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With
a few simple ingredients, including plum tomatoes, basil and tender-loving-care,
Easton homemaker Eleanora Scarpetta can bring a taste of traditional Italy
straight to a jar in her kitchen. "When I can my tomatoes and puree for the year, I use over 300 jars," she said. "I buy about 45 boxes of tomatoes, which are about 25 pounds each." Comfortable with processing and canning more than 1,000 pounds of tomatoes, Scarpetta eventually decided to take her show on the road. "I wrote a letter to Martha Stewart," she said. "My neighbor told me I should write, and I had heard that Stewart takes an interest in her neighbors." Stewart took Scarpetta up on her offer to reveal her canning secrets and cooking skills. "One day after I sent the letter I got a phone call [from Stewart's studio]," Scarpetta said. "They wanted to come see me. I couldn't believe it. I was so calm on the phone, and then got excited when I told my husband." After the call, Scarpetta's life became a two-week series of excursions with Stewart's crew, during which she cooked, shopped and was filmed in preparation for a segment on Stewart's television show, "Martha Stewart Living," to air Sept. 8 at 9 a.m. on Channel 2. "September 8, I remember repeating, I couldn't believe that date," Scarpetta said. "September 8 is my anniversary. I got engaged and married on that date too." First, Scarpetta was visited by one of Stewart's employees, who she thinks was sent to verify that she really could cook. "The woman came over and I made her some chicken cacciatore," Scarpetta said. "The lady was really impressed. She had a second helping and almost ate the whole dish I made." Scarpetta said cacciatore means the hunter's or hunted recipe. Whatever hunters caught for the day, they would cook hunter style, with any other materials they had on hand. Usually they cooked their catch with tomatoes, she said. Once her cooking credentials were established, the crew wanted to take Scarpetta shopping to see where whe bought all her ingredients. "I grew up in the Bronx, Little Italy, so I took them shopping on Arthur Avenue where I knew all the vendors," Scarpetta said. On another day, the crew filmed Scarpetta while she went through the long process of preparing the canned tomatoes in her basement. "I was the most nervous about that part, because they told me to just talk through it," she said. "I was even more nervous than in Stewart's Wesport studio." However, Scarpetta was not daunted by discussing cooking on the air with Stewart. "I'm totally confident about my cooking, so we filmed the whole thing at once, without any reruns." she said. But having the crew in her personal cooking area made her tongue-tied, Scarpetta said. In Scarpetta's garage, she has several 20-gallon aluminum pots in which she nestled the glass jars, tightly placed so they do not crack while boiling. With a propane tank, she fired a burner and let the pots boil, securing the lids with 30-pound lead weights. The film crew than asked her to talk through her procedure in which she chose the tomatoes she would preserve sliced, and which she would make into puree. The sliced tomatoes cannot have any flaws, she said, and must be a beautiful red. "You've got to take tomatoes seriously," she said. "One bad tomato can ruin the whole sauce. Sometimes it looks beautiful, but you slice it and it's rotten to the core." When the time finally came to visit Stewart's studio, Scarpetta was driven to Westport in a limousine. She acknowledged having been a bit nervous to meet a celebrity. "But when she came into the studio, it was like an angel came into the room," said Scarpetta of Stewart. "When I met Stewart, I felt right at home. She was so soft-spoken that fear left my body." Scarpetta and Stewart prepared Scarpetta's recipes during a filming that took several hours. "The experience was a treasure to me," Scarpetta said. "I must have been one of the lucky ones." She said she learned her canning techniques from her mother and a neighbor in the apartment house where she lived after moving with her mother from Naples when she was 3. Scarpetta said that when she cooks, she prefers using the oregano that grows in her native town of Cervinarana, in the province of Avellino. Opening up a tin of ground, dried oregano brought over from her hometown, she said "Ah, this smells like Italy." Scarpetta said she uses an old, traditional canning method passed down through her family, which she adapted to suit her tastes. "And, it's a good thing," she said, echoing one of Stewart's most famous lines. © 2000 Eleanora's Kitchen. All Rights Reserved. |
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