Eggplant? I had never even heard of it.
A few years later, I moved into a third floor apartment on Dorchester Avenue in Silver Lake. I might have been the only non-Italian on the street. Every Sunday, I'd wake up to the wonderful aroma of my downstairs neighbor simmering gravy -- and by gravy, of course I mean tomato sauce, Italian style, with some veal and beef and a lot of garlic, maybe canned San Marzano tomatoes from the garden. If I was lucky, I'd get a handout of leftover eggplant, meatballs and gravy or beef braciole. I learned to cook a bit so I could duplicate my neighbor's meals. I learned that you only buy Land of Lakes American cheese sliced as thin as paper, at the local meat store. Pasta must be al dente. How would I know? Everything I ate at home was cooked until it nearly dissolved.
This was a time when the produce man and fish man would still come around every week. You would hear them shouting out as they came down the street, usually on a fairly predictable schedule, with their push cart or battered truck and the housewives would go out and purchase the wares. Old school.
Of course I ate out too. My favorite restaurant was The Original Marcello's on Cranston Street, in Cranston near the Providence line. The interior was '70's Italian decor -- red, white and black and cave-like. There was also another sister restaurant in Knightsville, right up the street, that was more of a diner. The restaurant served up the absolute best stuffed peppers ever made. To this day, I still am trying to duplicate them; the restaurant is long gone, as I recall, it burned down. I had better luck finally recreating the pasta fagiole that the Marcello's diner offered. After about twenty years of failed attempts, the Providence Journal posted a pasta fagiole recipe and the minute I read it, I was pretty sure that was the right one and it was.
