“She cooks like no one else I know,” says Anastasia Miari of her grandmother, whose name is also Anastasia Miari (her grandchildren call her Yiayia – the Greek for granny) and who lives by herself in a tiny house in Corfu. “She’s pretty ferocious, but she cooks the most phenomenal food over an open fire, aged 80, and really shows her love for me and the rest of my family through the dishes she puts on the table.”
A couple of years ago, as she was trying to cajole recipes out of Yiayia, Miari, a 28-year-old journalist living in London, had a brainwave: “Wouldn’t it be cool to do a book of grandmothers’ recipes and stories?” She mentioned the idea to her university friend, Iska Lupton, a creative director whose relationship with her own grandmother is also bound up with food, and together they created Grand Dishes.
First they interviewed their own grannies. “For your Yiayia,” says Lupton, 29, “it’s her lifestyle, her whole day revolves around what she’s harvesting and cooking. For my grandmother [Margit], it’s more about a sense of celebration. All her family events happen around food.”
The project began to take shape online, with excerpts from their interviews appearing on granddishes.com, 2018 winner of best blog at the Guild of Food Writers awards (the full versions will run in a book, currently crowdfunding at unbound.com). “The more people we spoke to about what we were doing,” says Miari, “the more people were like, ‘I’ve got a granny you need to interview.’”
“Initially we’d think, oh, we’d better check if this one’s got a good story,” says Lupton. “Then we realised, anyone who’s lived beyond 70 has so many stories to tell. As long as they’ve got a recipe of their own to share, we just know the stories will come.”
Zena Abrahmsohn, 89, north London
I grew up in Johannesburg and started a family there. Then, at 30, I said to my husband, “It’s time to go” – I knew that South Africa was not right for my children – so we packed everything up and started from scratch in London.
Life was very busy in England. I worked with Revlon for 20 years, doing promotions all over the country, so cooking for a hungry family had to be fast. If I made a steak, I’d serve it with onions, tomato sauce and Worcestershire sauce, and call it a monkey gland steak. That was their favourite. I could make a very nice dinner within 10 minutes.
Since I was a young girl I have watched what I eat, and I have, I think, the perfect body for my age. I see that I have a certain amount of protein, vegetables and fruit. I make a smoothie every day, with five or six different fruits. And I try not to snack, especially after dinner. I never weigh myself – I know by my clothes if I’m putting on weight – and my metabolism seems to have improved with age. I can eat more today than when I was a youngster.
I’ve had three men in my life. Two of them could cook. My husband – we were married for 37 years – used to help from time to time. The next one was an Englishman and he was very English: he used to just sit at the table and wait to be served. The last one, an American, was a rocket scientist. We’ve been together 14 years. He’s 91 now and in a home. I still go over to visit, but mostly I’m on my own here in London. I’ll be 89 in a week’s time and I’m fit as a fiddle. I do have cancer: chronic leukaemia. But I just get on with my life.
Margit Vercoe, 90, Exeter
As a child in Germany, I used to watch my mother and grandmother cooking and eventually they allowed me to help. We would have typically Bavarian dishes, such as knödel, which is a sort of dumpling. They’re quite a lot of trouble to prepare: you have to grate raw potatoes and mix them with very liquid mashed potatoes, and having taken them all apart, you put them together again. I thought this was great fun.
One day in 1938, when I was 10, my mother picked me up from school. She drove straight to the nearest airport, parked the car, left the key in it and then booked a flight, which we boarded that afternoon. I never learned exactly what sparked that decision but it saved our lives –my father was Jewish.
In England, I was desperately keen to be completely English. When I went walking through town with my mum, I’d always try to stop her talking so noisily. She’d let the cat out of the bag, of course, and people would know we were foreign. We really weren’t welcome anywhere.
When I started cooking for myself, as a student at the Royal College of Music, it was mostly English food. But I suppose it was more exciting to cook the old German recipes. My music studies were supposed to be taken all the way, but I married, and children came along, and there wasn’t time.
These days I just adore a fried egg on spinach. My grandchildren love what they call my “granny carrots”. You chop your carrots into little diced things and cook them in butter with fried onions and maybe a few drops of lemon juice, then masses of parsley at the end. So they were very flavoursome.
I don’t take much pleasure in cooking these days. I make a mess in the kitchen. Now I’m 90, that’s not really surprising, is it?
Rajni Jesrani, 79, Leicestershire
In my time, we were told you had to go to your in-laws so you could learn how to cook. But my mother was a very good cook, so I learned everything from her first. Then I got married and my mother-in-law was a very good cook as well. So I learned from both ladies, and I’m still interested in cooking.
In Dar es Salaam, where I grew up, my mother taught me to cook savouries, curries and vegetable dishes. Sweet dishes I learned from my mother-in-law in Gujarat, because my parents weren’t so keen on them. It was all vegetarian food, we never even had eggs back then. And my mother-in-law was very strict about onions and garlic [certain Hindus don’t eat them]. I still cook vegetarian – no eggs, no meat, no fish – but I do use a lot of yogurt. I always tell everybody my skin is not that wrinkly because of the yogurt.
We left Tanzania for England 45 years ago. My children and my husband settled very quickly but I didn’t settle for two years. I was all the time crying because I missed my family. But I got a very good job with Corah & Sons, a Jewish company that made clothes for Marks & Spencer. It was good pay, good people, everything good, so eventually I settled. We’ve been in Leicester 45 years and now it’s my home, I don’t want to go anywhere.
Even when I was working, I had time to cook. My husband can do only beans on toast, but he helps a lot with housework. My children were very good eaters, I never had any problem. I like making savouries for them – I always make my own Bombay mix. Up till now at least: I don’t know in 12 months if I’ll be able to do it or not, because of my age.
My daughter’s daughter and my son’s two daughters, they all love cooking, but their way is not my way. My way is completely old-style. They love my proper curries – lentil curry, a curry I make with yogurt. They really love my food. Sometimes they ring me and say: “Grandma, make this thing for us.”
Jenny Wilde, 77, Northamptonshire
Food is a big chunk of my life. My husband had three children from his previous marriage and I had three with him, so I ended up with six children and I had to cater for all of them. Once or twice I had to say: “Come on, I don’t dish up poison, you eat what I give you.” Otherwise, they ate everything.
My husband didn’t do any cooking, he was busy working. He went out early and I always had a meal waiting when he came in. I never resented it. I can hardly stop myself now – I’ve made coconut tartlets this morning. The children all had their little jobs: one cleared the table, one filled the dishwasher and one dried up. My husband didn’t help, but he was wonderful and loving. I had a very happy marriage.
I still cook every day because I’ve got an arrangement with a widower, who comes to eat at six and goes at seven. I used to cook for a chap who worked for my husband, but he died suddenly, so I rang up John and said: “Pat’s gone, I’ll cook for you.” So he comes up, has a meal with me, and pays for it by taking me to the cinema. I did beef carbonnade two weeks ago and he’d never heard of it. But he eats it all. It’s like the dog’s licked the plate in the end.
My dinners are not complete without a pudding. I do one every single day and try to vary them as much as possible. But I don’t have a very sweet tooth. I had a road accident many years ago and they put me on medication which I think affected my taste buds, as well as damaging my nervous system, because I’m not into the cakes like I used to be. I do everything myself – jams, chutneys – I don’t buy anything at all, never have done since my eldest child was born in 1968. I grow all my own vegetables as well, chemical-free. I’ve got a large greenhouse, and guess what I do, I still bottle my tomatoes. You use them as you would tinned tomatoes. I haven’t bought a loaf of bread in 50 years.
Shewa Hagos, 60, south London
When I was younger, I was more interested in making things – building and fixing – than cooking. But when my son Daniel was at university, I started a small coffee shop in Woolwich, south-east London. We were serving British things: jacket potato, coronation chicken, tuna mayo. When that didn’t work out, we decided as a family to change it to an Eritrean restaurant called Blue Nile.
All the recipes were chosen by the family, based on food I cooked at home. The kitcha fit-fit (pitta bread fried in spiced butter and Eritrean spices served with yogurt) is Daniel’s favourite, I used to make it on a Sunday for breakfast. Habte, my husband, likes ful (warm broad bean stew served with a boiled egg). My favourite is hamli (spinach cooked with garlic, chilli and olive oil). It reminds me of Eritrea, where I grew up – my grandmother would make it if we came to visit.
I never, ever cook from recipe books, I just cook. And I get pleasure from cooking – when I look at someone enjoying my food, that’s the best. My husband doesn’t do much in the kitchen, although he managed to cook bolognese sauce when I broke my leg. It impressed me very much, but afterwards he said: “Don’t push your luck.” He also makes scrambled eggs now and then – the boys call it Dad’s Famous Scrambled Egg – and that’s fine by me.
Learning to cook happens day by day. You try something and think, um, this one doesn’t look or taste nice, so you adjust it. Also when the customers come, I always see whether they’re eating it or not. I ask them: “Is that OK? Do you want another one?” That’s good, because it helps you get better.
Food is important, it’s like fuel to a car, but we shouldn’t be obsessed about it. When my two boys were very young, they would ask me what we were going to have for dinner. I never said: “We’re going to have pasta.” I’d say: “We’re going to have food.” As long as I put food on the table, that’s the important thing, not the choice. We get so much, we should be happy with what we have. Why make it complicated? If you can’t eat fish today, eat chicken, or eat lentils.
Our first grandchild, Sami, is now two and our second, Zoe, was born last month. It’s a very exciting time for us. In this world, there are so many mothers and grandmothers who can’t feed their own family, so we are very lucky, very fortunate, that we have plenty to eat.
granddishes.com; unbound.com/books/grand-dishes
