OT: Sauce or Gravy?

[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.

 

[RegisteredUconn]

Only place I ever heard "gravy" used was by some guys I worked with from Trenton. And they didn't simply call it "gravy" but "tomato gravy."

 

[Excalibur]

My grandfather used "sauce" and "gravy" interchangeably, but, as others have pointed out, only for the Sunday slow-cooked red sauce with tons of meat in it -- meatballs, sausage, pork, even lamb made its way into the pot. It's basically what you saw being cooked in prison in Goodfellas. And yes, there were too many onions in the sauce, mainly because it shouldn't have any f*$&ing onions at all . . .

I'll make a vat of it, feed 15 people, and then freeze the rest to use on weeknights when we don't have time to cook. It really is a 1-2 day process. A proper recipe is available upon request

Lastly, a ragu is not sauce, gravy, or anything close to it. Ragu refers to what most would call a Bolognese, which is a much more meat-heavy concoction using a beef-pork blend, generally cooked with wine, pancetta, shaved carrots, celery, onion, and just a bit of tomato puree. The Americanized version of this has waaay too much tomato in it.

Italian-Americans everywhere have disowned jleves for admitting to skimming the fat off of his sauce. Next he'll tell us that he doesn't brown the meatballs before putting them in the sauce.

 

[imno1]

If you ever had pappardelle and meatballs at Goodfellas you've probably heard of "Sunday gravy"

 

[Husky25]

My grandfather used "sauce" and "gravy" interchangeably, but, as others have pointed out, only for the Sunday slow-cooked red sauce with tons of meat in it -- meatballs, sausage, pork, even lamb made its way into the pot. It's basically what you saw being cooked in prison in Goodfellas.

And even they called it sauce.

"VINNY! Don't put too many onions in the sauce." - Big Pauly Cicero

 

[8893]

Ok, best Sunday Sauce in CT (I mean, other than that made and served at several of our houses, or at our grandparents' houses)?

Campania in Branford gets my vote. Their Macheroni alla Campania comes closest to "homemade" that I've had, and it has meatballs, sausage and braciole, all served over rigatoni.

 

[mauconnfan]

You want intelligent "gravy" discussions, well here ya go:

 

[huskymedic]

The other South Philly gravy: Crab

 

[David 76]

In our house, a mopine was not a dishtowel but smaller- some would call it a dishrag

But the colander was the scholla-pasta (Last "a" ignored). To other people it was a scholla-macharoni (same with the "i")
It was the thing for draining pasta or draining macaroni.

My Neapolitan family did not put onions in tomato sauce (Onions are for salads) I know lots of others do.

I like the puttanesca sauce at Lo Monaco's in Branford

 

[TXHuskyFan]

I have only heard it called Gravy once. I grew up in Milford. A good friend of mine through HS was half Italian (mother) and half Irish (father). Roughly 8th grade or so (so about 1983) I was eating dinner at his house and pasta was served. My friend looks at me and asks me to "please pass the gravy". I was like WTF, do you mean the spaghetti sauce?

I had never heard anyone call it gravy up to that day, and never have since. One of those crazy childhood memories that was brought back to like by a Boneyard thread.

 

[pnow15]

100% of my friends growing up were and are Italian, right down to the "made men" playing bacce in the driveway while we shot pool upstairs in the garage. Later I moved and lived in Westerly, RI, where the Italians still had prearranged marriages from the "old country." I dated a girl who was jilted by her boyfriend for this reason.
No Italian in my entire life has ever mention tomato sauce as gravy. Two of my Italian friends owned restaurants, one quite famous and the other made homemade tomato sauce fresh from his tomatoes from his garden and never used the word gravy.
Gravy to every Italian that I ever knew was a fringe benefit from another deal, like sleeping with a guy's sister who owed him money.

 

[Deepster]

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.

Oh, I made it. Everyone said it was the best sauce they've ever had and my Mom told me she ate the cold leftover sauce with a spoon out of the jar the next day. It's a labor of love though. Not a Rachel Ray 30 minute meal at all....but well worth the effort. Now I'm hungry...

 

[MexicoHusky]

I just saw a Ragu commercial on TV. I arrogantly thought to myself, Ragu is meat sauce. Thank You boneyard.