A cold farro salad from Bevagna, Umbria, built on tomatoes, arugula, olives, and tuna. Nonna Iside is 86 and lives in Bevagna, Umbria, between stone lanes and the hills where her family once worked the land. Most mornings she is in the garden before anything else, watering the beds and gathering what is ready. Lunch is decided by the basket. She learned to cook by watching her mother, Ada, and her aunt Lina, cooking for a household that lived by the seasons. She still trusts touch over measurement, working by what she calls "quanto basta," enough. Zuppa di farro freddo is the kind of dish that habit produces, built from what is ripe rather than a fixed list.

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A layered flatbread from Pesaro, folded into a spiral before it is rolled thin and cooked on a hot griddle. Nonna Silvana's piadina sfogliata pesarese is a version of the flatbread she has been rolling since she was a child. Her mother handed her a rolling pin at eight years old and taught her to work dough on the pastry board for piadina. She remembers cooking it outdoors with cousins, over open fires built from gathered wood and bricks, the smoke and the smell of it staying with her ever since. This version is sfogliata, layered. The dough is spread with butter or lard, rolled into a log, and coiled into a spiral before it is flattened again, so what comes off the griddle has folds running through it instead of a single flat sheet.

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Filming an episode of Cucina della Nonna looks like the best job in the world. And it is, but twelve days, a four-person crew, 10- 14-hour shoot days, and a lot of things going sideways in ways you’d never guess from the final cut. I sat down with Teo and Blake after they got back from Umbria to find out what was really like.

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Going in blind

Neither of the…

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A hand-shaped Sardinian pasta in a sausage and tomato sauce, made by a Sardinian cook who has lived in Umbria for decades. Angelina Cogoni was born in Sardinia and has lived nearly everywhere since, Cagliari, then Luxembourg, then Gualdo, in Umbria, where she has made her home for decades. She learned the basics of cooking in Sardinia, ravioli with ricotta, tagliatelle, gnocchetti. It was later, in Luxembourg, working alongside a woman from Romagna, that her pasta really took shape. She picked up cappelletti and cannelloni there, and the handmade pasta habits she still keeps, rolling out six-egg sheets of dough with the same rolling pin she has used for years. She has never cooked for just a few. Angelina regularly feeds twenty or more, her children's friends and now her grandchildren's friends filling the table, and gnocchetti sardi is one of the dishes she carried with her the whole way from home.

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A pasta unlike any other from Le Marche, made with a simple dough of Parmigiano Reggiano, breadcrumbs, and egg, pressed into short strands. Nonna Silvana remembers going out fishing with her grandfather while her grandmother stayed home making passatelli. When they came back, she would serve it to them, once with fish stock made from what they'd caught that day. Silvana still makes passatelli the same simple way, with parmesan, breadcrumbs, egg, a little lemon zest and nutmeg, pressed into short strands and dropped into hot broth for a couple of minutes before serving.

(Watch the full recipe video below)

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A hand-rolled egg pasta from Sassocorvaro, in Le Marche, made from nothing more than flour and eggs. Nonna Anna shared with us her own recipe for tagliatelle, made the same way she has made it since she was a child. Anna is 95 and has been rolling pasta since she was seven years old, standing on a chair to help her mother measure flour and crack eggs into the well of the dough. Tagliatelle is still the dish she is proudest of, made by mounding flour on the counter, working in the eggs by hand, kneading until the dough holds on its own, then resting it before it is rolled thin and cut into ribbons.

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Biscotti della Nonna might be the best cookies we have ever eaten in Italy. Nonna Silvana shared her own recipe with us, a small, dense biscuit from Molise built on orange and a liqueur called Super Punch Jannamico. The two together give the dough a flavor that taste just like the holidays.

This is a biscuit built to last on a table. The dough is made with orange juice, olive oil, and liqueur, rested in the fridge until firm, then rolled into balls and baked until set. It traces back to biscottus, the twice-baked bread Roman legionnaires and travelers carried on long journeys. In Molise, it became smaller and sweeter, kept on the kitchen table and eaten daily with espresso, milk, or a glass of dessert wine. Nothing about it is elaborate, but the bag Nonna Silvana sent us home with did not last the day.

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In Molise, the land does not give more than it has to, so cooks learned to use what it gave completely. Pizza e Foglia comes from that habit. It is a slab of baked cornmeal, broken by hand and set beside cabbage and potatoes that have boiled soft and been dressed in oil warmed with garlic, chili, and anchovy. Nonno Umberto cuts nothing away from the cabbage. Even the tough outer leaves go into the pot.

The dish goes by other names too. In dialect it is pizz e foje, roughly pizza and leaves, though the pizza here is corn rather than wheat and closer to a firm polenta baked until it browns. It is peasant food in the oldest sense. There is little money in it, no waste, and enough to feed a full table.

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Nonna Nora shared with us her very own recipe of Panzanella, a Tuscan bread salad made from stale bread, ripe tomatoes, and good oil.

This summer dish is quite clever in its use of stale bread. The bread is soaked in water and a little vinegar, squeezed dry, and torn into the bowl with tomatoes, onion, cucumber, and basil. Tuscan farmers made it to use bread that would otherwise go to waste, and to eat something cool while they worked through the heat. Nothing in it is expensive, but it is always refreshing and enough to fill you. Some people add beans, tuna, or even anchovies. The classica leaves them out.

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I love the 4th of July….the whole thing. But there is always a point, usually around the second hot dog, where I find myself thinking about a completely different kind of summer eating.

The summers I spent in Italy ruined me a little. Over there, when it gets hot, nobody is firing up a grill or standing over a stove. They make panzanella. It is the dish …

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For my first few months in Italy, I was completely convinced caffè sospeso was just a drink.

I kept spotting it scribbled on chalkboards at my favorite bars, nestled amongst the cappuccinos and macchiatos. I figured it was some local specialty drink I hadn’t worked up the courage to order yet. ‘Suspended coffee’, doesn’t really translate into anything he…

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Pescara wasn’t even on my radar. When Teo and Blake put me on scouting duty for the Adriatic coast, I’ll be honest I had to google it. It’s one of the few parts of Italy that I knew nothing about, which felt equally exciting and terrifying given that my entire job is based on knowing Italy. What I could tell by the first search: beach, seafood, sunshine and I was in.

What I didn’t know was that in forty-eight hours I’d be sitting in a seafood restaurant behind a car dealership, a code word ready in case we needed an emergency exit, watching a hairdresser in her seventies cook the best fish I have ever eaten in Italy.

We were staying across the street from the beach, which obviously means a sunrise swim. I invited the entire team every single morning. Every single morning, the house was completely silent when my alarm went off. Their loss. The Adriatic in February at sunrise is completely still, completely beautiful, and oh my goodness, completely freezing. I lasted longer than expected and felt proud enough to treat myself to a cappuccino and fresh brioche before the team was up.

Nuova Torrefazione Autonoma

I tried a few cafes in Pescara before I landed on this one and at first sip, I realized I didn’t need any others. Nuova Torrefazione Autonoma is where I had my morning cappuccino for the rest of the trip, and where the staff was so genuinely kind that, when we found ourselves one nonno short for filming on the last day, they didn’t hesitate to send us straight to their friends across the river at Taverna a Prua Mare. That recommendation changed the entire trip.

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Our dish this week is Fiadoni salati, the savory Easter pastries of Abruzzo. Ricotta and parmesan go into a thin dough cut through with white wine, then bake until the tops puff and turn gold. They come from sheep country, where cheese and eggs have always marked the days worth celebrating. Nonna Giuseppina makes them the way Atri has always made them. By tradition they wait for the evening of the Vigilia, Easter Saturday, and not a day before.

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I got this job because I used to live in Siena. For some, Antonio runs one of the most incredible salumerias in the world, a cured meat shop that’s been in the same spot for over 200 years. For me, he’s my dear friend and my meat-and-cheese guy. I happened to be back in town one weekend, and as we were catching up, he told me about some small start-up t…

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Our dish for this week is Pasta e ceci, which has ancient roots in Roman cuisine, dating back to when chickpeas were a staple in the diets of both peasants and soldiers. This humble, hearty dish reflects Rome’s long tradition of folding legumes and pasta into nourishing meals, a practice still beloved today.

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Zuppa Inglese is one of those Italian desserts that looks like it was assembled in a hurry but tastes like someone planned it days in advance. Layers of sponge or Savoiardi soaked in Alchermes - that red liqueur that stains everything it touches - alternate with thick custard cream, sometimes chocolate, sometimes plain, depending on who’s making it and what region you’re in.

The name means “English soup,” which tells you nothing useful about what it actually is, though the theories about how it got that name are more interesting than the name itself. It’s messy to serve, impossible to plate elegantly, and completely indifferent to that fact.

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Recipe: Zuppa Inglese

• 45 mins

• 4 serves

• Utensils needed: baking dish and electric whisk (But you can also whisk it by hand!)

What You’ll Need

• 1 lt Whole Milk

• 400 g White Sugar (+ 2 tbsp for the cream)

• 200 ml Water

• 6 Egg Yolks

• 1 Orange, peel only

• 200 g Ladyfingers (Savoiardi)

• 100 g Potato Starch

• 50 g Cocoa Powder

• 100 ml Alchermes (or Limoncello / Amaretto)

• 250 ml Heavy Cream, optional

• 5 Cherries, optional

Step By Step Instructions

1. Make the syrup

   Combine 200 ml water and 100 g of the sugar in a small pot. Heat until the sugar dissolves and it comes to a boil, then set aside to cool completely.

   

2. Infuse the milk

   Pour all the milk into a saucepan with the orange peel in strips, avoiding the pith, and 150 g of the sugar. Bring it gently to a boil.

   

3. Temper the yolks

   Separate the eggs and use only the yolks. Whisk the yolks with the remaining 150 g sugar and the potato starch until smooth, loosening with a splash of milk if it stiffens. Pour the hot milk in slowly while stirring, a little at a time, so the eggs do not curdle.

   

4. Cook the pastry cream and make the chocolate cream

   Return everything to the pot and stir over heat until it thickens into pastry cream. Pull aside about a third, sift in the cocoa, and stir until dark and smooth. You now have two creams, orange-vanilla and chocolate.

   

5. First layer

   Stir the cooled syrup together with the Alchermes. Dip the ladyfingers quickly, a dunk not a soak, and line the base of the dish. Spread the chocolate cream over them.

   

6. Second layer

   Dip and lay a second course of ladyfingers, then cover with the orange-vanilla cream. The classic version ends here.

   

7. Optional: finish with whipped cream and cherries

   Whip the heavy cream with 2 tablespoons of sugar. Spread or pipe it over the top and finish with cherries. Decorate with swirls or lines. Serve chilled.

   

8. The table is ready

   The cooking ends here. Everything else happens together.

   ---

About Nonna Rosella

Born in

Born in Palombora, Italy

Favorite Dish

Strozzapreti with Red Sauce

Favorite Dessert

Zuppa Inglese

Born in

Palombora, Italy

Hobbies

Volunteering, Olive garden, Cherry Farm

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Antipasti (Starters / Appetizers)

Primi (First courses)

Secondi (Main courses)

Dolci (Desserts)