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Rob and Enza preserving their heritage
Photos courtesy of Enza Agliata
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By Enza Agliata
In 1975, my grandparents, father, and uncle immigrated to America, a foreign place where they were expected to assimilate and learn the American way of life. They settled in Brooklyn, New York. Their new home was over 4,500 miles away from Sicily; however, their customs and culture would not die. These traditions have been in my family for generations. Forty years later, we are still practicing and preserving these precious traditions. One of my favorite’s is jarring homemade tomato sauce.
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| The ladies prepare the tomatoes |
Jarring tomatoes is a multi-day affair; especially, when you’re jarring 30 bushels! We jar our crushed tomatoes on the first day. At the crack of dawn, my nonna and nonnu are already at my house preparing. At the sound of their arrival, my sisters and I know it’s time to start washing the tomatoes while the men lift and set up all the heavy equipment. After rinsing the tomatoes with water and draining them, we put the tomatoes into a boiling cauldron of water. After the tomatoes are done boiling, the most fun part of the process begins, crushing the tomatoes!
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| Filling the cauldron |
We all take turns crushing the tomatoes through the tomato-milling machine. It is so tempting to taste the freshly crushed sauce; you can even smell the freshness of the tomatoes from the house! We pour the boiling hot sauce into mason jars with nothing but fresh basil from my nonnu’s garden. The mason jars are sealed tight and we boil them one more time. This is the longest part of the process. All those who help throughout the day get to enjoy the fruits of their labor when my mom prepares the freshly made sauce for dinner. There is nothing more rewarding then to taste how rich and delicious the sauce is. Fortunately, we get to savor the wonderful taste every Sunday for the whole year!
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| Rob carefully removes the boiled tomatoes |
Day two begins just as early as the first. Only today we are doing things a little different; we are jarring whole tomatoes (pomodori palati). After we clean and boil the tomatoes, we peel off their skin instead of crushing them. We jar these tomatoes whole, seal them, and boil them in the jar just as we boiled the crushed tomatoes. The pomodori palati are used for special dishes like muscles with marinara sauce.
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| Everyone takes turns crushing them |
This beautiful tradition has traveled from the farmlands of Castrofilippo, Provincia di Agrigento, Sicily to Brooklyn, New York. Without fail, every August we will jar our tomatoes for the year. The Southern Italian traditions brought by the courageous immigrants who longed to call America home will live on for future generations.
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| Boiling the filled mason jars |
