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The Eggplant and the Sauce
M
y father flipped the quarter with his thumb, and it flew up in an arc and landed flush against the baseboard underneath the red Formica table in our dining room in Queens. We were tossing coins for money, but according
By Joe Ortiz
to Mom–who stood a few steps away in the kitchen making dinner–it was just another bad habit Dad was teaching me. Dad was down in the squat made famous by peasants throughout the world, crouching flat-footed, his butt nearly touching the floor, having learned it in the jungles outside of San Juan where he’d grown up. He said it came in handy whether you were in the trees “doing your business” or squatting under some streetlamp in the Old Ciudad playing dice. “Do ya get the similarities, Joey?” He whispered so Mom couldn’t hear him: “That’s why they call it . . .” Dad stopped. He hunkered down to see if Mom was listening. But Mom was silent. And the moment we heard her chopping, mixing, frying, we knew we could play our game in peace. And say anything and get away with it. Dad taught me that too, but he didn’t always take his own advice. Like now. He pointed at his quarter and shouted.
“A winner, Joey! Only a leaner can beat me.” Just then, my sister Laura bolted through the front door, her fiery pigtails bounding around her freckled face, her dungarees rolled up to the calves. She circled around and taunted us, waving her hands over our coins. She threw off her Dodgers cap and leaned her sawedoff broomstick wrapped in black tape in the corner—a clear sign she hadn’t been at Glee Club, but down on the stoop playing stickball with a bunch of guys. Laura ran into the kitchen, kissed Mom on the cheek and went straight to the Victrola. But instead of spinning a Nat Cole or Judy Garland record, she turned on the radio and started flipping the dial in that aggravating thud-thud sound that drove us all crazy. “I’m warning you,” Dad said. “Shut it off and go wash ya hands fa dinner.” Laura disappeared into the bathroom.
Mom was in the kitchen, preparing her specialty, Eggplant Parmesan, and at the step that caused so much argument in our family — whether to use grated Parmesan cheese in beaten egg to coat the eggplant before you fried it. “That’s an old wives’ tale,” Mom would always say. She had learned the method from her mother who came from Basilicata, where you were taught to make do with less and keep it simple. Some recipes call for layering the eggplant with mozzarella but in Basilicata they leave it out. Cocina Povera, was what they called it. But it was poor only in ingredients, not in flavor. According to Mom, it was the way you coat the eggplant slices with salt, drained them in a colander to release the moisture, then fried the slices in a skillet of bubbling olive oil that gave it a crispy crust, with a rich, custard-like texture inside. “Eggplant and Sauce” page 23
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