I recently met Granny Finder, Livia de Giovanni, in person. Although we’d spoken on the phone, I’d never spent time with her because she’s based near Bologna in Italy and I’m based in London. After a few months of working with the Pasta Grannies team, I am never short of amazed at the encyclopaedic knowledge both Vicky and Livia possess of the grannies and their signature recipes. I’d overheard a lot of telephone calls between Vicky and Livia in the arrangements of Granny finding over the past few months. But getting to witness the magic of what her job involves every day first-hand? That was something really special.
Travelling with Livia I almost felt a bit like a journalist who is asked to follow around an artist in an attempt to write a nuanced biography of their life. Granny finding is its own art form. And the Granny Finder (i.e. Livia) is a rare, rare, talented breed.
While watching her in action, I realised that it’s not as simple as just finding and researching a granny and chatting to them. Le nonne, as you all well know from watching their videos and interviews, are incredibly wise (sometimes headstrong) and big characters with even bigger hearts. Often their families are much the same. The scheduling to film is the easy part, but ensuring we capture the perfect essence of a granny as their community and their families see them? That’s much harder. It takes a lot of work!
We don’t talk directly to le nonne — after all, many of them don’t have mobile phones or computers and can’t use email, so Livia chats with their families. Of course, with all human things, plans can change — life can get in the way, the nonne and the family can have an unforeseen change or a last-minute unavailability of an ingredient based on seasonal produce available on a local farm and our scheduled menu or shoot time has to change.
While in Calabria, I would awake from a nap and overhear the reassuring Italian words coming out of Livia’s mouth to whichever family she was next planning on visiting. On long drives to our next restaurant stop, she’d be frantically sending emails asking about timings and seasonal produce. Specifically, ahead of the European cruise, she’d be using Google Translate to hunt for Grannies in France while also asking our entire Calabria group if they knew of anyone based in Cannes with a cooking granny we could chat to.
It was clear to me that there’s a certain amount of planning that goes into Granny finding, not to mention a serious amount of kindness as well as tenacity. Yet, the real beauty? The organic connections; seizing real-life moments and opening yourself to conversations that might lend themselves to meeting new nonne while out and about. Pasta Grannies is always on Livia’s mind (and moreover, her tongue).
One of the highlights of my trip to Calabria was an early evening visit to a small medieval town named Badolato. There, we spotted a lovely nonna on the way in, and thanks to Livia’s ability to make friends wherever she goes, fate would have us chat to this lovely lady later on!
Livia’s love of cats saw her in conversation with a lovely woman in the village who had taken in 17 little furry friends. It turned out she was originally from West Virginia AND she was a Pasta Grannies fan! Her sister had bought her the book as a gift some years ago, and she was so excited to meet us that she introduced us to her neighbour, who turned out to be quite the glamorous matriarch of the village. A serendipitous twist of fate? Or Livia’s ability to make friends in every village? Probably a bit of both.
Soon after, the start of Livia’s Granny-finding magic took place, and we had a private tour of the village which ended with an introduction to the wonderful Annunziata, who was 96 years old! Watching Livia immediately be able to build a rapport with the elder generation was incredibly beautiful; she has a way with all age groups where she is able to immediately have them offering up their stories; she makes them feel special, respected, and she’s genuinely so curious about their life and thus their cooking which acts as a vessel to their story. Thanks to Livia’s ability in bonding with others over her love of cooking and good recipes, Annunziata told us about what she likes to cook (pomodoro and nduja ragu) and so we discussed coming back to interview her properly and find out her pasta della casa later in the year if she’s well enough and available.
And it’s not just grannies; Livia showed me the ropes of collecting secret recipes while on her travels. No meal we enjoyed (and trust me, there were many of them) was left unturned. After complimenting the staff and the chef on the dish, she’d be there, voice recorder ready, asking for ingredients, verifying the method with follow up questions, before translating in the passenger seat of the drive home in time for me to upload to the website later that evening. After she left on day four, and I remained in Calabria for a few more nights, and I followed in her footsteps (braving my Italian practice). It worked. Slightly more stilted. And thank goodness for Google Translate; without it on a few occasions I’d have been very stuck, and the recipes on the website definitely would have had the incorrect ratios of ingredients.
