Carol’s Column

If you haven’t stuffed cannelloni ... you really haven’t lived

IF YOU haven't stuffed a cannelloni, you just haven't lived.

And before last night, I hadn't lived either.

I don't know if you've noticed — but there's a real back to nature kick these days.

White sugar is verboten, even brown sugar is passé. The real cognoscenti go for freshly-grown sugar cane.

In my household, frozen veggies are being cast aside for the fresh, barely-cooked variety and even the dogs turn up their tails at frozen dog dinners.

Organic

Everything is raw, unprocessed, organic and real.

As a responsible filler of 14 mouth-holes on a regular basis, I am particularly sensitive to this latest craving. I am also sensitive to the accusation that mealtimes are boring, boring, boring.

For my last birthday, the birds bought me a cookbook called '365 Different, Exciting Ways With Mince Meat'. I think they were trying to tell me something.

Which is why my eyeballs lit up when they sighted a do-it-yourself box of cannelloni shells nestling among the lasagna, spaghetti and macaroni.

Like a flash of lightning, I grabbed the box. I could see this was the real thing because this pasta came hot from Mamma Barilla's pastaria in Italy.

Besides, the instructions were written in Italian, (large), and French, Danish, German and English, (small).

This was obviously a cannelloni to be taken seriously.

I locked myself in the kitchen, put on my blue striped apron with the orange floral border and rolled up my sleeves.

Then poured a generous glass of crimson chianti, to put me in the mood, you understand, and lovingly gathered the ingredients together.

My maternal grandmother, a Turkish belly dancer and a woman of great passion, always maintained that a good cook should love food to make it respond.

Homebaked

Mince meat was cunningly mixed with homebaked, crunchy wholewheat bread crumbs, crushed garlic, onion, oregano, freshly-ground pepper and sea salt. Home-puréed tomato sauce made from yourcute, organic tomatoes gently plucked from the shrivelled patch beside the compost heap, completed the picture. Introduced to each other, the ingredients formed an unattractive, glutinous mess.

Just then, the phone rang.

It was my good friend Betty. After a brief half-hour chat, I returned to the kitchen.

The mixture had gone.

Too late, I discovered my youngest son had fed the dogs on my cannelloni mix.

He was defensive: “At least I thought it was dog food. Dad thought it was a new concrete mix for the crack in the bedroom wall.”

Chianti

You can't win.

I poured myself a second glass of chianti, for fortification you understand, and gathered the second lot of ingredients together.

After the third glass, my mixture was stiff and firm, ready to be stuffed into the waiting cannelloni shells.

The first one shot out of my hands and pierced the fridge. The second one slid to the floor, the third rocketed skywards.

But finally I was through. The kitchen looked like a battleground as proudly I placed my cannelloni soldiers in straight lines into the pyrex dish, covered them generously with tomato sauce and parmesan and marched them into the oven.

Three hours later, the cannelloni emerged, triumphant and springy.

Oh the feeling of satisfaction.

I carried the dish to the diningroom table where my family sat ready to eat anything. Almost anything.

“What is this?” said Jamie. His voice did not sound gratified.

The cannelloni was not a culinary success.

It's not that it was dry, hard or inedible — it was all these, and even the dogs refused it.

Jamie took the cannelloni down to the Zoo Lake to catch carp, and we had toasted cheese instead.

It gives me great pleasure to think of the Zoo Lake fish being nourished and sustained by my home-made cannelloni.

Ah, yes. If you haven't stuffed a cannelloni, you just haven't lived.

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