Why Mélanie Masarin Keeps Her Grandmother’s Cookbook Close at Hand

I grew up in Lyon, France, in an open-door culture of hosting and cooking. People were always coming over for dinner. Some of my uncles were chefs, and so was my grandma Mymo, who once owned a restaurant. She would visit my family once a month, and I loved visiting her house near Cannes in the summer because I knew when we arrived it would smell like pasta gratin, which was everyone’s favorite dish. She was the host with the most and cooked all the recipes we liked, which she kept in this cookbook she started when she was 18. When she passed away unexpectedly 10 years ago, my family entrusted the cookbook to me because I was very much the grandchild who cooked with her.