The Nonna Diaries: Holiday Special

By Rob Curran

In a New York Times article a few years ago, a longtime Italian correspondent for the newspaper described their quest for the perfect carbonara recipe. Spaghetti carbonara is a sort of Jerusalem for Italian cooking enthusiasts; everyone has a faith-based claim to authentic ownership of this hallowed ancient ground; everyone else is disgusted by these claims and wants to fight the claimants. The correspondent describes the hard-fought, inscrutable battles between the principal sects – the Creamists, the Eggists and the Black Pepperists. The Pepperists finally lure the author to the residence of an impossibly elegant Italian aristocrat in Rome where the American is won over to their cause. In the telling, the aristocrat who prepares the decisive dish is recognizable as my wife’s stepmother, who my children call Nonna (Grandma). The woman visited by the Times was almost certainly not Nonna. Timelines are vague but Nonna had probably already moved to Texas by the time the correspondent sat on the verandah and savored the winning spaghetti. Yet all the details fit, particularly the giveaway one, the peppery carbonara prepared with egg and a particular kind of cured meat (programming note: you’ve not heard the last of this!) If it was not her, I suspect Nonna gave the recipe to the subject of that tale.