Now that I spend most of my time in London, I must admit celebrating American Independence Day is a tad uncomfortable for one fairly obvious reason: the colonists won and the British lost. （I know the war was a long time ago, but I never quite know how to celebrate that victorious day here without feeling like I’m rubbing it in some Brit’s face—like my in-laws.） However, during the Obama administration, my family and I were fortunate enough to be invited to two July Fourth fêtes at Winfield House in Regent’s Park, the home of the American ambassador. These were lovely, casually posh daytime affairs for expats （a nice word for immigrants） and their families, complete with American military bands, jazz singers, and all the traditional American foods one could eat.
How ironic that in England, of all places, on these two occasions I would be reminded of all the positive aspects of this important American day. Taking part in joyous celebrations of American democracy on foreign soil made me long for a time in my youth when the sausage and peppers of Italian immigrants sat peacefully on the grill alongside their American cousins, the hot dog and the hamburger.
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My maternal grandmother, Concetta, was one of the funniest and most generous people I’ve ever met. She was also an extraordinary cook. Her parents emigrated from Calabria when she was three years of age to Verplanck, New York, a small town about forty miles north of Manhattan. She was taught to cook by her mother and, as far as I am concerned, perfected every recipe. Like my mother, she was someone who could well have been a very successful professional chef had she so chosen or had she been given the choice. It was very rare not to see her in the kitchen preparing some dish or another. If she was not in her kitchen, she was in the basement, which was home to an auxiliary kitchen where she often did “prep work.” It was down there, on an old yellow and green enamel-topped table, that she would make her light-as-a-feather, soft-as-a-baby’s-bottom pizza dough. On the gas stove （perilously unventilated）， she would prepare sauce or boil pasta for large gatherings that were held there if the main kitchen was unable to accommodate the ever-growing extended family.
That basement to me was a wonderful kind of time capsule and sanctuary. Divided by a staircase that led to an upstairs hallway, it boasted the makeshift auxiliary kitchen on one side （complete with an old washing machine with hand-cranked rollers that was still very much in use） as well as my grandfather Vincenzo’s workshop on the opposite side. Along one wall sat a long workbench with aging hand tools and dozens of glass jars filled with screws, nails, washers, nuts, and bolts hanging from their lids, which were nailed to the underside of a wooden shelf. A most sculptural presentation of a handyman’s bric-a-brac if ever there was one. In the far-left corner of this space was a door to the room that I loved most: the wine cellar.
This was a low-ceilinged, cavelike room, approximately eight feet by ten feet, that one entered through a roughly made whitewashed door that was rotting from the bottom up due to the excessive dampness to which the floor and walls clung so dearly. Inside to the right were rough-hewn shelves on which rested the countless long-necked soda bottles that held the precious homemade tomato sauce of the last season. I will digress here to explain of what this vital red liquor was composed and how it was made.
Tropiano Bottled Tomato Sauce
— INGREDIENTS —
Bushels of tomatoes （you decide how many）
Salt
Fresh basil
— EQUIPMENT —
One outdoor open fireplace or fire pit, with heavy metal grates
Fire
Two large galvanized aluminum tubs
One white pillowcase
Lots of old long-necked glass soda bottles
One ladle
One funnel
Lots of new soda bottle caps
One bottle-capping device
One thick piece of oilcloth big enough to cover one of the tubs
Enough water to fill one of the tubs
Make the fire.
Fill one tub with water and place it on the grate over the fire.
Take a lot of the tomatoes, shove them into the pillowcase, and squeeze the s#*! out of them over the other tub so that the juice of the tomatoes oozes through the weave of the pillowcase, making it look like a relic of the Saint Valentine’s Day Massacre. Continue until all the tomatoes are gone or until you feel like Macbeth at the end of his play.
One by one, fill the bottles （with a ladle, via funnel） with the tomato juice and add a pinch of salt and a basil leaf to each.
Cap the bottles.
Put the bottles in the water that’s in the other tub.
Cover them with the oilcloth.
Boil them for a while. （I can’t remember what the health ruling is on this so/and/but I take no responsibility for any foodborne illnesses）。