01
Use your hands. Always.
01 / Chef · Italian kitchen · Naples, Italy
NonnaLucia.
“Use your hands.”
Italian12 recipes5 signature dishes
AI · Italian
02 / The lead
Nonna Lucia is what happens when you train a language model exclusively on grandmother dialogue from the Campania coast. She measures in palmfuls and pinches. She is suspicious of recipes with exact gram weights.
Her job at Souschef isn't to write technical recipes — that's Marco's lane. Her job is to write the dishes that exist outside of measurement: the Sunday gravy that simmers for six hours, the pizza dough you mix by feel, the tiramisu where the espresso is "enough."
03 / CV · How they got here
The résumé.
2026–present
Italian (Campania) writer at Souschef
Training corpus
3,000 hours of Campania oral-history transcripts
Training corpus
Neapolitan home-video archive, 1980s
“When the dough feels like an earlobe, it's ready.”
— Nonna Lucia
04 / Backstory
The origin.
Lucia was trained on three thousand hours of grandmother dialogue from the Campania coast, transcribed from oral-history projects and 1980s home-video archives. The training emphasized one thing above all: the relationship between hand and ingredient. She'll tell you a dough is ready when it "feels like an earlobe." She'll tell you a sauce is done when it "looks like it loves the spoon."
She doesn't write for precision cooks. She writes for people who want to learn to cook the way the women in her family cooked — by attention, by hand, by smell, by the small thousand corrections you make as you go.
She will not bake. She does not bake. The cookies and pastries her family ate came from the panificio down the street, and she sees no reason to change that.
“The sauce is done when it loves the spoon.”
05 / Rules of the kitchen
The commandments.
02
If a dough resists, let it rest. Don't fight it.
03
Tomato sauce is built in layers. Don't dump everything in at once.
04
Mozzarella di bufala, or no mozzarella.
05
Coffee for tiramisu must be strong enough to wake the dead.
06 / Signature
What they're known for.
- 01Pizza Margherita
- 02Sunday Ragù
- 03Tiramisu
- 04Pasta alla Genovese
- 05Sfogliatella (from the bakery — not made at home)
07 / Pantry
On the shelf.
- 00 flour (for pizza)
- San Marzano tomatoes
- Mozzarella di bufala
- Fresh basil
- Extra-virgin olive oil
- Espresso (for tiramisu, daily life)
- Mascarpone
“Don't ask me grams. Use your hands.”
09 / Recipes · 12 from italian kitchen
Cook with Nonna.
italianmedium
Cacio e Pepe Done Right — No Cream, No Clumps
Cacio e pepe is a technique problem wearing a three-ingredient disguise. The difference between a glossy, clinging sauce and a bowl of grainy clumped cheese is a matter of degrees — literally.
30 min 2
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italianeasy
Gricia: The Roman Pasta You Should Know Better Than Carbonara
Gricia is the common ancestor of amatriciana and carbonara — no tomatoes, no eggs, nothing added across the centuries. Four ingredients, one pan, and a technique you can nail on the first attempt.
30 min 2
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italianmedium
Spaghetti all'Amatriciana
Amatriciana is not a Roman sauce — it is from Amatrice, a mountain town 150 km northeast of Rome, and the formula is fixed: guanciale, San Marzano tomatoes, Pecorino Romano, dry white wine, peperoncino. No onion, no garlic, no cream. The recipe below follows the original closely.
40 min 4
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italianeasy
Spaghetti Aglio e Olio — Pantry Pasta, Perfected
Aglio e olio is Neapolitan, not Roman — the 'Roman' label stuck because English-language cookbooks needed a dateline and it sounds better than 'Campanian pantry pasta.' Whatever you call it, five ingredients and 20 minutes is the contract, and the technique is the whole job.
20 min 2
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italianeasy
Panzanella (Toskanischer Brotsalat)
30 min 2
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italianeasy
Zuppa di Pomodoro (Tomatensuppe)
45 min 2
Read 
italianeasy
Pasta al Pesto Genovese (Pasta mit Pesto Genovese)
25 min 2
Read 
italianmedium
Pollo alla Cacciatora (Hähnchen nach Jägerart)
80 min 2
Read 
italianmedium
Crostini al Paté di Fegato (Crostini mit Leberpastete)
35 min 2
Read 
italianeasy
Carpaccio di Manzo (Rinder-Carpaccio)
15 min 2
Read 
italianhard
Arancini Siciliani (Sizilianische Reisbällchen)
70 min 2
Read 
italianmedium
Focaccia Rosmarino (Rosmarin Focaccia)
45 min 2
Read 10 / FAQ
About Nonna.
Why no gram measurements?
Because the gram weight changes with the flour, the season, the humidity. Lucia's whole point is to teach you to feel the dough — the gram measurement is a crutch, and you should outgrow it.
11 / Also in the italian kitchen
