Sometimes I wonder why food plays such a big part in my life. Not only because I love to eat (no shame here). As we say in Italy, I’m a buona forchetta (literal translation “good fork”, loose translation “someone who loves to eat”) and, for the longest time, I didn’t really think anything of it. I loved to eat, and cook, and that was the end of the story. Well, until now.

Since moving abroad, and subsequently starting to miss proper Italian food, I turned to cooking a lot, lot more. I say this was pretty predictable. Go and ask any Italian (or any other expat for that matter) what they miss the most about their countries and they’ll probably say family first and food second, the two big F’s of any traveller’s soft spot. And, depending on where you live, you will probably turn to the stove to recreate (or go to a restaurant to eat) the beloved goods which will send you on a first-class trip down memory lane.

Growing up, I had the luxury of partaking in numerous (if not nearly infinite) family gatherings which always presented the same ingredients: driving to some family’s home – grandparents’, aunties’, uncles’, cousins’ – copious amounts of food and grandmas standing near the stove with their plates because they always needed to make sure the next course wasn’t burning. The reassuring bubbling sound of ragù or some other slow-cooking sauce would greet me as soon as I entered the door, rushing my way to hug whatever relative stood closest to me, while the smell of the sauce would reach me as soon as I turned the corner of the road. Or maybe it was someone else’s nonna cooking Sunday’s lunch — you’ll never be sure as we always have our windows wide open, no matter the season or the weather.

One of the things that made its way into a cardboard box full of things we wanted to bring to the UK was my grandma’s cookbook. Nothing fancy: a little blue phone book, with recipes in alphabetical order (letters spilling over the j’s, k’s and w’s as we rarely use them in Italian), a little worn down but all the more precious. If I close my eyes, I can still see my nonna sitting at her kitchen table, writing on the latest page with a new recipe and already planning the next two meals. The questions were always: “what would you like to eat when you come round?” and “will you call us when you’re leaving so we can start cooking?”.

And so now, since I moved away from home, I’ve realised how much cooking brings me closer to my grandma. The way I flick through her recipe book, absorbing the way she would write a particular letter, almost stroking the words, trying to remember how the dish tasted, and never being too sure if it’s hers I recall or my version. If I’m particularly anxious or sad, I often turn to cooking. The soothing sound of chopping vegetables, the slow-cooking nature of some recipes, the chemical perfection of mixing something and creating a dough, a cake, bread — they all have a way of bringing me back to a very happy place: my grandma’s kitchen.

I had no intention of writing a soppy blog post, so I blame the moody classical music I’m listening to while I write (don’t hate me for dreaming about being the main character of my own film/book almost 24/7 — I blame growing up with Disney Channel), but alas, the writing is done and since this is my fake therapy session, blog-style, I cannot apologise for the way this is going. I’m merely a servant of the words flowing from my fingertips.

And this is perhaps why we Italians are so fixated on food. It’s more than pride, it’s more than quality, it’s more than tasting so damn good — it’s the memory of dinners, Sunday lunches, aperitifs with friends, eating pizzas on a bench, travelling to a particular part of the country just to experience the local cuisine, finding an Italian deli or restaurant abroad and discovering new traditions or remembering old ones. From the bubbling pot of pasta sauce in my grandma’s white kitchen to the pot in the kitchen of my little flat in Cornwall, it’s like an invisible string that will always tie me to my roots, no matter how near or far I am from home.

The luxury of such an upbringing is not lost on me. The safety net of grandparents, food on my table and never the question of worrying if it’ll be there the next time, having very little knowledge of bills, grocery shopping, a full fridge — these are all part of my privilege, which I must acknowledge. The incredible cultural value that food has for me is rooted in having it there all the time, together with the time and space to cook it and enjoy it. And with food being such an important topic in today’s news, I’m just going to leave some resources and links if you, or someone you know, are struggling to get food on the table.

End child food poverty:
https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/554276/

Help out when school’s out:
https://helpoutwhenschoolsout.co.uk
(postcode checker for places around you that are helping out with meals)

Search tools for local food banks:
https://www.trusselltrust.org/get-help/find-a-foodbank/