OT: Sauce or Gravy? | Page 3 | The Boneyard

OT: Sauce or Gravy?

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huskiesouth said:
Agree with the Alfredo sauce - but IMHO the clam pizza at Frank Pepe's is one of the great meals available in the USA.
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Do you think the clam pizza holds up at the branches? I will be going to Fairfield Pepe's this week and want to try it.
 
My grandmother (whose father was born in southern Italy) grew up in Bridgeport in the 20s and was calling it gravy since way before I or the Sopranos existed. My dad will call it that occasionally, but usually just says "sauce".

Probably just a relic from a certain wave of Italian immigrants adopting an English word to describe their cooking.
 
My Nana is an 85 year old, 1st generation American citizen, and she is the only person I've ever met that calls it gravy.
 
zymurg said:
The terminology is pretty common among Italian Americans in the Northeast. It was more common a generation ago, and it was particularly used for special Sunday preparations where the sauce/gravy cooked for half a day or more. It is of course a Southern Italian tomato based sauce.
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Yeah. "Sunday gravy"... I heard that a lot growing up in Stamford and later in Boston. That was red sauce with the kitchen sink - meatballs (using the beef/pork/veal mix), sausage, short ribs - cooked all Sunday morning. I don't find that pretentious at all. Opening a jar of Ragu and calling that "gravy", that would be pretentious.

And yeah, alfredo sauce doesn't do much for me. But a good carbonara sauce... yum.
 
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walker11 said:
Do you think the clam pizza holds up at the branches? I will be going to Fairfield Pepe's this week and want to try it.
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Was there last December, night of the Columbia game, all was great including the clam pie - if they clams have the night you are dining.
But watch out for the trick curbs on the exits - I drove over them as we were exiting to head for the Webster Arena, everyone gets jostled, my four-year old grandson pipes up to his Uncle Adam "This is why we need to put on our seatbelts when Grandpa is driving", everyone thinks this is funny - except me.

I wrote both of them out of my Will before halftime.:)
 
Nothing to do with pretension, it's simply tradition. Like @storrsroars said - it's not just tomato sauce, it's the meatballs, sausage, pork, braciole all simmering away for hours on Sunday morning - that's Sunday Gravy. The house smells amazing. It all transforms to something greater than the sum of its parts. And then when it's ready, it's all about eating together as a family. If calling it gravy isn't your tradition... So what? Call it whatever you want.
 
UConnDad said:
A good puttanesca sauce is the best. Over some nice fresh pasta, preferably pappardelle!
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Unfortunately a lot of restaurants in CT have a fuzzy grasp on what should be in a true puttanesca. Went to a new place in Cheshire that had a chicken puttanesca as a special. It was NOT anywhere near a puttanesca. You cannot just toss a few Kalamata olives into a pasta and say it's puttanesca. You need capers and for God's sake you need anchovies.
 
Love puttanesca sauce, love the back story.
 
Are you a cavone? Sauce = you're an 'American'. Gravy = you're authentic Italian. Certainly Brooklyn Italian.
 
mauconnfan said:
I will say one thing since you started a topic kinda, I will not eat anything that should be chowed down with red sauce, with an alfredo or anything close. I am red sauce only - anyone else like that.

I will have "gravy" on occasion but would prefer my mashed and good roasts/pot roasts/spoon etc etc without it.

I'm a fussy alien ;)
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Have you tried a little on turkey? Or on rice (with beans/meat)?

Its the only time I use gravy.
 
JMick said:
The only Italian Americans I've met that call it gravy are the pretentious ones who still think they're true "italians" when they're now 5-6 generations removed from Italy. All my friends with FOB parents call it sauce.

"Gravy" in reference to tomato sauce is literally just a bad translation of the Italian word to English.
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Very true.

I grew up in an Italian American family (in a city with many Italian American families). The only people who use the term gravy are first generation (parents were born in Italy, kids born here) and it is due to pasta sauce being referred to as ragu in Italian and gravy was the closest English (American English) word to substitute.
 
Only people I've ever heard call it gravy were a couple Waterburyians I used to work with. 100% Italian they were. Also they called all types of pasta made from semolina, "macaroni". Cavatelli was pronounced "gava-rells".

My mother was born in Sicily, I've never once heard her call it gravy, nor anyone from that half of my family. Always sauce.

Alfredo sauce is narsty. Carbonara is delicious. Puttanesca done right is also delicious.

For us it was always Nonna, but pronounced more like new-nah.

Also, why wasn't this a poll?
 
David 76 said:
Nonni?
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Nana is an name for grandmother in English speaking countries .
In Italian the actual word for grandmother is Nonna slang would be Nonni or Nonnie
The I in Italian is usually the plural form but in this case I believe it's a slang term of endearment sort of like Mommy or Daddy. Italian having no letter Y the I would be used and has the long e sound.
grandfather is nonno. Interestingly the masculine form disappeared more quickly in this country. Probably because first generation women tended to hold on to there native language longer than their male counterparts
The man had to go out into an English speaking world but when he came home it was more typical of the culture they left behind.
In northern Italy sir names are usually written in the plural form
To indicate your a member of a family or house.
The letter I would indicate plural. ( yes cannoli is plural.)
The south vowel ending a or o depends on the word's gender.
A is feminine O is masculine.
To the original point gravy has no Italian basis but was adopted by large segments of the first generation Italian American community. One of those interesting adaptive phenomena. It's usage is geographically fairly widely distributed. Yet completly unknown in some Italian communities.
I believe it's mostly used by immigrants from the southern regions.
Sauce is more of a direct translation from the Italian Salsa
 
My mother and father are Nonna and Papa to their 6 (soon to be 7) grandchildren. My grandparents are Mima and Clinch, but that is a story for a different day.
 
Kitaman said:
Have you tried a little on turkey? Or on rice (with beans/meat)?

Its the only time I use gravy.
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If the turkey is dry I will if not I prefer to just eat the turkey as is, although it's not awful to have gravy on Thanksgiving. Also at Cracker-Barrell for lunch I ill have the occasional Open Faced RB and it's pretty good with the gravy, mashed and corn. ;)
 
huskymedic said:
Doosi pots - only in Bensonhurst!

SUNDAY GRAVY
In Italian-American communities, eating a red sauce—or "gravy"—loaded with various kinds of meats and sausage is a beloved Sunday tradition. The recipe derives from Neapolitan ragù, but you won't find Sunday gravy in Naples. Or anything with the word "gravy" in it, for that matter.

;)
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Yes. My wife's Bronx Italian family explained to me once that gravy is a red sauce with meat cooked in it. Sauces, e.g. Marinara, have no meat. That would make Bolognese a gravy, I believe.
 
+It is gavone not covone. Italian Americans bastardized the language pretty badly. We grew up dropping the end vowel from lasagna, mozzarella, ricotta, etc. One reason we maule Italian was length of time away from the mother country. The other was our grandparents came before the language was unified in Italy. Italy became a country in the 1861 and our grandparents left around the turn of the century. The provinces had a long history of independence and they were slow to adopt the Roman dialect.
 
As a first-generation Italian-American, may I pitch in?

As an "authentic" Italian, I have never heard sauce referred to as gravy except by folks from Jersey of a certain age. So it might very well be a Jersey/NY regional thing.

As for the sauce itself: there's three basic kinds of red sauce (and a whole bunch of variations):

Salsa is fresh tomatoes, basil, etc. No meat, all fresh ingredients -- sometimes referred to as summer sauce. Tomatoes usually came straight from the garden, cooked in large batches and then canned for the winter season.

Ragu is sauce made with ground beef. This is the type of sauce used in a Southerns risotto (nothing like northern) and as filling in arancini. It may or may not contain peas.

Then there's what some folks here are referring to as "Sunday gravy" which is what is called (at least in the South of Italy) sugo. Sugo is made with meat (short ribs, meatballs, etc.) and takes a fair amount of time to cook.

Nonna = grandmother. Nonno = grandfather. Nonni = grandparents. Have never heard anyone refer to their grandmother as nonni, although even within regions of Italy, there's a ton of dialects. Sicily alone must have at least 100.

Also, David76, the official/proper Italian language is based on the Florentine dialect, not Roman. We have Dante to thank for that.
 
k9fanatic said:
As a first-generation Italian-American, may I pitch in?

As an "authentic" Italian, I have never heard sauce referred to as gravy except by folks from Jersey of a certain age. So it might very well be a Jersey/NY regional thing.

As for the sauce itself: there's three basic kinds of red sauce (and a whole bunch of variations):

Salsa is fresh tomatoes, basil, etc. No meat, all fresh ingredients -- sometimes referred to as summer sauce. Tomatoes usually came straight from the garden, cooked in large batches and then canned for the winter season.

Ragu is sauce made with ground beef. This is the type of sauce used in a Southerns risotto (nothing like northern) and as filling in arancini. It may or may not contain peas.

Then there's what some folks here are referring to as "Sunday gravy" which is what is called (at least in the South of Italy) sugo. Sugo is made with meat (short ribs, meatballs, etc.) and takes a fair amount of time to cook.

Nonna = grandmother. Nonno = grandfather. Nonni = grandparents. Have never heard anyone refer to their grandmother as nonni, although even within regions of Italy, there's a ton of dialects. Sicily alone must have at least 100.

Also, David76, the official/proper Italian language is based on the Florentine dialect, not Roman. We have Dante to thank for that.
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Proper representation of Italian Americans
 
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