Sweet rewards

‘She has a knack for putting ingredients together and making the flavours sing,’ says her daughter Bianca. ‘Hers are simple recipes using fresh ingredients, and she cooks from what happens to be growing in her garden – in summer there will be stu ed zucchini flowers, tomatoes, artichokes, snow peas... She uses a lot of herbs for flavour – basil, parsley and rosemary are favourites, as well as a lot of tomatoes and garlic, which is very Sicilian.’

Such is her talent for cooking that she now offers a handful
of lucky people the chance to learn from her, with workshops o ered at Politini every winter. These began after Josie and her husband Sam started making salamis: ‘Customers came to the cellar door and they would see the salamis, and ask about how to make them themselves,’ says Bianca. ‘And Mum being Mum, she would show them how to make them and then end up cooking everyone lunch.’

‘A lot of people were really interested in the food she cooked and so we wanted to incorporate some of her recipes with the salami making,’ says Bianca. In the hands-on classes, Josie demonstrates a classic pork rib sugo – it’s a really nice dish to have on a winter’s day,’ she says – using the bones leftover from the salami making. There is also eggplant caponata, polpette and polenta – ‘the polenta is not Sicilian, but it goes so well with the sugo,’ she adds – and the classes finish with homemade cannoli and biscotti.

‘They often go until late in the afternoon, as everyone sits down, has a few glasses of wine, and some food. They’re like a lunch party, but where people make new friends – they often exchange numbers at the end of a class,’ says Bianca, who is the organisational force behind the classes, including sourcing the ingredients, using as much local produce as possible.

It’s a long day for 74-year-old Josie, but she shows no sign of slowing down. ‘She’s not the sort of person who can just sit down, she has to be active,’ laughs Bianca.