Marinara: A Labor (Day) of Love

It's Labor Day weekend, and I'm making some marinara sauce to which I will add cubed eggplant (salted, pressed, and drained) to make Zoodles alla Norma – a simplified low-carb spiralized zucchini version of Pasta alla Norma. (Simplified: no separate frying of the eggplant and no ricotta salata. . .hmmm, sounds like I need to make the real deal one of these days!) Naturally, I start by sautéing some finely chopped onion in olive oil, to which minced garlic will be added shortly before the tomatoes – pomodori pelati – and tomato paste. (An aside: why do so many recipes instruct you to add onions and garlic to the pan at the same time? Garlic is so vulnerable to being overcooked, turning bitter, and even burning; it should only be added when the onions are just about ready for the tomatoes or other ingredients. My mother taught me this and I reinforced it endlessly with my own two children.)

Anyway, when I finally did add the garlic, when the onions were nicely translucent, and smelled the familiar fragrance of onions and garlic gently cooking in olive oil, I suddenly had a rush of emotion thinking about all the women in my family who had stood over a pot or a pan smelling that same unmistakable aroma. I kept thinking about this as I added basil and pepper and a pinch of sugar and later, the eggplant, and let it simmer. As I mentally ticked off the names of the women in the Mangano and Landino families, I realized I had forgotten the first names of two of my great-grandmothers. Thanks to my brother Joe's laborious genealogical efforts (laborious because it was all done pre-Internet), I quickly looked them up in my copies of the extremely limited edition spiral-bound books he put together.

So I salute each of them, on Labor Day weekend, these women in my family, their hard work unpaid and often unacknowledged, who stood over the stove making sauce, starting with that trio of olive oil, onions, and garlic: my mother Eleanor, her sister Maria, my grandmothers Jennie (née Giovannina) and Maria, my maternal great-grandmothers Maria and Sylvestra, paternal Francesca and Annunziata, my father's five sisters, born Rosina, Francesca, Teresina, Maria, and Carmella, but known to one and all as Rosie, Frances, Tessie, Mary, and Connie.

I wish my grandmother Maria had not died before I was born, or that I had been encouraged to cook with Grandma Jennie – my parents were trying so hard to become more Americanized back when I was a child. I have but a single memory of being with her in the kitchen at Chester Street, maybe I was ten or so, while she cut an onion telling me “Taglia, taglia, fine, fine!” Cut it, cut it, small, small!

Although marinara or Norma sauce can easily be made without a written recipe – and indeed, only one of my grandmothers was literate, and I assume none of my great-grandmothers were – I was working from a recipe from David Ruggerio’s lovely (lots of stories and reminisces) Little Italy Cookbook.  

And dinner, enjoyed like so many dinners by Dan and me, was delicious. Mangiamo, everyone! Let's eat!