Sunday sauce
I have really mixed feelings about posting this because there’s an
unspoken code in my family regarding recipes. Basically, you never tell anyone
the whole truth when it comes to cooking because the best meals are improvised and
you couldn’t tell it on paper anyway. You have to adjust on the fly, using your
senses—your eyes, your nose,
your experience, and most importantly your mouth. If it looks and
tastes fucked up then it is fucked up. Basically, if you don’t know what good
food tastes like, you will be throwing darts when you try and cook. This recipe
is for your basic “Sunday sauce”, it takes a whole Sunday afternoon to cook it.
I’m a proud Italian-American and if I ate macaroni and meatballs 3 times a week
I would die fat and happy, but satisfied. When given the choice I will always
eat Italian food before anything else. My good friend Jim Woolsey says it the
best, “the French talk about food but the Italians know how to eat.” If you’ve
ever been to
Macaroni
Pasta is pasta right? WRONG! I like spaghetti and clams. I don’t eat
spaghetti with meatballs. I like tortellini Bolognese but I like Rigatoni with Carbonara sauce.
Marinara sauce is something that I’ll only eat on mussels. I like fusili with garlic and oil. There’s a reason that pasta
comes in so many shapes, and it’s not to accommodate your fork or for your kid
to play with. When it comes to the most standard meal (pasta and meatballs) I
will only eat macaroni. That’s penne rigate or
rigatoni by my definition. If I cook spaghetti it’s usually with shredded
chicken or seafood or (my fave of all) white clam
sauce. This is about my regular family Sunday meal though, which from
heretofore-unce on will be called macaroni with
meatballs. Pencil points we call them.
Time
Time is a bitch, it’s really true. You can’t make this meal in less than 4
hours. If you do it enough you will learn how to force it in 3 hours, but no
less. If you try and tell lies or rush this then it won’t taste as good. Good food
takes time, and it’s not just a cliché. Relax and enjoy the experience, get
drunk on wine while you’re cooking—it’s acceptable when you cook this.
Your ingredients
I’m already tired of typing this. You’re gonna
fuck this up anyway. You have to go to the supermarket and buy the following:
(this recipe is designed for 7 people so adjust accordingly, freeze the
sauce and meatballs you don’t eat for another day)
4 lbs of ground beef/veal/pork (if you’re lucky enough to have a butcher in
your hometown have him grind it from cutlets, if not then buy it in the plastic
packs)
some pork chops (bone in)
2 lbs. of penne rigate
1 gigantic yellow onion
1 head of garlic
1 fresh batch of basil
1 batch Fresh parsley
An egg
1 long ring of hot Italian sausage
4 slices of bread ( I use any kind of white bread)
Milk
pecorino/romano cheese (don’t skip on this one, buy
the best cheese you can get and either grate it or spend extra for the good
shit already grated)
extra virgin olive oil
dry white wine (I use holland house cooking wine,
available anywhere)
3 big (29 oz.) cans of tomato sauce (depending on what texture you like—I like
regular, already pureed sauce for this recipe)
4 bottles of wine.
A loaf of fresh Italian bread, and get some butter too.
Go Time
Alright. You have a big pile of groceries on the counter. It’s
1pm and dinner is at 6. Relax. Pour yourself a glass of red wine and commence
drinking. Sharpen your knife, the big one. Dice the big onion into bits. Take 5
cloves of the garlic and dice that too. Chop the basil up, all of it. Put the
beef/v/p/ into a big ass bowl and add salt, pepper, a little bit of oregano, ½
cup of the cheese, and one raw egg. Take 4 slices of the white bread and put it
into a cereal bowl and fill it with milk. This is key.
Bread crumbs are bullshit in meatballs, this is our substitute. This is what
will make your meatballs excellent. Sautee
½ of your onion, ½ of your garlic, and one half of the basil in 2 tblsps of oil in a big pan, slowly. I mean really slowly.
If you burn the garlic right here then all is lost. Throw the whole meal away
and start over. You won’t fool anyone if you burn the garlic. Burnt garlic will
be the only thing anyone tastes. Be cautious and go slow and low, medium low
heat. When the onions are translucent then it’s ready, it might take 15 minutes
but wait it out. When the onion/garlic/basil mix is finished sautéing, then
dump it on the bowl of meat. Squeeze out the milk bread and put the wrung-out
milk bread into the meat bowl too. Squeeze the milk bread gently so it
relinquishes half of the absorbed milk. Go easy. This is what it’ll look like
out of focus:
Now it’s time to get messy. Grind this shit together through your fingers. Mix
and mash it up it up for 5 minutes, kneading it. Make sure that everything is
blended together evenly. When it’s all done it will look something like this
hopefully:
Now just wash your hands and set this bowl aside for the moment.
The Sauce (gravy, whatever)
Add another 2 tablespoons of olive oil to a large spaghetti pot and sautee the rest of your onions, garlic and basil, again,
slow and low. Do not burn the garlic. When the onions are translucent, add the
three cans of tomato sauce. For every can that you pour in the pot, go to the
sink and fill up half the can with water and dump it in the pot, rinsing out
the remaining sauce still in the can. This water is going to cook off over the
next 3 hours as you will see. Remember that, 3 cans of tomato sauce, 1 ½ cans
of water. Now sprinkle some oregano on the pot of sauce, and add a tablespoon
of sugar, stir it a little, and simmer the sauce on medium low heat.
The Meat
Ok here we go. I like to brown my meatballs before putting them in the sauce,
it greatly helps the texture and flavor of the end product, but it’s more time
consuming and messy, but totally worth it. Pour an inch of oil in the bottom of
your pan and turn the burner to medium high. Get that
oil scorching hot. Shape the meatballs in your hand to whatever size you like,
I like larger meatballs. Add them to the scorching hot pan, try and not let
them touch one another. If the oil is hot they should brown on each side quickly.
We are not trying to cook them here, it’s okay if they’re still undercooked in
the middle, they will be cooking in the sauce for
three hours. When each side is browned, remove the meatballs to some paper
towels and add the next batch to your pan. I usually have to do this 4 times, 4
batches of meatballs. When you’re done, add your browned meatballs to the
sauce.
Pork chops
I always throw a couple of (bone in) pork chops in my Sunday sauce, they add a
ton of flavor and they completely fall apart while cooking in the tomato sauce.
Anyway, using the same oil you used for the meatballs, brown your pork chops,
remove them from the pan and pat some of the oil off with a paper towel and
then add them to the tomato sauce too. After this, cook the sausage and repeat
the previous, add the sausage into the sauce.
Sausage
My father loves hot Italian sausage so I usually add a
few pieces in there for him too. It too helps the flavor of the sauce.
Deglazing the pan
By now the bottom of your pan is filled with little bits of meatball, pork
chop, sausage, onions, etc. put the empty oily pan back onto medium high heat
and pour in some wine, enough to cover the bottom and then a little more. Smoke
will come billowing out and all of the pieces that were stuck to the bottom
will come off. Simmer this for a couple of minutes until the alcohol cooks off,
you will be able to smell this. Now pour the brownish wine gravy into your
sauce and stir it in.
This is after 2 and a half hours of simmering, the
pork chop has completely fallen off the bone and dinner is almost ready.
The hard work is now over. You are going to let your sauce simmer on low heat
for the next three hours. Clean up the mess that you’ve created and get ready
for the final phase. Over the next three hours your sauce is going to
relinquish a lot of fat and oil, like tons of it. There is a lot of debate over
this in my family, I personally skim 90 percent of it
off. It is a constant job. Some people believe in stirring it back in for
flavor. You will see what I mean. Like I said, I leave some and stir it back
in, but not a whole lot.
This is what it will look like. Get the table ready and put out the wine and
whatever else your guests like. We tend to eat simple, but tasteful meals. I
usually put out a bunch of fruit and berries and olives and cheese.
Dinnertime
Cook your pasta until it is al-dente, about 11 or 12 minutes. When it’s
finished, drain it in a colander and then transfer it to a big serving plate. A
large plate is better than a bowl for this. Grab a fistful of cheese and cover
the pasta with it and then toss it a little, this will help the sauce adhere to
the pasta. Now start spooning the tomato sauce over the pasta, stirring it in,
covering the pasta. Don’t put too much sauce on it yet, let your guests decide
how much they want, I just cover it enough to use as a starting point.
I like to put some meat around the outer ring of the serving plate, but take
the whole pot of sauce and meat and put that on the table too. Let people
decide how much sauce they like and let them hand pick
what meatballs, sausage, pork they want. Last but not least, sprinkle the dish
with parsley and a little more cheese for presentation. You made it. 
This is what it should look like and it’s time to eat and drink! Make sure the
cheese is on the table. MANGIA!
Mom and dad throwing down.
My beautiful wife, Ellen.
