Everyone has a nostalgia-soaked dish from childhood they wish they could recreate. But for one reason or another — a discontinued ingredient, a lack of skill, no written recipe, or a recipe riddled with “grandmother measurements” (a pinch of this, an eyeball of that) — it remains just out of reach. You might land on something intoxicatingly close, but still frustratingly lacking. Grandmothers, after all, are notorious for secret ingredients, something to make their cannelloni stand out from all the other nonnas on the block.
Trying to erase the space between the version we remember and the version we make often becomes one way to honor their love after they’re gone.
