My grandmother, Benedetta Boccaccio, is about to turn 104 this January.  For much of her life, she lived in a Cape Cod on White Street in Hartford, Connecticut. 

In her 100^th year, my grandmother had to leave her little house.  She took a fall that landed her in a nursing home where she seems content most of the time.  When I call her, she knows who I am.  Not only that, when I phoned her on my birthday last April, she recalled the particulars of my birth.  “You were a breech baby.  Your mother was in labor for 30 hours. Your father slept through the phone call from the hospital.  He didn’t know you were born till the next day.”

Now, in her new home, Benedetta doesn’t cook anymore.   She doesn’t seem to miss it.  She’s become quite the news junkie.  Don’t get her started on Michael Jackson.  She’ll go into an endlessly intricate conspiracy theory.  After about ten minutes, you’ll want to stick a knitting needle in your eye.

Benedetta may not miss cooking, but oh how I miss her cooking. Especially her bread.  She’d start early, often before dawn. She used old fashioned yeast shaped in rectangular cakes. By the time I’d get to her kitchen, the loaves would be rising in no-nonsense tins. She’d always leave aside enough dough to make pizza fritte, or fried dough.  She’d cut and flatten the pieces, then slide them into sizzling oil.  After they’d browned, she’d sprinkle plenty of sugar on them.  Crisp, yeasty and sweet.  I’ve never been able to replicate the texture or the flavor.

We made sandwiches with the bread, too:  roasted pepper drenched in garlic oil, tangy rounds of melted provolone cheese, shaved slices of salty Capicola ham. But, my all-time favorite sandwich was made with chicken cutlets. Although I snoozed through Benedetta’s bread making, I routinely observed her making cutlets.

She pounded the chicken breasts thin, but not too thin.  Then she dunked each piece into a bowl of beaten eggs.  After which she dipped the cutlet in a marvelously fragrant mixture:  homemade breadcrumbs, grated Parmesan cheese, minced fresh garlic, basil and parsley. Then—this is the secret part of her recipe—she’d re-dip the cutlet in egg and run it through the crumbs a second time before frying them to a golden brown.

To this day, when I think of those cutlets, my mouth waters.  Recently, I made them for a friend who was quite ill.  He said they were the best he’d ever eaten.  I’m grateful that at least that one time, I’d managed to re-create Benedetta’s magic.

Although my grandmother no longer cooks, she still holds those recipes in her heart and mind.  Just the other day, I asked her how to make lentil soup and she said, “Ah, lenticcche. Good for a winter day.  First you find a thick-bottomed pot and then you add a little olive oil…”

Benedetta’s seven-month-old great-great-granddaughter will be visiting me this weekend.  I wonder how soon I can start teaching her how to make the perfect cutlet.