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

OT: Sauce or Gravy?

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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.
 
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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.
 
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+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
 
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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Thanks for the correction. I just assumed it was from the capitol.
Would a marinara sauce be different from salsa? Now I'm hungry!
 
Gravy belongs on birds and spuds.

Pasta gets Ragu
 
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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.
 
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.
 
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?
 
David 76 said:
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?
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I'm not Italian but even I know that's a mopine.
 
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David 76 said:
All Right Super John! You must of had some Italian exposure
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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!
 
David 76 said:
All the I-As here: what did you call the thing you drained the pasta in? The cloth for wiping up around the sink?
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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.
 
k9fanatic said:
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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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.
 
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