Ever cook something that, when you taste it, immediately brings you back to a place you never thought you’d go again?

Today, for the first time ever, I tried my hand at a very precious family recipe. We have always called them pastellas; they’re much like empanadas, and it’s very possible the recipe originated as a spin from something learned when my mother’s Sicilian family was in Argentina, before they came to the States. That being said, the double-L in the word is not pronounced like the Spanish double-L, it’s pronounced with a regular L sound. Anyway, for years, I’ve tried to find some semblance of a parent recipe to these things, because while the overall concept and method are empanada-like, the filling has always struck me as so unusual. I have yet to come across any sort of hand-pie recipe where the filling consists of sautéed onion, seasoned ground beef, sliced pimento-stuffed green olives, and hard boiled egg. (If you’re reading this and thinking, “what in the actual—?”, trust me, I know! But it’s actually amazing!)

This recipe was handed down from my mother’s aunt, to my mother, to me. My mother was the only one who knew how to make them, for the longest time; every summer, when we went to visit my mother’s side of the family, we would have to bring trays of these things, which the patriarch, my mother’s first cousin, would hoard and almost refuse to share with anyone else. I have funny memories of him counting them all out along the table, rationing out one or two for each of his five children, before he would freeze all the rest to keep for himself. He prefers to eat them with yellow mustard. When I was little, the notion that only my mother could make these pastellas seemed like a really magical thing. What remarkable power she held in my eyes in this way, to be able to have such a powerful impact through food…I could tarnish this perception by noting that in hindsight, it probably fed right into her narcissistic tendencies, but to be honest, I’m not really in the mood to travel that road tonight.

Because now, she’s not the only one who can make them.

When I got older, into my teenage years, instead of bringing them to Long Island already made, my mother started making the pastellas there, in their kitchen. At some point during one of those times, I rewrote the recipe so it was actually legible, because the original one was written on then-thirtyish (now fiftyish) year-old stationery from my mother’s days as an executive assistant on Wall Street, and it’s practically worn away. I had written the new copy out on a piece of personalized notepad paper with our cousins’ surname at the top, so that’s fun too. Half the joy of these old recipes comes from what they’re written on and whose handwriting they’re written in, you know? Anyway, through a largely forgotten series of events, I happen to have all of my mother’s old and cherished recipes in this very old decrepit spiral bound book, and the pastella recipe was in it – more importantly, so was the square cardboard template used to cut out the dough into even pieces.

Over the last few years, I’ve made a number of these recipes that have memories and significance attached to them. Even before I stopped talking to my mother, I was making most of her recipes better than she ever had, and she herself would say so, depending on what it was. I know that sounds counterintuitive, but remember, everything I did well was a reflection of her, so, really my culinary success was not to my credit but to hers (maybe someday I can try to say that without irony, since it’s not a complete lie). All that being said…I was afraid to come anywhere near this recipe. I was afraid to touch it, afraid to hold it in my hands – or, really, afraid to hold it in my heart. More so than every other thing I’ve made that once was someone else’s, this was a recipe that for my whole life, I’d witnessed firsthand how much food is memory and family and history and love. And maybe…just maybe…I was afraid that if I couldn’t do it, I wouldn’t live up to the bar my mother had set decades ago.

But I did it. I decided I was ready to try, I followed my memories almost more so than the written recipe (which was sorely lacking in detail and instruction, so now I’ve rewritten it again much more thoroughly), and I did it. Once they were all done, my husband said we should taste one to make sure they’re good. So I cut one in half, and took a bite.

And then I promptly burst into tears.

Ever see the animated movie “Ratatouille”, where a rat dreams of being a gourmet restaurant chef? Toward the end of the movie, this tough scary food critic comes to eat at the restaurant and the rat-turned-chef cooks him a dish that at first glance isn’t fine dining at all, but when the critic tastes it, he is instantly transported back to a memory from his childhood. Hand to G-d, that is what happened to me today with these pastellas. I was floored to have this taste and texture back in my mouth again. It was sensory overload for a minute there. My husband patiently held me while he chewed, bless his heart.

What’s funny is that when I was a kid I wouldn’t eat these things. I loved the dough, so I would usually break off just the corners where there wasn’t really any of the filling. The corners are the best parts to me, even now. Well, my daughter, who is always eager to help me in the kitchen (something about apples and trees?), helped me make the pastellas today, and she too is a picky eater. I did convince her to try a bit of just the dough and she said it was delicious. I then called her back over from where she’d dashed off to play, and took a picture of her holding my cut half. I then took it back, but she said she wanted it; she broke off the corner, stuffed the corner in her mouth, handed it back to me, and ran off again!

Everything came full circle today. For as stressed as I’ve been lately, I really needed this kind of victory! Now, I just to figure out how to send food in the mail…