Hairdresser's Passion for Cooking Inspires Hundreds of Original Italian Recipes

Domenico Candelieri, owner of Michelangelos Hair Salon in Braintree, does a lot more with his hands than cut and style hair.

In his backyard off Grove Street he maintains a garden, growing fresh vegetables and herbs much of the year, and in his kitchen at home – his grocery store as he likes to call it – Candelieri keeps a six-month supply of ingredients.

"There's always enough food in my house," he said.

Why all the gardening and cooking? Because Candelieri, a well-known and respected hair stylist who used to co-own salons across the South Shore, is now a published author whose two volumes of How to Master Italian Cuisine feature more than 400 original recipes inspired by his roots in the Calabria region of Italy.

Candelieri wrote the books over the last four years, spending painstaking hours in his kitchen developing the recipes when he was not running his salon on Pond Street in South Braintree Square.

The result is a trove of ideas for Mediterranean cooking using olive oil and natural ingredients such as garlic, parsley, rosemary, Ciro wine and Tropea onions. With these as a foundation, Candelieri built a wide range of recipes, from dishes like the Melon Antipasto with Calabrese Prosciutto to heartier fare like the Fried Pork Chops with Dried Cherry Sauce.

"I did so much cooking it comes out of your ear," Candelieri said of the preparation for the books, which he sells at Michelangelo's and which are also available online at the website of sponsor Pastene, a specialty Italian food supplier based in Canton. "In order to cook for Italians, you have to be a good cook," he said.

Candelieri's cooking chops go back to the 1950s, when he was living above his uncle and father's meat market in the North End of Boston, and even further, to his mother and grandmother's recipes.

Back when Candelieri moved to the North End, he said, it was "Italian, Italian," and different groups of immigrants – Calabrese, Sicilian – cooked with and for each other. His friend opened a restaurant and Candelieri worked for him before buying part of the business. He was also taking night classes to learn English.

"I came to the land of opportunity," Candelieri said. "But nobody gives you anything for free, you have to work for it."

After a while, working 16 hours days at the restaurant became tiring and Candelieri took up with a large hair styling firm based in New York and began learning new techniques, working in Boston most of the week and traveling to headquarters for training sessions.

Before long Candelieri decided that most of his clients were from the South Shore and it made sense to start up his own shop in Quincy. From there he expanded with business partners to Five Corners in Braintree, Brockton, Dedham and Weymouth. Eventually he sold his stakes in the diverse collection of salons and consolidated into his current building in 1982.

More recently, Candelieri felt the itch to expand his horizons again. "I thought, I have to do something else with my life," he said.

So six years ago the hair stylist began teaching Italian for and then at Blue Hills Regional Technical School, where he also demonstrated hairdressing. He taught cooking for a couple years as well.

In 2007, Candelieri published his first volume of How to Master Italian Cuisine, followed by his second in October of 2010.

Candelieri was inspired, he said, by a long-time client at his salon who kept urging him to put his recipes down on paper. For years he had passed them out to friends, family and customers.

"'You can do it,' she said... It really put the idea in my head," Candelieri said. "I didn't know how much talent I had."

He draws parallels between both his creative processes. "You're an artist," Candelieri said, adding that a hairdresser makes a woman beautiful. "Then you have to feed this person."

A third volume is in the works, with a focus on food for children and vegetarians. In the meantime, Candelieri continues to experiment, using his two kitchens at home and occasionally serving large groups of people. Last month he fed more than 100 people at the Sons of Italy Hall in Braintree and sold as many copies of his books.

"I keep cooking everyday," he said.