If you are a kid growing up in an Italian family, you will recall many memories of your mother making red sauce. Red sauce is that quintessential Italian-American food staple that many associate with Italian families. Call it what you want: spaghetti sauce, marinara, gravy, or (my Dad's personal favorite) "the juice." In all its varieties, and by any other name, a good sauce is what makes an Italian an
Italian.
My family is Italian on both sides, stretching all the way back to the Old Country itself. We are a mix of Southern and Northern Italians and Sicilians -- and don't get that twisted. A Sicilian is not an Italian, as much as Long John Silver's doesn't serve real fish n' chips. These are completely separate entities, people. My parents come from Utica, New York. Go there today, and you'll find yourself thinking about how a place could become so dumpy-looking. It wasn't like that when my parents lived there -- sadly, if you go around downtown you can still see the boarded-up and abandoned places from their memories. The city is a shell of what is often described in my parents' stories. Utica is an extremely unique city in upstate NY. It was the location in which many Italian immigrants chose to settle between 1880 and 1920. Many of these immigrants found work in the local mills and industrial yards. My grandparents found such work as children; my grandmother worked in a textile mill and my grandfather worked in a foundry pouring hot lead. They lived their entire lives in Utica, knowing only their little Italian-American community and my parents spent most of their lives there, as well.
Now, I wouldn't call myself Italian-American.. or American-Italian. I'm not into this chest thumping "I am a guido, hear me roar!" bullshit that's been spreading like herpes thanks to
The Sopranos and
the Jersey Shore. I will not get a bee in my poof over you not recognizing my red sauce roots. But, my Italian heritage is a large part of my identity and it does mean a lot to me. Being Italian has shaped me into the woman I am today, and the proof is in my spaghetti sauce.
I remember when I was little. I was a very picky eater as a kid. Certain textures could induce nausea, and there were a number of vegetables and meats that were completely off limits for me. Shockingly enough, I even went through a period of sauce-hating, demanding that my mother serve me plain pasta with butter and parsley instead of her homemade red sauce. It was too "chunky" (whole piece of tomatoes) and too runny (she never had a chance to cook it for hours, like my grandmother). Eventually, I couldn't stand the taste of tomatoes at all and shunned most forms of it-- just don't tell me that my pizza has sauce on it, because it is useless to argue with a child with a Guinea stubborn streak.
Once I got over my 2 years of "saucelessness," my favorite thing to do when I was a kid was "taste test" the sauce. My mom would make it in a big silver pot (she gave me these pots and pans when she upgraded to Calphalon cookwear -- how fancy), and I would need to stand on a stool to peer into it. Armed with a piece of soft Italian bread, I would carefully dip into the sauce and, after much blowing, would shove the hot piece of bread greedily into my mouth. Nothing, I repeat, NOTHING tastes better than your "taste test" bread soaked in well-cooked homemade sauce. I would find excuses to "test" the sauce over and over until it was time to eat. My mother always turned a blind eye to this pre-dinner snacking. I also had the pleasure of helping stir the sauce while she was preparing the rest of the meal. I would strap on my red apron (it was my mother's, but I loved to wear it and pretend to be her), stand on my stool, and stir the sauce CLOCKWISE with a big wooden spoon. Clockwise because, as my mother told me, the sauce will not cook or boil if stirred counterclockwise -- gotta love that old Italian santeria. Even as an adult now, I can't bring myself to cook sauce any other way. It has to be in a heavy bottomed old pot (I'm using my new Le Creuset today, which is making me super nervous), I need to use a wooden spoon, and I often catch myself wanting to taste the sauce with a piece of bread (which is why I try not to buy Italian bread to save the calories).
We often had some form of meat accompany our spaghetti and sauce for dinner most nights. Sometimes it was sausages (I hated these right up to my early 20s), bracciole (rolled-up stuffed steak braised in sauce), or meatballs. Can you guess what my favorite thing was? Bracciole is AWESOME, but meatballs? ...I'm going to need a minute here. Meatballs have been my favorite thing since forever, and I am extremely picky about how I like them. My mother, who learned from my grandmother on my father's side, always cooks her meatballs in a pan to brown them and then throws half in the sauce and half in the oven. The kids in our family never liked sauce-covered meatballs, preferring the "dry" meatballs so that we could make sandwiches of ketchup and meatball between two thick slices of Italian bread. I'm pretty sure the ketchup gave my grandparents the heebie jeebies. :) My great uncle Freddy, my dad's uncle, loved to remind me of when I was a toddler and how I told him of my mother's "black" meatballs. Black because she cooked them at high temps in a skillet until they turned dark, but they would lighten a bit in the oven. Every time I ever saw Uncle Freddy, he would jokingly remind me of how I embarrassed my mother over her black meatballs. These food memories run deep, huh? As an adult, I still make my meatballs the same way my mother and my grandmothers have always made them. I mix them by hand, never measuring the ingredients. I cook them in a skillet, and finish the meatballs in the oven. And sometimes, I still make meatball and ketchup sandwiches for breakfast the next day.
Tonight I'm making spaghetti and meatballs with my homemade sauce, for what seems like the 100th time (probably more like the 5th or 6th time) since I've been dating Andy. The man cannot get enough of this stuff, apparently. And he's not the only one: his son, Anthony, can't seem to get enough of my Italian cooking either. Thank goodness for small blessings, because it seems like these days Ant hardly wants to eat any real food at all; when I make spaghetti and meatballs, we can be assured he will actually eat his dinner all the while rubbing his little belly and exclaiming "Mmm! Mmm! I like you Liz!" So it's true: the quickest way to a man's heart is through his stomach.
Red sauce recipe
Ingredients:*
- 2 cans crushed or whole tomatoes (San Marzano tomatoes FROM Italy are great, as is Tuttorosso. Get the kind with basil already in it.)
- tomato paste (I use the kind in the tube)
- dry red wine (Merlot or Cabernet Sauvignon)
- 4-6 cloves minced garlic (Use the fresh kind -- trust me)
- ~1/4 C chopped onion
- 3 bay leaves
- Oregano (dry or fresh)
- Flat-leaf Italian parsley (Not the curly kind; I grab a handful, pull out the stem and chop roughly)
- Basil (Fresh or buy the kind that comes in a tube)
- Crushed red pepper (Optional, to taste)
- Black pepper & salt to taste
- Olive oil
- Time.. lots and lots of time. (Not to be confused with thyme.)
*I don't measure anything when I cook, unless I'm using a recipe.. which is rare. Most of what I do is by eye, so it's hard to tell you exactly how much of anything to use. Your best best is to err on the side of caution, and re-season towards the end of cooking to adjust the flavor.
Begin by placing a good sized heavy-bottom pot on the stove top. That wasn't so hard, was it? Next, put some olive oil on the bottom of the pot -- about 2 good turns around the pan. Turn up the heat to medium, and start mincing and chopping away until the oil is hot enough. To test the temp, drop a single piece of chopped onion in and check for the sizzle. If the temp is right, dump in all your onion and move around with a wooden spoon until the onion is soft. Next, throw in your garlic and move it around the pan as well. Be careful not to let the garlic turn brown or else the sauce is SHOT and you'll have to start all over again. If you're smelling garlic, it's getting near done so move quickly to the next step.
Pour in a cup or so of red wine and stand back. It'll steam up heavily, so don't lean over the pan. Use your spoon to stir from the bottom of the pot. When the steam dies down, add your tomato paste. Now here's where things start to get pretty subjective: you're going to need as much as you think you need. Yeah, what? Ok, so I just squeeze like a tablespoon or so of tomato paste into the pot and hope for the best. I really have no idea how much I use, sorry. Stir in your paste, crack open a couple cans of tomatoes, and pour into the pot carefully. I hope you're not wearing a white shirt, because you'll be regretting it at this point. Stir your ingredients together.
Throw in your bayleaves, 1/2-1 tablespoon of dried oregano, a palmful of chopped parsley, and about 6 basil leaves (chopped). If you use the basil in the tube, squeeze in like a tablespoon's worth into the sauce. Toss in a couple good pinches of salt, 5 or 6 twists of your pepper grinder, and a pinch of crushed red pepper if you're into the spicy stuff. Stir from the bottom, bring your sauce to a boil, and then bring the temp down to a simmer. Put the cover on half-way, so that steam can escape, and cook for at least 2 hours. Stir occasionally and don't dump off the water that collects in the cover, but rather pour that back into the sauce when you lift the lid.
When you're about read to eat, prepare some pasta according to the box instructions. Save a ladle or 2 of water from the cooked pasta, and pour into your sauce. Bring it up to a fast simmer, and stir to revive your sauce.
Hugs and fishes,
