Hunt holds hands-on cannoli class

FALLS VILLAGE — Matthew Yanarella showed a large group of children (leavened with a handful of adults) how to make cannoli at the David M. Hunt Library Friday afternoon, Sept. 12.

The enterprise was set up under a tent outside. Cannoli-making can get a little messy, and when the students tend to the young and energetic side of things, the outdoor setting assists in the cleanup process.

Yanarella, affable and quick-talking, managed to keep everyone corralled and on point, no mean feat when small hands are kneading dough and calling for more ingredients.

Beau Martinez, age 10, showed up with his father Brooke and a Pyrex dish with four gluten-free cannoli shells ready to go, which impressed Yanarella.

Yanarella established the ground rules right from the start. With reference to the hot oil department, which was set well away from the main action in a separate tent, he made it clear:

“We are not going to run around.”

Why not?

Because of the hot oil.

“It’s incredibly hot,” he said. “If you got it on you, you’d go to the hospital.”

“I’ve been to the hospital,” a youngster piped up.

“Today?” countered Yanarella, whose interlocutor got the point.

Yanarella discussed the ingredients as the group moved through the process.

He uses an inexpensive cooking sherry, a fortified Marsala.

In fact, the stuff is downright cheap, but once the alcohol is burned off, the residual flavor is critical to a successful cannoli filling.

But it’s definitely for cooking. Yanarella said that when he returned to the same store on a fifth successive day to buy another bottle, the proprietor asked if he was all right.

“You’re not actually drinking this?” the man asked solicitously.

The dough-making was going so well that Yanarella predicted that everyone involved would open a restaurant and that in 10 or 20 years Falls Village would be known as “Little Italy.”