L'Italo-Americano

THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 28, 2019 www.italoamericano.org 30 L'Italo-Americano LA BUONA TAVOLA RECIPES COOKING TIPS SEASONAL DISHES MICHELE BECCI Continued to page 32 T he year was 1921, the place Ellis Island. My maternal grandmother, single, arrives into port from Napoli on the ship Patria to be with her sister Concetta, living in Brooklyn. My grandfa- ther, who had come to America in 1911 from Marche, had recently lost his young wife to the 1918 flu epidemic and need- ed a mother for his then 5-year- old son Nelson. They somehow found each other in the sea of Italian immigrants that had arrived in the new world. They married in 1924. My grandmother, Maria, grew up on the beautiful Bay of Naples. My grandfather told her he too lived on the water here in America. However, his body of water was the Delaware River that divides NJ and Pennsylvania, a far cry from the immense beauty of bays in Italy. She told that story often, with a chuckle. Together, they made it work – they went on to have 3 children together (my father the middle child) and they died within a year of each other in the late 60s. The food of Naples is the food of our childhood — from the pasta and sauce my mother made every Sunday to the pasta fazool she had waiting for us after a cold winter's walk home from school. The soil in Campania specifi- cally around the infamous vol- cano, Vesuvius, is incredibly fer- tile. Waverley Root in his The Food of Italy, states that legend has it Neapolitan sailors first brought the seeds of the tomato from Peru and they grew healthy and robust in the rich soil of Naples. Today, the San Marzano tomato reigns supreme. The Neapolitans make a very simple sauce made from canned San Marzanos, simmered for a brief period with a garlic-infused olive oil and basil – allowing the mag- ical and pure taste of this beauti- ful variety of tomatoes to shine through. I don't always use extra vir- gin olive oil to cook but in this case, given how few ingredients make up the sauce and their quality, I highly recommend breaking out the good stuff. Hot on the Neapolitan food trail, I purchased pasta from Neapolitan Pastificio Faella, established in 1907, turning out delicious pasta made from the wheat of Gragnano (the birthplace of Italian dried pasta) and the spring waters of the Lattari Mountains. This sugo di pomodori is as easy as it comes – yet the ingre- dients, in their simplicity, allows the flavors of the tomatoes and the wheat to work their magic in your mouth. Seek out the ingre- dients if you can find them, open that bottle of vino, toss the dish together in under 30 minutes and enjoy these simple, magical pleasures from nature. Buon appetito! Michele Neapolitan sugo di pomodo- ri Ingredients: 2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil 2 or 3 medium cloves garlic, lightly smashed 1 (28-ounce) can San Marzano tomatoes The beauty of traditional Neapolitan sugo di pomodori is its simplicity (Copyright: Dreamstime) Neapolitan sugo di pomodori

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