The story
My grandmother Peppina raised me around a real kitchen fire.
She cooked beside the fire with traditional Calabrian terracotta pots. In the morning she placed one pot with water and another for the sauce, moving them closer to or farther from the flames to control the heat.
The tomato sauce cooked slowly for hours. In our dialect we say pippuliare: a gentle, patient simmer. The smell of tomato and basil was the first thing I noticed when I entered her house.
“Today, the machines have changed. The recipe hasn’t.”
