Life From Scratch (6 page)

Although I have a tendency to add garlic to my sauces, in traditional Italian cooking either onion or garlic is used—never both. Alfred pureed the tomatoes with a food mill and ground the meat with a meat grinder. His sauce was an exercise in love, a taste of the Old World. Here is my modernized version, which relies heavily on a wooden spoon and pre-ground meat. But I like to think the flavors remain as hearty as he intended. Although it might seem ambitious to make a gallon of sauce, Alfred taught me to freeze leftovers in 2-cup, freezer-safe containers for future meals; not only is it handy, but it saves effort in the end
.

• 1 ounce dried mushrooms (porcinis, if available)

• 2 sweet Bermuda onions, chopped

• ½ cup olive oil

• 1 pound lean ground beef

• Three 28-ounce cans San Marzano whole peeled tomatoes

• Two 6-ounce cans tomato paste

• 2 generous pinches nutmeg

• Generous pinch allspice or cloves

• Salt and pepper

• 10 sweet Italian sausages

Soak the dried mushrooms in one cup recently boiled water. Cover and set aside.

In a large Dutch oven or heavy-duty pot over medium-high heat, fry the onions in olive oil until soft, sweet, and golden brown. Add the beef and continue browning.

Next, pile on the canned tomatoes and their juices, the tomato paste, nutmeg, and allspice or cloves, salt, and pepper. Finally, chop the mushrooms and add them and their cup of liquid to the pot. Give everything a stir and bring to a simmer. Top with raw sausages—just plunk them in whole (Alfred said so). Cover and keep the mixture at a gentle bubble for about 4 hours.

Remove the sausages and, when cool enough to handle, slice into half-moons. With a wooden spoon, break up the tomato chunks, if there are any, and stir the sausage back into the sauce.

At this point Alfred covered the sauce and left it on the counter overnight. Times have changed, so I must recommend refrigerating the sauce for 8 hours—more if you have the time. During this rest, the flavors will mingle and deepen.

Though the sauce keeps for about a week in the fridge, I like to freeze it in 2-cup portions so I can enjoy the bounty over several meals. Frozen, it will last at least 6 months.

It is simply wonderful on top of hearty pasta, like spaghetti or rigatoni, with a liberal heaping of freshly grated Parmesan. Alfred liked it best over ravioli. I find it delightful in lasagna, too, though Alfred never did this himself.

Makes about 1 gallon

CHAPTER 4

Just Dess
e
rts

I
N THE FACE OF OUR NOISY
I
TALIAN HERITAGE
, the living room kitchen in our new apartment in Jamaica Plain felt too quiet. There should have been a grandmother bustling among us, chiding in Italian, bumping elbows, laughing too loud. The only times Mom managed to capture the energy of Grammie’s kitchen was when Connor and the twins, Tim and Grace, came to visit.

Mom made a big fuss before each of our siblings’ yearly weeklong visits, especially when it came to planning what we’d eat. One autumn she ushered Michael and me into an orchard on the outskirts of Boston to pluck fallen apples for Michael’s birthday pie. He always requested it, since Mom wouldn’t let us get those “slabs of poison-soaked garbage” we eyed at the supermarket. I must have been about five years old, Michael almost seven.

“They’re bruised,” we’d cried in dismay when we saw the misshapen fruit around us. But Mom reminded us that soft apples make the best pie. I asked if we had to pay for them. “Not if they’ve been on the ground,” she said. “What if animals had scavenged them? Who knows what damage they’d do? Tell you the truth, we’re doing the farmers a favor keeping pests off their land.”

I figured she was probably right—and anyway, I liked having the orchard all to ourselves. When Connor, Tim, and Grace arrived, we had a bowl of apples and a box of candles ready for the pie.

As with all our visits, we took a while to get settled. Our siblings would load their backpacks and sleeping bags into Mom’s small bedroom; she’d sleep on the living room floor near Michael and me. Though Michael was happy to see his older brothers and sister, he often acted out to sustain Mom’s attention. He didn’t just cry; he wailed. He could kick up a full-blown scene in a matter of seconds, without regard to where we were. Once on the other side, though, he lit up with an expansive, dimpled grin, ready to roughhouse.

Though Michael and I were skinny, our half siblings had the added height of freshly sprouted teenagers. The boys had Mom’s earthen hair, while Grace’s bloomed goldenrod. As soon as they put down their bags, the tiny apartment resounded with the ruckus of five kids with a license to run, play, and do as we liked. Not only could we get our clothes muddy, but we could also track the dirt in. “That’s what baths and mops are for,” Mom reasoned, “so live a little.”

I’m not sure if Connor, Tim, and Grace found our lifestyle a relief or disconcerting. I know they hated to be so far from us. The feeling was mutual; we were always trying to figure out a way to get our households in the same city, or even state. In the end, we gave ourselves up to the little time we had together.

The cramped kitchen was the only place we could all fit; we’d congregate around the mismatched chairs, elbows on the counters, sometimes sitting cross-legged on milk crates. While the older kids shaped the piecrust and squeezed lemon juice over the apples, Mom handed out scraps of dough and a few slices of apple for Michael and me, allowing us to put whatever we wanted into our “inventions.” Everything was fair game, but I always went straight to Mom’s spice rack, that hodgepodge collection situated on the railroad tie shelf above my clothes dresser. In addition to the spices she used in her pie—nutmeg, allspice, and cinnamon (which mom called “sin”)—I dusted on some hot paprika and a handful of raisins.

I loved it when we crammed together around that old wooden table. In those days food was never just sustenance; the very act of cooking knit our disparate lives together.

After the pie was done, Mom plopped the glass dish on the table and shooed us outside for an hour or two. She knew she could never keep us from cutting into it unless we were far enough away that we could no longer sniff that intoxicating whiff of cinnamon and apples.

When we finally sat down to eat, Mom stuck a candle in the pie’s center and said with a smile: “Happy Birthday, cutie pie!” We all sang to Michael, ate two slices each, and licked our plates until they gleamed. Any leftovers were served for breakfast with a big dollop of vanilla yogurt.

Even as the dishes were washed, we’d beg Mom to make the pie again. But there was never time. Inevitably Connor, Tim, and Grace had to go back to their dad, three states away. When our visits ended, all of us cried, especially Grace and me. To make the separation easier, she slipped me elaborate, handwritten notes adorned with bubbly hearts and flowers. When I was too little to read them, Mom or Michael helped me, indulging me dozens of times until I knew the words by heart.

Day after day I shut myself away in my castle bed, staring at the drawings until I could almost see Grace sitting next to me. Without her and her brothers, the house was too still. When the last crumb from our meal was swept up, often Mom disappeared into her room for hours at a time. She said she was napping.

There’s a difference between poverty of resources and poverty of spirit. For a long time, Michael and I were oblivious to hardship because of Mom’s determined efforts. But in the end she couldn’t erase the reality of our situation. Nowhere was our poverty more apparent than when we went out into the community, which seemed to operate under a constantly shifting set of rules. Even figuring out where we could buy our groceries was to risk humiliation.

A year after we moved to Jamaica Plain, a new health food store opened two miles from the apartment. When we got the notice in the mail, Mom decided we’d go immediately.

Mom had tied my babushka on extra tight when we’d left the apartment, tucking my long brown hair into the neck of my woolen poncho. She’d pointed to the trees, whose leaves stood silver against the charcoal sky, and said we needed to hurry; there was rain on the way. But she’d said it with a smile since we were going to make a German Tree Cake.

Broiling 21 crepe-like layers of batter into a cake, Mom decided, would be the perfect rainy-day activity. She got the recipe from a German woman at a folk dance. Mom made a habit of asking foreigners what they like to eat, pressing them until they shared something she could add to our patchwork of recipes.

Michael and I wandered into the dry goods section, where I reached into a large barrel.

“This cereal tastes funny,” I said.

Michael stood on tiptoe, his corduroys rising a couple of inches above his loafers, and peered inside the barrel. His hair fell into his eyes. Already in second grade, he could read. “That’s
dog food
, Sash.” He giggled, but took a handful, too.

The egg-shaped man behind the counter was talking to Mom in a low grumble. She looked upset as she waved her hand over her selections: chocolate, eggs, almonds from the bulk bin, and a tin of almond paste. There was also an avocado. Mom promised we could split it for lunch. But our car had broken down again, and we had walked two miles from our apartment to the health food store. I was hungry
now
.

The man’s voice grew loud. “I’m sorry, ma’am. I can’t change the rules. We don’t take food stamps.”

Mom glanced over at Michael and me, straightened her small shoulders and knit her eyebrows together.

Michael marched to her side. “Come on, Mom, we don’t need his stupid food,” he said taking her hand, and scowling up at the clerk.

Mom tucked the food stamps back into a fold of her coat. She counted out a few coins from her change purse, looked the man squarely in the eyes, and placed them on the counter with a sharp
click
.

She managed our avocado lunch, but it would be another few weeks before she could hem enough trousers to buy the ingredients for the German Tree Cake. We begged her to go to a different grocery store, one of the many chains near our apartment where she could use her food stamps. But she said we deserved to shop at the health food store just like anyone else.

Mom saved her money, and when we left the store the second time, we had what we needed. After a painstaking morning spent broiling the 21 almond layers and another afternoon glazing it, the first bite was nowhere as good as I expected.

It was better.

German Tree Cake | Baumtorte/Baumkuchen

This is the kind of cake that pulls family together around the stove, incites gasps when sliced, and tastes like escape. The stacked almond cake looks like the rings of an ancient tree, whose secrets hide under chocolate and crushed almond bark. Golden apricot jam drips like sap
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