Any Given Sunday

Growing up in an Italian-American household, on any given Sunday, the house would be filled with the smell of tomato sauce simmering away all day on the stove and the day topped off with a large Sunday dinner of pasta, salad, meatballs, sausage and pork.

Note: "Sauce" will always be "gravy" to me and "pasta" will always be "macaroni" but I digress...


Today is the first day in a few years that I've attempted to make sauce. When it comes to pasta portion control, I lack the willpower to stop until I see the bottom of the bowl; therefore, I don't trust myself with a house full of meatballs and gravy. However, after many years of debating how to make the best sauce and meatballs, I decided (for the sake of my dear readers of course) to bite the proverbial spaghetti and review my own sauce.

Coincidentally, there was a recent article in the Dining Section of The New York Times titled"A Grandchild of Italy Cracks the Spaghetti Code". The author traveled back to Italy to discover the secrets of her ancestor's sauce and came to the conclusion that no matter how hard you try, it is difficult to match or replicate the sauce of your ancestors. I couldn't agree more! My mother and Grandmother (nicknamed Grandma Beach because she lived on the Jersey shore) made the best meatballs and the best gravy hands down! The most interesting thing is that they used two very different approaches to making their amazing sauce.

My mother made her meatballs with a combination of beef, pork and veal. She used seasoned breadcrumbs, cheese, eggs and lots of fresh parsley. The meatballs were then fried in oil and left to drain on paper towels. In a separate pot, she would brown the pork and sausage and then add the tomatoes and the meatballs and let the pot simmer for a few hours on the stove.

My grandmother used a similar combination but with a lot more eggs and locatelli cheese. She would not fry the meatballs, but instead cook them in the sauce, a process that took an entire day. She would also use tomato sauce in lieu of tomato paste, making her sauce less thick than Mom's.

They were both incredible! Grandma's sauce was sweet versus the spice and tang of Mom's and Grandma's meatballs were fine and petite versus Mom's larger chunkier ones. Each meatball was fabulous in its own way and no matter how I've tried through the years to duplicate both recipes, I've never come close. Of course, with so many family recipes, nothing is written down and nothing is measured making it nearly impossible to replicate.

For this Sunday's "gravy", I went with Mom's approach with a few adjustments:

For the meatballs, I used a beef/pork/veal combo, heavy on the pork light on the beef. To that I added five eggs, lots of fresh parsley, chopped garlic, and freshly grated parmesan, crumbled wheat bread soaked in water, a few tablespoons of ricotta cheese and just a touch of fresh thyme.

I also used hot and sweet sausage along with some pork butt. I have found tracking down pork butt to be the most difficult part of the dish, a search that had me at the hellacious Union Square Whole Foods on a Saturday afternoon!

The messiest and most time consuming part was browning all the meats. Where did these women find the patience? Or the time? I finally removed the meat, drained on paper towels and started to add the crushed tomatoes, scraping up the browned bits of meat and garlic at the bottom of the pot. I let the tomatoes cook for about 20 minutes, then began to add the tomato paste, salt, pepper, nutmeg, grated carrot and bay leaf. After letting those flavors meld for another 20 minutes or so, I lowered the heat and returned the meat to the pot.

After about four hours, I couldn't stand the anticipation and begun to boil water for the pasta. Again, not quite my mother's pasta, I chose a whole wheat spaghetti to ease my carbo-guilt.

All I can say is that I really outdid myself this time! The pasta was toothsome and hearty enough to stand up to my spicy tomato sauce which was rich without being too chunky. The carrot added a nice bit of sweetness to the sauce, but again, not too much to overpower. I am assuming that extra layer of flavor was to the credit of the bay leaf; an item I usually do not keep in my pantry.

As I enjoyed my perfect pasta with a medium bodied glass of red wine, I couldn't help but to be transported back to the Sunday's of my youth. At Grandma's the wine would be served with a little bit of Sprite (hey, I was just a kid) and at home it was usually ice tea but you get the picture. Ahhh, gravy - there's simply nothing like it!

NOTE: I decided to prepare two separate batches of meatballs; one set of baked and one set of fried. This is for a future meatball tasting to decide which meatball rules supreme: fried, baked or cooked in the sauce. Anyone want to volunteer for the panel?