My Green Garden

This custom of making enough bottles of passata to last until the following year has endured in Australia, even with the passing of the original post war migrants. When they first came to Australia, these preserving traditions were done through necessity. Each season had its own rhythm for these Italians: summer meant the warm season vegetables would be pickled; late summer had the sauce making; autumn was wine, mushrooms and green olives; winter was black olives and salami curing time. Spring was the time to plant all the vegetables that would provide the ingredients for the preserves ahead.

Sauce day might involve dozens of boxes of tomatoes being processed if several families are working together. If the tomatoes weren’t grown in the garden, it would be a visit to one of the many roadside stalls found in areas where Italian households could be found, where the cases of tomatoes were sold off the back of the trucks that had come directly from the farms. If they were bought from a greengrocer it was always prudent to put in an order beforehand to ensure that they were kept for you. The tomatoes were grown especially for this purpose. They still are and are a type of roma or pear-shaped tomato. They are not particularly tasty to eat but are meaty with a lot of pulp, perfect for making thick sauces. Nowadays, tomatoes are still available from February through to April but it is a good idea to order them if you want more than one box at a time.

For backyarders who can grow their own, the sauce day would probably be done in smaller batches over several sessions as the tomatoes ripen.

In its simplest form, the machine is like a mouli-mill. This separates the sauce from the seeds and the skins of the tomatoes. This is adequate on a very small scale but a version that can take more tomatoes with less cranking work is preferred by Italians. The spremi-pomodori (translated as the ‘tomato presser’) does just this. There are table-top machines that use manual labour to turn the handle which work fine for small amounts at a time, but for serious quantities, a mechanised version of the spremi-pomodori, with half or one horsepower behind it, makes fast work of the pulp separation. Either version can get quite messy with juice leaking so the sauce making always happens outdoors or in the garage.

COLD SQUEEZING THE TOMATOES: The tomatoes are washed, cut into halves or quarters and then processed through the spremi-pomodori machine. The resulting sauce is runny and watery but easy to bottle.

BLANCHING THE TOMATOES: The tomatoes are washed, the stem end where the stalk was attached is removed and then the tomatoes are blanched in a large pot of boiling water. After taken out and drained well, they are processed through the machine. Since a lot of the water is removed during the blanching and the tomatoes are softened somewhat, they pass through the machine easily. The resultant sauce is much thicker. To gauge how many bottles are needed, one box of tomatoes weighs about 17kg and you could be expected to get about 10-12 litres of sauce per box.

Some families skip the step of removing the stem end and only wash the tomatoes before blanching them. They argue that the stem end is removed with the machine anyway so it’s an unnecessary extra step. However, physically picking up each tomato and taking a cut out of the top makes for good quality control as well, so that any rotten parts of suspect tomatoes can be removed before they taint the sauce.

PASSING THE TOMATOES THROUGH THE MACHINE is the fun part where the tomato becomes sauce. The machine separates away the seeds and skin but there is still more useful juice in these discarded parts, so they are put through the machine at least two more times until the final discards are very dry indeed. 

Preserving the sauce is done in a waterbath. It used to be done in 44 gallon drums over open fires. Now most people will use a portable gas ring set under a metal stand to hold the drum and its contents. The preserving can be done on a much smaller scale in the kitchen using a large stockpot but, considering the number of bottles to be heat preserved for a year’s supply, large drums work well to hold the bottles. 

After setting the drum in place over the heat source, the base of the drum (or stockpot) should be lined with an old towel (or a thick layer of teatowels) to prevent scorching of the sauce closest to the base; and then the bottles (or jars) are stacked in the drum. The bottles can even be laid on their sides, but it is a good idea to pack them in tightly so that they don’t jiggle and potentially break when the water starts to bubble when heated. 

Getting the local community involved in this day is a way of making light work out of a lot of simple repetitive tasks, but it does take some serious organising. The equipment needs to be bought or borrowed, sufficient clean bottles and jars obtained with intact lids (not rusty or bent) and then, most importantly, the tomatoes ordered. When organising this for a lot of people, it is always a relief when the tomatoes have actually arrived and are awaiting processing. Large tubs for washing the tomatoes, access to water, large pots to blanch the tomatoes and then the pots or drums to do the waterbath preserving are also needed. A few need to be in charge of refreshments – morning coffees, making a pasta sauce from some of the freshly made passata for lunch and the supply of cold drinks throughout. Honestly, for those growing up with Italian parents, the annual tomato day wasn’t always a favourite day but it has now become an enjoyable ritual that groups of friends look forward to for a good laugh and annual catch up. And of course, for the satisfaction of having a pantry (or garage) full of bottles to last until the next time.