holiday season and beginning of a new year.

And then, as if that wasn't enough, I took on running the avocational cooking school of a local kitchenware store. The busiest time there was also the winter holiday season Read More 

One of the great ironies of summer is that it's the very time of year when vegetable soups are at their best, since all the ingredients are at peak season, just when the last thing one wants to do is stand over a hot stove.

Luckily, these soups really don't require the cook to stand over them for more than a few minutes. You put it together before the kitchen is heated up, hang around only as long as it takes for it to come to a simmer, then just walk away Read More 

Of all the lovely ways there are to prepare summer squash, I never tire of pairing it with pasta, partly because I love what they do for one another and partly because the possibilities are practically endless.

Whether it's zucchini or our own delicate yellow crooknecks, their silky texture and subtly sweet flavor make a fine sauce for practically any pasta shape.

So when I came by some beautiful and fresh small yellow squash at the farmers' market, at least one of them was sure to end up in a bowl of pasta.  Read More 

While I was a student at Clemson's center for architectural studies in Genoa more than forty years ago, Ilda, our lovely cook, used to make us something she called an "omeletta." It was really not an omelette in the French sense, nor was it a frittata, but something halfway between. Read More 

Among the best things of all the wonderful summer produce that used to come from my mother's now dormant vegetable garden were delicate, sweet summer squash. It yielded our familiar Southern yellow crooknecks by the bushel, but also produced slim little green zucchini in equal quantity, because our whole family loved both.

They're what I miss most from her garden. We cooked them in all the usual ways and never tired of any of them:  Read More 

30 June 2021: Summer Squash and Pasta

Last week I was finally able to visit my parents, whom I had not seen since December of 2019. It was bittersweet: Finally seeing and actually touching them was undiluted joy; witnessing the toll that age and pandemic isolation have taken was heartbreaking. Hearing it in their voices on the telephone, and in regular reports from my brother, was one thing, but experiencing it in person was something else altogether.

One of the single saddest things of all was that my mother is no longer able to do the thing she loves best: garden. Her large vegetable garden plot is now indistinguishable from the rest of the yard. And there was not one single green vegetable to be found in that house.

Still, it was good to actually see them and, if only for a few days, take some of the burden off my brother, and do things Read More 

Dropping by Charles J. Russo's, my neighborhood fish market, for the shrimp that went into that sauté with new potatoes a couple of days back, some lovely fresh bay scallops caught my imagination and, like a child in the grocery, it started begging me to take some home.

A nice, simple gratin seemed like just the thing for them, with a touch of garlic, scallions, and a little hot pepper to season them, a few soft crumbs to soak up the juice they inevitably shed, and a few buttered dry crumbs to finish their top.

What could possibly go wrong? Well. It wasn't exactly wrong, but the garlic turned out to be way more than "a touch." Read More 

Over the course of my newspaper column's twenty year run, I but rarely developed original recipes for it. It wasn't laziness; it just wasn't cost effective. To fully develop a recipe from scratch requires a great deal of time and a lot more money than the column earned.

Still, every now and again, a column would inspire an idea for a dish that just wouldn't leave my imagination alone. And when, on those rare occasions, I gave in to the call and the recipe turned out well enough to make it into the column, it was always met with a hollow promise that I'd repeat it until it was perfected.

All too often, though, it got filed away and never made again.

Last year when panic hoarding created so many shortages of basic staples, just such an idea reared its little head and demanded to be noticed. Read More 

To round out an intimate Easter dinner with elegant simplicity, one can do no better than the classic Italian semifreddo. At first glance, the name seems contradictory, since it means "partly cold (frozen)" and yet the thing is actually completely frozen.

The usual explanation is that the light, mousse-like texture remains soft even when frozen solid, and doesn't feel quite as cold in the mouth as gelato, sorbet, or ice cream.  Read More 

Thin spaghetti simply dressed with butter, freshly-grated Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese, and thinly sliced young scallions has long been a spring standard at my table. I start making it when the first beautiful, slender little scallions appear in the market in late winter, and have it at least once a week throughout the season.

It's the very essence of spring and so perfectly balanced that even thinking of adding a thing risks falling into an exercise in gilding lilies.

But whenever I happen to have fresh thyme on hand, a few of its leaves inevitably find their way into the bowl.  Read More 

15 October 2020: Orecchiette with Broccoli and Anchovies

One of the things that quarantining during the pandemic has done for some of us is to make us less careless while shopping for food and more conscious of using every scrap without wasting it. As grocery bills have soared in the last few months, straining budgets that were already being challenged, it's a sharp reminder that all food is precious and ought never to be taken for granted.

Still, with only two of us in the house, unless I've made a large batch of soup, stew, or something like country-style steak (which is usually better the second day anyway), our leftovers tend to be a dab of this and a dribble of that—barely enough for a single serving, let alone two. Read More 

As many of you know, for most of my adult life, two culinary traditions have been inextricably intertwined in my kitchen: the Southern cooking of my childhood, and the Italian cooking that made such a marked impact while I was studying architecture as a young adult.

Part of it is that the two cuisines (or, I should say, collections of cuisines) have so much in common. The cooks of the South's many cuisines, and those of Italy, especially Northern Italy, share so many of the same ingredients and approach them with a similar mindset, combining and building flavors in exactly the same way. Because of that, the blending of these cuisines in my kitchen has a natural logic.

At any rate, that blending has marked my cooking for nearly half a century. Read More 

A social-media query that has often been bandied about among the curious (or merely bored), in this time of pandemic-induced social isolation, is whether or not it's had a significant impact on our individual cooking patterns.

Are we cooking more? Are we experimenting more? Have irregular shortages of certain staples such as meat, flour, eggs, milk, and pasta impacted what we do cook?

For my part, not much has changed. I routinely cook every day, and other than developing a recipe for a newspaper column, the only real difference in what I cook is that I'm tending to be less experimental, and am falling back more and more on things I've made dozens, if not hundreds of times.

The reassuring familiarity of dishes that can be done without thinking about them makes them a comfort both in the cooking and in the eating of them.  Read More 

She was standing alone, her regal bearing making her seem much taller than she actually was. Impeccably dressed in a chili-pepper red Chanel suit, her sleek, graying hair neatly pulled back in its signature coil at the nape of her neck, she sipped from an old-fashioned glass cupped in her hand with careless grace, and exuded the kind of timeless beauty and noble elegance that had earned her the nickname "la bella contessa."

My breath caught in my throat. There, within just a few yards of my wondering eyes, was one of the great, iconic teachers of Italian cooking. I had two of her lovely cookbooks and had long admired her simple, direct way of writing and cooking. And she was right there. Alone.

Pinching myself and gathering my nerve, I ambled over, and shyly introduced myself, "Signora Bettoja, you don't know me from Adam's house cat, but I've been an admirer of yours for years and have wanted to meet you for a long time." Read More 

There are far too many cooks who believe that a knowledge of culinary history and of the traditions of a given cuisine is a culinary straight jacket, that to be truly creative is to abandon the past and its structure, throw caution to the wind, and let your creative juices flow. But actually the opposite is true. In cooking, when there’s no grounding structure, the results are rarely memorable and all too often look less like a burst of creative magic than a train wreck.

Contrary to this notion, a firm grasp of basic the culinary principles and flavor profiles of a tradition actually lends more freedom than less to be creative in a meaningful and lasting way. Read More 

If my entire life as a cook could be summed in one thing, it would be a lifelong—and so far—failed quest to reproduce my maternal grandmother’s summer vegetable soup. Her kitchen was where I first cooked, and we made many a pot of vegetable soup together during my summer visits. The memory of its taste remains vivid more than half a century later. But somehow, I’ve never been able to get my own to taste and look exactly like hers.

When I was trying to construct a recipe for my first cookbook, in her typical way, MaMa said, “I never measured anything for soup, so just guess.” Well, of course, she measured— Read More 

In all of cooking, nothing satisfies me in the summer, both in the making and the eating of it, quite the way that a pot of vegetable soup always does. Whether it’s my best shot at reproducing my grandmother’s soup (something I have never quite succeeded in doing) or a classic minestrone alla romana, it’s my idea of the ultimate summer comfort food.

Whenever I manage to get home for a visit, it’s the first thing Mama and I make together. It’s never exactly the same: The base is always tomatoes, onions, and okra, but while she was still gardening, we’d add whatever was ready to be harvested supplemented by the stash from two enormous chest freezers in the garage. Read More 

One of the great compensations for (and means of relief from) summer’s heat is a fresh mixed fruit salad. It’s also one of the most versatile dishes of the season. Call it “cocktail” and open the meal with it; call it “salad” and serve it as the meal’s side dish or even centerpiece (all on its own or blended with cold seafood, poultry, or meat); call it “Macedonia,” “fruit cup,” or “compote” and it brings the meal to a delightful close.

Whatever we call it, and however we serve it, a fragrant bowl of well-mixed and chilled fruit is perfect warm-weather fare: it stimulates, satiates, and cools as nothing else can. It brings a ray of sunshine to a rainy day and soothing coolness to days when the sun’s rays become relentless. Read More 

In her later years, M. F. K. Fisher, the prominent mid-twentieth-century American essayist and food writer, once wrote poignantly of missing the ravenous, almost insatiable hunger of youth. Charmingly romantic to read in one’s twenties, it wasn’t so charming to reread years later, when that youthful hunger lingered and fought with a suddenly slowing metabolism of middle age. But there’s nothing charming or romantic about it when old age is staring one square in the face.

The problem is that, while our appetite and capacity may slow down with age, the curious cook’s palate doesn’t slow down with it.  Read More 

This morning, after days of midday temperatures that felt more June than November, Savannah finally awoke to clear, crisp air that had an actual a nip in it. Okay, it wasn’t exactly frosty, but it was cool enough to finally feel as if it was really fall—and to make the idea of cooking hearty things like pot roasts, thick stews, chili, and short ribs a welcome thing. Read More 

Recipe testing and food styling for my books and newspaper stories almost always leave some interesting leftovers and scraps behind. After finishing a story featuring some of the celebrated pasta dishes from earthquake-devastated Lazio, Marche, and Umbria, there was half a pound of mild Italian sausage, about one-and-a-half cups of tomato puree from a large can of tomatoes, and barely 2 ounces of pecorino romano cheese in the refrigerator. Read More 

If you’ve been following my recipes and stories page or my author’s page on Facebook for any time at all, you know that Italy, its people, and its many lovely cuisines have as large a chunk of my heart as my native South, fellow Southerners, and our many lovely cuisines. And this week, that part of my heart has been aching.

By now, most everyone has heard that in the early hours of Wednesday, August 24, central Italy was hit by a major earthquake of 6.2 magnitude, followed by a series of aftershocks that were still rattling the region as late as Friday.  Read More 

You might think that fresh asparagus can’t be made ahead, but it can actually be prepped and blanched up to 3 days ahead and then all you have to do is serve it up cold with vinaigrette or make up in this lovely Parmigiani classic.  Read More 

Sundays are busy days in my house. We’re up and out to church early: Tim is the organist-choirmaster and I help with the food for coffee the hour after services. If I’m on the schedule at the store, I go there straight from church, which makes for a very long day. By evening, we’re both ready to be off our feet, preferably with a glass of wine in hand.

Sunday supper, then (especially on those work days), is usually a simple meal. Read More 

One of the great universal concepts in Western cookery is the breaded cutlet: a thin slice of meat, beaten thin both to make it uniform and to tenderize it, coated with dry bread crumbs, and fried to a delicate brown. Crackling crisp on the outside, tender and juicy inside, it’s arguably one of the most satisfying ways of giving flavor and panache to cheap and bland cuts of meat or poultry. Read More 

In my family, the fat turkey of Dickens’ immortal tale, A Christmas Carol, was always the centerpiece of our Christmas dinner table, even though we’d just had turkey at Thanksgiving. Usually, my grandfather also baked a fresh ham (not the cured pink meat we think of as “ham” now, but an uncured fresh haunch of pork), an old family tradition that had been passed down for generations before him, and is carried on by my younger brother to this day. Read More