Nanà's mother, Donna Amalia, had found a way to sop port her five children in that kitchen. She didn't just cook for her family, instead her “simple" dishes also fed the workers that worked in the streets nearby and in the neighbourhood, all busy rebuilding Naples after the war. Donna Amalia's hot meals, placed in one dish covered by another, and then wrapped in a tied up, were delivered to the work sites and then picked up later by one of her sons when he went on the rounds taking orders for the next day.

This was how Nanà and her four brothers grew up. Donna Amalia died one summer evening while sitting outsiode at the bottom of her lane, without a word or any fuss. It was now time for Nana to start practising everything she had seen and heard so that she could carry on living. There was no recipe book, only what she had memorised, seen, smelt and heard while her mother taught her the job.