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
Roman Semolina Gnocchi — Crispy-Edged Rounds in Brown Butter
In Rome, Thursday is gnocchi day — and this is the gnocchi Romans were eating long before anyone thought to boil a potato. Semolina rounds, baked until the Parmigiano crust crackles and the interior stays soft, is cucina romana at its most direct.
70 min 4
Read 
italianmedium
Lampredotto Fiorentino: Florence's Legendary Tripe Sandwich
Lampredotto is Florence's most stubbornly local street food — the fourth stomach of the cow, slow-simmered in an aromatic broth, piled into a crusty roll, and finished with sharp salsa verde. The lampredottai have been selling it from carts at the city's markets since medieval times, and the formula hasn't changed.
110 min 4
Read 
italianeasy
Lenticchie Umbre in Umido — Umbrian Braised Lentils with Tomato
Castelluccio lentils from the Sibillini plateau have held IGP status since 1997 — small, thin-skinned, nutty, and built to hold their shape through a long braise. This is the Umbrian way: slow soffritto, crushed tomato, a sprig of rosemary, and a serious pour of raw olive oil at the table.
60 min 4
Read 
italianeasy
Mozzarella in Carrozza — The Roman Fried Cheese Sandwich That Leaks If You Rush It
Campanian by birth, Roman by adoption — mozzarella in carrozza is cucina povera at its most satisfying: a sealed bread pocket that traps the cheese so completely it's still pulling strings two minutes after you plate it.
30 min 2
Read 
italianhard
How to Make 'Nduja Calabrese: Italy's Spreadable Spicy Salami
'Nduja comes from Spilinga, a hillside village in Calabria, where poverty turned pig scraps and a surplus of dried chiles into one of Italy's most imitated condiments. The cure takes 60 days minimum — but the active work is under an hour.
75 min 8
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italianmedium
Olive all'Ascolana: The Marche's Fried Stuffed Olives
Olive all'ascolana come from Ascoli Piceno, a city in the Marche that treats its bar snacks with the seriousness most places reserve for main courses. Each olive is pitted by hand, packed with a seasoned meat filling, triple-breaded, and fried to order — patient work that produces something no bag of chips can approach.
80 min 6
Read 
italianmedium
Veal Piccata Done Right: Thin Scaloppine, Silky Butter Sauce
In Italy this dish is called scaloppine al limone — 'piccata' is largely how it crossed the Atlantic, but the technique is the same: thin veal seared hard and fast, pan sauce built directly on the fond, cold butter swirled in off-heat. Thirty minutes start to finish, and it looks like you spent longer.
35 min 2
Read 
italianmedium
Polpette al Sugo — Italian Meatballs Braised in Tomato
These are Neapolitan polpette — not the American-Italian kind served on spaghetti, but tender, slow-braised meatballs that give everything to the sauce and get something back in return. The sauce goes on pasta first; the meatballs follow as the main course.
75 min 4
Read 
italianeasy
Puntarelle alla Romana: Rome's Bitter Winter Salad with Anchovy Dressing
Puntarelle alla romana is a winter-only dish from Lazio — thin strips of chicory shoots soaked in ice water until they curl tight, then dressed with a pounded anchovy-garlic sauce that has two thousand years of Roman precedent.
20 min 4
Read 
italianeasy
Grilled Tardivo Radicchio with Crispy Pancetta and Aged Balsamic
Radicchio tardivo di Treviso carries IGP status for good reason — these elongated heads, harvested after the first frost and forced in cold running water, are sweeter and more nuanced than ordinary round radicchio. Grill them and the bitterness becomes something richer.
25 min 4
Read 
italianeasy
Sarde in Saor — Venice's Ancient Sweet-Sour Sardines
Sarde in saor is one of the oldest dishes in the Venetian repertoire — a 14th-century fisherman's preservation technique that happens to produce something worth making today. Fried sardines, slow-cooked sweet onions, vinegar, raisins, and pine nuts, left to merge in the refrigerator for two days until the whole is more than its parts.
65 min 4
Read 
italianeasy
Scaloppine al Marsala: Pounding, Browning, and Getting the Sauce Right
Scaloppine al Marsala is the Italian pan sauce most cooks should learn before anything elaborate — thin veal, a very hot pan, and a Sicilian wine reduction that comes together in about five minutes once you understand the logic.
30 min 4
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
