TOMATO SAUCE-suco
Today was the making of the tomato sauce. Mario who lives on the side of a mountain near Tortorello
grows the most amazing tomatoes. He says it's because his terraced gardens face the sea and get the sea
breezes. I think it's what he sprays on them when they're flowering. Anyway, he brought SOOO many
tomatoes for Dora to clean, cut up and cook and bottle that you could smell the aroma of sauce cooking
everywhere here. Huge pots cooking on a wood burning stove. Remember the Baroness doesn't allow Dora
to cook using anything but wood. Save money. These pots were so big and so full of sauce. Well I just don't
know how to measure the size of those pots. Then there was this guy, a friend since childhood of Mario's who
came through the kitchen with a wheelbarrow full of really dry wood. Can you picture it? He made a fire under
the old pig pot in the oldest kitchen and put a bunch of used beer bottles in the pot with some water over this
fire to disinfect them. He put newspapers across the top of the pot. Don't know why. Will ask Mario
tomorrow. This old kitchen is right through the door of my kitchen so the smell of the fire burning was very
strong all day. Then in the other old kitchen next to this one where all the copper pots are hanging on the wall
there was this machine that after stuffing the cooked tomato sauce with a plunger down into it, out would come out
sauce from one place and the skin and seeds out another. Then when you get a bunch of this stuff made-up
of just skin and seeds, you put that through the shoot again and what comes out and into the sauce is like
tomato paste. We're talking big tubs of this stuff. Then you put a whole basil leaf into each of these already boiled
beer bottles and they're ready to fill. I think tomorrow is the 'fill' day. They have a bottle cap press that puts
the cap on the bottle once filled. Then I guess also tomorrow after the bottles are filled they cook them in the
pig pot and this will secure them lasting in the bottle safely for 2 years. And there is salt added.
Mario wants to get together with me and talk food/sauce. He speaks and understands English very well. I
guess he was an architect at one time. Retired now. He's one of Carla's brothers.
So that's how sauce is made. A two day process. I'll find out how many of these bottles they ended up with.
I wonder who drank all this beer?
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