Clementina

It's hard to talk about growing tomatos, without starting with Clementina.

Clementina Patalano was born in Gaeta - a small, poor, farming village in Lazio, Italy.

But America - the land of opportunity - shimmered on the horizon.

You know how the story goes: with nothing but the clothes on her back and a dream for a better life in her heart, Clementina, and her new husband, Erasmo Magliozzi, set off for Brooklyn, New York.

While Erasmo got a job as a fishmonger down the street at Sheepshead Bay, Clementina took pride in growing food - tomatoes, garlic, basil - that reminded them of their childhood.

The Old World recipes using seasonal, staple ingredients lived in her hands.

She’d hook the pasta press to the kitchen counter and crank out sheets of dough, stretching and cutting noodles that draped and dried off every inch of that apartment.

The seductive smell of simmering sauce wafted onto the streets of Manhattan Beach.

Her secret?

Starting with a base of fish heads and adding a pinch of sugar to cut through the acidity of the fresh tomatoes.

She never forgot that food was meant to be slow and shared.

Because in la cucina povera, a tomato isn’t just a tomato - it’s medicine, memory, and what holds community together.

Decades later, I would sit with Clementina and tell her that my mom had taught me how to make sauce from scratch.

She raised an eyebrow playfully.

“Did you go into the garden and pick your own tomatoes? How about the basil?”

“No,” I giggled, recalling the packaged products we picked up from the grocery store instead.

Tsk, tsk tsk...

“Then you didn’t make it from scratch.” She clicked her tongue at me.

Clementina was cheeky and determined until the day she died - at 103 years old.

Today, as I wash the tomato tar off my fingers - that sticky, dark-green residue you get from handling the plant’s vine - I can feel her with me.

Yeah, Nonna — this time, I did go into the garden.