Sicilian-Style Spaghetti with Tomato and Meat Sauce and Bullet Tomatoes

When mingling with people from various countries, food and drink inevitably get mixed in.

And when food and drink get mixed in, life stories inevitably come along with them.

In Sicily, the pressing of tomato paste must be done only by the soft feet of a "certified virgin"

To my feminist ears, this sounds like nothing but the wishful demands and nonsense of a bunch of chauvinist men (though the local culture still deserves respect)

What is clever is that it was because of this experience that I began to pay attention to the original flavors of food,

and because I began to explore the original flavors of food, I began to learn the stories behind the food,

[The Laundry Girl of Sicily]

One evening, a mysterious man brought a coat to the local laundry and asked for it to be dry-cleaned,

The shop was being watched by a local girl working a part-time shift, obedient and quiet, steady in her work, and well regarded by the neighbors.

The silent man did not make many demands; he merely asked for dry cleaning in a faint tone and generously paid a deposit in advance,

Although the girl found him a little mysterious, because it was a simple and easy piece of good business, she took the order without suspicion, and following the shop's procedure, told the customer he could come pick up the coat the next evening

After the customer left, as the girl was preparing for the dry cleaning, she found a slip of paper with a short string of numbers written on it in a hidden pocket inside the coat.

The girl thought to herself: luckily the boss always instructs us to check for customers before every wash; some customers are especially careless, otherwise this slip of paper would have been ruined in the wash.

She carefully put the slip of paper away and began the dry-cleaning work.

The next evening, the customer came to pick up the coat as agreed, and the careful girl handed over the dry-cleaned coat that looked as good as new, and considerately told him she had found the slip of paper, returning it to him on the spot.

The customer asked whether anyone else knew about the slip of paper. The girl said no, she was the only one who had handled it.

A little later, without any warning, a small sound came from the laundry, and the neighbors, as if by unspoken agreement, reached out trembling hands to quietly close their windows

A crying infant was held by the mouth by its parents and carried away from the window

From behind the door of the narrow laundry, blood as vivid as tomatoes gradually seeped out

A mysterious man picked up the coat and hurried away

The whole street suddenly fell silent, until late into the night.