By Chris Cutler
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f I’m to be honest, and heaven knows I don’t want Santa to think I am naughty, I was not wild about Christmas traditions we celebrated when I was a child. Christmas Eve at my paternal grandparents’ house was a dinner of dishes I didn’t like: sauerkraut soup, buckwheat pierogis, and some other things I have thankfully forgotten.
As Italian as I am, I wasn’t wild about a lot of the Christmas Eve foods on my mother’s side, either. I lled my plate with the pasta of the year and let the others enjoy the eel, anchovies, squid, and whatever other slimy sh happened to grace the table. Desserts were another thing. My paternal grandmother o ered kolache, which was okay unless she made it with lekvar. The goodies my Italian mother and aunts made, though, made the table groan under their weight. We never had panettone because that particular sweet bread/cake originated in Lombardia, and we were Abruzzese. We had snowballs, cream wafers, amaretti, biscotti, and more. My mother also made scrucchiata, a rolled and lled cookie she called “little kolache” to appeal to my father’s roots. Instead of ground nuts and lekvar, though, she used apricot, cherry, and strawberry jams to ll them. Of course, we always had pizzelles. My grandmother, mother, and aunts (I had seven!) had their own recipes. From the plain to orange, lemon, cocoa, and anise, we had every kind of pizzelle you could imagine. I think I’ll take out the ol’ pizzelle iron and make a few dozen before Christmas.
Cookies, Photos courtesy unsplash.com
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Dolci Italiani (Italian Sweets)
