--- Season 3 of premieres at 8:00pm on Tuesday 17 May 2022 on SBS Food, or stream it free via SBS on Demand ---
Something wonderful happens when you fall in love. Boundaries melt, barriers fizzle and you find yourself doing things that are so far out of your comfort zone you are practically in another country.
That's precisely what happened when I met my Italian-Australian husband, Bartolo. Like so many others, his parents migrated to Australia in the early sixties. His father Giuseppe came with his sister and mother to be reunited with his father, who had come alone several years before to make the money needed for his family to start a new life.
Bart's mother Maria defied convention and came with just her sister, rushing away from their tiny Neapolitan parish and the only existence they had ever known. Spirited, adventurous, fearless, I was fascinated by her story from the moment I heard it.
"But what gave her the confidence to leave her family and friends for something so unknown?" I asked Bart as we drove to meet his family for the first time.
"She's like that," he replied.
Word must have got out that Bart's girlfriend was incoming because I walked straight into a large gaggle of Italian nonnas.
Spirited, adventurous, fearless, I was fascinated by her story from the moment I heard it.
"She's not Italian!" one nonna cried from the back corner of the room. I swear she was repeatedly making the sign of the cross.
"She's Irish," said another.
"Well, at least that's almost Catholic," added a third.
I have never identified with my Irish heritage more than I did that day. We discussed the various differences between the Irish and Italians; their home life, their religion and, oh goodness, their food.
10-year-old Massimiliano prepares the tomatoes on passata day. His mother looks away. Source: Bron Maxabella
"Do the Irish have food?" asked Zia Francesca.
"They eat," answered Zia Katerina drily.
I tried not to be too offended on behalf of my distant Irish relatives. My mother had occasionally rolled out a delicious Irish stew recipe on particularly cold nights, but otherwise I had little to add to this lively debate.
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Irish stew
Soon we were at the table, diving into a huge plate of lasagne that tasted exactly like thousands of years of culinary greatness should.
"It's because of the passata," Zia Nicolina told me when I mentioned how delicious the pasta was. "If you get that right, you're a very good cook."
I left that day with three bottle of passata that did indeed magically turn me into a very good cook. My future mother-in-law took me deep into the garage where shelves were lined with bottle after bottle of the rich, vermillion sauce. A piece of torn masking tape was attached to each shelf with the year of each vintage carefully written in permanent marker. 1994, 1995, 1996...
Each bottle had been studiously recycled again and again, such that the lids were faintly rusted on the outside, though still good as new on the inside. "A bit like us," Maria noted as she took my bottles down from a shelf marked two years prior.
And so began a beautiful love story. Each time I visited, Maria would gift me another bottle and ask me what I'd made with the bottle before. In the early days, I struggled to understand her thickly-accented English, but I always understood the meaning behind her thoughtful gift of passata. Here, she was saying, take a little bit of me home with you and come back and tell me how you are.
Arabella and Lottie, learning from the greats. Source: Bron Maxabella
The lids were faintly rusted on the outside, though still good as new on the inside. "A bit like us," Maria noted.
It's been many years since those early exchanges and there have been many passata days along the way for both myself and my children. Full days punctuated by the squeak of my father-in-law's ancient tomato press. Pudgy toddler fingers oozing through the tomato pulp until Nonna gently moves them away. Willing children fighting over jobs and getting tomato in their hair in the process. This year, helpful teens do the heavy lifting and spin the crank when Nonno gets tired.
The intense heat of the open fire that boils the mammoth pot to sterilise 20 bottles at a time billows over the gathering. A twig of basil leaves is stuffed into each bottle, the only thing you'd ever dare add to the thick tomato sauce. Jar after jar of passata is stacked neatly on old wooden shelves before the day is done. And afterwards we gather around the long table to eat fresh pasta with tomato sauce, made from a jar hot-off-the-press.
I slip away from the table and head out to the garage, in the same way I once stole away with my mother-in-law to receive my first bottles of precious passata. Everything is exactly as it was back then, even the light green paint my father-in-law is so oddly fond of. Perhaps it's because the luminous green showcases all those rows and rows of bright red bottles. Enough really to feed a family and lucky friends for a decade at least, maybe more.
It seems too much, but perhaps every last one of them will be needed one day. It's hard not to notice how the hand that writes on each piece of wonky masking tape gets shakier with each year.
Stirring the pot is no easy feat. Source: Bron Maxabella
Nonno tends the fire while the passata jars sterilise. Source: Bron Maxabella
The well-earned pasta reward at the end of the day. Source: Bron Maxabella
Then I pause at the shelf marked 2022 and notice that this time it's my daughter's neat handwriting marking the year. The passata story continues to be written, as it always has.
