Taste: My Life through Food(7)
One ladle
One funnel
Lots of new soda bottle caps
One bottle-capping device
One thick piece of oilcloth big enough to cover one of the tubs
Enough water to fill one of the tubs
Make the fire.
Fill one tub with water and place it on the grate over the fire.
Take a lot of the tomatoes, shove them into the pillowcase, and squeeze the s#*! out of them over the other tub so that the juice of the tomatoes oozes through the weave of the pillowcase, making it look like a relic of the Saint Valentine’s Day Massacre. Continue until all the tomatoes are gone or until you feel like Macbeth at the end of his play.
One by one, fill the bottles (with a ladle, via funnel) with the tomato juice and add a pinch of salt and a basil leaf to each.
Cap the bottles.
Put the bottles in the water that’s in the other tub.
Cover them with the oilcloth.
Boil them for a while. (I can’t remember what the health ruling is on this so/and/but I take no responsibility for any foodborne illnesses).
Take out the bottles.
Let them cool.
Put them in my grandfather’s wine cellar, or store in a cool, dry place more convenient for you.
This sauce was used throughout the year. It was light and sweet and could be cooked with olive oil, sautéed garlic, and onions or doctored up any which way one chose. One or two long days of work for months of red gold. The bottles would be stored in the wine cellar on wooden shelves alongside mason jars containing pickled green tomatoes, or roasted peppers suspended in olive oil, flavored with salt and a single clove of garlic. From the wooden beams, over these vacuum-sealed treasures, hung small homemade salami and waxy, pear-shaped bulbs of provolone cheese.
And so now we must return to the wine cellar. Yes, we must return to the must. For the must was all-consuming when one entered the wine cellar. Must and mildew, dank and deep, coated everything, including the aged wine press that stood so proudly in the corner. One was sure that new life forms were breeding from the spores that danced on every surface and consequently one’s nostrils and lungs after the first inhale. But the pride that my grandfather took in drawing out his vinified love from the fetid oak barrel into the abraded decanter and presenting it to my father or my uncles (and in later years me and my cousins) made up for any respiratory diseases we were sure to contract. It was an honor to be asked to participate in, or even bear witness to, the ritual in the wine cellar. In fact, I remember being furious when my sisters wanted to tag along, as I saw this as a distinctly male rite of passage. At any rate, those of us lucky enough to be present swelled with pride as the cloudy purple liquor was carried upstairs to the table in its decanter, poured into juice glasses, toasted with, and drunk heartily.
Was it the best wine in the world?
No.
Was it the worst?
Very close.
Did it matter?
No.
It was part of my grandfather, whom we adored, and that made it the sweetest liquid ever to pass our lips.
The house that holds that cellar, that kitchen, and those memories was sold long ago, but the flavors and aromas, both tart and sweet, musty and fresh, inhabit my nose, my mouth, and my heart to this day.
* * *
In the backyard of the Tropiano house was a sizable garden in which my grandparents not only grew every vegetable imaginable but also raised rabbits, chickens, and the occasional goat or two, all used to sustain a growing family. This garden and their home were a hub of activities that changed with the seasons but were all ultimately dedicated to what would end up on a plate, from the planting of vegetables and raising of animals to the grafting of branches from one fruit tree onto another, to the repairing of the outdoor fireplace in which the bottles of homemade tomato sauce were boiled in order to pasteurize them. My grandparents had left the extreme poverty of Calabria and, like their forebears, knew nothing but labor. All of that labor was dedicated to survival and creating a life with only the most minimal of creature comforts. Nothing went to waste and luxuries were unheard of. Only what was necessary was… well, needed.
In Southern Italy even into the early twentieth century, a feudal system was still in place, and most people worked the land for wealthy property owners. America held the promise of jobs, for both men and women, outside of the home, yet for many of them this did not mean that the agricultural and manual skills that were basically part of their DNA would no longer be used after they settled down in a new country. In fact, for a great many the mindset never changed. If you could grow it, raise it, hunt it, cultivate it, build it, or repair it yourself, why buy it or pay someone else to do it? Therefore backyards became microcosms of the land they had abandoned.
If you’ve ever been to Italy, you’ll have noticed gardens and grapevines growing just about anywhere and everywhere, terraced expertly up steep hills, down narrow valleys, on rocky outcroppings, or right next to the Autostrada. The Italians have a gift for cultivating and growing some of the best produce in rather extreme geographical settings. For a mountainous country, the number of vineyards and small farms is extraordinary, as are the quality and variety of what they produce. In Sicily, people are willing to risk everything to live and cultivate some of the best vegetables and wine grapes in the volcanic soil near the still-active Mount Etna. In the region of Campania, just outside of Naples, the rich earth beneath a quivering Vesuvius imparts the incredibly deep, sweet flavor of the San Marzano tomato, again a result of millennia-old volcanic soil.