Looking for Alibrandi has a lot to answer for!

Looking for Alibrandi has a lot to answer for!
                                                         Dedicated to all my cousins :)

Chances are that if you are of Italian heritage you have spent at least a day or two this Summer making sauce for the pasta...as in, from scratch! And chances are, if you have an Italian friend, they have had to miss some social event or other because of this need to make sauce.

Admittedly, today my mum and mother in-law made sauce for Sam and I...he was at work and I had a problem with my back (slowly on the mend). Thanks Mums!!  But I digress...

In previous years, I've had cousins from up North (you know who you are) as well as friends and aquaintances, lament the fact that they don't make sauce. They talk about how wonderful and fun it would be. I am convinced this is the fault of the movie makers who turned Melina Marchetta's book Looking for Alibrandi into a movie. Well, I am here to tell you that this (please play clip below)...

does not happen in real life, well at least not at a sauce making day! Sauce making days are NOT bright, cheery, breezy, sunshiny days where everyone laughs and dances! The reality is that they usually begin at some crazy hour of the morning in a cold, dark shed, after very short notice from the elders in the family that the tomatoes are "ready". Too bad if you have something planned for that weekend...the sauce needs to be made. It can't be bought. That's an Italian sin.

Different families have slight differences in the way sauce is made, but basically this is the procedure...

Lots and lots of boxes of tomatoes are bought...God forbid anyone should run out of sauce!

(Note: all photos taken on mobile phone last year).  Eager elders, complaining, lethargic teenagers and bored children gather for the sauce making ritual.



Enough for just my parents and us (mind you, we still had a hundred bottles left over from the previous year)


The tomatoes are placed in water, then each is cut open, has the excess juice squeezed out and is then placed in a bucket ready for the production line. Obviously bad tomatoes don't get past the human slicers and are quickly discarded. The people doing this job usually end up with sore backs from sitting on crates for hours on end and blisters on their fingers. The cold shed in which the day begins also turns into an oven at some stage (it is Summer after all), which is an invitation to all flies within 100 kms to come buzzing around and land on said people's seed stained legs, feet, arms and faces. So as they slice, they also swat flies... These photos though were taken from the comfort of my parent's suburban garage :)

The tomatoes are then ready for processing. They are put through the machine once, twice, sometimes even three times (this is at the discretion of the elders...the rest of us are usually saying "that's plenty" so we can hurry up and finish). I must add that the machinery has come along in leaps and bounds and is now a lot quicker. A rich, bright red sauce is soon ready to be bottled.   

Finally we have the sauce. Salt is poured in and hundreds of bottles are washed and lined up. These days the bottles are usually bought from a store, but years ago they were slowly collected, aquired from anywhere and everywhere. The same bottles are used year after year, so unless they break, they are basically yours for life.

Each bottle is then implanted with basilico (basil) for added flavour. This job is usually the responsibility of the youngsters in the family (aged 12 and under, it is the only job they are trusted to do). Certain cousins have likened this to child labour (again, you know who you are) and yes, I suppose by definition it is. But nobody really cares.



Sometimes there are no children around and an adult has to do the job.

Finally, the sauce is poured into each bottle by hand using a funnel. Accidents can occur when workers are too busy gossiping ie funnel fills, bottle overfills and sauce flows everywhere. If this happens, you get evil stares from the elders.

I don't have a picture, but the next step is the capping of the bottles. Beer bottle caps (bought new of course) have to be securely fastened on the bottles. Thankfully, there's machinery to help with that also these days. My mum carried such a contraption in her hand luggage from Italy one year! The capping is very important because if the bottles are not capped properly, they spoil and the prized sauce is lost. Thus, only trusted individuals are given this job.

I wish I had taken more pictures but I left production last year to take the kids to a party. The final step is placing the bottles very carefully in giant drums which then have a fire lit under them (natural or gas) and the bottles are boiled for hours until they are ready. It is during this stage that bottles which have not been capped properly may burst, causing a bit of a mess within the drums.

Participants get an obligatory plate of pasta at the end of this procedure, which everyone loves because the sauce is super fresh.

So that's it I guess. Some families add an extra step of boiling or steaming the tomatoes before bottling, but the above procedure is how you make sauce in a nutshell. It's not all fun and games. Whilst we do get to have a big get together and gossip session whilst making sauce, there are usually arguments about how to do this and that (even though we do the same thing every year), a bit of complaining here and there and very sore, tired bodies at the end of the day! If anyone doesn't believe me or wants to make sauce despite the hard work it involves, please register for next year's sauce making extravaganza! 

But having said all that, I kind of missed not making sauce yesterday. That's either years of indoctrination at work or evidence that my children have definitely driven me insane!

Please don't be shy to add your thoughts about sauce making day to this blog. Who knows if my kids will one day make their own sauce? I want them to read all about it. So if you're an Italian who loves or loathes sauce making, another person who has always yearned to participate in this tradition or even a person who has no idea what I'm going on about, click on "comments" below this post and leave your own perspective.