TOTV is a great forum.
 

When my Nana was teaching my generation her recipes we always enjoyed the time she spent with us. No matter how many times we tried the recipe it never tasted quite the same. I was talking to one of my aunts one day and mentioned this. She told me not to worry, Nana NEVER gave out a a complete recipe. From then on we video taped her as she made the dish.

She also used a "pinch" of this and two fingers of that. So we assigned someone to take the ingredient in her hands and measure it.

My wife, with her Irish-English heritage, has been a fabulous Italian cook ever since. (I've always been a good cook. LOL)

Off topic, but I SO love these Italian cooking stories. dbussone, you would love some of the earlier Italian cooking posts--the sauce vs gravy debate, the one where people described their Sundays at their grandparents' with all the family, etc. If you haven't read them, I'll try to dig some up for you.

Please do, there are significant geographical differences in Italian cooking.

And, by the way, in my experience, sauce is used by those born in this country. My Nana always called it gravy. I go half and half.

Please debuse tell me more too. I'm of Italian decent. I don't have much to offer but I am willing to try any recipe you send my way and share it with you.

Tom - let's see what we can do about that. We just finished (30 minutes ago) a nice angel hair pasta, and Bolognese gravy with beef and sweet sausage.

I also cooked up a couple of servings of chicken parmesan. A nice red wine topped it off!

Ciao

thank-you

TOTV is a great forum.
 

Tom - here we go:

Nana's basic meat gravy -

A 20 oz can of crushed tomatoes
12 ozs of tomato paste
12 ozs of water
A green pepper chopped
1 onion (large cooking) chopped
1 large clove of garlic - crushed
1 pound of lean ground beef
1 pound of ground Italian sausage

Brown the burger and the sausage
Remove from pan onto paper towels to drain the fat
In a lg pan put 4 tbsp of extra virgin olive oil
Sautéed the onion, garlic & pepper until soft
Add the tomatoes, paste and water
Stir to combine
Then add 2 tsps of sugar, 1 tsp of dried basil, 2 tsps of dried oregano, 1/2 tsp of mint flakes
Salt & pepper to taste
Simmer 1 hour covered
Enjoy!

You can vary/adjust the recipe to meet your taste. This is a Bolognese gravy. Marinara will not be as heavy, but I prefer meat in my gravy.

Let me know what you think.

Regards

thank-you
how many will this feed at one setting? 8?
can i crock pot after i brown?

i like to bring my friends over for dinner after golf. does this interest you and yours?

It should feed 8
You certainly can use the crock pot after the meat is browned

Remember you will have to cook the pasta in boiling water. The crock pot won't work for that.

My wife and I would be honored to join you if we are available. You might want to try the meal once before you invite us though - you might change your mind!

I have found in R.I. regardless of country of birth gravy is used by most who reside in the west bay area of the state and sauce in the east bay where I reside. Providence is the dividing line and it is a coin flip there.

Yes I most certainly agree that Italian food is so different from region to region especially when it comes to meatballs. I can remember when I was a kid I had a good girlfriend who was Sicilian and my family is from the Puglia region. I was invited to her house for meatballs and spaghetti, and was shocked to discover when I took a bite of a meatball there were raisins in it. The meatballs weren't bad, but not a practice I would adopt when I began making my own.

Funny...I put raisins in my bracciole, but never the meatballs. My Mother was Sicilian and I make my meatballs the way she did. The bracciole recipe I just picked up along the way, and I like it. Kinda like the escarole soup. Most call it Italian Wedding soup, we never did...just escarole soup. And we never had any pasta in it...just the escarole, meatballs, a few scrambled eggs, and cheese.

LOL, I just made a big pot of the R.I. version of Italian Wedding soup which always includes pasta/pastine specifically acini di pepe. Sometimes folks here include chopped hard boiled eggs some not.

Oomph! Never heard of hard boiled eggs in Italian Wedding Soup. Do you like it that way?

Wow! It sounds like my wife and I have been missing out on true Italian food all of our life.

We have friends in Sun City Grand, AZ that cook Italian when we visit; we've been so busy with careers and such that Italian to us is (true Italian aficionados don't :yuck:) Ragu sautéed onion and garlic poured in with browned hamburger meat or frozen Italian meatballs from the local Price Chopper.

I don't use eggs in my soup, but if you get the soup in most R.I. Italian restaurants it will usually have eggs in it. They are chopped up so fine you hardly notice them. Also, some folks here put sliced hard boiled eggs in lasagna which I do not.