22 MONTEREY COUNTY WEEKLY may 2-8, 2024 www.montereycountyweekly.com Two recent cookbooks bring recipes from local restaurants to the table, along with family lore. By Dave Faries Recipes for Success As Susan Culcasi tells the story, her husband’s family was treated to meatloaf every Tuesday. When Jim and Susan opened Rosine’s in Monterey in 1980, the dish made it onto the restaurant’s menu. They named the restaurant after Jim Culcasi’s mother, known for her touch in the home kitchen. A few years ago, as they made preparations to compile a second cookbook—one which would include family recipes as well as restaurant favorites—they asked her to look over the recipe for the popular meatloaf served at Rosine’s. The culinary matriarch studied the line items, scowled, reached for a pen and began making changes with a terse, “I don’t put mushrooms in my meatloaf.” Family recipes vary, and cookbooks have generally served as guidelines adaptable to personal tastes. But as Jim Culcasi says, the cookbook bearing the restaurant’s name is a way regulars “can bring a piece of Rosine’s home with them.” In other words, by following a recipe step by step, a home cook should be able to bring to their own dining room table a restaurant dish. Two storied Monterey establishments published cookbooks in the fall of 2023. Jim and Susan Culcasi put together Rosine’s Cuisine: A Treasure Trove of Select Recipes from Monterey’s Legendary Family Restaurant. Meanwhile Dominic Mercurio filed Cafe Fina’s Cookbook: You Don’t Have to be a Chef to Cook Great Food, with the help of local writer Sally Baho. Both cookbooks appeal to family, to the mystic chords of memory that resonate from the home kitchen and family gatherings. They are illustrated in part by treasured snapshots and, in the case of Rosine’s, a family tree. “Between my uncle, John Pisto [who owned The Whaling Station and Domenico’s] and my mother, I learned a lot about cooking—my grandmother was a good cook, too,” Mercurio says. “I do not like to call myself a chef, because I had no formal training. That’s why the book is titled…” He points to the subhead—“You Don’t Have to be a Chef to Cook Great Food”—with a grin. ■ ■ ■ It’s Mercurio’s first cookbook. There are nostalgic images and stories, along with recipes familiar to Cafe Fina regulars. Yet he includes dishes from family and friends, such as a couple of contributions from famed Oakland Raiders head coach and later television broadcaster Daniel Dreifuss
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