Family sticks, not the dough
Traditions of Grandma’s Italian cooking that defined a childhood are passed down through generations
No matter if you were immediate family, extended or adopted, my family — at times over 30 of us — inevitably crowded into my grandparents’ Bridgeview bungalow kitchen.
Even when it was nice outside or there was room elsewhere, we were there. With a cheesy, ’80s mirrored wall, a “Nanie’s Kitchen” sign (depicting characters from “The Lion King,” for some reason) and the heavy, wooden chairs that were once the biggest obstacle between tiny me and the table — it wasn’t just the act of eating together at my grandma’s house I remember most, but also the hours spent making all the food. Nowhere to sit? No problem, there were walls to lean on and doorways to occupy. The most important conversations, funniest moments, fondest memories, petty arguments broke out (and were mostly resolved) in that kitchen.
When I was a kid, those kitchen hours were molded by her — Josepina, my nanie, la mia nonna (depending on which region of Italy your relatives came from — my nanie’s side was from Sicily).
Her table was always covered with plates of homemade cookies and boxes of pastries on one side, and the day’s food preparation equipment on the other: a cutting board, rolling pin, pot of water to drop potatoes in, some type of magical pasta machine that shattered all notions of dried noodles in boxes at the grocery store, the noisy meat grinder only used for sausagemaking, and flour. Flour was everywhere: Even if a recipe didn’t call for it, the white stuff found its way onto everything.
I never saw her look at a recipe or recall specific instructions, instead tossing a handful of this and a pinch of that into various pots and pans until the food hit the table, always enough to feed the neighborhood, just in case any surprise guests wandered over. I imagined my Nanie’s mind as a fastspinning Rolodex of delicious secrets only she would ever know. When she passed away — the Friday after Thanksgiving, almost 12 years ago — there was an unspoken-but-shared feeling that all of it, the generations of culinary customs, our culture, would go with her. The glue that more or less held all of us together was gone.
Unlike me, my mother, Catherine — lovingly referred to by everyone as “Cath,” the fourth of my grandparents’ six children — caught the cooking bug early, volunteering to chop vegetables or clean at her aunt’s (my Nanie’s sister Virginia) restaurant when she was just 8 years old. Cath continued helping out at the family’s restaurants in the late 1970s. From
1980 to 1987, Cath was the pastry chef at Sogni Dorati, at Chicago’s Erie and Wells streets, owned and operated by her godfather, head chef Silvio Pinto. When the restaurant closed in ’87, she left behind her culinary career.
“I will carry on your traditions and always keep the family together,” my mom recalled telling my Nanie before she died, before also asking for her cannoli logs, handmade by Uncle Jack, Nanie’s brother. For my family, sharing a home-cooked meal, made by scratch from our well-worn family recipe book, always helped put things into perspective, and as that first Christmas after my Nanie’s death approached, Cath became the de facto keeper of our family’s traditions.
All of this is not uncommon when growing up Italian, or in any culture with a strong connection to food and family — but with us, for me, food felt — feels — different. From calzone and giambatta to bracciole, cannoli and molte zuppe, I discovered a new appreciation for my family through
our food, our traditions. Since my grandmother died, we have lost the entire generation that raised us with the histories and practices we keep to this day. But in that time, Cath has kept alive that feeling of “the kitchen” and the traditions it housed.
Throughout my childhood and continuing today, I see the spark ignite in her often. Whenever I bring friends to her house, I find them almost immediately immersed in what’s happening around the stove. Cath invites others to share the ways of her world and vice versa, all while forking ravioli ends, fanning out pizza dough or regaling them with stories from her restaurant life and mine — stories as absolutely heartwarming as they can be mortifying. Like clockwork, my friends leave the family home asking to be “adopted” and calling her “mom.”
At Christmas, my family makes cavatelli, referred to by many as “govadils,” a regional, Southern Italian-turned-Italian-American slang for pillowy, noodle dumplings no bigger than your pinkie finger and smothered in our longstanding recipe for “broken meat gravy.” To say fights have broken out over who gets to take home leftover govadils after we mangiamo molto is not an overstatement. Watching my mom mix the pasta dough, her hands caked with a mixture of flour and baking powder, masking the thin age lines slowly setting in on her hands suffering the pain of arthritis — as she creates a well to mix in the eggs and water slowly, kneading it together until it transforms into a soft cushion before running it through the machine — is like watching the best at-home cooking show.
The dough never sticks, no matter what. Cath’s cavatelli machine, an heirloom of my grandma’s, is arguably the most reliable piece of equipment anyone in my family has ever used. She rolls the pasta in long rods, passing it to me (or my sister) one by one to sprinkle with flour again before slightly pinching the end, which catches in the machine and gets the operation rolling. With every crank of the handle, perfectly uniform govadils shoot out the other side.
Cath’s kitchen — with its alternating warm mustard and deep winecolored walls, decorative script about the importance of family and cooking, and quintessential Italian signage — is slowly eclipsing the memory of my Nanie’s. It’s a natural progression, but it’s also the place my future children will hopefully develop their connection to their roots. It’s where their Nanie, my mother, will show them about what it means to be one of us.
I think of little Cath doing this with her mom — before the machines, when the noodles were pressed and rolled gently with your index finger. I think of a younger me watching them do it together in the kitchen in that bungalow, then testing my own skills — often resulting in a necklacelike band of govadils far from the correct form. I imagine a future when my child is just as proud and in awe of our family’s traditions, and his or her grandmother and mother’s place in them, before sitting down to a warm, comforting bowl of pasta and equally as comforting conversation.
Once while prepping cavatelli, I asked my mom why there was masking tape wrapped around the wooden rolls of her machine.
“I don’t really know,” she said. “Your Nanie did it. I never touched it. That’s just how it is.”
“Was she having problems with the dough sticking?” I asked.
“Maybe,” Cath smiled. “You’ll get it one day when I’m gone, though. Don’t worry.”
I put my arms around her and rested my head on her shoulder. As she says, family traditions stick. The dough doesn’t.