26 November 2023

Notes from Nonna

WRITER: BRI DIMATTINA

PHOTOGRAPHER: LOTTIE HEDLEY

Kāuta Taiwhenua. Provincial Kitchen.

The flavours of Bri DiMattina’s kitchen are anchored in Italy. The second-generation Italian-New Zealander spent summer holidays in Whakatū Nelson with her grandparents, where she learnt to appreciate the bounty of fruits and vegetables in their garden. Today, in her own garden in Māngere Bridge, Bri nurtures the Italian ingredients she loves, sharing her family’s beloved traditional recipes in this seasonally inspired cookbook, Nostrana.

Woman gathers vegetables from her glasshouse

Nostrana is Italian for ‘homegrown’, and that pretty much sums up this book.

Gardening crept up on me. I never really referred to myself as a gardener – I’m not sure why, my kitchen windowsill has always been littered with cuttings and seedlings and small caches of seedheads. Even when I was flat broke and renting, there was a kitchen garden with a few things in it. But it was just something I did, like any other run-of-the-mill thing around the house. There is no single moment I became a gardener; I’ve always been this way. Maybe I inherited it.

Black and white image of a child walking on a lawn

My poppa grew tomatoes in Nelson in the 1940s for the household kitchen, but also as a job. So the smell of a brushed-against tomato plant is bit nostalgic for me. I often snatch ripe ones off the vine and demolish them right in front of the plant.

My nonna was from Naples. Her family immigrated in the early 1900s to Wellington, then she and my poppa moved to Nelson when my father was born. Church on Sundays would be followed by large, lingering lunches – the main meal of the day. We made visits to friends and neighbours, all recent arrivals to New Zealand who were finding their feet, often refugees with similar backgrounds and homeland memories. Nonna was part of a community in Nelson called ‘The Wood’ that helped ensure new arrivals were welcomed, finding them a place to live, filling their pantries and finding work. Many lifelong friendships were made through this and some have lasted for generations.

My grandparents didn’t have a lot, and died when I was still quite young, so their true heirloom was Nonna’s recipe book. Its appearance is unassuming, but her handwriting and the threadbare bottom-right corners of some of the pages, slightly gritty with flour, evoke fond memories.

Several of the recipes have a name in the top right corner, which is the person the recipe came from. The tomato sauce has ‘Mum’s’, so that would be my great-grandmother’s recipe...and it’s the reason I grow a particular type of tomato still.