Food for Thought
connects people and stories.
one recipe at a time.
hat she loves most about her career as a cookbook author and frequent contributor to The New York Times and Food & Wine are the stories behind those beans and scallops: who she developed the recipe for—or with. Who brought what over to the house, and what was the occasion. How long she’s known these friends, what food memories they conjure, and how grateful she is to be able to share a meal with them.
Every post on Henry’s Substack, Colu Cooks (coluhenry.substack.com), and each recipe in her cookbooks—Back Pocket Pasta (2017), Easy Fancy Food (2022), and Better at Home (March 2026)—invites readers to pour themselves a glass of pinot noir and join her in the kitchen as she introduces them to her friends and family; her dog, Sugo; and anyone else who drops by. Crucially for Henry, the conversation goes both ways.
“[When] you’re making my recipes at home, what are the stories you’re telling when you’re making that food? Or are you using a different ingredient and then that changes the story?” she said.
Cooking wasn’t always Henry’s storytelling vehicle of choice. The Musical Theatre major grew up in a “food-crazy” family, and during her time at Emerson, she worked in local bars and restaurants, including Sonsie, the see-and-be-seen epicenter of 1990s Boston. But her intention was to graduate, move to New York City, and try to make it on the stage.
She accomplished the first two goals, but after doing some cabaret shows, she realized she needed health insurance and a steady income. She got a job with a fashion PR agency, which eventually began taking on food clients. Her boss sent her to a food writing class, and she ended up doing public relations for restaurants and chefs.
“On the job, I was not only learning about food, but I was learning how to write recipes and produce photo shoots, and do all these things that are actually needed to write a cookbook, or write recipes in general,” Henry said. “Then this eagerness to learn more and more about food just wouldn’t leave me. I was like, OK, this is my path.”
a really good bottle of wine…doesn’t need to be expensive, just delicious.”
Her path also led her to Washington state, where she represented actor Kyle MacLachlan’s wine label, and Oregon, to work for the Oregon Wine Board, then back to New York for roles in editorial and marketing with Bon Appétit. She returned to New York right as the fledgling Instagram was taking off and started her own hashtag, #BackPocketPasta, featuring simple, elegant dishes you can make on the fly.
“I was making all these recipes, and I had all these tools that I had learned over the years, and I was like, ‘Why am I doing this for everybody else when I want to just kind of do it for myself?’” she said.
Henry’s recipes originate in a number of different ways. Oftentimes, she comes up with something based on the ingredients she has on hand. Occasionally, she’ll have a dish at a restaurant or on her travels and will try to replicate a flavor in a new way. And sometimes, they manifest from one of the stories of connection that Henry treasures.
For example, a local friend of hers with a garden invited Henry to stop by to get some lettuce and tarragon. As she was handing it over, the friend mentioned that she loves to put tarragon on Caesar salad.
“I was like, oh, that’s interesting! So I wrote [myself] a note: ‘Val, Caesar salad, tarragon.’ At some point, I’m going to go back and try that. Maybe it becomes a recipe, maybe it’s a story about up the road,” she said.
While Henry tells stories from the kitchen rather than the stage, she said she’s used many of the tools she learned as a BFA student at Emerson in her chosen career. Particularly in interview situations, she said, her ability to memorize points, think on her feet, and anticipate what’s coming have served her well.
And she still feels connected to her classmates and to the creative energy she felt from 69 Brimmer Street, the heart of the Musical Theatre program until the early 2000s, and from Emerson in general.
“It was just a very intimate and very special place to spread your wings as a young person,” she said.
Today, Henry’s food philosophy, generally speaking, is the more “off-the-cuff” the recipe—and the less one overthinks it—the more delicious the result. And while her second cookbook is a compendium of “easy fancy food,” her definition of “fancy” has nothing to do with complicated cooking techniques; pricey, hard-to-find ingredients; or intimidating tasting menus.
“I prefer not to go to a 10-course dinner. I prefer to have a beautiful plate of anchovies, some really good butter, some amazing bread, a really good bottle of wine…doesn’t need to be expensive, just delicious,” she said. “And that, to me, is the height of luxury.”