From Nonna with love

From traditional meatballs to buttery apple cake, the inspiration for Emiko Davies’ new book was her Italian family – and a notebook of recipes passed through the generations. Photographs by Lauren Bamford

Italian recipes passed down through the generations

THE INSPIRATION FOR food writer Emiko Davies’s new cookbook is, simply, an Italian love story – a young noblewoman called Anna who, with her postman husband, moved their family of nine children from the port city of Taranto in the south of Italy to Turin in the north, in search of a better life. The dishes in Tortellini at Midnight are their recipes – including Anna’s polpette, beef and pork meatballs in tomato sauce – passed down and added to by children and grandchildren, and still cooked today, over a century later, by the couple’s granddaughter, Angela – Davies’s mother-in-

law – and by Davies herself. Such heirloom recipes, as Davies describes them, ‘are learnt through tasting and watching, usually from the kitchen table, and through repetition’. The meatballs cooked slowly in passata were taught to daughters and daughters-in-law across the generations. ‘Now, almost everyone makes them the way Anna did,’ says Davies.

Reviving these recipes – from a classic of pasta with plump mussels to a buttery apple cake, one of the earliest recipes Angela scribbled in her own 40-year-old recipe notebook – is ‘good for the soul’, Davies says. ‘It’s also simply

‘Heirloom recipes are learnt through tasting and watching’

good; it reflects a time before processed food – even before refrigeration – when food was always fresh and nothing went to waste. It’s a way of cooking that, in the spirit of cucina povera, makes the most of little.’ Davies has added her own family’s favourites, discovered on their travels through Italy and developed in her kitchen in Florence. There, she explains, ‘we keep alive a powerful connection to those people who have nourished us. Their repertoire has become our own.’ — Amy Bryant Tortellini at Midnight, by Emiko Davies, is published by Hardie Grant (£26). Buy yours now for £22.99 at books. telegraph.co.uk or call 0844-871 1514

‘Reviving these recipes reflects a time before processed food’

Below Emiko Davies prepares food for her family