They’re Stanley Tucci’s comfort watch and YouTube’s favourite chefs. Faye Curran meets the founder of the online recipe catalogue, who traverses Italy, archiving each recipe just like Nonna used to make. 

Vicky Bennison spends much of her time hoping a small group of elite Italian nonne won’t die. In fact, it has been a fundamental prerequisite of her work for the past ten years.

“I know of a granny that is 100 years old who is a beekeeper. I’ve been in a hurry to get to her hometown in Sardinia since I heard that.” she laughs.

Bennison is at the helm of Pasta Grannies, a cross-platform archive of Italian cooking, brought to viewers and readers from the homes of Italian nonne or grandmothers. Lauded by the likes of Stanley Tucci and Martha Stewart, Pasta Grannies has a combined following of two million on YouTube and Instagram. Here, the oldest generation of fresh pasta chefs show off their signature recipes, from Luciana’s Tuscan wild boar ragù to Isolina’s simple gnocchi with basil pesto in Deiva Marina, Liguria. 

Since 2014, Bennison has travelled the length and breadth of Italy, meeting nonne as old as 105. Together, they interview and video the women, documenting the vast array of approaches to cooking archetypal Italian dishes.

“I didn’t start out thinking it was important. I started out thinking it was fun. Then suddenly, you realise that you have an archive of 10 years and over 500 recipes,” explains Bennison.

The project stemmed from research Bennison conducted in 2014 when she co-authored Seasonal Spanish Food with chef José Pizarro. Coming off the back of a 20-year career in international relations, the south London native wanted to investigate the anthropological links between gastronomy and culture. 

From her research, she found that “one of the things that is being lost is the ability to cook”, and there were few cohorts of younger generations left who still valued fresh, locally sourced ingredients and recipes made from scratch. 

This is where the Italian nonne entered the picture.

“Here in Italy, I saw that it was only older women who were making pasta by hand,” she says. “Pasta was becoming professionalised – you went out and bought it.

“Here are these women, and what they’re cooking is the cornerstone of Italian gastronomy. But, they’re not the people that you see in the media. It’s always the male chefs who are lauded, who are the ambassadors of Italian cooking, and I thought it was time to put women centre stage.”

Pasta Grannies started slowly reaching small audiences of pasta fiends and homesick Italians abroad. Then, in 2017, 93-year-old Cesaria’s Sardinian lorighitta recipe went viral, catapulting the channel to overnight fame. The braided pasta style originates in Morgongiori – a town of 800 people tucked in the crevices of Mount Arci. Cesaria is one of the last remaining women who understand the intricate knots and braids required to make the dough, which has warmed the bellies of Sardinians since the 16th century.

When Bennison decided to spotlight Cesaria on Pasta Grannies, she was an unexpected hit. Her popularity led Bennison to be inundated with calls from book agents, leading to the publication of Pasta Grannies: The Secrets of Italy’s Best Home Cooks in 2019.

“It won a James Beard Award and sold over 200,000 books,” she says. “I never expected that. It’s been translated into about six languages.”

“We wanted to liberate people from the idea that they had to make fresh pasta all the time”

Vicky Bennison

Having seemingly travelled the length of the country searching for nonne, Bennison asserts the opportunities for content still feel endless, with each region purporting different pasta shapes, regional meats and cheeses, cooking techniques, and, of course, different nonne.

In northern Italy, Bennison found dishes like schupfnudeln, from Sud Tirol in the Italian Alps. Nonne Louisa and Berta’s dish had clear influences from Austria and Switzerland – incorporating poppy seeds and sugar. As she moved toward the centre, the pasta was meatier – often mixing poultry, pork and beef into one, like in Wilma’s cappelletti stuffed pasta in Marche. 

Things got looser in the south, where Bennison says dishes combine more vegetables, such as using breadcrumbs instead of cheese as dairy products were traditionally more expensive. In Ischia, an island near Naples, the bashful Nonna Biggina showcased coniglio all’ischitana – a delicacy that incorporates an entire rabbit (including offal and head) and half a bottle of local white wine with fettuccine.

These videos were less popular with viewers, but for Bennison, they are just as important as some of the better-known recipes.

“The audience would watch lasagne every week. I don’t want to do that – it’s the balance between what is popular and what I think is interesting.” she says. 

“We’re hunting for recipes we haven’t come across in the last 10 years because there’s always something different. Even if it’s just the story of the woman involved, there’s a unique and special quality to them.”

To find the women, Bennison and nonne finder, de Giovanni, will start with local representatives in the towns. Often mayors or sagre (food festival) organisers, these fixers will locate local women who would be interested in being filmed and interviewed. Here, Bennison often takes a backseat, aware that her English accent may deter any patriotic nonne who doesn’t trust a Londoner with their family recipes.

“You need an Italian to close the deal and I freak out about being filmed speaking Italian, even though I can. I’m not the one that drives the interview because I feel that it should be a conversation, and the quickest, easiest way is for everybody to be speaking Italian,” she says.

Yet, despite being a straniera (foreigner), Bennison asserts her perspective works to Pasta Grannies’ advantage.

“You have more of a helicopter view,” she says. “Whereas most Italians – even Livia [de Giovanni], who I love dearly and is immensely good at her job – still think where they’re from is the best place for food.

“In Italian there’s the word campanilismo, coming from the word campanile (church bells), meaning a sense of pride in your hometown. Every single Italian will tell you that where they grew up is the best place, so they will not think, or care, about what is happening 200 miles down the road.”

Still, while a Neapolitan nonna may have little interest in a tiramisu from Treviso, Bennison says mutual respect for ingredients permeates throughout Italy.

“What unites our grandmothers is frugality. There is that respect for ingredients and then nothing is wasted, which people talk about, but they live,” she says.

This ideology – a respect for high-quality ingredients, locally sourced and seasonally eaten – became the basis of Bennison’s second book, Pasta Grannies: Comfort Cooking. This book strayed from the orthodoxies of the first, placing emphasis instead on simply getting people cooking, even if it meant some corners were cut.

“We wanted to liberate people from the idea that they had to make fresh pasta all the time,” Bennison laughs.

While the book continues to put cheerful, talented nonne in the spotlight, the overarching theme is respect for Italian food diversity and history. She highlights other areas of Italian cooking, incorporating rice, pizza, and even, Dio mio, store-bought pasta.