Learn How to Cook Real Italian Pasta from a Nonna

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Learn How to Cook Real Italian Pasta from a Nonna

Create genuine pasta with these homemade cooking videos

There's a wonderful sense of undeniable authenticity when a lovely, grey-haired, slightly camera-shy Italian nonna welcomes you into her kitchen to teach you how to make real pasta. That's what happens in this weekly video series called 'Pasta Grannies'.

Each week, the videographer finds an Italian 'nonna' and gets her to share a recipe onscreen. The ladies' onscreen charisma and no-nonsense style of preparing the food is better than any celebrity chef out there.

Even though you can't taste the end result, you can just tell what's been made is melt in your mouth perfection.

Here's a video on how to make Filindeu pasta, a specialty of Sardinia in Italy.

Filindeu pasta is rare and unique to Sardinia; there are only three women in the town of Nuoro who still make it. It looks like angel hair pasta and it's very tricky to make, so watch and marvel at Salvatora's skill! (Even Jamie Oliver has trouble making this pasta!) It's always served as a cheesy thick soup.

This is what the creator of Pasta Grannies has to say:

I find and film real Italian grannies - nonne - making delicious, traditional, handmade pasta. And sometimes soups, breads, dolci, rice dishes, that kind of thing, because that is what the Grannies wanted to cook for me. I'm saving skills and sharing traditions one recipe and Granny at a time!

Their most viewed video is of a 93 year old nonna making Lorighittas pasta, which is from the island of Sardinia in Italy.

Lorighittas pasta look like twisted hoop earrings. They come from one town in Sardinia, called Morgongiori; and 93 year old Cesaria is an expert at making very fine ones.

But 93 year old is still a spring chicken compared to Letizia, who at 100 years old is the oldest Pasta Granny they've been able to find! She still makes a delicious tagliarini pasta from her hometown of Trapani in Sicily.

Letizia lives near Trapani in Sicily and she's 100 years old, although she doesn't look or act like it. She makes tagliarini pasta served with dried fava bean puree flavoured with onion and wild fennel. This is a simple pasta dish which will appeal to people of all ages.

> Watch all the episodes of Pasta Grannies on their YouTube channel here.

> Find Italian nonnas eager to fill your belly with delicious pasta on our Italian walking and cycling tours. Click here to view them all.

What dish will you be trying to make at home? Do you think you have what it takes to make an Italian pasta just like a nonna? Let us know your thoughts in the comments!