Again, I have chosen a new object for discussion. This time I asked my mother to send me pictures of it from home. My object is a Passatini Press.

It is metal and hard but makes passatinis that bring me back to the warmth of my grandmother’s cooking. The tool has a cylindrical barrel with medium sized holes at the bottom where the noodle like passatini is pressed through. The bottom cylinder is attached to a long handle with finger grooves. The top long handle connects to the part of the tool that is flat and is meant to press the ingredients down into the medium holes.

I bought this Passatini Press myself while I was in Italy over the summer. My hunt for this obscure kitchen tool has always been with me. My grandmother is unable to cook anymore because she is too sick. Most of my memories with her have been in the kitchen as she cooks for me. My favorite meal of hers that she would cook for me was passatini. It is a sort of soup with chicken broth and breadcrumb noodles. It is the type of meal that I have never had anywhere else besides my grandmother’s kitchen. For years, I kept asking my mother where my grandmother’s own personal press was but it has never been found.

The hunt for the press was revived while I was living in San Marino. For the program I was in, everyone stayed at the Quercia Antica Hotel where we ate most of our meals. Claudio, the hotel owner, sat us all in their dining room downstairs right next to the kitchen. Everyone in the program took up about three long dining room tables. One night Eduardo, our waiter, brought out Passatini and I swear I almost cried. I had not had this soup in years and there it was right in front of me.

My friend, Stephanie, who spoke fluent Italian, began asking Claudio about the soup for me. He told her it was made in a chicken broth. It was also the meal that was cooked when there was not much else around besides the left over pieces of bread. Stephanie also asked Claudio’s wife where she could buy a good Passatini Press. Stephanie was told the mercato in Rimini would have them. The next Saturday I was in Rimini hunting down this press.

When I came back from San Marino with my Passatini Press, I began asking my grandfather and my mother about my grandmother’s recipe for the soup. Of course, my grandmother never wrote her recipes down but instead worked all from memory. From my grandfather, he told me to add lemon zest. From my mother, she told me to use a sharp knife tp cut the noodles from the bottom of the press. From my aunt, she told me to freeze the breadcrumb like dough before putting it through the press. From the Internet, I added nutmeg.

Over the past couple of months, I have been perfecting my own recipe taking bits and pieces from what everyone else could remember from watching my grandmother in the kitchen. For Christmas, my mother and I collaborated as she used her signature chicken broth and my passatinis. When my uncle Rob walked in to the kitchen and saw the passatini cooking in the broth, he actually screamed.

The Passatini Press is used to make soup but it is also able to bring back not only my own memories of my grandmother’s cooking but also my mother’s and my uncle’s. While the press has been used in Sammarinese house holds for years, it had finally made it into my own and it feels like a piece of my grandmother has come with it as well. Like the sari was an extension of the woman’s body, my grandmother’s cooking was an extension of her love. Her cooking brought her family together and still continues to do so today.