Anne is an Danish adventuress who has spent much of her life exploring the world in search of arts and crafts, new experiences, and foreign cookbooks. Classically trained in cooking at Le Cordon Bleu, from Anne I learned that Danish home cooking is all about pork, potatoes, and cabbage. And in the summer, berries, ærter (shelling peas), and fjordrejer (tiny pink fjord shrimp).

Usha was tender and methodical with her baking. Each day the wooden dough board came out, as did a big knife for cutting butter, and small bowlfuls of ingredients—apples, nuts, plums, and on a rare occasion even chocolate.

Mamma Maria learnt to cook by her mother’s side. “You just watch and spend time. You lend a hand. Maybe the first time you make a mistake, then the second time you do it right. It’s not that you are “taught.””

Armida cooked for an army’s worth of people on Sundays. Thirty or forty locals would come for lunch, bringing goods to exchange with one another, and lingering for hours over her food on long tables set under the olive trees.