When my grandma was in her early 80s, 10 years widowed and settled down south near us all, my dad took her on a trip back to Yorkshire. They drove around revisiting places from her life: the house she was born in; her schools; the church where she was married; and her last house in Stokesley. They visited relatives, where they took up offers of tea. (“Oh, yes please, that would be lovely, but only if it isn’t too much trouble.”) Then sat in front rooms, reminiscing. They drove through towns and past former workplaces, little of it unchanged. All the while they talked, some of which my dad captured on audio tape – a stream of memories, joyful and sad, plenty of hushed gossip and, true to form, a long observation about the most recent prawn sandwich eaten in a cafe. She loved a prawn sandwich. We don’t need a recording to remember Grandma, but I am so glad we have it.

There have been moments in the past 10 days when I wished I had recorded the stories I am hearing now. We are staying in Vincenzo’s family house in Gela, a town in south-east Sicily. Until last year, the house had been more or less boarded up for 20 years, ever since his grandparents moved north. It is a plain, three storey, concrete building in the warren of Gela’s backstreets, its grey facade mitigated by a pleasing balcony with coloured canvas woven through. With the help of family, we have been putting the house to rights – of sorts. Vincenzo’s father, Bartolomeo, is back in the town he married in 55 years ago.

Encyclopedic about Sicilian history, and fluent in local and family gossip, Bartolo walks with me around the town, revisiting relatives and colleagues, places of work, opticians, launderettes, noting who has aged well and who hasn’t. We walk down streets named after the family, while he explains the history of this very particular town. On occasions, he shouts about the place as if it was a corrupt person, but also marvels at the obstinate endurance of everything, the kindness and familiarity of people not seen for decades and the taste of soup made from tender greens, called tenerumi. He dabs the sweat from his brow endlessly, and makes me laugh. Each night we take a passeggiata, passing the hundreds of men who gather in the piazza, to join the Gelese, unabashed lovers of conspicuous consumption and finery, on their nightly stroll. My sandals have never felt so flat, my hair so frizzy. After supper, as the cat from the collapsed house in front screeches in the street below and the fan rattles, I can hear Bartolo on the phone recounting the day’s events to his wife in Rome. Later, the arrival of the water will wake us all, a delirious motor pulling enough for two days up three floors to our new 1,500 litre tank on the roof.

One day, we were eating what is best described as a bread pie – two rounds of bread dough pinched around filling, when Bartolo said: “Posso dirti qualcosa, cara Rachel?” (May I say something, dear Rachel?) He told me I needed to put more filling in the impanata. He was right – there wasn’t enough filling. Before marrying a girl from Gela, Bartolomeo lived in Riesi above his family’s forno (bakery) – a famous one by all accounts, where, as well as Sicilian sesame seed-encrusted bread, they made impanata stuffed with wilted greens, potatoes and anchovies. In Catania, we enjoy something similar called scacciata, filled with tuma cheese and anchovies. Every town has its own version, I’m told. Mine borrows from both impanata and scacciata. The dough is made of coarse semolina flour, yeast, olive oil and water. The possibilities for fillings are endless. My son, predictably, demanded prosciutto and cheese, which I put in half. In the other half, I put anchovies and cheese, a soft and deeply savoury filling that stretches like a telephone cord when hot.

Remember to grease the tin and dough well, and to fill right to the edges. Practice is not advice we welcome in this age of fast, infallible recipes, but this is the sort of dish you need to make few times to get a feel for it; especially the fill and pinch. It is best straight out of the oven, but also just the thing for a picnic, the mention of which has Bartolomeo reminiscing about his mother making trays of pizza for the scampagnata, “the picnic scamper”, into the countryside. This leads into story about a local widow who was murdered by her son! My grandma would have gasped, but loved that story.

Impanata

Serves 4-6
10g dried yeast or 20g fresh yeast
1 tbsp sugar
500g flour, ideally semolina flour, but plain flour or 00-grade works too
10g salt
30ml extra virgin olive oil
Water

For the filling
500g mozzarella (well drained), tuma cheese or primosale, sliced
8-16 anchovy fillets or 8 slices of ham
Olive oil mixed with water or 1 beaten egg
Salt and black pepper

1 Dissolve the yeast and sugar in a glass of tepid water. Mix the flour, salt and olive oil in a large bowl, then add the dissolved yeast and enough extra water to bring everything together into a soft dough (usually another 200ml). Knead until smooth. Transfer to a lightly oiled bowl, cover with a cloth or clingfilm, then leave in a warm spot for 2 hours, or until doubled in size.

2 Lightly oil a 29cm-round tin. Halve the dough. Roll out both pieces on a lightly floured surface – one should be larger than the tin, the other the size of the tin. Press the big piece into it, making sure it comes up the sides. Rub the dough with oil. Arrange the cheese and anchovies, if using, evenly on the dough, sprinkle with a little salt and pepper. Brush the edges with oil, then cover with the remaining dough. Pinch and twist the edges closed. Brush with either oil mixed with water or beaten egg. Poke a few holes in the top with a fork and bake in a preheated oven at 200C/400F/gas mark 6 for 25-35 minutes, or until golden and puffed up.

• Rachel Roddy is a food blogger based in Rome and the author of Five Quarters: Recipes and Notes from a Kitchen in Rome (Saltyard, 2015) and winner of the 2015 André Simon food book award