The wonder of Italian Nonnas and English Nannas

Italian Nonnas seem to be getting a lot of attention at the moment, in theory for their cooking skills, but I suspect largely for their charm. The Pasta Grannies Instagram account has more than half a million followers and many thousands watch the weekly YouTube videos of these women making pasta the way they’ve always done and at the same time offering us a glimpse into their lives. Last week’s post with 101-year-old Concettina had been viewed 151,475 times at last count, one of them by me.

To be honest, I have no interest in home-made pasta (life is short in my view, just buy it), but the Nonnas fascinate me. Concettina has led a remarkable life and is a lesson in perseverance, acceptance and the benefits of incredibly healthy food. I can’t imagine her popping out for a bag of prawn cocktail crisps. She grew up on a farm and they led a frugal life, eating everything and wasting nothing. We seem to have come full circle in 100 years. But it does make me think about my own grandmothers, who I don’t think were renowned for their cooking skills.

One Nanna lived with us, but I never saw her cook anything because she suffered terribly from arthritis and couldn’t stand for any period of time. She did do a lot of vegetable peeling though and I can remember the bizarre contraption she used to peel potatoes. It was a bit like a salad spinner with very rough sides that removed the peel. I don’t recall the potatoes being peeled that thoroughly, but I bet it did wonders for Nanna’s arm muscles. Like Concettina, she’d had a very eventful life and I wish I had a video of her talking about it, preferably while using that odd potato peeler.

I did experience my other Nanna’s cooking and I can’t say that it was entirely successful. Well, to be honest, it was bordering on inedible. My father used to cheerfully reminisce about what a terrible cook she was, and I can recall her gravy in vivid detail. As she poured a watery beige fatty liquid onto my dinner, she said “I don’t bother to thicken my gravy, do you?” It’s a couple of years since I’ve eaten any meat and, now I think about it, her cooking may have something to do with it. Can you be traumatised by gravy? But, like my other Nanna, she had also lived through war, economic hardship and upheaval, and no doubt had fascinating stories to tell.

Obviously I have no cooking skills learned at my grandmother’s knee, no family recipes to be passed down through the generations. My mother, however, is a very good cook (although somewhat less inclined these days). She was very adventurous in her cooking – as in her life – and I can remember her preparing spaghetti in the 1960s when it was a very exotic dish to serve in England. Well, our part of England anyway. My Nanna quite rightly refused to eat “those worms”. Sometimes you just have to take a stand.

I definitely need to start filming my mother cooking and talking about her life so that my children will not have to seek out Pasta Grannies on YouTube. Maybe she could prepare bread pudding and take us right back to that thrifty 1960s kitchen. Or maybe not.