Jeanette Winterson: pumpkin pasta in Lombardy

"Mantua is one of those Italian towns that lives in the past and the present with such style that history becomes a continuum..."
Photograph: Alamy

Jeanette Winterson admires the local produce
Photograph: Francesca Cao

Swine dining... most of the food in Mantua is sourced locally
Photograph: Francesca Cao

Preparing the dough for fresh pasta
Photograph: Francesca Cao

Ravioli being made in a restaurant in Mantua
Photograph: Francesca Cao

A pumpkin stall Piazza delle Erbe. "Pumpkins are to Mantua what potatoes are to Peru – varieties of every kind, shape, size and ­colour, the incredible edibles, the ones for ­decoration and others that are strung into ­loofahs or grated into soap"
Photograph: Getty

The Merlin Cocai restaurant at dusk, owned by a three-­generational family who grow a lot of their own food, and who offer cooking lessons
Photograph: Francesca Cao

"To be in that warm kitchen with plenty of ­lambrusco sloshing about and food being ­prepared with such skill and pleasure was in every sense, and for all the senses, a better world than the “convenience” food of the ­Anglo-American supermarket culture"
Photograph: Francesca Cao

"The daughter and grandson taught me how to make and roll the pasta dough, then spoon out the pumpkin filling, which has to be mixed with amaretti biscuits. The amaretti give it the distinctive sweetness that ­either you love or you don’t.'
Photograph: Francesca Cao

"I was very bad at making same-size parcels, and I kept taking the little pillows over to la grandmamma - sitting by a wood-burning stove, watching bright-eyed - who in one twist and squeeze turned my lumpen, oozing misfire into elegant ravioli."
Photograph: Francesca Cao

Jeanette Winterson enjoys the fruits of her labour
Photograph: Francesca Cao