A food writer's journey around Greece to learn the culinary secrets of the yiayias

Like most Greek grandmothers, my yiayia, after whom I was named, is a force to be reckoned with. Following her as she walked round the kitchen of her white-washed Corfu home - a set of weighing scales in hand - was the start of my obsession with documenting women of her generation and their relationship with their land through cooking. My yiayia hails from a Greece that did not yet know tourism. She was one of 10 children and her parents chose not to send her to school but instead sent her out to work the land from the age of nine.

Yiayia's education was learning about planting by the moon's cycle and wild-herb foraging; about baking sourdough bread and cooking rich Corfiot dishes like cinnamon stifado stew in a pot over a fire that she would build herself. Stoic, cutting and at times just plain terrifying, Yiayia is not the kind of granny you go to for cuddles. She has a look of disapproval that could kill. She once famously tied my father - then just seven years old - to a tree with an ants' nest at his feet as a punishment. In the kitchen, though, she is all heart. Our meals together as a family are characterised by shouty disputes and cackles of laughter (often from her). The food is simple, made up of Yiayia's own produce and never anything less than delicious.

As much as I wax lyrical about my own yiayiaka (a diminutive of yiayia), she is not in the minority in Greece. She is one of a generation of Greek matriarchs who came of age during the post-Second World War years, during which most of Greece was still in poverty and experiencing civil unrest. They took care of the finances and raised families while husbands were off fighting wars or working on cargo ships to send money home - or just off with other women. In an unashamedly patriarchal society, it is our yiayiades that have come through the strongest and have, more often than not, lived the longest. Despite the sometimes awful hypocrisy they have had to face in life, these women are still here and they are carrying the Greek spirit.

Setting out on my odyssey to collect recipes from grandmothers dotted across my homeland was transformative in more ways than one. Being Corfiot, I was accustomed to a diet informed by the Venetians, who colonised the island 800 years ago. In the Old Town of Corfu, Marina's Taverna and Pergola might serve spicy tsigarelli (wild greens) and cinnamon-spiked pastitsada (slow-cooked beef stew with pasta) as staples, but that is not standard fare once you leave the island.

Travelling across Greece - from the verdant Ionians to the sun-scorched Cycladic islands, the Balkan-influenced northern mainland and down to Crete and far-flung Kastellorizo, which is closer to Turkey than mainland Greece - I realised the cuisine is incredibly regional. There is much more to it than Greek salad and tzatziki. One way to get to know this diverse country beyond the surface is the cooking, and the key to finding special restaurants that serve authentic cuisine is to ask the locals.

In the mountains of Karpathos island, up a winding road of seemingly never-ending hairpin bends, I met Yiayia Anna in a village that felt very much disconnected from the rest of the world. Wearing the local folk costume of Olympos - a head scarf and many skirts that trailed behind her - Anna hurried round the kitchen of her restaurant, Taverna Olympos, showing me how to roll makarounes, a traditional pasta topped with sweet, caramelised onions and a generous grating of local cheese. I had no idea that homemade pasta was a tradition in Greek kitchens.