Sonny Bono and Cher’s Recipes

For a while I’ve been thinking the worlds needs a Sonny Bono cookbook. Recently I was even bemoaning the fact that we never got a Sonny Bono Cooking Channel show. This is because Cher scholar Jay sent me an episode of Sonny cooking from the October 13, 1969 Mike Douglas Show where we can see Sonny (and Cher) cooking together while Mike Douglas goofs off.

Inspired by this episode and my conversations with Jay, I went online to gather all of the Internets’ find-able Sonny Bono recipes. I’ve compiled all I could find here.  I’ll try to make these dishes in both meat and vegetarian varieties (so I can eat some of it) and contribute notes and pictures to the page. If you decide to make any of these recipes and have stories or pictures to share or if you have other confirmed Sonny recipes, email me.

Other Cher-related food items can be found in my Zine 2, The Jack Nicholson/Cher Muffin-Off, and Zine 3, My Armenian Dinner Party.

Hopefully this list of recipes will grow over time as well, or maybe someone in “the family” will create a cookbook tribute to Sonny. Or maybe his Chef-daughter Christy will someday want a cookbook of her own that will include her father’s recipes.

Until then….this.

Sonny’s Recipes

 

Sonny Bono’s Pollo Bono

From the Baltimore Sun…

“Selma Kopelman of Brookline, Mass., sought help in finding Sonny Bono’s pollo chicken recipe. She lost a recipe her daughter-in-law had given her. Helena Blum of Baltimore came to the rescue. She said she had a recipe from the Feb. 6, 1990, issue of Woman’s Day magazine. “I never tried it. Now I will,” she wrote. The dish features breaded chicken breasts, which are topped with fresh tomatoes and onions, and then baked. Blum also included other information about Bono from the article. “Sonny Bono’s parents worked when he was a kid, his father in a factory and his mom in a local beauty shop. The first one home made the meals, chosen from an array of old Bono family recipes. On Sundays, they cooked very special dinners together, and when Sonny and his older sister were old enough, they cooked too.”

Tester Laura Reiley’s comments: “This dish is very low in fat and cholesterol. There is not a huge amount of tomato sauce, although the tomato slices release their juices during the broiling process. I would suggest Maui or other sweet onion for their sweet flavor and greater juiciness.”

Mr. Cher Scholar made this recipe on July 24, 2021.

Serves 6

Ingredients:

Tomato Sauce:

1 cup tomato juice
1/3 cup olive oil
2 tablespoons chopped fresh basil leaves or 2 teaspoons dried
2 teaspoons chopped fresh oregano leaves or 1/2 teaspoon dried
2 teaspoons minced garlic
2 teaspoons chopped shallot
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon ground pepper

Chicken:

6 skinless, boneless chicken breast halves (about 8 ounces each)
1 tablespoon olive oil
1/2 cup packaged seasoned bread crumbs
1/4 cup grated Parmesan cheese
2 medium tomatoes, each sliced in 6 rounds
1 medium onion, sliced in 12 thin rounds

To Prepare:

Mix tomato-sauce ingredients in a medium saucepan. Bring to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer, uncovered, 5-7 minutes until sauce thickens. Heat oven to 375 degrees. Put chicken breasts in a plastic food storage bag. Pour in 1 tablespoon oil. Close bag and press to coat chicken with oil. Mix bread crumbs and cheese on waxed paper. Coat chicken with crumb mixture. Place side by side in 13-inch-by-9-inch broiler-proof baking dish. Top each breast half with 2 slices tomato and onion. Pour tomato sauce over chicken. Bake 30 to 35 minutes until chicken is opaque in center. Turn oven selector to broil. Broil chicken 4 to 5 inches from heat source for 4 to 5 minutes or until onion is tender.

He made a vegetarian, fake-chicken version for me.

Mr. Cher Scholar made this recipe on July 24, 2021. I invited my friends Priscilla and Mikaela over and they were gamely willing to test out a few of of Sonny  recipes.

Everyone liked the results. The biggest critique came from me, which was to say the fake chicken was rubbery (but very tasty). Mikaela said the chicken was “fantastic, excellent.” Priscilla said she loved the Pollo Bono too and is usually very picky about her chicken.

Mr. Cher Scholar said, “I like his recipes because they’re authentic stuff made at home, not over-the-top elaborate. Simple ingredients. Simple process.” Afterwards he said he would make it again for his brother. “It’s not hard.”

Alterations: Our chicken breasts were huge. Monstrous. So he ending up baking them for 50 minutes at 375 degrees.

 

Sonny Bono’s Chicken Tonight

I found this one on facebook by Steve Martine Cooks. He says,

Sonny was on Merv Griffin many years ago and he prepared this dish. Turns out to be a favorite of mine.

Ingredients:

Chicken breast on the bone or bones (whichever you prefer)
Olive oil
Italian seasoned bread crumbs
1 bell pepper
1 onion
Favorite tomato sauce (see Pollo Bono above)
Mozzarella cheese
Pasta of choice

To Prepare:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Dip chicken in olive oil and then then bread with Italian seasoned bread crumbs. Place breaded breasts in a glass baking pan. Cut a bell pepper and an onion in long, thin strips and place over the chicken breasts. Top with your favorite red sauce (Cooks used Ragu for this dish). Use only enough sauce to cover. Cover the baking pan with foil and bake at 350 degrees for 45 minutes. Remove foil and add mozzarella cheese and bake for 15 minutes more uncovered. Serve over pasta (Cooks uses angelhair pasta). Cooks says, “use a spatula to serve the chicken but grab a spoon to get all the goodies in the pan! Great flavors there. Grate some cheese on top and enjoy!!”

Sonny Bono’s Rigatoni with Sausage and Short Ribs Sugo Di Spuntature Recipe

I found this recipe on a site called Group Recipes. It’s from crabhappychick 12 years ago, who says,

Talk about a hearty meal! Save this for the first cool fall day to warm you up from the inside out. Used to be served at Sonny’s restaurant in Palm Beach – don’t know if its still there or not. Fantastic!!!! Bon Appetit 1988.

Does this mean the recipe was also in Bon Appetit Magazine in 1988?

260 minutes to make
Serves 6

Ingredients:

1/4 c. olive oil
2 onions, chopped
3 garlic cloves, minced
1 1/2 lbs. boneless beef chuck, cut into 1-inch cubes, patted dry
1 lb. sweet Italian sausage, halved crosswise
6 beef short ribs
3 15-oz. cans tomato sauce
3 c. water
2 c. dry red wine
1 6-oz. can tomato paste
2 tablespoons dried basil, crumbled
1 T. dried oregano, crumbled
salt and pepper to taste
3 T. chopped fresh basil
freshly cooked rigatoni pasta
freshly grated parmesan cheese

To Prepare:

Heat oil in large saucepan or Dutch oven over medium heat. Add onions and garlic and cook until tender, stirring occasionally, about 10 minutes. Remove from pan using slotted spoon. Increase heat to high. Add chuck and brown well on all sides. Remove using slotted spoon. Add sausage and brown well on all sides. Return onion, garlic and chuck to pan. Add short ribs, tomato sauce, water, wine, tomato paste, dried basil, oregano, salt and pepper. Bring to boil. Reduce heat, cover partially and simmer until chuck is very tender, about 3 hours, de-greasing occasionally. Just before serving, stir in fresh basil. Divide rigatoni among bowls. Top with short ribs and meat mixture. Serve, passing Parmesan separately.

Sonny Bono’s Frutta Di Mare a la Palm Springs

This recipe was found on two websites, RecipeLand and CD Kitchen. The recipe note says,

    In English this recipe is called “Fruit of the Sea” which is served at Sonny Bono’s restaurant in Palm Springs, CA.

Ingredients:

1/2 pound swordfish, cubed
1/2 pound red snapper, cubed
12 scallops
4 jumbo shrimp, peeled, de-veined
6 green New Zealand mussels in shell
6 clams in the shell
4 crayfish, opt
1 carrot, sliced
1 medium onion, chopped
4 cloves garlic, chopped
1 small can anchovies in oil, chopped
2 cans (6.5 ounce size) clams with juice, chopped
2 cans imported Italian whole tomatoes with basil
4 tablespoons olive oil
2 tablespoons butter
2 teaspoons lemon juice
1/2 cup dry white wine
2 bay leaves
1 teaspoon dried oregano
2 teaspoons dried basil
10 fennel seeds
water
crushed red pepper, to taste (optional)
salt and pepper, to taste

To Prepare:

Steam clams and mussels over water with half the garlic, wine and lemon juice for 9 to 10 minutes until they open. Discard liquid.

Boil crayfish in enough water to cover, with half the onion, the carrots, a celery stalk, crushed chilies, salt and pepper for 15 minutes. Leave shells intact, discard liquid.

To prepare broth, cook the rest of the celery, onion, anchovies with oil, half of the olive oil and bay leaves in a large covered saucepan over medium heat. Cook until the celery feels fork tender.

Add clams with juice and half the wine and cook for 5 minutes. Add crushed tomatoes, oregano, basil, fennel seeds, chilies, salt and pepper. Bring to a boil for 5 minutes.

To prepare fish, heat rest of olive oil and butter in a large skillet over medium heat until hot. Add swordfish, snapper, salmon, scallops, shrimp, salt and pepper. Saute until cooked on all sides.

Add rest of wine and lemon juice, cook for 3 minutes. Add to broth, then add the steamed mussels, clams and crayfish.

Serve in a deep dish with linguine, a salad of fresh greens, crisp Italian bread and your favorite white wine.

“A Veal Dish” aka Veal Bono aka Sonny’s Baked Veal

Cher: He doesn’t name them. He just puts Bono at the end of it.

From The Mike Douglas Show, October 13, 1969.  This was part of an alleged 3-course meal presented on the show that week. These measurements are my own estimates from watching Sonny on the show.

Ingredients:

Olive Oil
Bread Crumbs
2 Tablespoons Parmesan cheese
3 Tablespoons fresh parsley, chopped
1 teaspoon garlic powder
6 pieces of veal
2 28 oz. cans of Whole Tomatoes
1 White Onion
Oregano

To Prepare:

Preheat oven to 375 degrees.

Put some olive oil in a bowl or pan. Add breadcrumbs into a bowl or pan. Add to the breadcrumbs the parsley, parmesan cheese and garlic powder. Stir. Add salt and pepper (Sonny: “lots of it”). Coat the veal in the olive oil and then the breadcrumbs. Lay them into a 9X13 pan. Slice the tomatoes on top of the veal. Add the rings of sliced onion on top of the tomatoes. Sprinkle oregano on top. Bake at 375 degrees for 45 minutes to an hour.

Watch Sonny, Cher and Mike Douglas make this.

The Secret Pasta Sauce
https://www.cherscholar.com/the-secret-pasta-sauce/
There was Sonny Bono’s Spaghetti with Fresh Tomato Sauce in The Dead Celebrity Cookbook and Cher Version of  Sonny’s Pasta Sauce. Then there some other pasta sauces from other cookbooks related to Sonny & Cher that I’ve tried. There are enough pasta-sauce recopies that I decided to create a whole page just for this elusive, secret, locked-down pasta sauce.

 

Sonny Bono’s Pecan Chocolate Chunk Cookies

I found reference to this on the Flikr page of Studio Z-7 Archives. It’s not a recipe, just a reference to the existence of a special cookie recipe in existence somewhere in the universe. Apparently you could buy these! Studio Z-7 Archives quotes Sonny’s message on the the box:

“Thanks for trying my Gourmet Cookies. I really think you’re going to enjoy them! As a matter of fact, they’re the same cookies I baked for rehearsals. Everybody loved them. I’m still using my favorite recipe and insist on the best ingredients like pure chocolate chunks and table grade butter. Then I seal them in this SPECIAL “Cookie Jar” so you’ll enjoy them fresh and crisp! All My Best, Sonny Bono”

Studio Z-7 Archives then says,

If Paul Newman could have his own line of gourmet products, so could Sonny Bono. Cool to think he made homemade cookies for the crew when they were doing rehearsals…cookies were baked by Silver Lake Cookie Company of Islip, NY. Don’t know when this was made but the package design looks like mid-late 1980s.

Sonny cooking with Cher on the Mike Douglas Show

Sonny & Cher Recipes

It’s a slim 96-page book. Sonny & Cher are in the middle with a pork chop recipe (see below) and this intro:

“Sonny & Cher shared a pizza the afternoon they met. That was the day they both had jobs as background singers at a recording session. It’s been Italian food ever since. Cher doesn’t really know how to cook many dishes, but she’s learned a couple to please husband Sonny, who is Italian. At any rate, they always keep a gallon of olive oil on hand, and lots of different kinds of pasta. Sonny always cooks the pasta, and often have it with one of Cher’s specialties.”

Cher’s Recipes

You can also explore Cher’s recipes in her books Forever Fit with Robert Haas and Cooking for Cher with her chef Andrew Ennis.

 

Salmon en Papillote / Salmon with Roasted Red Pepper Sauce

From Cooking with Cher. First I made the recipe “en Papillote” as called for in the cookbook but I forgot to take any pictures. It was good. The second time I made it I decided to use the Red Pepper Sauce from the scallops recipe a few pages later. I’ll never made scallops although I like them. Let’s be real. The pictures are the salmon with the red pepper sauce. The Salmon en Papillote has carrots, celery, Dijon mustard, garlic salt, pepper, lemon, white wine and dill springs. You steamed the vegetables and then baked everything in parchment paper.

The roasted red pepper sauce version used shallots, celery, vegetable broth, red peppers you had roasted the Andy Ennis way, a bay leaf, thyme and cayenne pepper that you heated up and then blended for a smooth sauce. I made my mother’s Jalapeño cornbread to go with it. The roasted red pepper salmon was a big hit and I had enough left over to try on other types of fish in my freezer.

 

Cajun Swordfish Brochettes

From Cooking for Cher. This was made for small dinner party in 2004 and then again in 2025. Read about it here: https://www.cherscholar.com/the-jack-nicholson-cher-muffin-off/

 

Fiery Pepper Shrimp Fried Rice
From Cooking with Cher. The chef says he created this for Cher because she likes spicy food and shrimp fried rice.

Ingredients:

1/4 teaspoon dark sesame oil
1 tablespoon peanut oil or vegetable oil (I probably used more because I eyeballed it for the size of my pan)
1 large onion, diced
3 medium carrots, cut into short julienne pieces
1/2 to 3/4 cup julienned red bell pepper (I added the same of mushrooms, too)
1 + 3/4 cup brown rice, prepared according to package directions, kept warm
2 teaspoons or more low-sodium soy sauce (I used regular soy sauce and 5 teaspoons because I’m devil-may–care)
3 green onions, thickly sliced, plus extra for garnish (Hello Fresh teaches us to separate the whites from the greens and use the greens for the garnish)
1/2 cup frozen green peas, thawed
1 1/2 pounds medium shrimp, peeled, deveined, rinsed and patted dry
1/2 to 3/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper (I made two batches of this because Mr. Cher Scholar doesn’t like spicy. His concentrate was 1/4 cayenne, mine was 3/4.)
3/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
1/2 teaspoon garlic salt (I also added a pinch of salt)
2 tablespoons toasted sliver almonds (optional, I skipped this because I didn’t want to roast them)

To Prepare:

In a large sauté pan or wok, heat the sesame oil and 1 teaspoon of the peanut oil over medium-high heat. Add the onions, carrots and bell peppers and lightly brown for 6 to 8 minutes. Stir in the cooked rice and cook for another 2 to 3 minutes. Add the soy sauce and stir well. Mix in the green onions and peas. Pour the mix into a bowl and keep warm. Rinse and dry the pan. (I never do this because I’m lazy. I just scrape it out with a rubber spoon.)

Make the rub with the cayenne, black pepper and garlic salt. Coat the shrimp with the rub in a bowl. In the sauté pan, heat the remaining 2 teaspoons of peanut oil over high heat. When pan is very hot (whisps of smoke appear), add the shrimp and let them brown and crisp on one side before turning. Don’t breathe in the smoke. The spices are intense. The shrimp will cook for 4 to 5 minutes. Add shrimp to the other mixture. (I added it on top.) Garnish with green onions and optional almonds.

I learned to make shrimp fried rice from Hello Fresh so I was excited to try this version. It was a hit. And aside from the chopping and the length of time to make the brown rice, not that hard. I just had a conversation with a Chinese-American friend about the health benefits of brown rice.  Turns out if you put a good protein with rice rice, the differences might be negligible.  So next time I might use up some of my white rice surplus. Also, for this I added mushrooms because I had some to use.

 

Cher’s Perfect Pork Chops

From both Singers & Swingers in the Kitchen, The Scene-Makers Cook Book by Roberta Ashley (1967) “Recipes to get Hung-Up On” and Celebrity Recipes by Janice Tomano (circa 1980s).

Serves 2

Ingredients:

2 pork chops, double-thick (the butcher will cut these on request)
1 ½ cups olive oil
2 large cloves garlic, crushed
1 cup chopped onions
1 can whole stewed tomatoes
¼ teaspoon oregano
¼ teaspoon basil

To Prepare:

Put the olive oil into a bowl; crush the garlic into the olive oil. Marinate the double chops in the mixture for 2 hours or more. Then put the marinade into a saucepan. Add the chopped onions and heat until the onions are soft. Add the oregano and basil and stir; then all the pork chops. Simmer the entire mixture for about 10 minutes. Finally, add the whole tomatoes and let the dish cook over low-medium heat for another 20 minutes. Serve piping hot with spaghetti or Italian bread.

 

Cher’s Hawaiian Meatballs

Ingredients

2 1/2 lbs. ground beef (I used Beyond Meat instead, which complicated things considerably)
1/2 cup minced onion
1 egg
2 T. salt
1 cup bread crumps
1/2 t. ginger
1 1/2 T. shortening (I used vegetable shortening)
1/2 cup milk
2 1/2 T. cornstarch
2 cans pineapple (~13 oz. cans; good luck finding the right size cans and good luck finding canned fruit these days…but you need them because you gotta have the juice. So get it.)
3/4 cup brown sugar, packed
2 T. soy sauce
1/2 cup vinegar
1/2 cup chopped green pepper

To Prepare:

Combine meat, minced onion, egg, bread crumbs, salt, ginger and milk. Shape mixture into balls. Melt shortening in large skillet and cook meatballs until browned. Removed meatballs from skillet and place in oven on low heat to keep warm. Drain fat from skillet.

Mix cornstarch and brown sugar, stirring in the vinegar, soy sauce and reserved pineapple syrup until mixture is smooth. Pour into skillet and cook over a medium heat, stirring frequently until mixture becomes thick and is boiling. Continue to boil and stir for 1 minute. Adding meatballs, green pepper and pineapple bits, heat completely through.

My experience making Cher’s Hawaiian Meatballs (2024).

 

Cher’s Fat-free Tuna Pasta Salad

From Rock and Roll Cuisine, also known as “Boyfriend Approved Macaroni Salad (Serve Cold)” like revenge.

Serves “enough for a horde – not a rampaging horde, just a horde

Ingredients:

2 lbs. De Cecco gnocchi (see gnocchi note below) or cavatelli pasta
4 (6 1/2 oz.) cans Chicken of the Sea brand white Albacore tuna (in water)
4 or 5 (4 oz.) cans sliced ripe black olives
4 extra lg. tomatoes, cubed
1/2 large or 1 small red onion, finely chopped
Mayonnaise
Beau Monde seasoning (Spice Islands)
Cracked black pepper

To Prepare: 

Cook pasta to your taste. In large bowl, mix pasta with a little mayonnaise so as not to stick. Next, add tuna, onion, olives, and tomatoes. Mix with more mayonnaise and season to taste with pepper and Beaumonde seasoning. Add a little more mayo than you think is neccessary so it’s kind of goopy. REFRIGERATE.

My experience making Cher’s Tuna Pasta Salad in 2023 began when my sister-in-law Susan sent me an online picture of the recipe and wanted to know if it was any good. So I dug out my Cooking with Cher cookbook and found the same recipe there and made it.

The recipe tasted….well fat free. I followed her chef Andy Ennis’ fat-free version. I didn’t have the goopy instruction from the Rock and Roll cookbook version. This was back when the fad was to make everything fat free. People aren’t doing this anymore.  Michael Pollan has said in his book In Defense of Food that the fat-free craze just made us fatter. And we need some fats as it turns out.

Someone else’s experience with the recipe (Parade Magazine) which was more positive (except to illustrate how hard it is to find ingredients in celebrity recipes sometimes).

Gnocchi note: “Cher calls for “gnocchi” pasta, but she doesn’t mean potato gnocchi but rather something like Gnocchi Sardi, which is a small, hand-rolled shell-shaped pasta. As you’ll see, I went with orecchiette because I couldn’t find the gnocchi-style pasta Cher called for….Cher’s macaroni salad ended up being much greater than the sum of its parts. The pasta was cooked perfectly al dente, the tomatoes were ripe and juicy, the raw red onion added a sharp bite and the black olives were creamy and earthy…After Cher said to make this salad on the goopy side, I added a generous dollop of avocado oil-based mayo and relied on my seasonings a bit more for flavor. It was perfection! Another thing I loved was how quickly this one-bowl recipe came together. This is truly an easy-peasy side dish that’s absolutely perfect for your next picnic or barbecue. I could definitely be convinced to make this macaroni salad again for an upcoming summer soirée.”

Sonny Bono’s Restaurant Ventures

From Rose Dotsi’s Los Angeles Times review (1985)
https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1985-05-09-fo-7108-story.html

“I’ve always liked Bono’s even when no one else did, and God knows no one else did in the old days. I liked Bono’s wild bar scene, his interpretation of a comfortable, informal pastel-peach and terra cotta Mediterranean villa…he has discovered that Italian cooking–Sicilian in particular–has a range and depth he never thought possible. Until now, Bono was featuring his parents’ rendition of simple Sicilian cooking brought from their native Sicily to Detroit and later to Inglewood, Calif., where Sonny grew up.

“Now I’m up in Palm Springs sun-drying tomatoes, reading Italian cookbooks and growing my own basil. I’m trying to take in everything I can about regional Italian cooking,” Bono said. And he’s serious. This June, Bono will fly to his ancestral town in Sicily for more study. “I take my restaurant very seriously.”

….

Looking over the Italian menu with English subtitles, my eyes locked onto sugo di spuntature , described as “Sonny’s Dad’s favorite–an old family recipe of meat sauce with beef ribs and Italian sausage on rigatoni.”

There is an entire page describing the unusual types of pasta to which we have come to expect from Italian restaurants: fettuccine with Cognac, angel hair pasta primavera , linguine with eggplant, linguine with scallops, white wine and herbs, and pasta Bolognese with veal meatballs.

I tried the pasta primavera with angel hair pasta (quite good) and the fresh spinach tagliatelle with fresh tomatoes on the day’s special (a bit watery).

My only honest-to-goodness disappointment was the shrimp salad, which, I think, was dreadfully abused from a beauty standpoint. Cut shrimp? Warm greens? Help.

The carrot soup, on the other hand: beautiful color, superb taste, perfect texture.

For those who like fish, the chef loves to prepare the many dishes offered. Some, like the swordfish with oregano, is grilled on mesquite. Calamari fritti (fried squid) was quite fresh.

Bono’s, 8478 Melrose Ave., Los Angeles, (213) 651-1842. Open Monday through Friday for lunch 11:30 a.m. to 3 p.m. and dinner from 5 to 11 p.m. Open Saturday and Sunday for dinner only: Saturday 6 p.m. to midnight; Sunday 5 to 11 p.m. Reservations accepted. MasterCard, Visa, Diner’s Club, American Express accepted. Valet parking. Average pasta entree $7.50; average meat dish $10. Wine served by the glass and from a list featuring 10 of Italy’s growing regions.”