Simone and Rosa were born in Naples in the early 1940s and despite having lived in the north of Italy for nearly 40 years Rosa’s cooking is still from the south.
It is full of roasted vegetables, small amounts of meat plenty of fish and lots of olive oil with an eye to colour as well as taste.
And they still meet up with the family to make their own passata.
Now passata is made from ripe tomatoes that have been puréed and sieved to remove the skin and seeds.
They make theirs in the late summer when there are loads of ripe tomatoes and once made it is bottled and used throughout the year. Rosa stores hers in the cellar of the flats they live in.
And when their own children were younger they too would be roped into the activity. It was their job to spoon the mixture into jars which would then be sealed.
It all seems a wonderful mix of tradition and an opportunity for a family gathering. But listening to Tina it could at times be a chore which took the children away from the playground at the bottom of her flats and confined them to a messy days work.
Despite the availability of shop bought passata, Simone and Rosa still will make their own which will then be used to make the tomato sauce. This is an essential standby for Rosa and like her we always have a pot of it to use almost on a daily basis.
The passata is added to a couple of tins of tomatoes which have been sieved in a food mill and cooked with some olive oil garlic and basil. In our house a large pot of the stuff lasts just a few days as it forms the basis for many of the meals I make.
Today I rather think it will be parmigiana di melanzane which is a wonderful dish of fried aubergine slices interspersed between a mix of parmesan and mozzarella cheese, a little beaten egg and topped by tomato sauce.
Now I prefer mine served cold but I seem to be alone in liking it this way for the rest of the family it has to be hot and bubbling.
Picture; tomatoes on sale in the late summer in Viareggio, from the collection of Andrew Simpson
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