«I mean»
Nonnas Sauce
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The lawyer Karl Tschopp from Stans investigates the secret ingredient of the Italian sauce and doesn’t want to let any tomato sauce out of the glass on his spaghetti.
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Karl Tschopp is a lawyer from Stans.
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No, I don’t want to describe a recipe here, that’s reserved for other writers and, above all, good cooks. Nevertheless, I keep wondering how one can make the apparently simplest sauce in the world so diverse and rarely absolutely digestible. Translated, sugo means nothing else than sauce. Still, sugo is not just a sauce as we know it. That’s what the Italian word salsa is for. So the name already shows that the sugo is actually something special, although the basic ingredient typically only consists of tomatoes.
When I look at the most varied of recipes, most of them come from Italian hands. There is talk of the best tomato sauce in the world from star chefs – and there of tomato sugo as soul food for decelerating in perfection. Everyone agrees that the best tomatoes come from Sicily. Score the skin of the tomatoes crosswise on the underside, pour hot water over them and peel off the skin, then chop it up. Garlic, fresh thyme and basil, sage, the best olive oil, sea salt and pepper are also required. Add everything in traditional or self-created amounts and, here it comes: let it simmer gently for up to seven hours. Can you smell the bewitching scent from Nunna’s kitchen?
Sad glasses in a row
How can you just buy the tomato sugo from the glass, bring it to the boil and serve it up. It couldn’t be more heartless. And now the test has just appeared in the latest K-Tipp about 16 different tomato sugo. In a row the glasses are sad and only two did well with a mediocre one. They were not only tested for their beguiling smell and taste, but especially for the presence of pesticides, mold toxins and bromide ions. You just lose your appetite with this list. What should I leave on my spaghetti now?
«I mean»: It’s about a lot more than just any tomato sauce on the spaghetti. Proper preparation takes time, a lot of time. A valuable asset that has become more important, especially during the pandemic. More time in the kitchen also means more time for personal encounters that we urgently need. Incidentally, the significance of the famous divorce proceedings of an Italian couple has now become clear to me: The two argued in court and could agree on everything, except the division of almost a hundred homemade tomato sugo in preserving jars. Viva Italia!
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