Johnny Di Francesco is getting all old school traditional on it at Gradi at Crown. Wanting to create a menu with dishes from the heart, passed down through families with a story to them, he put the call out on the Italian grapevine for nonna nominations and was inundated. After a lot of thought, he narrowed 100 down to 3, choosing Nonna Rita’s cauliflower fritters, Nonna Concetta’s spinach and ricotta cannelloni, Nonna Elena’s bigne and Johnny’s own Nonna Angela’s stuffed calamari.
It’s lovely to speak to you again, Johnny. I spoke to you at the start of last year and we discussed the expansion of Gradi into the Middle East and cruise ships and now that is all happening, so congratulations! I thought that it is interesting that you are doing things on such a large global scale and at the same time you are launching your new Piatti dei Nonni menu at Gradi at Crown which is really getting back to basics and celebrating the beautiful and often traditional home cooking which might have been passed on down through families.
Correct. That’s what it’s all about.
Ok, so is that what inspired you? I see that you have a really lovely relationship with your Nonna Angela. How did you go from that to creating a menu including dishes from other Nonni into your restaurant?
I think if we go back to basics and think about food and what it does, for me and probably a lot of other people, it’s a means of bringing people together, but not only family, but also friends and people in general. Then I thought whose house would you normally go to when it’s a birthday, Christmas, any special occasion or just for Sunday lunch? It’s always the nonna.
I remember when I was a child I used to visit my nonna’s house six days out of the seven. For me my childhood was being around my nonna. So I thought I would ask my nonna to share a recipe with me, then we had the idea to reach out to nonnas around Melbourne. How many of them would love to share a recipe and have it showcased and enjoyed by many other people that they wouldn’t be able to reach. So that’s how we came up with it.
Is there some kind of Nonna Network? How did you find them all?
We put the call out on social media, asking people to nominate their nonnas and that’s how it started. There were over a hundred nonnas nominated. It was an amazing response and we thought how cool it was. Then the hard work started with working out who we would choose. Everyone’s submission was amazing because of the stories behind every dish they submitted. I think everybody’s story is special, so that was definitely the hard part. We narrowed it down to five, then four, then three.
It was three amazing choices. The nonnas I worked with were absolutely amazing humans. I could have sat there the whole day just talking to them. Their stories were heartfelt. You know that there’s a passion behind what they are doing. It’s not just about cooking for them and it validated the initial thought I had had that food brings people together. They all said, “My family love this recipe!” or “My family come over and I can’t even get it to the table because it’s finished before I can even cooking it.”
Number one, family is everything. In the cooking sense, to cook from the heart. My Nonna has always said that to me. When you become a chef and start cooking from a recipe, you can start to lose that soul cooking. She has always said, everything is from the heart. The food needs to speak to you and you have to love what you are doing. I think most nonnas have lived their life that way. They will have migrated to a country where they had to learn a new language and a new way of life; everything was by feeling, learning by touch and smell and sound. I think that’s the same thing for cooking.
I saw some lovely photos of you with the nonnas and their families, so that was another lovely layer to get you together with all the people they usually cook for. How did it work? Did they come into your kitchen or did you go into theirs?
I went to their houses and cooked with them and took very, very careful notes so that we could replicate it exactly. We filmed it all as well, so we have all this really great footage which is not only good for me, but lovely for their families as well.
I read that every recipe will stay true to its creator, from extra lashings of gorgonzola to hearty dollops of whipped cream, how does that work from a recipe someone is making on a small scale being brought into a commercial kitchen?
You just do. One of the nonnas we went to has a really big family. There were probably 25 people in the house when we were doing the filming and that was only half the family. Nonnas are already cooking on a large scale. Italian families are so big, so it’s not that difficult to replicate.
The cauliflower fritters from Nonna Rita come from cauliflower grown on her farm in Werribee South. That’s pretty cool. Is that a recipe passed down through her family or is it something she has come up with because she has lots of cauliflower?
All three nonnas had the recipe passed on to them from their mothers or their own nonnas.
Do you think it matters whether you use Werribee South cauliflower? I imagine that tastes pretty good.
The cauliflower Nonna Rita had on her property was exceptional quality. Obviously you can find really good cauliflower from a lot of growers. But you can’t beat cauliflower just picked that morning.
I imagine that would have been amazing for you to have been part of as well. You also have Nonna Concetta’s spinach and ricotta cannelloni which she has been cooking since she was 8 years old, and I was going to ask what the bigne from Nonna Elena were.
Bigne is choux pastry; a dessert filled with cream. A lot of people fill it with chocolate cream or pistachio cream, or crema pasticcera. These particular bigne are made by hand and the cream is a rich, old traditional way of making cream, it’s similar to crema pasticcera, but we use milk, butter, flour and everything is done by hand.
Did you end up using one of your nonna’s recipes as well?
Yes. My nonna is 93 years old. Her recipe is calamari ripieni, stuffed calamari.
It sounds like a delicious and cosy menu. I’ll have to come in and try it. Just to finish, obviously your nonna has had a big influence on you, what do you think is the most important thing she has taught you about food or life?
Number one, family is everything. In the cooking sense, to cook from the heart. She has always said that to me. When you become a chef and start cooking from a recipe, you can start to lose that soul cooking. She has always said, everything is from the heart. The food needs to speak to you and you have to love what you are doing. I think most nonnas have lived their life that way. They will have migrated to a country where they had to learn a new language and a new way of life; everything was by feeling, learning by touch and smell and sound. I think that’s the same thing for cooking.
Crown Towers, Southbank, Melbourne