![]() We keep on in the sweltering heat of the kitchen and, while I”m a sweaty mess, Rosa remains poised and pretty. ![]() Then we grill eggplant (“Don”t dip them in the oil, rub them with oil on your fingers”), stuff a head of steamed purple cauliflower with garlic shards, anchovies and pecorino cheese before baking it with breadcrumbs and olive oil (“This is how they do it in Sicily”) and sear wild salmon before braising the fillets in an Italian sweet and sour sauce using onions and balsamic vinegar. She shows me how to make the perfect summer salad: halved grape tomatoes, chunks of fresh mozzarella, diced red onions, fresh oregano, briny bits of olive, salted anchovies and a healthy drizzle of Italian olive oil. I think we”re done and begin to remove my sauce-stained apron. “I can cook a three-course meal in 20 minutes,” says Rosa, never boastful, just honest. We toss the sauce with the swordfish and pour over al dente pennette pasta (“Always undercook pasta because it has more fiber and fewer calories”). She approaches my pan, sticks her finger into the lavalike sauce and puts it in her mouth (“Taste everything, honey”). I tear leaves off a bunch of mint and toss them into the mix (“In Sicily they use mint with fish”) and a liberal dose of white wine (“There is no cooking without wine”), followed by a ladleful of Rosa”s marinara. (“Never six,” she says, “because of him,” pointing toward the floor. I remove the fish and add quartered grape tomatoes from the farmers market and exactly seven cloves of chopped garlic. I season the swordfish and sear the chunks in olive oil. As they eat, Rosa watches, almost urging them on, and it makes her proud and wistful - every time. For Rosa, cooking with love is simply cooking with care for the ingredients, for the process and for the final product that you set down in front of loved ones. The secret to great food is simplicity, she says, and paying attention to each step. To Rosa, a ripe tomato or a fresh loaf of bread are considered beautiful, and should be cherished and honored. ![]() For a while, a young Rosa Tarantino hid out with her family in area caves to escape harm. 7th Army”s invasion of Sicily, designed to beat back the Germans, her mother cooked for Gen. Growing up near Palermo, Sicily, in the 1940s, Rosa”s family often had little to eat. I begin by cutting swordfish into chunks, slicing eggplant, chopping onions and listening to her stories. “You look too thin,” she says, which is either a complete lie, a cause for a new optical prescription or a ploy to make me eat like there”s no tomorrow. I had just finished breakfast why not grape juice? It”s 11 a.m., yet she asks me to pour two glasses of wine, for no reason other than ritualism I suppose. I arrive with eagerness and an appetite - all she requires. What I got was an offer I couldn”t refuse - to cook at her side in the kitchen at Cibo Ristorante Italiano, the Monterey restaurant started by Rosa and her beloved late husband, Johnny, a few decades ago. I expected an entr?e recommendation, a trick to make eggplant palatable or, if I”m honest, a scribbled-down secret recipe I would be required (happily) to take to my grave. Not long ago I asked Rosa for ideas about what I should cook for my wife for her upcoming birthday. They have an unrestrained passion for food and its pleasures, and the knowledge they accumulate cannot be underestimated. I”ve always wanted to cook at the apron strings of an Italian nonna. “When I do something I do it with my whole heart, and it always turns out better,” says Rosa, a spirited, 81-year-old Sicilian-born beauty who sings in the kitchen, never measures, never compromises on quality, never overlooks a detail and never takes “I”m full” for an answer. What does it mean? Certainly preparing a meal for someone can be an expression of love, and someone can love to cook in much the same way they love to knit or love to sing.īut watching Rosa Catalano prepare a meal makes me believe in love as an actual ingredient, as much as pasta, olive oil or salted anchovies. MONTEREY > > I”ve always dismissed the expression “cooking with love” as trite and ambiguous in a Rachael Ray sort of way.
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