The shop is filled with oversized wine barrels and old fashioned wicker baskets; strange-looking sausage casings and sharp-bladed slicers; and all manner of equipment to make and bottle your own sauce. My husband chanced on this place on the dusty outskirts of suburbia a few weeks back. I’m out here to sus out the tomato situation. We're going to make passata.
This place would have once been rocking at this time of year as older Italians and Greeks stocked up on its wares to preserve their late summer produce. An elderly shopkeeper is chatting in Greek with a bloke at the front of the shop, but otherwise, the shop is empty. She gives me a cursory glance, doesn’t bother asking if I need help. I’m sure she's sized me up as a tourist to the art of mass home preserving. I’m about 30 years too young.
When the gent leaves, I approach her.
'How much are your sauce tomatoes out the front?' I ask in Greek.
She raises an eyebrow. Maybe she might make a sale after all.
'$22 a box.'
Too much, I think. I’m becoming my mother.
'Will you still have some in a few weeks?'
'I can’t promise. If we do, they’ll be more expensive. It hasn’t been a good season for tomatoes.'
I nod. I don’t believe her. She wants to offload several boxes right now. I’m not quite ready, haven’t yet mobilised the family to sit over the ruby red orbs for a whole day making sauce. And I can probably get them cheaper if I wait.
A few weeks later, a date is set, the family booked in to make sauce. It’s Friday, and the long weekend looms seductively ahead. I make my way to Oakleigh, where I know there are several greengrocers. I’m there by 8 in the morning. Apart from a few groups of old men playing cards and smoking, the cafes are quiet on the main drag. I turn into one of the smaller streets to try my regular greengrocer.
'I’m after sauce tomatoes. Do you have any?' I ask an older bloke who's making a tower of eggplants.
'We ran out early this morning. The phone has been ringing hot and I’ve stopped answering it. It’s a long weekend. Everyone wants them.' He shrugs. 'You could come back next week...'
'Oh. Will I find some anywhere else?'
'I don't think so but you could try down the road. But make sure they don’t sell you romas, which growers cut off the vine too early and are green in the middle. Useless. You want the rounder, small sauce tomatoes that are red all the way through. And make sure you run the skins two or three times through the press. That makes the thickest sauce...''
I don't dare tell him we process the tomatoes through a food processor that we bought at the school fete a few years back, and that it always splutters to a stop about halfway through the day. It's not exactly the most professional of methods.
‘’Do you make sauce?' I ask him.
'Nah. My Italian friends used to make it. But they’re all dead now.' He laughs. 'That’s what happens when you have grappa with coffee in the morning, wine with lunch, and beer and scotch with dinner.'
We talk some more, but in the end stories aren’t going to get me my tomatoes. I had better get a move on.
At the next greengrocer, I can’t see any on the shop floor. I ask the guy in charge if they have any out the back. He tells me there should be a shipment in an hour. $25 a box he says. Yes, they’re expensive. Don’t I know it’s been 50 degrees in Echuca and Shepparton this year, burning the vines? Horrible year for tomatoes. I tell him I might be back later. It's going to be a long morning.
I try greengrocer number three, where I paw through a box of overripe romas. They’re cheap, but rotten on the outside, and green on the inside. A middle-aged woman stands beside me, looking the way I feel. Forlorn.
'Mmm, they’re not very good…' I say.
'No.' She sighs. 'I should have done this a few weeks ago. I might try the place down the road…' We walk together, two strangers on a shared mission.
'I don’t know why I make passata. It's so much work. Every year, I threaten to stop, but my kids won’t let me. They love it, the ritual of it. As it happens, now they've got other things to do and it looks like I’m on my own with it…' I make sympathetic sounds.
When we get to our last resort greengrocer, it's the same story. No tomatoes. They ran out last week. I suggest we go back to the greengrocer who is expecting a delivery but we both know it’s not looking good. She says she might try Dandenong Market. I wonder if it's not too late to trek across town to Preston Market. As we walk, I take out my phone and we google an out of the way place she knows. It’s just a shed at the back of a house in an outer suburb I’ve never heard of. An Italian bloke. She can’t remember his name. He’s been selling tomatoes and wine grapes for decades. When we enter the scant details she knows, a boutique winery comes up but no Italian bloke in a shed. I hope he's not dead.
Back at greengrocer number two, we’re in luck. A shipment is being unloaded downstairs. A few sample boxes have been bought up. My fellow searcher thinks she’ll be able to find cheaper – she’s going to drive out to her Italian bloke. I’m not taking the risk. The shop owner assures me I'll be happy - he gives these very same tomatoes to his family. I pay at the till and am told to take my car down to a dark loading bay where men in high vis vests are doing secret fruit business. A beefy bloke loads my car with several boxes of tomatoes. I keep my distance. It feels like the set of The Sopranos, where dead bodies may well be kept in cold storage. When he’s done, I furtively snap a pic and send it to my husband with the heady words of success: Mission accomplished!
'
Images George Mifsud
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