Gli Alici del Nonno Amedeo or My Grandfather Amadeo's Sardines in Spicy Tomato Sauce

I am a true Cancer.  I love tradition, setting up a cozy home, antiques, and yes, I’m a dreamer.  My world for the most part, is a happy, cozy place.  That bowl full of fresh lemons smells as beautiful as it looks and it makes me happy.  They are there to remind me to make a lemon meringue pie from scratch, but I keep putting it off mostly because, they just make me happy to see them and to breathe in their fragrance when I walk by.  I own no shiny furniture.  Everything is pock marked, and old and I always imagine what life was like for those who owned them when they were new.  I wonder how they got their marks and their stains.  My antique glasses remind me of lemonade and Kool Aid, and picnics in baskets and mint julep and verandas.

 Today, I’ve been thinking about my grandfather, Amedeo Temistocles Orazi who lived in our home where I grew up in Sudbury, Ontario.  By the time I was old enough to really study this character, his tall build was burdened by his years, and he couldn’t see or hear very well.  My visits to him in the basement didn’t last long, but they were frequent.  He had a wood stove down there, and I’m sorry to use that adjective again, but it was really "cozy" on a cold winter night, when the only thing to watch on tv was hockey or Don Messer's Jubilee.  He also cooked on that stove, and he only owned 1 pot and 1 pan.  The pan was so seasoned with olive oil and garlic that no matter what he cooked, it smelled good.  Today I’ve tried to re-create one of his concoctions.  I have no idea what his recipe was…I’m going by smell.  Here it is then

Alici del Nonno Amedeo or Nonno(grandfather) Amedeo’s Fresh Sardines in Spicy Tomato Sauce.

I bought some fresh sardines today at the local Pescheria and I asked them to clean them which means cutting of the head and pulling out the entrails.  I bought ½ kilo.  Once home, I rinsed them, and took out the backbone.

I placed them to dry on a paper towel.

Then I added olive oil to cover the pan, two cloves of garlic, 1 diced small onion, and a bunch of flat leafed parsley, 1 hot pepper (should have added two, because I like it spicier) and I simmered for a bit.

I added the fresh, cleaned sardines ( I know my grandfather used canned sardines which would have had a stronger taste and smell), and I mixed everything around now and then.  I put a pot of salted water on to boil for the pasta.

Then I added the passata to the almost cooked sardines.  I would hazard a guess at 1 cup but it was really half a beer bottle. (Passata is slightly cooked, crushed and sieved tomatoes preserved in a beer bottle.  The process is done at the end of June when the southern Italian tomatoes are ripe and sweet and they are bottled in sterilized beer bottles and a crown cap is put on.  You can buy Italian passata in glass bottles in Italian grocery stores.)  In Canada, I used crushed tomatoes.  I added a couple of fresh leaves of basil and a bit of salt to taste (only add salt if using fresh sardines.)  I let simmer and reduce.  

Next, the wine.  My grandfather would add a few glugs of his homemade wine, usually made from Zinfandel.  Instead I opened a white Biancolella, Casa D’Ambra from Ischia 2010.  Fresh sardines are not strong tasting, and I wanted a lighter sauce. I thought the minerality of this wine would go well with my salt-water fish and that it could also stand up to the tomato sauce.  

The first pour went into my glass and on the palate there is no doubt that this wine reflects the terroir of a volcanic island surrounded by the salty sea.  The wine is like a breath of salt sea air.  Biancolella is usually blended with Forastera, 2 indigenous vines of Campania, but the wine is mainly found on  Ischia.  To date, Casa D'Ambra is the best producer of this wine that I have tasted.  It is complex, floral, fruity, and has a lingering mineral aftertaste.

I added a couple of glugs, and I let simmer uncovered while I put the pasta into the salted boiling water. 

I served this dish on pasta, but I realized that once it had reduced it was better suited to a bruschetta.  I could not resist the fresh Italian bread that I bought this morning , so I returned to the pan after my meal was finished and just scooped it on my bread.

This is a dish per fare la scarpetta, or good enough to clean your plate with your bread. 

Grazie Nonno!

  

 

Why?

I had reason to be scared of writing the Level 1 exam leading to the 4^th level and pinnacle level of Master Sommelier qualification with the Court of Master Sommeliers.  The two days of review before the exam were grueling:  8 to 6pm of one power point after another, one country after another, flipping from old world to new world, districts, zones, individual vineyards, varietals international and indigenous, wine controls, labeling, geography, soil and blind taste tests all followed by studying until 11pm and up at 3am for more review.  If I hadn’t prepared for 3 weeks prior to this, I don’t think I would have stuck it out past day one.  But I passed the first exam, and with a grade over 70%, I was invited to attempt the second level test.  I knew in my heart of hearts that I was not prepared but buoyed by my initial success, I went for it and did not pass the second level exam. 

Although I am a Certified sommelier in Italy, I wanted to know more about International wines.  I couldn’t have picked a more rigorous course of study: the Court of Master Sommelier based in Torquay, England.  It seems that since the Brits don’t have a wine culture of their own, they have taken it upon themselves to maintain an encyclopedic knowledge of everybody else’s wines.  It didn’t take long for me to realize that I was in a different league.  

When you step out of your comfort zone, you learn a lot about yourself.  This experience ended up being a bit of a revelation for me.  My first epiphany was that I learned that I do not want to work as a restaurant sommelier.  I realized that they go to work at about the time that I start looking longingly at my pajamas and continue ‘til the wee hours of the morning.  I know that I would not be able to maintain that schedule for very long.  But, that does not imply that I don’t want to continue with my studies.  I am as determined as ever to continue with my studies and master this thing called wine, albeit hopefully by a different route.

  

People were curious as to why I was there.  One person told me I looked too scholarly to be in the “sommelier business”.  Perhaps they were just being kind and “scholarly” was their euphemism for “old”.  I did feel a little out of place, but enjoyed listening to these young people banter about their work, and it caused me to answer a really important question. Why am I doing what I am doing?  It wasn’t easy to answer that right off, and I think I’m still working my way through it.  In order to come up with an answer to that question I had to go back to how I got here.  

Seven years ago, I was a new vice-principal living in Halifax, Nova Scotia with 3 sons and a husband.  We had lived in Halifax for 10 years.  My husband had been in the military and we were used to moving, but it was nice to finally start putting down some roots.  For Christmas 2003 I bought my husband a book called “The Voyage of the Northern Magic:  A Family Odyssey”

This is the true story of a family from Ottawa, Canada with 3 boys about the same age as our boys were at the time, who sold their home, bought a sailboat, left their jobs behind and sailed around the world with their family for 4 years :  65,000 kilometers in 1,145 days.  The book chronicles all that they did to prepare for the voyage (they were not sailors), their reasons, and the details of the trip.  I longed for that sort of sustained time with my family.  Up until then, being together as a family seemed to come in small spurts of time, interrupted by phone calls, sports, lessons, school, work and friends.  Family vacations had allowed us a short period of time together floating in our bubble, undisturbed by our everyday routines.  To make a 7 year story short, we got what we wished for:  our adventure brought us to Japan at the foot of Mount Fuji for 2 years and then to Naples, Italy at the foot of Vesuvius.  We managed to give our family the adventure we were looking for, and then suddenly, our 3 sons were walking out the door seeking fortunes and adventures of their own.  You’ve heard this part of the story before:  our entire married life had revolved around our children and suddenly they were gone. 

Tired of feeling sad and lonely, my husband and I were not satisfied to let the adventure end and we decided to do something useful with the extra hours in the day that you find yourself with in an empty nest.  We had to find comfort in our lives. We had to find something other than the television at the end of the day.  We were not in crisis mode for long before we came up with a plan.  We spelled out how we wanted to live an active life, how we would do it, and what we were going to do to achieve it.  We were faced over and over with the thought of failure, of family and friends laughing at our “mid-life decisions”.  The decisions that we made have taken us in a direction that we would never have imagined 7 years ago.  We thought and we planned out how we wanted to live for the next part of our life.  We were faced with all kinds of fears, but we did exactly that, we faced them and we got busy.  My husband signed up for a certificate course in winemaking and viticulture with UC Davis, and I signed up to be a sommelier and we bought a vineyard, the unfolding of which is all chronicled right here on this blog.  So to answer the question “why”?  What started out as an escape has become a passion.  When you begin to learn something in part 2 of your life, you learn it with zeal.  I am prepared to master it one hour at a time even if it takes me 10,000 hours. 

I have, after 4 years of study become confident enough to say the following:  I am a grape grower and my grapes tell a story and I know how to read that story of weather and soil, of sun and rain.  I can foretell harvest dates.  I know how to winter prune, and green prune and I know why and when to do it.  I know about bugs.  I tend my vines and care for them with the attention that I afforded my children and my students.  I am a sommelier and I not only know what makes good wine, I am able to taste it and describe it to you using all of my senses.  I may have started out unsure, but I know what I know, and I know how to teach you what I know.  I know where I’m going and I know why:  because I want to.