Written October 12, 2019
My grandmother came to America from Naples in 1952 with almost nothing — but she brought this recipe in her head. She never wrote it down. She said you couldn't write down something that lives in your hands.
For forty years I watched her make this every Sunday. The way she crushed the tomatoes by hand. The way she always added a pinch of sugar at the end. The way the whole house smelled like something sacred.
She passed in 2018. I spent three months trying to recreate it from memory and phone calls with my aunts. This is as close as I've gotten. I make it every Sunday now.
I think she'd approve.