Behind-the-Scenes: Carmelina in the ManCave
It was a very exciting day for me when I told my father that I was going to be a brand ambassador for Carmelina Brands®. I'll never forget sitting with him at the kitchen table, my mom at the sink washing dishes, when I told him about this new partnership. My Dad looked right at me and said, "You tell Carmelina that if she wants to learn how to make tomatoes, that she should call me!" It still makes me laugh just thinking about it. Just talking tomatoes, brings back wonderful memories of my father and his garden. It was his home away from home. Every year the man would wonder if he was planting too many tomatoes, but every spring you better believe he was out there with his shovel making room for more! The neighbors loved him, it was like having their own little farmer’s market right outside the door.
Now, we grew up in a neighborhood made up of almost all Italians on the north side of Chicago, in a 3-flat my parents owned. If you you’re not familiar with the common lot size of an average Chicago home, then just know this: our front yard had a small piece of grass,and the back yard had a small piece of grass, nothing more. Yet, Dad turned the backyard into an amazing garden AND left just enough room for a small swing set. He was a smart man, as soon as my brother and sister stopped showing interest in it though, he quickly replaced it with a peach tree and some grape vines! My dad was so particular about tomatoes that he would start his plants every year from vurvini (Voor-Vee-Knee), the Calabrese dialect word for growing a plant from a seed. Others may have started their seedlings in tiny pots, but not my father. He used his Calabrese ingenuity to make his own out of soda or coffee cans, some old paper cups, or really anything that would hold a bit of dirt. Once the vurvini were big enough, he would then plant them in the garden in these perfectly aligned rows. He grew the most beautiful bell-shaped Roma tomatoes! He also had the biggest beefsteaks you had ever seen. They would grow to a couple pounds each! We used to joke that he must have been using steroids on these vines. My dad gave me the responsibility of watering the garden. In those days, I would come home from school, drop my books, throw on my headphones and water those plants. It was an important responsibility. *Fun Leo Fact: for some reason I always had a Pink Floyd cassette playing in my Walkman when I watered the garden with a goal to finish before the first side of the tape was done!
As a kid, we always had a tomato salad on the table for dinner in the summer time. My mom would cut up fresh tomatoes and white onion, season them with some salt, pepper, and oregano, then toss them in some olive oil and red wine vinegar. The best part of that salad was the juice at the bottom of the bowl. We would all fight over who got to dip their bread into that juice. To me, that will always remind me of summer. We only ate tomatoes in the summer time. My dad being the tomato aficionado that he is, will only eat fresh tomatoes in the summer. I still often remind him of this silly thing called "Globalization" and explain to him that he can get fresh fruits and vegetables all year round even when they're out of season. He won't hear anything of the sort though. He will still only eat fresh tomatoes in the summer. Every year, for some reason usually the hottest day in August, we all head to the back yard and get ready to make sauce. I said SAUCE, NOT GRAVY! Each year, my dad would harvest 5-6 bushels of plum tomatoes out of the garden and then we would proceed to make our own jars of freshly made tomato sauce. The tomatoes were washed and then cut into pieces by my mom and grandma before placing them into two huge pots to cook. The tomatoes would get reduced down to the point where much of the water was removed. We’d then scoop out the boiling hot tomatoes from the pot and pass them through an electric tomato grinder. As the machine would grind them up, it would separate the skins and seeds from the "Passata" (Pa-Sa-Ta). The Passata was the smooth red sauce (tomato puree) that remained after the tomatoes were ground. At this point, all the Passata was collected and returned to the huge pots to be cooked again, reducing it further. This was the point where my grandmother would take over the cooking. She used this huge wooden spoon that looked like the paddle to row a boat. She would continue to stir until the sauce until the viscosity was just right. When I say just right, I mean not too thick and not too thin, just right (this was very scientific as you can probably imagine). They would then gather about 100 clean mason jars that my mother would sterilize in boiling water and then fill them each with a good handful of fresh basil right from the garden. Once my grandma gave the signal, it was time to fill these jars. Each jar would was filled to the point where there was about an inch of space left from the top of the sauce to the bottom of the lid. The heat from the sauce would create a vacuum seal and then a metal ring was used to hold the jar lid in place. For anyone who has ever done any sort of canning, this was actually a very smart way of doing this. The boiling sauce would kill any possible contamination that might have been introduced into the jar from the basil, the vacuum seal would then create an air gap eliminating anything from getting in between the lid and the sauce. To this day, I never remember a single jar of sauce spoiling or creating an outbreak of botulism! Cheers to no botulism!
NOW with all the new excitement about my relationship with Carmelina Brands, I couldn't wait to start making some pizzas! Matt Maslowski, the President and CEO of Mangia Inc., and producer of Carmelina Brands, was on board to be my Sous Chef for the day when I invited him to come cook with me at my house. I have the perfect place for tomato talk, wine and cooking- my Mancave I designed in the basement of my house. The “Spizzirri Headquarters,” if you will. Or as we affectionately refer to around here as "Spizzirri HQ". The first thing I like to do after a long day’s work is come home, chill out in HQ, pour myself a drink and well…cook!
When Matt arrived at my house with Bob Burdi, his sales manager, you could see they were both ravenous. As I welcomed them, Matt handed me a bag with four bottles of wine. What a gracious guest! This was going to be a good night! HQ has a full kitchen, a pizza oven, and was stocked with every type of canned bean and tomato in Carmelina Brands’ lineup. These guys were hungry so I needed to whip up a quick snack. As Matt began to open the first bottle of wine, I took some sliced Italian bread, brushed it with olive oil, and seared it on a grill pan. In a bowl, I took the Carmelina Brands Italian Cannellini Beans, mixed them with a can of Italian olive oil poached tuna, threw in some finely chopped red onion, a handful of chopped Italian flat leaf parsley, and stirred in some lemon juice and extra virgin olive oil. I seasoned it with some fine Italian sea salt and cracked black pepper, and mixed it up until well combined. When the bread was nicely toasted, I scooped the bean mixture on each piece of bread, and let Matt have the honors of shaving on some imported Parmigiano Reggiano on top. It didn't take long to polish those baby's off! Now that the wine was flowing and we had a little food to hold us over, Matt began to tell me about how his tomatoes were processed. I was amazed to learn that he takes several trips a year to Italy just to see his tomatoes grow. Once the tomatoes are almost ready to harvest, he travels back so that he can tell the farmers the exact time when he feels that the tomatoes are ready to be picked! He has great stories about the foothills of Mt. Vesuvius and why the volcanic soil is the best spot to grow tomatoes (Maybe he should take up blogging, I’d read it).
With all this talking and drinking, we needed another snack. I decided to make some pasta. I mean, what better food to pair with the second bottle of wine? Also, what kind of person whips up pasta for a snack? An Italian, of course! While waiting for the pasta water to boil, I began to sauté some chopped onions and garlic to which I added a bottle of Carmelina ‘e…San Marzano® Italian Passata. Matt described the process of making his Passata and amazingly enough, it was very similar to the process my family uses to makes ours. Mangia Inc. operations in Italy is much larger than my parents’ back yard, but it still incorporates old world artisan techniques that go back generations, including that Mangia’s tomatoes go from the vine and into the can within 6 hours. 6 Hours! That's unbelievably fresh! And the tomatoes’ freshness really shine through. After about 5 minutes in the pan, my sauce was ready. Matt explained that his tomatoes are packed in their own purée and the Passata is already cooked down, which means that I get to spend less time in front of the stove cooking down my tomato sauce because he already did it for me! Once the pasta was ready, I threw it directly into the sauce. The starch from the pasta thickens the sauce and allows it to cling to the pasta. As I grabbed some dishes, Matt opened wine bottle #3 and pasta was served. Matt swooped in and grabbed my cheese grater which he used to freshly grate some Parm on our pasta. We joked about, "Making America Grate Again!" (Forget the blogging, maybe we hit the road as a comedy duo?) The pasta was so good that Charlie, my video guru, actually put down the camera so he could eat too! It was hard to believe that in such a short amount of time, we squeezed two food courses in between 3 bottles of wine...Was it just me or is my face turning red and did it get really warm all of sudden? Matt looks at me and says, "Ya know, there's still one bottle of wine left. How about some pizza!" I couldn't have agreed more!
It wasn't long before I had Matt rolling up his sleeves and getting his hands into some dough. As a kid, Matt worked in his uncle's pizzeria and I quickly saw he didn't need any direction. He stretched out his dough like a pro! I pulled out a pouch of Carmelina ‘e…San Marzano Authentic Italian Pizza Sauce. This product was really nice because it wasn't in a can, but a self-standing pouch. No spills! The sauce consistency was perfect for pizza. It had the right amount of olive oil and salt already in it too. We literally just poured it into a bowl and spooned it on the stretched dough. We added some fresh basil and hand pulled some Fior di Latte mozzarella, and into the oven it went. I must say that I was a bit skeptical at first. My experience in the past with prepared pizza sauce brought back horrible memories. This sauce was different though. It was the same gorgeous bright red color as my family’s Passata recipe and smelled like fresh tomatoes. At one point, Matt took a spoonful of sauce and shoved it in my mouth and said, "Tell me this doesn't remind you of summer!" It seriously did. It brought me back to those tomatoes from my dad’s garden that I remembered as a kid. Back in Spizzirri HQ, my oven was set at 850 degrees and I was making a Neapolitan type pizza out of my electric Cupone Micro oven. 90 seconds later I had a beautiful pizza and if I hadn't seen the sauce coming out of that pouch, I would have never guessed that this was a prepared pizza sauce! The flavor was friggin' killer! We put the pizza on a plate and for the first time that night, we sat down to eat. We poured the last drop of wine from our final bottle and with full bellies, lifted our glasses for a toast, "Good Wine, Good Friends, and Good Health...Salute!" Special thanks again to Matt Maslowski and Carmelina Brands for joining me in my kitchen, for having such fresh, delicious products and for welcoming me to the Mangia Inc team. I hope you enjoy the video of this amazing night, this was truly a memory that I will cherish for a lifetime!
A'presto,
Leo