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In the Italian American home of the past century, back in the era after World War II, in the world prior to this generation of our own children, Sunday dinner was the most sacred and most cherished time of the week. Sunday dinner was the ritual that bound together the Italian American family. The particulars of the Sunday dinner were as exacting as the book of Catholic ritual that determined the slightest gesture in every ceremony.
I would go so far as to say that Sunday dinner surpassed the rituals of the church in importance and in meaning.While the exact details of the Sunday dinner had minor variations from family to family the fundamental menu and the overall spirit was the same: you came home, home to your parents and grandparents, home to your family, home to a rich, satisfying tomato gravy and macaroni. Preparing Sunday dinner began just after dawn. I went to mass with my father at 7am. We always sat in the last pew. I followed along with my little brown Saint Joseph’s Children’s Missal.Mass was over in less than 30 minutes. In those days people would often attend the mass where the priest could rattle off the Latin as fast as possible and the sermon was limited to giving money and to women covering their heads. I remember one of my cousins bragging that the priest in their church had them in and out in less than half and hour.
When my father and I came home from church the gravy was already on the stove. I don’t remember when my mother went to church but by the time my father and I were home the dinner tomato gravy was already bubbling away. As my father and I came in the back pantry door, the kitchen sang out the fragrance of the tomatoes. In my childhood, it was not an aroma that I appreciated. It seemed to attack me. For me,as a seven year old, the aroma was too strong.
On the stove, in a very heavy aluminum pot with a thick wooden handle, there was an amalgam of canned tomato products. In those days the Sunday gravy required three types of canned tomato.The gravy demanded a can of crushed tomatoes, a can of tomato purée and a small can of tomato paste. Sometimes there was also a can of whole tomatoes that were crushed by hand, but that was less common.The blend of the standard three types of tomato, crushed, purée and paste was the body of the dense gravy. Then there was the meat.
On another burner, an aluminum sauce pan browned a bowl-full of meatballs, some sausage links and various other pieces of meat on the bone. When these meats were browned they were added to the big aluminum pot. The pot simmered slowly on the stove like a volcanic cauldron sending up little burbling bubbles that exploded with a “ploop, plop,” splattering the stove top with drops of deep red. The combination of the meat and the tomatoes was called gravy. No one in those days called it “sauce.” The pot on the stove with tomatoes and meats was gravy, plain and simple. And when it came to the dish for which the gravy was intended no one said “pasta.” It was “macaroni” or, “maccheroni.” In fact, just as for some families the dinner was called “gravy” in others it was called “macaroni.” In our house, while we had any number of macaroni types from ziti to rigatoni the favorite macaroni for us children is what we used to call “twistettis,” from the name on the box.
Twistetti
Some makers call them “radiatori,” some call them “rotini” and others “fusilli.” Spaghetti, however, was not usually a Sunday dinner. Spaghetti was usually reserved for fish recipes or for when we had non-Italian company. Whether macaroni or spaghetti it was always from a box. The brand as I recall was Conte Luna, a local producer. Their TV ad sang, “Conte Luna ….Reach for the moon.” Today, they are the Philadelphia Macaroni Company.
Conte Luna Twistetti
With the gravy in the stove and the rich fragrance of the sauce filling the kitchen my father would make us our breakfast. Unlike any other meal I have no memory of my mother in the Sunday morning kitchen. Sunday breakfast like Sunday dinner was a ritual, but the high priest of this ritual was my father. He fried up the bacon and then in the bacon grease he fried the scrapple. On a special griddle he made our Bisquick pancakes to be covered in butter and Log Cabin syrup. Syrup also dressed the scrapple. Sometimes, he would set strips of the bacon in the middle of the pancakes. Sometimes, he would make the pancakes in funny shapes. He would make snowmen and button them with raisins. Sometimes he made circles like the head of Mickey Mouse. Sometimes in late summer he dotted then with blueberries from the Jersey farm stands. The disparate kitchen smells of gravy and bacon and scrapple penetrated every room of the house. Here, in our Sunday morning kitchen, Italy and America sat side by side on the stove. After breakfast I went to the television in our second floor living room to watch “What in the World”
After “What in the World” came Gene London
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By the time my television shows were over the gravy bubbling on the stove had reached a tasteable stage. My father would share out slices of Wonder Bread from its plastic wrapper dotted with multi-colored balloons. He would ladle each slice with the tomato gravy, sprinkle them with Parmesan and serve them to me and my sister. As simple as that little plate was to this day I have enjoyed no experience of anything more heavenly.
Wonderbread
By the time my television shows were over the gravy bubbling on the stove had reached a tasteable stage. My father would share out slices of Wonder Bread from its plastic wrapper dotted with multi-colored balloons. He would ladle each slice with the tomato gravy, sprinkle them with Parmesan and serve them to me and my sister. As simple as that little plate was to this day I have enjoyed no experience of anything more heavenly.
As my sister and I enjoyed our little plates of pale slices of Wonderbread saturated with the rich gravy from the stove pot and elevated to Eucharistic euphoria with ample sprinklings of grated Parmesan, the eye roast was already in the oven. The eye roast along with mashed potatoes and peas would be the main course for Sunday dinner.So,while we delighted in our little bread slices with gravy and cheese, the fragrance of the roasting meat enhanced our tasting pleasure. Now, from what I have assessed from other Italian Americans, the main course after the macaroni was not a roast. For many, the main course was the meat that had braised in the tomato sauce: meats such as sausage or braciola. For us, the meat from the gravy was served as a side to the macaroni.
On some Sundays there was also another ritual that came before dinner, the visit to the cemetery. Sometimes we brought flowers. Other times it was just a visit. When the car entered the gates, the car radio was turned off. I was captured by the oval photographs of my ancestors encased in some kind of glass oval embedded in the grave stone. I was intrigued by the sepia faces that stared out at me as though they had something to say from inside their glass ovals.
The dates on the stones took me to a world a century before my own. I liked those visits. I think they were those faces and those stones gave me my first sense of history. After the cemetery it was time for dinner
Sunday dinner began around two in the afternoon. On most Sunday’s dinner included my uncle, aunt and cousin. In my father’s family of ten siblings the distribution of who went to whose house on Sunday is not clear in my memory. Despite the notion that Italians are very family oriented, there is also the reality that there were always various points of rivalry and contention. One side of the family always mistrusted another. One of the most important things a child needed to learn was to answer “I don’t know,” if a relative asked you anything about your parents. While for certain holidays such as Christmas and Easter everyone joined together in silent truce, any other interaction was guarded and approached with suspicion. Aunt Florie had something to say about Aunt Annie; Aunt Lena had something to say about Aunt Annie. Aunt Dolly had something to say about everyone. Uncle Tony despised all his in-laws. I am sure that my father’s sisters had plenty to say about my Irish descent mother. Uncle Henry shut them all out and played his violin. Children were thought to be deaf to the aunts’ and uncles’ subtle innuendos but we heard and understood every word. Sunday dinner began with a fruit cocktail made from canned Del Monte and from whatever fresh fruits happened to be around, usually slices of banana and slices of orange and grapefruit. The fruit cocktail came to the table in old champagne glasses. Fruit cocktail has no Italian origin. My guess is that it came from trying to imitate the better restaurants of the day such as Walber’s on the Delaware and Bookbinders.
After the fruit cocktail there was often an antipasto of lettuce leaves layered with giardinera, olives and slices of various dried sausages or sometimes pig knuckles. On a regular Sunday, the antipasto, if any was very modest. On holidays it was a visual and gustatory baroque creation sparkling with orange slices and strips of bright red roast peppers. Then came the macaroni.
In the kitchen, the meatballs, sausages and veal bones were taken from the gravy and set in a large serving bowl. The macaroni was mixed directly into the aluminum gravy pot. The pot was brought directly to the table where it was served into our waiting bowls. The bowl of meatballs and sausages made the tour of the table followed by the small bowl of grated parmesan cheese. The gravy, rich and heavy, rendered up the fragrances of garlic and oregano. When the macaroni were cleared from your bowl the remaining gravy was scooped up by a piece of Italian bread. In their Italian American dialect they used to call the bread the “moh-peen, “ (moppine) a word which I would guess is an Italianization of the English word “to mop up.” In proper Italian the word is “scarpetta,” literally “to shoe up,” referring to using the heel of the bread to scrape up the gravy from the circle of the bowl.
The main course was the eye roast. The eye roast was thinly sliced and served with deep rich brown mushroom gravy. The sides were always mashed potatoes or baked stuffed potatoes loaded with butter. When the potatoes were mashed the bowl of heavy serving spoon of brown mushroom gravy pressed a well into the potato mound and tilting left behind its rich contents to fill the basin. Then there were the green peas saturated with butter. Although my personal practice was somewhat frowned upon, I loved mixing my peas into the potatoes and gravy.
When the main dinner service finished the men retired to the living room to rest their eyes. The children congregated on the center hall steps to create their own entertainment. The women scurried between the dining room and the kitchen to clear the table and set out the dessert.
We called it Sunday dinner. Some folks called it Sunday gravy, others called it Sunday macaroni. These days it is only a memory. Today’s children are now professionals with their own lives often in distant cities. Few still live close to home. Fewer still return for Sunday dinner at two. Just as Sunday dinner has all but vanished, so too has its heavy read gravy, a gravy that was sometimes almost brown. Many of us have travelled in Italy to learn simpler, lighter preparations.More have discovered the lighter and fresher approaches in the restaurants of celebrity chefs. Frankly, I must say that I no longer care for this traditional recipe. I prefer the lighter and quicker methods of today. Like the faces in the glass ovals on the cemetery stones this recipe speaks out from the past of the Italian American kitchen.
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What you need
EquipmentEnamel Dutch oven or other heavy metal pot
Wooden spoon Tongs Spider |
Ingredients
Macaroni of choice
Can of crushed tomatoes Can of tomato puree Can of tomato paste Olive oil Garlic Red wine Oregano Salt and pepper Parmesan cheese for finish Meats of choice Ground veal, pork and beef for meatballs Sausages Veal neck or other cuts |
The Meatballs
The ingredients for meatballs varies not only from family to family, but from time to time in the same family. Sometimes they were made with stale bread soaked in milk, at other times with boxed breadcrumbs. Sometimes they had chopped onions and chopped celery, other times not. Sometimes they were made with a combination of meats, at other times with ground beef only. Perhaps the most unusual ingredients were the addition of ketchup, mustard and Worcestershire Sauce. In short, you can make them in any way at all with any kind of meat, even ground turkey.
Ingredients
Combination of pork, veal and beef.
Stale bread Milk Eggs Onion Oregano Ketchup Mustard Worcestershire Sauce Grated Parmesan |
Bread
Soak the stale bread in milk until it breaks down to a soft mush, Squeeze out any excess milk.
Alternate: dry bread crumbs |
Additions to the meat
Add one egg (if the mixture is too dry, add another or a bit of water.)
Add two or three tablespoons of ketchup, mustard and Worcestershire. Add the oregano, a chopped onion, salt, pepper and a few tablespoons of grated Parmesan. Salt and pepper. |
Shape
Use an ice-cream scoop to measure out equal amounts and roll them.
Set the meatballs aside. |
Other Meat
You can add any number of other meats. Braciola is a very traditional part of Sunday gravy. You would also usually find Italian sausage, some sweet and some hot. Veal bones were also very common in our sauce. The veal doesn't have much meat but the bones contribute to the rich flavor. A beef bone would also be a good addition.
Browning
In a good measure of olive oil brown the sausages and the bones.
Set them aside. If necessary, wipe out any burnt pieces and re-oil the pot. |
Meatballs
In the same pot, brown the meatballs. Set them aside.
You don't have to cook them all the way through. They will finish in the gravy. |
The Tomatoes
Garlic and wine
Set aside the meat.
Add a bit more oil if needed. Sauter the garlic but do not let it brown or burn. Add about a cup of red wine. Let it simmer for about five minutes. |
Canned tomatoes
Add a can of crushed tomatoes, a can of tomato puree and a can of tomato paste.
Rinse the sides of the cans with a little bit of water and add this to the pot. Stir well. If the gravy is extremely thick, add a bit more water. It will cook down. |
Add the meat
Add the veal bones, the sausage and whatever other bones you have.
Cook on medium until the gravy just begins to bubble. Reduce to the lowest heat and let the pot simmer for about four hours or even longer. Add the meatballs in the last half hour. |
The Macaroni
Boil the macaroni a minute or two less than suggested on the box.
Remove the meats from the gravy and set them aside. Use a spider to turn the macaroni into the gravy. Let it simmer in the gravy for a minute or two. |
Serve the macaroni with the meat and the meatballs. Finish with Parmesan.
