As Catalan as . . . Canelons

If you can talk about as American as apple pie, a dish that was surely not American in origin, then you can talk about as Catalan as canelons (cannelloni).

They are everywhere.  Butcher’s shops have foil boxes of gratineed canelons ready to be cooked at home. So do grocery stores and the many take out stores that dot the city of Girona in Catalonia, Spain where I am spending a few weeks.  They are a staple of the fixed-price midday restaurant menu.  And there are even whole stores devoted to them.

Cannelonia

There’s a filling to suit every fancy: mushrooms, spinach, vegetables, duck, beef, pork, chicken, fish and seafood, and (you guessed), another local favorite the salt cod, bacalao. Almost as popular are lasagne and macaroni.

Canelons were brought to Barcelona, 40 miles or so away, by Italians and Italian Swiss who began arriving in the eighteenth century. Or so says the book Catalunya a la Cuina, published by the Diari de Girona in 1997, edited by Llorenc Torrado, citing the well known Spanish food historian, Nestor Luján.

My own guess, for what it is worth, is that Catalan canelons didn’t really enter the repertoire until the late nineteenth or early twentieth century.  Anything made of wheat flour, topped with bechamel, and baked in an oven whispers–actually shouts–late nineteenth century in my ear.  So I’d peg it as part of the creation of Italian cuisine in the greater Italy of emigrants who quickly became wealthier than all but a tiny minority in Italy itself.

In any case, its now a festival dish for the festival of Nadal in Barcelona, attesting to its thorough integration into the regional cuisine.

Spelling.  Canelon is the Catalan spelling. I think the name of the takeout store has the double n for greater Italian-ness but can’t do a double ll because it would be pronounced a bit like y.  Just a guess.

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