Pizza, Love, and Other Stuff That Made Me Famous by Kathryn Williams

I don’t remember this, of course-I was four. The year after they opened the restaurant, my mother died of a sudden and unexplained brain aneurysm while folding clothes on an otherwise ordinary day in the northern Virginia suburb where we live. My grandmother is Italian, from Orvieto, and my grandfather is Greek, from Thíra. The name was a nod to my father’s Greek-Italian heritage.

My family opened Taverna Ristorante in the Georgetown neighborhood of Washington, DC, when I was three. Mi vida es totalmente aburrida.” I loved the word for “bored” in Spanish because it sounded like “a burrito.” “How are you this evening, chiquita? ¿Qué pasa?” Quickly, I sidestepped a potentially disastrous encounter with a sheet pan of steaming moussaka. “Hot pan, comin’ through!” someone yelled. Only when I swung through the double doors into the brightly lit, bustling kitchen could I remember why I actually loved working at the restaurant. I knew he could hear me in the office upstairs. “Dad!” I shouted at the water-stained ceiling festooned with fake grapevines. Eighty red linen eggrolls sat stacked in two neat pyramids on the white tablecloth in front of me. I also wanted to get where I really belonged-in the kitchen. My rush was only partially motivated by boredom. I raced through it-napkin, fork, knife, spoon … roll … napkin, fork, knife, spoon … roll-the rhythm so deeply ingrained I could do it with my eyes closed. It was Saturday night, and I was doing what I’d done every Saturday night since I was ten: rolling silverware in the empty dining room of my family’s restaurant (Taverna Ristorante, est. I realize framing a recipe for tomato sauce sounds strange, but it’s a reminder, not just of my mother but that every cook has to start somewhere. It’s stained with oil splatters, and one corner’s ripped. The recipe is written on an unlined index card. I have it displayed in a five-by-seven, plastic craft store frame on the desk in my room, the desk where I’m supposed to do homework but can’t because it’s covered in books and dirty clothes. I never knew my mother, but I know this recipe by heart. He likes to add oregano and basil and more garlic-always more garlic. My father says this tomato sauce was the first thing my mother mastered in the kitchen. Dash in some salt and pepper, and there you have it.

You crush the tomatoes with your hands and stew them over low heat in their own juices with garlic, onions, and a bay leaf that have been sautéed in extra-virgin olive oil. Then you pull back the skins, just like peeling a banana. You dunk them in boiling water, just for a second-maybe ten-and run them under cold water. To peel them, you use a sharp knife to cut a tiny X in the skin at one end. My mother’s recipe for tomato sauce starts with ripe plum tomatoes.

Pizza, Love, and Other Stuff That Made Me Famous by Kathryn Williams