From Nonna's Kitchen to Mine: An Italian-Australian Journey
How generations of Italian immigrants preserved their culinary heritage while building new lives in Australia, one recipe at a time.
Editor’s Note: This is a composite narrative representing the shared cultural experience of Italian-Australian immigrant families from the 1950s-1970s. All people, places, and specific details are fictionalized, but the experiences described reflect documented patterns across the Italian-Australian immigrant community. This is a “cultural group snapshot”—the common threads that emerge when similar journeys are examined together.
The Journey Begins
When my Nonna Maria stepped off the ship at Port Melbourne in 1956, she carried two suitcases and a small wooden box. One suitcase held clothes, the other held her most precious possessions: her mother’s handwritten recipe book, a bottle of olive oil from her family’s grove in Emilia-Romagna, and a well-worn wooden pasta rolling pin that had been in the family for three generations.
She was 23 years old, newly married, and terrified. Australia was as foreign to her as the moon. She spoke no English, knew no one except her husband Giuseppe, and had never been more than 50 kilometers from her village.
Finding Home Through Food
The first months were the hardest. The Australian sun was too bright, the food too bland, the language incomprehensible. In Carlton, Melbourne’s “Little Italy,” she found solace among other Italian immigrants who shared her homesickness and confusion.
But it was in her tiny kitchen that Nonna found her anchor. Every Sunday, without fail, she would make pasta from scratch—just as her mother had taught her, just as her grandmother had done before that. The ritual of kneading dough, rolling it paper-thin, cutting perfect ribbons of fettuccine became her meditation, her connection to home.
“When I make pasta,” she once told me, “my hands remember. They remember Mamma’s hands guiding mine. They remember the feeling of the dough when it’s perfect—not too wet, not too dry. This knowledge traveled with me across the ocean. It’s my inheritance.”
The Recipe Book
Nonna’s recipe book wasn’t like the glossy cookbooks we have today. It was a simple exercise book with a blue cover, filled with her mother’s careful handwriting. The pages were stained with olive oil, dusted with flour, splattered with tomato sauce—each mark a memory of a meal prepared.
Some recipes were detailed, others just a few cryptic lines: “Like we always make it” or “You know how much.” These weren’t instructions for strangers; they were reminders for family, assuming knowledge passed down through observation and practice.
Adapting Without Losing
Over the years, Nonna learned to adapt. Australian tomatoes weren’t quite the same as Italian pomodori, but they would do. She couldn’t find fresh porcini mushrooms, so she learned to work with local varieties. The prosciutto from the Italian deli in Carlton became a precious weekly splurge.
But she never compromised on technique. Pasta had to be rolled by hand. Sauce had to simmer for hours. Bread had to be kneaded until it was silky smooth. These were non-negotiables, the sacred elements that kept her cooking authentic.
My mother, born in Australia but raised in Nonna’s kitchen, learned these same techniques. And now, in my own kitchen in Sydney, I roll out pasta dough with the same wooden pin Nonna brought from Italy nearly 70 years ago.
More Than Just Food
What I’ve come to understand is that Nonna’s recipes were never just about food. They were about identity, about maintaining a connection to a homeland she would only visit twice more in her lifetime. They were about creating a sense of family and community in a new land.
Every Sunday dinner at Nonna’s table was a gathering—not just of family, but of other Italian immigrants, their children, grandchildren, and eventually, friends from all backgrounds. Her kitchen became a bridge between the old country and the new, between tradition and adaptation, between who we were and who we were becoming.
The Gift of Heritage
Today, I cook Nonna’s recipes for my own family. My children, fourth-generation Australian, may not speak Italian fluently, but they know how to tell when pasta dough is ready by touch. They understand that good food takes time. They’ve learned that a recipe is more than ingredients and measurements—it’s a story, a connection, a gift.
When I teach my daughter to make lasagna, I’m not just teaching her a recipe. I’m passing down Nonna’s resilience, her love, her determination to preserve beauty and tradition in a world that was strange and new. I’m giving her a tangible link to ancestors she’ll never meet, to a village in Italy she’s only seen in photos.
Lessons Learned
The immigrant experience is one of constant negotiation—between old and new, tradition and innovation, memory and reality. Food becomes one of the few constants, a way to maintain connection when everything else is changing.
Nonna taught me that preserving heritage doesn’t mean refusing to change. It means understanding what’s essential and holding onto that while adapting everything else. The techniques, the care, the love put into cooking—these are what matter. The specific ingredients, the equipment, even the setting can change, but the essence remains.
Passing It Forward
Now, in my fifties, I’ve become the keeper of these recipes. Nonna’s exercise book sits in my kitchen drawer, wrapped in plastic to preserve it. I’ve typed up many of the recipes, tested and annotated them for clarity, but I keep the original as a sacred object.
When I make Nonna’s lasagna, I can close my eyes and I’m in her Carlton kitchen, watching her layer sheets of fresh pasta, spooning on ragù that’s been simmering all day, grating fresh parmigiano, sprinkling torn basil. I can hear her voice: “Not too much sauce, or it will be soggy. Each layer must be perfect.”
These recipes are my inheritance, more valuable than any material wealth. They’re proof that home isn’t just a place—it’s a set of practices, a collection of tastes and smells, a feeling of connection that can be recreated anywhere in the world with flour, water, and love.
Maria Rossi is a third-generation Italian-Australian living in Sydney. She teaches cooking classes focusing on traditional Italian home cooking and runs a small blog documenting immigrant food stories. This story is part of HomeFood’s Immigration & Heritage series, celebrating Australia’s multicultural food landscape.
