Italy’s female pasta masters

NONNAS know what they’re doing. Even bona fide Italians rely on dried pasta.

Reaching for hard twirls of fusilli and twiggy strands of spaghetti is not exactly frowned upon – we’re all busy, we all want pasta, and you really can’t argue with the packet stuff in those circumstances.

But there are those who will make their own fresh egg pasta from scratch, and have been doing so all their lives. One such is 85-year-old Maria, one of the nonnas to star in Vicky

Bennison’s Pasta Grannies cookbook, which charts Bennison’s mission to meet and film women who still make pasta by hand.

Dressed in a beautiful lace-edged apron she also made herself, in honour of the cookbook, Nonna Maria is teaching us how to make her celebratory Cappelletti (‘little hats’) in Brodo (broth) – the sort of pasta dish traditionally eaten at Christmas, or on feast days.

She’s been making pasta since she was five, when she’d put the broth on before she even went to school, having learnt her technique from her own grandmother.

She is full of dough-related wisdom; from, “Never add water, add extra egg yolk,” if it’s too dry, to, “Brass is better”

in terms of pasta cutters, and that you really ought to take care of the board you roll your pasta out on (wooden is better, scrape it clean, don’t cut on the board itself). She also has firm ideas on rolling pins, noting that a “thicker rolling pin is better”, jokingly adding that “you can use it as a weapon as well – for the husband.”

You can’t help but quietly adore a woman who also manages to get through a kilo of Parmesan a week!

Pasta Grannies: The Secrets of Italy’s Best Home Cooks by Vicky Bennison, published by Hardie Grant priced £20. Photography Emma Lee. Available now.