OT: Sauce or Gravy?

[David 76]

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.

Thanks for the correction. I just assumed it was from the capitol.
Would a marinara sauce be different from salsa? Now I'm hungry!

 

[Dove]

Gravy belongs on birds and spuds.

Pasta gets Ragu

 

[k9fanatic]

Marinara would be a type of salsa. I'm actually making some salsa as we speak.

 

[Devland]

I'm the guy who orders a steak if we go to an Italian restaurant . If we are choosing a place to eat, Italian is behind Mediterranean, Spanish, Seafood, Mexican, Chinese, Japanese, Korean barbecue and French. I am not a big pasta fan.

 

[David 76]

I'm the guy who orders a steak if we go to an Italian restaurant . If we are choosing a place to eat, Italian is behind Mediterranean, Spanish, Seafood, Mexican, Chinese, Japanese, Korean barbecue and French. I am not a big pasta fan.

Thanks for sharing.

PS There is a lot more to Italian food than pasta.

 

[Hoophound]

Gravy and macaroni are basic Italian American terms. I had relatives in both NY and RI that used the two terms exclusively. My mother, grandmother and great grandmother all said it. My great grandmother was an actual immigrant.

 

[David 76]

Macaroni is real for me. It meant every type of pasta that is not a noodle/ spaghetti. Elbow macaroni. Ziti, penne, rigatoni, rotelle. shells Even the not Italian Macaroni and cheese. But gravy is kinda regional.

To me it isn't that hard to understand that people moved here and looked for an English word to describe their salsa. Most chose sauce. Some chose gravy. Both words existed here before the food arrived. I doubt it was like either was wrong.

All the I-As here: what did you call the thing you drained the pasta in? The cloth for wiping up around the sink?

 

[superjohn]

Macaroni is real for me. It meant every type of pasta that is not a noodle/ spaghetti. Elbow macaroni. Ziti, penne, rigatoni, rotelle. shells Even the not Italian Macaroni and cheese. But gravy is kinda regional.

To me it isn't that hard to understand that people moved here and looked for an English word to describe their salsa. Most chose sauce. Some chose gravy. Both words existed here before the food arrived. I doubt it was like either was wrong.

All the I-As here: what did you call the thing you drained the pasta in? The cloth for wiping up around the sink?

I'm not Italian but even I know that's a mopine.

 

[David 76]

All Right Super John! You must of had some Italian exposure

 

[huskymedic]

All the I-As here: what did you call the thing you drained the pasta in?

Always dumped the roni's in the scolobast!

 

[superjohn]

All Right Super John! You must of had some Italian exposure

For sure, my best friends growing up were Italian and we're still best friends to this day. Many family meals with them over the years and they would often tuck a mopine into the neck of my shirt so I wouldn't get any sauce on my shirt. I love Italian food and culture, family is everything!

 

[MexicoHusky]

So a mopine is a light towel? News to me.

 

[jleves]

All the I-As here: what did you call the thing you drained the pasta in? The cloth for wiping up around the sink?

We called the drainy thing a strainer - never a colander. We never had a dish towel on the counter but that's what we would have called it. Mom thought they were dirty and she was right. We had a roll of paper towels for drying hands and wiping up.

 

[FfldCntyFan]

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

Actually we have Marshall to thank for that. The Marshall Plan including establishing a standard language for each European country within the plan and Florentine was chosen for Italy. This led to considerable anger in many places as families (in some cases receiving an education for the first time) had children being taught a different version of a language they had been speaking for generations.

 

[B1GEast]

I love pasta Genovese, but you rarely see it on a menu

 

[Dove]

I grew up on buttered elbow macaroni. Best strained through a plastic collander.

 

[superjohn]

I grew up on buttered elbow macaroni. Best strained through a plastic collander.

That's because your parents hated you.

 

[jleves]

I have a pretty amazing ragu/gravy recipe (whatever it would be called here) that was passed down from my Dad's Grandmother that I make about once a year that takes two days. Day one is lots of tomatoes and spices simmered with pork and beef meatballs, italian sausage, and beef and pork ribs. Day two is scraping a bunch of the fat off and resimmering the sauce and getting it hot enough to put on pasta - which was almost always ziti. I've given the recipe to @KembaSlice and @Deepster. Kemba told me he GF expected such great things all the time; Deepster never got around to making it or letting me know he made it.

If anyone wants the recipe, let me know.

Now I am infatuated with finding the best and most original recipe for pasta Genovese. I am going to make that. Thanks @B1GEast for that.

 

[AZHuskiePop]

G

+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.

The old dialect from the Marche region typically cuts off the vowel endings.Thats how it was spoken in places like Fano or Ancona.
Their were a few locations in CT with populations from this area.
New Haven, Bridgeport ,Waterbury ,and Derby had large populations . The AM club in Derby is a remnant. Do they still have Porchetti nights.?
I will be in Ct for the next couple of weeks I would like to take my grandsons.
My hobby is geneology ,of specific interest is the great migration. 1890-1923
You are correct many immigrants might say their race was Italian but their country of origin would frequently be their region
There was never much love between regions and in many respects their union under the house of Savoy was forced on them.

When you mix eggs with flower you get pasta , you can then form that pasta into identifiable shapes , collectively all those shapes are called macaroni or Macharoni
( to get the k sound in Italian requires a ch.)
Individually each shape has at least one name ,sometimes many.
The strainer we always called a Scolla-macaron

 

[ctchamps]

G
There was never much love between regions (conferences/teams) and in many respects their union under the house of Savoy (conferences/NCAA) was forced on them.

 

[zymurg]

In general, less is truly more, but in some cases more is really more. So abundanza! Rao's has a well deserved reputation as the classic red sauce restaurant in NYC. In the second of the Rao's cookbooks "Recipes From the Neighborhood" in the foreward written by Mimi Sheraton,
former NY times restaurant critic, this passage appears: "This goes a long way toward explaining the Southern Italian proficiency with subtle.
soul-warming sauces based on poultry, meat and innards, like so many of the regulars on Rao's menu-papardelle with hot sausage sauce, pasta with Sunday gravy, veal sauce for gnocchi or risotto."

A basic tomato sauce like a marinara isn't a gravy. In this particular cookbook, the only sauce termed "gravy" is the Sunday gravy, Ragu della
Domenica." That recipe is found on page 87. For those interested other Italian American Cookbooks featuring traditional southern Italian fare are: "We Called it Macaroni: by Nancy Barr and "Carbone's Cookbook" in the Roadfood Cookbook series of Jane and Michael Stern.
Yes, it is that Carbone's; IMO simply the best collection of Italian veal recipes that is available. Nancy Barr grew up in an Italian family in Providence. Her book is full of family recipes. That hardly exhausts the literature, but these are a good starting place.

Back to Rao's; the preface is written by Danny Aiello, yes that Danny Aiello. That leads me to two movie recommendations "Big Night" and
"Dinner Rush." The first deals with two immigrant Italian brothers trying to establish a restaurant in the '50's. They invite Louis Prima
to dine, and the most extravagant over the top menu is prepared. Naturally he doesn't show. Stanley Tucci is one of the stars; he is a well known foodie. Really good movie, even better if you like food. The second stars Danny Aiello who is a bookie and restaurant owner. His son
is a master chef of nouvelle Italian cuisine, but Danny has the sous chef go out and buy sausage specially for him so he can have traditional
sausage and peppers (page 138 in "Recipes from the Neighborhood"). This is another good movie even without the pretentious food.

 

[8893]

I can't believe you people started a food thread--and an Italian one at that--while I was away.

My maternal grandparents, like most Italian-Americans here I presume, were from the Naples area. My grandmother was the only one of them alive by the time I was born. She died when I was eight, but I could still pick the smell of her Sunday sauce out of a lineup. We always called it sauce; I've heard others call it gravy--but only the Sunday sauce, i.e., not the other types/styles of sauce.

I made fresh sauce solely from tomatoes (and herbs) I grew for the first time just a few weeks ago. Very labor-intensive, and very rewarding. Loved it so much that I made three times as much a week later with the end of my tomato harvest.

As for Italian cookbooks, we use a variety of them for various recipes, but far and away my favorite, and the one I consider to be most essential, is Marcella Hazan's "Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking."

Any Bridgeport-area folks grow up eating "scamozza" pie?

 

[zymurg]

I can't believe you people started a food thread--and an Italian one at that--while I was away.

My maternal grandparents, like most Italian-Americans here I presume, were from the Naples area. My grandmother was the only one of them alive by the time I was born. She died when I was eight, but I could still pick the smell of her Sunday sauce out of a lineup. We always called it sauce; I've heard others call it gravy--but only the Sunday sauce, i.e., not the other types/styles of sauce.

I made fresh sauce solely from tomatoes (and herbs) I grew for the first time just a few weeks ago. Very labor-intensive, and very rewarding. Loved it so much that I made three times as much a week later with the end of my tomato harvest.

As for Italian cookbooks, we use a variety of them for various recipes, but far and away my favorite, and the one I consider to be most essential, is Marcella Hazan's "Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking."

Any Bridgeport-area folks grow up eating "scamozza" pie?

Marcella Hazan was born in Emilia Romanga, and was a college graduate, Ferrara I believe. She didn't know how to cook until after her
marriage and move to the US. She disdained Italian American Cocina. Don't get me wrong, she was a great cookbook writer, but she had no interest in our subject. If we are talking about classic Italian cooking; then other names come into play. I really like Anna Del Conte, since
she is UK based, she is not as well known in this country. Her "Gastronomy of Italy" travels the regions of Italy introducing you to favorites of all the regions. Her "Classic Food of Northern Italy" is just that. My point being that as much as I like and respect her and Hazan, I wouldn't use them as references for Italian American cooking. Traditional Italian cookbooks ignore this cocina.

 

[8893]

Marcella Hazan was born in Emilia Romanga, and was a college graduate, Ferrara I believe. She didn't know how to cook until after her
marriage and move to the US. She disdained Italian American Cocina. Don't get me wrong, she was a great cookbook writer, but she had no interest in our subject. If we are talking about classic Italian cooking; then other names come into play. I really like Anna Del Conte, since
she is UK based, she is not as well known in this country. Her "Gastronomy of Italy" travels the regions of Italy introducing you to favorites of all the regions. Her "Classic Food of Northern Italy" is just that. My point being that as much as I like and respect her and Hazan, I wouldn't use them as references for Italian American cooking. Traditional Italian cookbooks ignore this cocina.

Yes, I am aware of her background and I agree. I don't use her cookbook or any other for red sauce. I just make it from the knowledge of having made it myself for around 35 years now. I make sauce similar to the way I make cocktails: I follow a few basic principles learned from decades of experience doing it, and I use what I have on hand.

But I do use her cookbook for scores of other, "non red sauce" Italian dishes.

I use Lidia Bastianich's "Lidia's Italian-American Kitchen" the most recently for more Italian-American recipes; iirc hers is the one I've been using for the base of my braciole recipe because it is most similar to the one I grew up eating. But I make my own variation.

 

[UC313]

Only place I ever heard it called gravy was in Jersey by my irish grandmother. FWIW, she made a hell of a gravy for an irish woman. And always Rigatoni.