SOPHIE GRIGSON: How I found the recipe for La Dolce Vita

SOPHIE GRIGSON: How I found the recipe for La Dolce Vita
SOPHIE GRIGSON: How I found the recipe for La Dolce Vita

Sitting behind the steering wheel of my beloved ‘Aubergine’ — my nickname for my purple Chrysler PT cruiser — I suddenly realised that I was hopelessly stuck.

I was attempting to navigate a maze of narrow streets in the heart of Gallipoli, the town in southern Italy

I’d managed to get half-way round a corner, but was now unable to move forward — or backwards — without scraping the sides of the Aubergine. Somehow, my bumper had become hooked on some stone steps that thrust out into the alleyway.

Around me, a crowd of bemused onlookers had gathered amid the scorching heat of the Italian summer, to see how on earth the pink-cheeked signora inglese would manage to extricate herself from this situation — a question I was also asking myself.

My saviour came in the form of Marco, a genial local man who opened the driver’s side door. Waving me over to sit in the passenger seat, he said in heavily accented English: ‘You move, I drive.’

Burning with feminist indignation I might have been, but I was also hugely thankful. To cheers from the crowd, Marco wriggled my car out, then led us on through a series of tortuous alleys to freedom. Grinning, he handed me back the keys and disappeared into Gallipoli’s centro storico.

I’ve navigated Italy’s notorious red tape, stumbled over endless language hurdles and had to learn to cope with the ‘muffa’, the black mould that sprouts alarmingly from those pale ochre walls in the damp Puglian winters

I’ve navigated Italy’s notorious red tape, stumbled over endless language hurdles and had to learn to cope with the ‘muffa’, the black mould that sprouts alarmingly from those pale ochre walls in the damp Puglian winters

This, I confess, would not be the last time I came a cropper in the perilously narrow streets of the ancient villages of Puglia: just one of the endless escapades that have come to characterise my unexpected new life in the corner of Italy I now call home.

Just a few weeks before Marco came to my rescue, I had packed up my entire belongings into the Aubergine to start a new life in Italy’s ‘heel’, leaving my home, my friends and almost everything I knew for something that, if not quite a whim, certainly looked that way.

I spoke only basic Italian and had merely the faintest idea where I was going. Yet two years and three months later, here I am, blissfully installed in a small sunlit two-floor apartment with steep stairs and pale ochre and ivory stone walls: purchased for the grand total of €50,000 (£42,500), furniture and all.

I’ve navigated Italy’s notorious red tape, stumbled over endless language hurdles and had to learn to cope with the ‘muffa’, the black mould that sprouts alarmingly from those pale ochre walls in the damp Puglian winters.

But I have also harvested olives, dined like a queen, learnt new cookery skills (my orecchiette, Puglia’s favourite ear-shaped pasta, look close to the real thing now) and, as I nurse my Campari spritz on a summer’s evening on the beautiful sun-filled main square of my adopted town, found a level of deep contentment in my soul in this, my seventh decade.

I’ve always loved travelling. Throughout my childhood, my family spent three months a year in France in the Loir-et-Cher, where I went to the local school.

In my early twenties, I had grand plans to spend a year in France and Italy after finishing my maths degree at Manchester University, only to lose the courage of my convictions. 

As for so many, life got in the way. After starting my career as a food writer, marriage and a family followed.

My husband William and I settled in Northamptonshire, where our children Florrie and Sid came along. As the years went by, I soon had a number of successful cookery books to my name as well as a few television series.

I was happy and successful, although that thwarted year abroad lingered in the recesses of my mind, coupled with a growing sense of the fragility of life.

Two years and three months later, here I am, blissfully installed in a small sunlit two-floor apartment with steep stairs and pale ochre and ivory stone walls: purchased for the grand total of €50,000 (£42,500), furniture and all

Two years and three months later, here I am, blissfully installed in a small sunlit two-floor apartment with steep stairs and pale ochre and ivory stone walls: purchased for the grand total of €50,000 (£42,500), furniture and all

In 1990, my dear mother, the renowned cookery writer Jane Grigson — from whom I inherited my passion for food — died at the relatively young age of 62. I felt her loss keenly.

Then, in 2015, William passed away from a brain tumour. We had divorced by then, but this tragic end for a man who for so many years had been such a major force in my life was another seismic moment.

As I approached my sixtieth birthday, it was hard to shake off thoughts about the unforgiving march of time. I was also — whisper it — bored.

Even so, I might have done nothing about these feelings were it not for a chance encounter in early 2018. I had been asked to interview Russell Norman — the famed restaurateur behind the Polpo chain — about his book Venice, a fascinating account of a year he spent living in the backstreets of that magical city, learning to cook like the locals.

Russell was wonderful company, but as I fired my questions at him, my prevailing emotion was envy. Why couldn’t I do something like that?

The answer, of course, was that I could. By then, I was presiding over an empty nest. And much as I enjoyed many things about my life in Oxford, where I had moved following my divorce, I didn’t need to be there anymore.

So when, a few days after, I stumbled across a news story about a village in the north of Puglia whose shrinking population had led the local council to offer outsiders €1,000 (£850) to move there, it was as if a lightbulb had come on above my head.

Finally, here was my chance to indulge that ancient wanderlust to the full.

I had no plan at all other than to drive south, pulling off the road wherever I fancied. It was gloriously liberating

I had no plan at all other than to drive south, pulling off the road wherever I fancied. It was gloriously liberating

Two weeks later, I flew to Bari airport and bowled up in a hire car at that village, Candela, with Florrie, now 27, and Sid, 25.

If my children thought I was a bit bonkers they hid it well — although later, when it became clear I was serious about this dramatic new start, they admitted feeling a little wistful and apprehensive about potentially losing their ‘base’ in Oxford: my home.

‘It will be a new kind of base,’ I confidently told them.

I knew straight away that Candela was not right for me: it was too remote.

But driving through more of Puglia’s glorious hilltop towns had brought a new impetus to my thoughts about moving there. In short, my mind was made up.

Giving myself a deadline of the following spring, I returned to Britain and set about divesting myself of the past. I had a lifetime of stuff to get rid of, and while it

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