A lifetime of experience
Armida Filippini
Ask Armida Filippini how long she has been cooking and she will tell you forever. Armida is 95 and has been cooking for at least 80 years. Raised in Veneto in a farming family with eight children. She had her first cooking job at the age of 16 when she went to work in the kitchen of the landlord where her family were tenant farmers.
The year was 1932 and the food was simple, seasonal and of course local. They ate what was in season from the surrounding fields. Minestrone with fave, lenticche and patate and braciole di maiale. One speciality she particularly enjoyed was polenta e osei, songbirds caught in a specially constructed roccolo. An arboreal architecture designed to capture song birds when they fly in a flock.
Armida and her husband Giovanni, an engineer and architect, moved to Milan in 1943 and had three daughters. Armida now has four grandchildren and three great grandchildren.
With all the advances in technology and cooking techniques Armida still insists on cooking everything from scratch and doesn’t even buy passata. Her favourite dish has been the same for almost a century, polenta and gorgonzola.
Each morning she wakes up and thinks about what to cook for lunch, by 10am she has decided and goes out to collect her groceries. She cooks for herself, slowly, in motions so practiced it looks like a well rehearsed dance, she never burns, never over cooks and everything she makes has that distinctive nonna richness of flavour that comes from 80 years of experience.
Armida Filippini
Ask Armida Filippini how long she has been cooking and she will tell you forever. Armida is 95 and has been cooking for at least 80 years. Raised in Veneto in a farming family with eight children. She had her first cooking job at the age of 16 when she went to work in the kitchen of the landlord where her family were tenant farmers.
The year was 1932 and the food was simple, seasonal and of course local. They ate what was in season from the surrounding fields. Minestrone with fave, lenticche and patate and braciole di maiale. One speciality she particularly enjoyed was polenta e osei, songbirds caught in a specially constructed roccolo. An arboreal architecture designed to capture song birds when they fly in a flock.
Armida and her husband Giovanni, an engineer and architect, moved to Milan in 1943 and had three daughters. Armida now has four grandchildren and three great grandchildren.
With all the advances in technology and cooking techniques Armida still insists on cooking everything from scratch and doesn’t even buy passata. Her favourite dish has been the same for almost a century, polenta and gorgonzola.
Each morning she wakes up and thinks about what to cook for lunch, by 10am she has decided and goes out to collect her groceries. She cooks for herself, slowly, in motions so practiced it looks like a well rehearsed dance, she never burns, never over cooks and everything she makes has that distinctive nonna richness of flavour that comes from 80 years of experience.
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