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What I learned about leading a happy life from cooking with 100 Mediterranean grandmothers
In the rural villages around Tunis, I discovered one of my favourite dishes featured in my book. Grandmother Latifa poured a soul-firing chickpea stew atop days’ old bread husks, topping it with kicky harissa and a boiled egg to create a lablebi – a worker’s lunch that is both filling and comforting in equal measure. I ate this in Latifa’s chaotic kitchen surrounded by various family members, arms crisscrossing over a retro print tablecloth to seek out favourite toppings (capers, spicy chilli, harissa, eggs, tuna) for their lablebi. It was a kind of build-your-own-dish that felt so decadent, it surprised me that it was borne out of necessity.
Beyond the purse strings, religion and cultural norms have very much shaped the healthy diets these women have followed their entire lives. There’s an element of fasting in cultures all across the Mediterranean, regardless of the specific religion, and this has added an element of regimen and restriction that has obvious health benefits, not to mention those for the planet. “Everything had a sort of logic to it, even if it masqueraded as religion,” Nonna Anna told me as we cooked up her favourite Easter Monday lunch of ricotta balls in a rich tomato sugo in Puglia. “After breaking our 40 days of lent and feasting on Easter Sunday, we then picnic on Easter Monday, eating lighter foods to make up for all of the gluttony of the day before.”
As with my own Yiayia, meat for most of the women I cooked with has always been a treat, appearing at Sunday lunch or on celebrations. We no longer have the luxury of denying climate change. Though meat is now very much a commodity, Mediterranea is packed with vegetarian and vegan options, purely because the nonnas of the Mediterranean have always eaten in this way. Given the current demands on our climate and the obvious health benefits, it makes a lot of sense to cook meat as these women do, and seek out good quality, grass-fed and slow-grown options from a local butcher.
On produce, most of us are incredibly privileged to have ingredients available to us year-round but you will never catch my Yiayia eating fresh tomatoes in November. First, they won’t taste good. Second, it’s really not the most sustainable way to eat. Tomatoes just do not taste the same in winter and the only tomatoes Italian nonnas are using in their cooking during the winter months are jarred tomatoes that they have preserved themselves in the bounteous summer months.
In Sicily, Nonna Carmela taught me how to make her famous pasta alla norma with aubergines and a passata made and stored from her 90-kilo batch of summer tomatoes, grown around her summer home in the countryside, outside of Catania. All Mediterranean grandmothers tend to stick by the “eat local, eat seasonal” rule and it applies to all fruit and veg – not just tomatoes. The dishes within the pages of my book taste best when cooked at the right time of year, so please, look to hearty pulses, soups and stews in the winter and the light, bright dishes featuring fresh tomatoes, aubergines and courgettes in the summer months.
The lessons are simple yet when applied, powerful. “Nonna food” is made with basic ingredients but the produce bursts with freshness and flavour. I didn’t write a book about what it’s like to be old, these women taught me how best to eat so that we can truly live.
I hope that Mediterranea can be an edible baton to inspire us to live in the style of a Mediterranean Nonna. Beyond teaching me the dishes within the pages of my book, these women shared their insights into how best to live out a life. The real secret behind the Mediterranean diet is the lifestyle that informs it. No matter your age, move your body, swim in all seasons and walk in nature, even when your knees creak. Surround yourself with friends and connect with your neighbours and elderly family members. Share food. Eat a little of what you fancy… And for goodness’ sake, nap more.
‘Mediterranea’ by Anastasia Miari with photographs by Marco Argüello (Quadrille) is out now. This article was first published on Condé Nast Traveller Middle East.
