About The Cannelloni

A few weeks back, the holly jolly season poised to descend, I struggled to muster much cheer (and not just for the usual reasons).

My entire Christmas construct–the tandem baking, giddy treats and decorations, the tireless joy–is wrapped in memories of my grandmother, and this would be my first without her.

Except, complicating the sentiment further, that’s not really true.

Mamma passed a few months ago, but it’s been years since she was really here. Dementia took her in gradual, unforgiving layers like a photograph displayed in the sun. I said goodbye in a thousand instalments, watched her slip away several Decembers before this one. I saw the end coming, eventually praying it would, relieved and grateful that she would finally be herself again, albeit somewhere else. In other words, I believed myself well-accustomed to her absence by this point.

And yet.

Adept as I’d become at running our holiday playbook without her, cranking out pizzelle and enough sparkle and shine for the both of us, this year I found none. I craved a way to mark the end of our era quietly and in private, to pay tribute to the Christmas magic she created while avoiding it altogether.

But how?

It hits me: the cannelloni.

Mamma made the tube-like pasta filled with ricotta and spinach every Christmas Eve–along with about ten other dishes, none of which overlapped with the full traditional dinner she pulled from her kitchen like loaves and fishes the very next day for the ever-growing masses. The two-day spread was incredible every time. But those cannelloni?

They were the crown jewel.

They’re the only dish of Mamma’s I’ve never attempted, never even considered making myself, much for the same reason I’ll never order them in a restaurant.

They could never be the same.

But now, there’s this burning need to give it a shot. No ceremony, no pressure, just a small batch for my husband, kiddo and I on a regular Saturday night.

The problem is, I have no clue how to make them.

It’s been twenty years since I tasted them (after Grandpa died in 2004, Mamma reluctantly transitioned from holiday hostess to guest). For all my hours standing on the wooden chair at her counter as a girl, I never thought to ask how much flour, what brand of cheese. Mamma helped run her parents’ Italian restaurant from a young age; her pasta recipes weren’t written down.

The stakes feel pretty high. I don’t want however these cannelloni turn out to overwrite the memory (what precious little remains) of how her famous ones tasted, but neither do I want this piece of her legacy to fall dark. Mostly, I don’t want to botch this.

It doesn’t matter, I decide. The point is not to replicate my grandmother’s cannelloni, but to keep making the cannelloni, right? Develop my own recipe, perfect it over time, share it with my daughter and God willing, maybe even my grandchild(ren) someday. In doing that alone, I know Mamma is pleased and proud.

Still, the details nearly derail me. Online recipes are conflicting, and before I know it, I’m pacing the kitchen spouting desperate questions Mamma can no longer answer. Fresh spinach or frozen? Pecorino Romano or Parmigiano Reggiano? Regular cooking onion for the sauce, or that ever-present Spanish one in your crisper?

I’m angry now. At myself, for not paying closer attention, for never thinking to grab a paper and pen and ask while I had the chance. I’m angry at last chances, for not identifying themselves better outside of hindsight.

I close my eyes, straining to be back in the patinaed rectangle of her kitchen, the pale stack of crepes growing taller under the tea towel. Did you put butter in the batter? Can you make them ahead, or will they dry out?

I watched her do it countless times, yet I can’t recall one damn useful thing–which makes sense, I know. I was a child, then a teen too consumed with eating the food to consider how it arrived on the table. Yet, Mamma’s final weeks with dementia still top of mind, these memory gaps upend me.

For better or worse, after lighting a candle, I begin. I bungle the first few crepes, cursing. Then I laugh, recalling how she used to laugh whenever she heard me curse. After what feels like five hours, I’ve produced twelve usable crepes. I cannot fathom how she made enough of these for 20, 30 people at a time, plus everything else on that table, plus the entirely different meal the next day, plus all the other meals people still need you to feed them while you’re up to your neck in preparing these meals in a kitchen the size of a Ford Tempo.

How did you DO it? Where did you put it all? Why didn’t we help you more?

At some point during my empty-kitchen interrogation, I’m suddenly very sure: there is butter in the batter. I race to melt some, toss it in, re-whip. Next, I tackle the cheese and spinach filling, and it’s pretty good. Except it’s decidedly missing…lemon.

Lemon??

That can’t be right. Not one recipe I scoured online said a thing about lemon.

Still, I can’t shake it. I call my mother.

“You know, I think she did put lemon!”

“Like, she squeezed the juice?”

“No. The rind. I’m pretty sure I saw her grating it in once.”

(Did I mention Mamma let no one but me, then eventually my husband–further affirming he was a keeper–into her kitchen while she was cooking?).

The rind! I all but slap my own forehead. I don’t know how much to put in, but I’m no longer stalled on the details. I don’t even think about the details. My hands just…seem to know. When to stop grating, how much mozzarella to sprinkle on the top, when to pull the foil off during cooking.

As it turns out, some memories can’t be coaxed from the brain, because they live inside your bones.

I tuck between my husband and daughter at the kitchen table, steam wafting off our plates. I hope my cannelloni are good, but mostly I’m just glad I made them, that I’ve found this way forward by light of the past.

But also. I take a bite, and my is vision swimming, my words falling away.

They’re exactly the same.