Why I’m documenting my nonna’s recipes – and the history behind them

Every year, one month before the holidays, my mom and my grandmother would start planning. The two of them hosted Christmas: One would take Christmas Eve, the other Christmas Day. My mom would start by writing out a work-back schedule, scribbled notes peeking out of cookbooks that included ideas for specialty cocktails and cookies. She excelled at all aspects of hosting parties, from the cooking to the music to the games, keeping up traditions but changing things up enough to keep us interested.
My nonna does not believe in that kind of change. We know exactly what to expect. On Christmas Eve, we’re greeted by a small appetizer table filled with seafood salad, stuffed mushroom caps, cubes of cheese and pickled vegetables. You know not to overdo it early on because the feast is just beginning. Pasta with mussels and stuffed squid is next, followed by fried fish fillets, sautéed shrimp, veggies, scallops, crab and lobster.
In 2017, a few weeks before Christmas, we lost my mom to cancer. As devastated as we were, we couldn’t imagine not gathering around a Christmas table. So in honour of her and her favourite holiday, I decided to take on hosting Christmas Eve. With the help of my nonna, it was a success but also a rude awakening to the challenges of cooking for a large group for the holidays. Every year since then, I have hosted Christmas Eve alongside my dad, my sister and my brother.
Over the following months, my family would get together with my grandparents on most weekends and cook. My mom had written a cookbook of all of our favourite recipes, which we cherish to this day. We didn’t realize it at the time but sharing memories through food and preparing her favourite dishes – polpetti (sauce-free fried meatballs), Caesar salad and veal parmigiana – was our way of healing. The experience created a new relationship to food and an appreciation for how a person can live on through recipes and traditions passed down. It also made us realize we didn’t have a record of any of my nonna’s recipes and neither did she. There was only one thing to do: write a cookbook.
Many of Nonna’s recipes evolved over time. She learned most of them from her own mother and grandmother back in Puglia in southeast Italy. How to assemble a cookbook to document this history and translate it to the dining table was a complete mystery to me. I was nervous and intimidated and didn’t know where to start. I reached out to photographers Saty Namvar and Pratha Samyrajah, friends who share my love of food, for help. They would take photos and encourage me along the way.
To start, I wrote down all the important recipes – my mom’s, my Nonna’s and even a couple from my dad, who had never cooked before he had to. I had my nonna dictate her recipes to me, but after a few failed attempts at her onion calzone (a stuffed pizza with caramelized onions, egg, cheese and olives) I realized that Nonnas do not give out their recipes freely (the small glass of water she told me needed to go into one dish turned out to be a generous pint). Instead, you have to watch them cook. And so, with my siblings, we watched and cooked and ate and listened to stories while she worked her way through meat ragu (a.k.a. the “Sunday Sauce”), zucchini fritters, panzerotti, cannelloni and zeppole.
Before photographing each dish, I go back to my nonna’s house and borrow her tablecloths, dishes, cutlery and the other odd trinkets that only nonnas own. In true nonna fashion, she asks me if I’m going to put plastic over her tablecloths to make sure they don’t get dirty. I enlist my siblings, family and friends as recipe and taste testers. As much as I want to get the recipes right for my family, it’s been nerve-wracking watching someone who has never eaten these dishes take their first bite. Not only do I want to capture the right flavours and textures but also the spirit of all the family memories baked into a dish.
The book is going to be small and whether it becomes a beautiful memento shared with close family and friends or something that reaches a wider audience is still to be determined. My nonna finds it bewildering and entertaining that I’m doing this at all. I don’t think she realizes what treasures she holds – but we do.
Plan your weekend with our Good Taste newsletter, offering wine advice and reviews, recipes, restaurant news and more. Sign up today.