​NONFICTION  -
   with a focus on food

Life and Love in an Italian Kitchen *
by Cathy Fiorello

I have no childhood memory of my mother sleeping. She went to bed after I did at night and got up before me the next morning to start breakfast and prepare the family for our day at school or work. In my young mind, mothering was a 24-hour-a-day job.
 
On Sunday, when the rest of us slept in, she was up even earlier than usual, filling the house with what I will always think of as Sunday morning smells. The long process of making the gravy for that day’s pasta dinner was an inflexible ritual. It always started with browning cloves of garlic in oil poured from a gallon can with holes in two diagonal corners that my father had punctured with an ice pick. Imported olive oil was a staple in our kitchen, purchased from our neighborhood Italian provisions store, a Saturday morning shopping routine for my mother.
 
When I accompanied her, I would pull the next number from the dispenser and take my place in line beside her. I remember being overwhelmed by the pungent smells of its prepared foods—the golden fried rice balls with mozzarella melting inside, the glistening red peppers roasted with anchovies and black olives. I would stand in awe before shelves heavy with imported pastas in every shape— long and thin, tubes and bows, squiggles and squares. I stared, mesmerized, at the bearded man in the long white apron behind the deli counter as he sliced pricey prosciutto so thin it was almost translucent, tenderly placing the slices between sheets of waxed paper. I held my nose at the cheese bins, but that’s where I learned that the worse a cheese smells, the better it tastes. This mecca for serious Italian cooks was a vestige of life in the old country carried to the new and passed down to generations of children who still honor it. No matter how “Americanized” we’ve become, our cheese is still from Parma; our tomatoes, while no longer preserved at home, are canned in Italy and cross the Atlantic to our tables.
 
The immigrant mothers who shopped here were demanding customers; they knew exactly what they wanted. They had their favorite counterman who paid special attention to their needs. In my mother’s case, it was Sal who sliced the salami and provolone for our Saturday lunches and ground the wedge of parmesan that went into our Sunday meatballs. The key to memorable meals at our house was in his expert hands. My siblings and I—we were five—would gather around my mother as she unpacked those weekend treats. Some families revere their doctors. Our family revered Sal.  
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Back to Sunday morning. When the garlic gave up its essence, its work was done, but my mother’s work at the stove was just beginning. She removed the garlic from the pot and added a diced onion. Wakened by the first whiffs of garlic and onion, I’d remember it was Sunday and join her in the kitchen. She assembled the essential meats. Links of pork sausage and fleshy spare ribs, each with its own flavor and spicy aroma, were lightly browned in the oil and removed from the pot. Jars of crushed tomatoes, preserved at home the previous summer by my mother and her sisters, their aprons and hands stained red for days, were poured into the pot. Fresh basil leaves from my father’s garden and a generous sprinkle of grated parmesan cheese were added. The meat was returned to the pot; the pot was covered. The scene was set for the next stage—the hours-long simmering on low heat, carefully watched and stirred to prevent burning.
 
At this point, my mother would step away from the stove and set the table for breakfast. Only then did she allow herself to sit with a cup of coffee. But not for long; it was time to make the meatballs. All the ingredients—ground meats, eggs, breadcrumbs, cheese—were measured into a bowl and squished together with her sturdy hand until the mixture turned a dark pink and bore no lumps.
 
“Can I do the squishing?” I’d ask.
 
She would reply, “You’re not ready yet.”
 
I didn’t know what that meant at the time. But she did show me how to roll the meat into balls between the palms of my hands. Standing side by side at the kitchen table, we’d roll all the mixture, placing the balls on a platter. I counted them every time, and every time there were sixteen. 
 
“Stand back from the stove,” she’d say, so I wouldn’t be burned by splattering oil as she dropped the balls, evenly spaced, into a heavy frying pan, blackened with use and age, one of her treasured cooking utensils. The immediate sizzle and pop, followed by compelling aromas, woke the whole family. I defy anyone to sleep through the frying of meatballs.
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​My husband, also of Italian heritage, has similar memories. He, too, from early childhood, woke on Sundays to the smells of his mother’s cooking. He, too, considered his mother’s meatballs better than anybody else’s, a test of loyalty in Italian families that persists into adulthood. After both our mothers had passed on, it was a long time before Sunday morning smells enticed my family out of bed. I tried, again and again, but couldn’t get it right. My gravy was either too thin, or it was lumpy; my meatballs were sinkers. I was tempted to quit trying, but if I didn’t preserve this tradition, who would? I’d remember things my mother had told me—basically the importance of using authentic Italian ingredients. She loved telling the story of how my brother’s Irish wife used Kraft grated cheese in her meat balls instead of the Parmesan revered by Italian cooks and couldn’t figure out why they didn’t taste as good. “No wonder!” my mother huffed. I never forgot that lesson.
 
I also remembered her telling me when I was a child that I wasn’t ready to take on this motherly task. I could see her still, standing at the stove, hair pulled back into a tight bun, a boxy apron tied around her ample form, working so lovingly to please her family. I wanted to do that for my family. When would I be ready? I wondered. I identified with the young Italian wife in the movie, Prizzi's Honor, who was told, “Go home and practice your meatballs.”
 
I did; and with practice, came success. I knew I was ready to fill the void left by our mothers the first time my husband came downstairs, followed his nose to the kitchen, took a deep breath, and said, “It smells like Sunday in here.” 

 * Excerpt from the book, Standing at the Edge of the Pool: Love, Loss and Never Learning to Swim by Cathy Fiorello (Plantation: Breezeway Books, 2018). [Available at Amazon.com]
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Find your passion and follow it!   -  Oprah Winfrey.  
Cathy Fiorello's  passions are food, Paris, and writing. A morning at a farmers’ market is her idea of excitement and visiting Paris is her idea of heaven. And much of her writing is about food and Paris. She worked in publishing in New York, freelanced for magazines during her child-rearing years, then re-entered the work world as an editor. She moved to San Francisco in 2008 and published a memoir, Al Capone Had a Lovely Mother. In 2018, she published a second memoir, Standing at the Edge of the Pool. Cathy has two children and four grandchildren. Her mission is to make foodies and Francophiles of them all.
Other works in this issue:
Nonfiction
The Bread is Warm
Bay Area Stew
My Pancetta Epiphany   
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​Vistas & Byways Review is the semiannual journal of fiction, nonfiction and poetry by members of Osher Lifelong Learning Institute (OLLI) at San Francisco State University​.
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