Stefano Gajani Billi, a 55-year-old Roman with roots in the northern Italian region of Emilia-Romagna, has been eating homemade cappelletti for Christmas lunch for as long as he can remember.

The “little hats” of meat-filled pasta used to be made exclusively by Gajani Billi’s grandmother, but the tradition has since been taken over by Stefano himself, along with his mother, sister, wife and their children. Every December they convene for a cappelletti-making bonanza, where proceedings are dominated by two strict rules.

First, no shortcuts are tolerated. The filling requires at least five different meats, the pasta is made from scratch, and the broth in which the cappelletti will eventually be boiled has to be made from a capon, a castrated rooster.

Second, once the pasta dough has been folded over the filling, only Gajani Billi’s sister, Elena – the boss of the operation since the deaths of their grandmother and then father – is allowed to close the cappelletti, all 500 of them. The final twist must come from her well-trained fingers, she says, otherwise they may fall apart.

“It’s a family moment, in remembrance of my father and also my grandmother,” Gajani Billi says. “Also, it is the best thing you can eat in your life.”

Such Christmas meals are pillars of Italy’s rich culinary tradition. While the definition of a “typical” festive lunch varies from region to region, dishes such as cappelletti have been considered staples for centuries.

But that is changing. According to one Rome-based food writer, many labour-intensive Italian food traditions are dying off, especially in the south, largely because of economic factors that have led to the depopulation of villages and towns where the dishes used to be made.

“When people speak about food here nostalgically, they talk about their grannies. The mom might not be able to make those dishes, or she might just buy them. And the grandkids certainly don’t know how to make them,” says Katie Parla. “It’s not that people who are under 60 don’t cook, but they definitely don’t do it as intensively as they once did.”

The list of so-called endangered Italian foods – a topic on which Parla is now writing a book – is long and includes savoury dishes, sweets, and even digestifs and liquors.

Some of the most labour-intensive foods are broths, such as the one used to cook cappelletti on Christmas Day. Some broths require an assortment of meats, which are boiled in different pots so the liquid is a perfect blend of flavours.

Making the broth and then the bollito misto – mixed boiled meats that are served after the first dish – is a big job, Parla says, especially considering that a host would also be expected to prepare deep-fried vegetables for a Christmas antipasto.

Traditionally, that antipasto would include vegetables that were prepared in the summer and then preserved.

In the southern region of Molise, Parla has visited a town called Civita, where a special shortbread biscuit is made with a pasta frolla crust and a filling of flour, breadcrumbs, spices and red wine. What makes the biscuits unique is their elaborate decoration using a crimping tool. In one town, which now has just 400 residents, the only people left who make the biscuits are one baker and her daughter.

“When those women stop making those cookies, no one will be making them,” Parla says. “There they have an expression: ‘when she dies, the world dies’.”



But Parla, an American who has lived in Rome for many years, does not think the situation is hopeless. Her book will tackle what may be considered a sensitive topic in households trying to preserve traditions: is it OK to cut corners?

“In my opinion, it is one of the best ways of preserving a tradition,” Parla says. “Because if you trap a recipe in amber and require a huge number of steps, yes, it is beautiful if you can devote time and resource to it. But if you can’t, cutting corners means you are not eliminating it altogether, you are just evolving into another thing.”

In the case of Gajani Billi’s Christmas lunch, that could mean buying the cappelletti and focusing on making the broth. Or it could mean buying pasta dough instead of making it. “We can still evoke the importance of those recipes on certain days if we preserve them in a simplified way,” Parla says.

The Gajani Billi family recipe for Cappelletti in brodo (Cappelletti in broth)



Ingredients: Fresh pasta dough (For 300 cappelletti, use 5 eggs and about a pound of flour)

1 To make the filling: in a pan of olive oil and rosemary, cook a turkey breast, 100g of mortadella, one pork chop, one sausage (casing removed), and guanciale (pork jowl). Blend the meats together and then mix in grated parmigiano reggiano and stracchino cheese. Also add 2-3 eggs and nutmeg. Refrigerate overnight.

2 Place a small dollop of the filling in the middle of a small circular piece of pasta dough. Fold the pasta in half and squeeze the sides of the pasta together. Bring the two edges of the pasta together and pinch them shut. Flip the cappelletto around and gently fold the sides down, so that it resembles a little hat.



3 For the broth: boil a capon. Remove the capon and then boil the cappelletti for about 20 minutes. Serve with the broth.

