The Search for a Cannoli

Can you believe that I was around 23-24 the first time I had a cannoli?  What is wrong with my parents?  I can definitely be added to the neglected child watch list for not having been exposed to this little goody years earlier. My memory is not the greatest, but my first cannoli was at a Johnny Carinos, I think, in Southern California. Is that the place where they give you a piece of butcher paper and some crayons? The girl I was dating learned that I had never had a cannoli so she said we just had to order one... I will forever be grateful for that Krystal, so thank you wherever you are.

So why am I writing about cannolis?  Well, it's because I have been on a cannoli kick lately.  I don't know why.  After that night I spoke of earlier it was years before the cannoli ever even entered my mind again, but now its here and it's stuck.  So I decided to try mind hand at making some.

The problem is that I've not had very many in my lifetime so I'm not completely certain as to what it should taste like.  And in my limited knowledge of cannoli's is the knowledge that people are very particular about how exactly these little boogers are made.  Yep I just referred to a tasty dessert as a little booger.

Just like there are wine snobs, cigar snobs, and even beer snobs, I have discovered that there are cannoli snobs. I was discussing cannoli's at work and one of the ladies told me that we Americans just don't know how to make them. She complained that we always make them too sweet. And honestly it is the cannoli snobs that almost kept me from making them, but then it dawned on me....wait a minute, these are basically a deep fried pie crust stuffed with whipped cream and ricotta cheese.  I'm from the South....I think we practically invented deep frying, so I got that going for me.  I freaking love cheese, so I got the cheese thing covered.  Once I discovered that all it takes to make whipped cream is to put some cream in the mixer and whip it with the whisk attachment, I've always kept some cream on hand and I can't remember the last time I purchased a tub of cool whip. So I'm good as far as the whipped cream goes as well.  So what's the problem?  Like I said this is the South, the home of sweet tea, the place where we fry everything, the place where unbuttoning your pants at small group because you ate way too much gumbo is not necessarily frowned upon.  I am a man from the south, so by golly I can make some cannoli's and to hell with authenticity.

And so I did.

I made some cannoli's.

And they were freakin awesome!

So let me offer up some advice for those of you who might be wanting to make cannoli's.  You pretty much need to eat them within a couple of hours of putting the filling in the shell, otherwise they get soggy and who wants to eat a soggy deep fried anything?  The reason I mention this is because I made mine as soon as we got home from church today.  I put together about 15 of them before it dawned on me that I'm the only one at my home who will eat them and we weren't going to be leaving the house for another 4 hours or so.  So there I was with 15 cannoli's that had to get eaten.....so what did I do????



Ha, you were expecting me to say I ate 15 cannoli's weren't you?  Well I didn't!  I ate 7 cannoli's before my wife suggested it might be a good idea to bring the remainder over to my neighbor who surprised us by mowing our grass last night.  What a guy....we had been out dove hunting,

 so imagine our surprise when we pulled into the driveway at 9:30 pm and our grass was three feet shorter then when we had left.  It was incredible....so for that, Sam got a plate of cannoli's.  Oh did you catch that part about three feet shorter....yeah, yeah, yeah, I don't need it from you too, my wife gets after me enough.  But you know what they say, the mechanics car never runs, and the cobblers kids have no shoes, so why would the landscaper's grass be mowed?

Oh yeah, if you haven't been following and keeping up with the career path of Brady, I work at a church these days as their jack-of-all-trades, and one of my many tasks is mowing.

So back to the cannoli...you want to be careful about how big you make them.  I had to call a buddy and ask him how big around they should be and he said you should be able to fit your ring finger inside it if the cream filling weren't there.  So that's important, otherwise the recipe only makes about half the amount of filling you need then you have to wait till you get to the store and buy more ricotta so you can make more filling, but then you have more filling than shells so you gotta make more shells.....oh man can you see the dilemma?

And I probably had more I wanted to say about cannoli's but I ate too much and would like to lay down, or is it lie down???? I always get mixed up there.  The most important thing to keep in mind when you are cooking is this...to hell with what it's "supposed" to taste like....do you like what it DOES taste like?  If the answer is yes then you win.  And if others say yes then you're a freakin rock star.....Rock On Homies!!!!!!