"Crimson Tide", published in Good Taste (Sydney), November 2000
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There�s an old joke that always gets a laugh around our dinner table. Translated into English, it goes something like this: Mum puts a mountain of steaming spaghetti in front of Dad and, sniffing his plate, he says, "What's this? Is this pasta? I can't tell you the last time I remember tasting pasta." See, our family eats pasta up to five times a week, and that's not including lunch. We love the stuff, can't get enough of Mum's traditional Italian cooking. Naturally, this high-level pasta consumption requires a lot of tomato sauce. That's why, once a year, in our inner-suburban Melbourne backyard, my family celebrates TSD - Tomato Sauce Day. Like other important culinary affairs on the Scatena family calendar (such as Wine Day and Salami Day), putting aside time to make a year's worth of bottled tomato sauce is a custom my parents have kept alive since immigrating from the old country more than 40 years ago. And they're not alone. In backyards across Australia, there are communities of semi-self-sufficient, micro-cottage industries (also called families) producing all manner of produce (charmingly depicted in the recent Aussie hit film, Looking For Alibrandi). They've converged on Australia from every compass point across the globe to start a new life, but still feed themselves in the same way their great grandparents did a century ago. It's a tradition of the Mediterranean. Many older Anglo-Greek families also opt for homemade foods -- wine, sauce, jams, olives and pickled vegetables. Some in the Lebanese community like to make their own olive oil. The average annual Scatena TSD begins soon after sunrise, with Dad taking off for the market in his Holden Commodore, trailer in tow. There he looks for the finest, ripest fruit. This year, he managed to pick up six crates of tomatoes, about 20 kilograms all up, for $60. As soon as Dad returns home, the work begins for all of us. The backyard hose is strung up over the clothes line, and we all sit around, individually washing each piece of fruit under its slow drip, then slice off its head and bottom before cutting it in half (larger ones are cut in quarters). Once all the fruit is prepared, the sauce-making begins in earnest. This is where you've got to be careful not to lose a finger. Don't laugh -- several of my parents' friends are missing fingertips from TSDs gone wrong. The fruit is jammed, a handful at a time, through a contraption best described a juice extractor, which is hooked up to an old washing machine motor bolted to a board. As you can imagine, it's a ferocious piece of engineering. The fresh juice spills into a huge pot on the ground while the pulp magically blobs out into a tray on the side. This pulp will be put through a couple more times to extract every last drop of moisture. As each pot is filled, Mum throws in a couple of handfuls of salt and a pinch of fresh basil, then gives the mixture a good stir. The sauce is then funneled into bottles (old beer bottles that have been washed and sterilised) before the seals are closed. A day's work produces 125 long-necked bottles of sauce. Before anyone can rest, all the bottles are carefully placed into a 44-gallon drum filled with water and a fire is lit under it. The whole thing boils away for a couple of hours while we clean up the backyard which, believe me, is a sight. Our reward for all this effort? We have another year's worth of pasta to look forward to and, even before the clean-up is complete, Mum has a sample of the new stock on the dining table ready for the tasting. We all have a good idea of what it's going to be like, but nonetheless, we can't wait.
