The Old Man and the Sauce

This weekend, I helped my dad prepare our family’s tomato sauce. I hauled myself out of bed Saturday morning, after three hours of sleep, because I’ve savored this sauce for as long as I can remember, but I’ve never participated in its creation, from start to finish. I remember the smell and the stirring from when I was kid, but I guess I was in the mango trees outside or ensconced in my room while all this was going on in years past.

This is not a recipe from the Old Country. My dad’s family is of Polish heritage, by way of Connecticut. My dad honed this recipe to perfection in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s with the help of my mom’s brother, Pepe. This was not a concentrated effort, but rather a result of social afternoons spent with Pepe in the kitchen, experimenting with sauces and chicken pot pies.

My uncle Pepe died unexpectedly at 38. I love that he lives on in two of my family’s main food traditions. My Mom’s pan de jamon (a Venezuelan holiday food) and my dad’s tomato sauce are both continuations of what he began.

The sauce is composed of nothing more than fresh tomatoes, tomato paste, onions, garlic, salt, sugar, basil, oregano, bay leaves and olive oil. Nothing organic or premium; Dad’s a simple man. The tomatoes come from the lady at the field off 136^th and Kendall. When we were little, my dad used to spend the day picking tomatoes, but now he gets boxes of choice ones in bulk.

Over the years, my parents streamlined the sauce-making from a three day event to a one day job. They make two or three 5-gallon pots, enough to enjoy for at least the whole year. It is now a precision operation.

The day he buys the tomatoes, my dad washes them and then lays them out in neat rows on newspaper in the garage. This way, if one tomato is moldy, it won’t affect the others.

When I arrived on Saturday morning, the house was still and dark. My mom wasn’t awake yet. My dad and I did the chopping and blending in the garage so we wouldn’t wake her up. Chopping and pulverizing the tomatoes and onions is the most time consuming part of the process; it took about an hour to go through the 46 pounds of tomatoes. As my dad cut each tomato into quarters, we spoke about the economy and houses and family. He worked on the newspapers spread out on his work bench. I asked if he wanted me help with the blending, but he he told me that I was to observe, as an apprentice.

My father tends to be didactic in his conversation, but he is not heavy handed. He just feels like he has so much he wants to share and so little time to converse with me. I have come to realize that I am so much like my father that now I can listen and sort through most of his dispensed wisdom without leaping to defensiveness. We can enjoy these times and each others’ company, recognizing ourselves in the other.

My dad methodically checked each tomato for freshness, both by sight and smell, before placing it in the blender. By the time he was nearly finished, my mom was awake, browning the garlic. First, the onions cooked in olive oil, the pungent aroma tickling my nose. Then we added the garlic. My dad stirred in tomato paste and deigned to let me add the spices.

After everything was in the stockpots, the sauce simmered for about twelve hours. As the whole house filled with the fragrance of tomato, olive oil, and basil, my heart surged with more sentimentality than Proust with his madeleines.

That night, my mom and dad and I ate a meal of spaghetti with the seventh hour version of the sauce, my mom’s salad, warm bread and chianti. Everything I could worry about receded into the background for me—all the detritus that thirtysomethings like me obsess over. My heart and my belly swelled. Sometimes things are just perfectly clear. It was the best day ever.