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The sauce was always the same. Olive oil. Tomato paste. Garlic. Water. Salt. That was it. The elements in the pan never changed. The thick oil, more green than yellow, warmed on the fire. It thinned from the heat and flowed across the metal. Then the garlic went in. It was sliced or chopped small or smashed, depending on preference. Depending on the dish. Depending on secrets. The garlic warmed slowly to draw out the sweetness hiding in its veins, instead of the bitter that came with impatience. If the garlic went brown around the edges, a drop of water fixed it. You always kept a glass of water by the stove. I remember it. It wasn’t for drinking. No one drank water, ever. It was to slow the cooking when things got too hot. An extinguisher. A buyer of time. An emergency brake. The hot pan screamed and spit objections, but the water worked like magic. A spoonful of tomato paste went in when the garlic turned soft and its aroma moved through the room like a swarm of slow bees drunk with early spring. The thwack of a spoon on the pan’s edge. Ba bop, ba bop bop. A rattle. An echo through the house crawls back far beyond my own memory. Don’t let it burn, my Nonna calls from behind a block of marble in a cemetery on the rough edge between the city and the towns. Then the water goes in. It all simmers. It’s oily and salty and yellow-red. In its repetition and sameness lives the essence of home. The knap of a certain carpet under your feet, the freedom of children running in the sun. The magic of fireflies like pinpricks of lamplight. The sauce changes too, in subtle ways. The flavors and texture vary depending on what you cook in it. Dried cod adds more salt and the depth of the darkest seas. Fresh lobster brings the brine of the shoreline, the crackling fizz at the edge of infinity. Rabbit on the bone whispers of the dry earth. Beans are different from hunks of beef cooked long and slow with string beans, or chicken with olives. The sauce is always the same and never the same. But it beckons like an open door. [Painting: Flayed Rabbit by Chaim Soutine, 1921]