Doing a tomato souce

Beginning of the work

Life in Italy is an adventure, every day something old-new to learn. Specially the way they cook! We all love it, don't we? Preparation of fresh tomato paste for winter is one of the cooking traditions here, more popular nowadays in South-Italy. Preserve it in a cellar for the winter. Without chemical preservatives added. Home made. Nowadays we enter in a big supermarket to buy one, bottled, full of chemistry. But as we continue our path, we search the convenience in our lives. Although food made at home is always appreciated. If it is ready on the table waiting for you, who of us could deny? 

Stirring the tomatoes

Tomatoes ready to the next step- mincing

This summer I had one great opportunity to participate in making "sugo di pomodoro", like tell Italians for tomato paste, sounds beautiful, don't it?  The day before the tomatoes were harvested and put into the boxes, we had them about eighteen, each box about 20-25 kilogram. Our day started early in the morning at 6. We went to a country side. Ready to work, most of us! First step was to wash all tomatoes, cut them to half. Cutting them we needed as well to check the "quality". The black marks we had to cut, if tomato was soft to smell it, if it smelled bad, we through it away. After we put them to boil and stirred sometimes so it would not be burned. For boiling we used big pot, one that maybe you see in the place of your grand-grand mother. Put a water, about a quarter, after added the cut tomatoes. And boiled them about a half an hour, as tomatoes were soft. Following action was to drain them, and to make a sauce. To drain, we used as you can see as well from the picture, very simple things: box and a cloth. Continued with mincing the tomatoes, using one special machine, like the one we know used for mincing the meat. Putting in as much as possible, using truncheon to press and out comes a delicious sauce. If all this is done were needed to put all this into the bottles, that were ready, washed and cleaned. The last step was to put the bottles correctly closed to boil all, so they could be preserved for winter time. For this, like one time, we used cisterns, where we put as much bottles as possible. Under the cistern was the fireplace. Once the bottles were in the cisterns, fire were up, was left to do only one thing: to rest. The boiling procedure was about three hours. After when the fire was distinguished, the cisterns were left to cool down for the night. The next day we collected the bottles and storaged them to cellar.

Mincing process, who work, who watch that work
is done correctly. 

The work seemed to be so easy for me, I imagined why we do not do this anymore? As the day continued, I understood that the end is far-far away. It takes all day. Wake up early in the morning, invite all your family. Moreover before all, is needed to take care of the plants... It all needs time, passion and will to do it! Making this paste is not only a work, it is something more, it is one of the actions, where family comes together, tell the stories, do jokes. 
All the hard work that was done was worth it.  Now we can enjoy a dish of pasta with fresh tomato sauce and polpette for example. Or use it to make fantastic and famous sauce of bologna!