From our cooking correspondent, TaMara:
Going old school tonight. I thought you may still have some zucchini and tomatoes that needed to be used up and this menu does both. Growing up, spaghetti was a weekly occurrence. I’m not sure where my mom learned to make it, because it is my dad’s half of the family that is Italian, but it was always a hit at our house. Over the years we’ve all played with different variations, but this is pretty close to the original. Whether it was at a weekly family meal or the Christmas dinner at my Gram’s, this basic sauce ruled. And the good thing is, it is simple to modify depending on your tastes. If you want to spice things up, add 1/4 to 1/2 lb of spicy Italian sausage and reduce the ground beef by as much.
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Quick, easy and freezes well, I usually make double so I have some on hand for quick dinners. Trust me, you will never find any jar sauce in my house. Ever.
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On the board tonight:
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1. Spaghetti w/Meat Sauce
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2. Zucchini Italiano
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3. Crusty Italian Bread
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4. Sherbet or even better, Gelato
As ever, recipes and shopping list at the link.
lamh32
Wow, great minds think alike.
I made Sphaghetti and Meat Sauce for dinner earlier today too!
No bread or the other stuff though… too bad for me.
I made it at about 5pm, but I wasn’t that hungry. So I sat down to play Family Feud on my Wii. OMG!!! It took me 4 hours to finish the final level and now my brain hurts!!!
So I”m gonna have to go to bed without even eating my lovely meal.
soonergrunt
I’m sure others have already noted this here on Balloon-Juice, but I think it’s important enough to mention again:
Foes of health-care reform law lose key court ruling
The Thomas Moore Law Center lost another important federal case, the other being Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District, when a Federal Judge in Michigan declared that Congress does have to right to require people to buy health insurance under the commerce clause of the constitution.
janeform
We had the honor of receiving a Sharron Angle fundraising letter today. The best line is the P.S.: “Harry Reid is responsible for getting Obama’s agenda through the Senate. Defeating Reid is like cutting off the head of a snake – it will spell doom for Obama’s agenda!” (emphasis in original)
We’re sending it back with a Traditional Medicinals Organic “Smooth Move” teabag (an “herbal stimulant laxative”), and we’re thinking we’d start out with “we know how much you like tea bags, we thought this might help you get your message out.” BJers — as the finest commenters in the world, you must have other suggestions for what to say to Sharron.
Paddy
Must see, but be prepared to bang your head.
Video- Rachel Maddow spanks Bizarro Congress Wanna Be Robinson
Nick
Chris Bowers has a revelation;
Janet Strange
Summer tomatoes are long gone here in Central Texas and I didn’t get the Fall tomatoes planted soon enough so prolly won’t get any more this year.
However, okra are still going strong (over 7 feet tall, at least). Supper is eggplant in tomato gravy (Indian) and fried okra. Picked okra in the dark about an hour ago and now eating them. Yum. Eggplant is from the garden too.
If there are any non-haters (of okra) who want to know my (not so) secret recipe for totally awesome fried okra, I’ll share.
soonergrunt
@janeform:
Tell her to take a flying fuck at a rolling doughnut.
Trueblood
I don’t mean to start a semantics argument, this is an honest question: I was brought up with “meat sauce,” but fairly recently was told by a friend that “any meat sauce is a gravy” and my world was turned upside down. Is that true?
TaMara (BHF)
@Janet Strange: I’d love to hear your recipe.
jeffreyw
Thread needs more puppies.
KG
@janeform: I’d go with:
Hi, I’d love to donate to your campaign, but unfortunately, after the last decade, I can no longer afford it. And since you seem to support many of the policies that resulted in my no longer being able to afford supporting your campaign, all I can say is “fuck off.”
Signed,
Someone not voting for you.
Kristine
@jeffreyw: Puppilicious puppihooligans! Or Larry, Curly, and Moe. Or something.
So cute!
beltane
@Trueblood: It’s called a gravy in some families, but my father who was born and raised in Italy would never think to use the word. “Sugo” translates as sauce, not gravy, which is a very American substance.
mr. whipple
@soonergrunt:
And take a flying fuck at the moooooon!
Janet Strange
@TaMara (BHF): OK. Trim off okra caps and tails and slice the okra into 1/3 inch rounds. Cover with buttermilk (milk works fine, but buttermilk is even better). Let sit at least a few minutes. Longer is okay while you do other meal prep.
A few minutes before your meal is ready, start heating enough oil for deep frying and drain the okra in a collander or strainer. Put a little corn meal MIX (like Aunt Jemima corn meal mix or corn muffin mix) in a largish plastic container or plastic bag. Add more corn meal mix, close the container or bag and shake enthusiastically.
If a test okra floats and sizzles, the oil is ready. Add the rest of the okra, keeping as much extra corn meal mix out of the oil as you can and fry til golden brown. Drain on paper towels and salt generously. Eat immediately.
The keys are a) you don’t need an egg, and b) the corn meal mix makes it crunchier than plain corn meal. I prefer a mix that doesn’t have sugar in it.
TrishB
@beltane: What you said. Except that it was my Nana, who was from a small town near Napoli. She never called it gravy. Nor did my great aunt, ZiaZia who came over in 1918. FWIW, everyone in their families settled in upstate NY. I’ve heard the gravy terminology downstate far more often.
Martin
@Trueblood: Uh, no.
Only in Philly is a tomato based sauce called ‘gravy’.
Gravy is any sauce which is derived from the natural release of juices from meat or vegetables. I can’t think of any traditional sauce put on pasta that meets this definition. Tomato sauce isn’t a gravy because it’s a puree or heat reduction of the tomatoes, including the solids.
jeffreyw
@mr. whipple:
I remember a DI during basic training telling someone to “take a flying lip lock on the slick tip of my fuck stick”.
Martin
@TaMara (BHF): BTW, I’m going to take another run at those apple pie cookies this weekend. They were a hit, but I haven’t gotten the bigger format dialed in quite right. I’ll give an update over at your place.
freelancer (itouch)
@soonergrunt:
Case Closed. As only a soldier can say.
Also, stuckinred, you around? What was that about the huskers not looking so great early on? Yeah, note to the nation: the Cornhuskers are for real. Damn that was a great performance tonight.
Sooner, we’ll see you in Arlington. Start popping the popcorn, it should be a barnburner.
freelancer +6 :D
Ailuridae
@Trueblood:
As a non-Italian who grew up around great italian home cooks I can’t think of any Italian that would describe a meat sauce as above as a gravy. Any “gravy” includes, without fail, both italian sausage and meatball and then usually braciole or occasionally ribs.
sfinny
It’s amazing how much I’ve become used to buying pre-made pasta sauce. Maybe it is just me, but I never considered making my own sauce until recently. My grandmother showed me how to do chicken stock but not a basic tomato sauce. So I am determined to try producing sauce from the actual tomato and will suffer the results until I get it right.
monkeyboy
I’ve given up on using ground beef in spaghetti sauce and instead use Italian sausage.
The problem is that in the area I now live the grocery stores put too much garbage into their grind. Around here people think it is normal for ground beef to have little nuggets of gristle – a texture I cannot stand.
Ailuridae
@TrishB:
I’m from north of Albany and everyone I knew as a kid in the late 70s early 80s referred to what I mentioned above alternately as gravy or Sunday Sauce.
Here is Peter Bocchieri on the dish
Ailuridae
@sfinny:
I only make sauce from fresh tomatoes for the six weeks in late summer I can get quality tomatoes and then until whatever I can runs out.
But even a store bought 28 oz can of house brand tomatoes for a buck and change will start the base of a great sauce and outkick most anything in a jar (a lot of which either tastes flat or is so sugar rich that it might as well be candy).
jeffreyw
@Ailuridae:
Gaah! I just had to look it up and now I want some.
sfinny
@Ailuridae: That is the issue. Now I have to figure out the timing on when tomatoes are good, what to add in the cooking as far as sugar and olive oil. So far as I can tell, the routine is to dice tomatoes, saute them with olive oil, add chopped oregano, basil, garlic and simmer. How does sugar come into to it?
Yutsano
@jeffreyw: Hoisted upon your own petard good sir. But yeah braciole is like Italian manna.
My lesson in the proper terminology of “gravy” came from the Dawg. He said he was having spaghetti and gravy for dinner one night. I imagined him eating thick brown stuff all over noodles and told him that sounded a bit odd. The conversation went around in circles until I figured out what the hell he was talking about. To this day he still calls meat sauce “gravy”. And he’s from the Catskills, so it is a Noo Yahk state thing.
JWL
Better yet was my six course Irish cuisine while watching Lincecum fan 14 in a nail-biting 1 zip win.
Go Giants!
TrishB
@Ailuridae: That’s funny. I’m from Amsterdam, so probably not too far from where you grew up. I’m familiar with the concept of gravy, but no one in the family ever cooked that specific type of dish. Maybe it’s a regional thing (Italian region, that is.) When searching the Ellis Island website, the two family names all came from the same two towns. It would seem that I am at least vaguely related to everyone in the US with those names.
Ailuridae
@jeffreyw:
I’ve only made full on gravy once as an adult (I’m basically a pescetarian) and it was to sub in for an Italian friend here on the NW side of Chicago when her and her family had spent most of the week in the hospital (matriarch sick and a new niece being born). Intimidated by the larger task and scared of making braciole and the size (servind about two dozen) I used deli brought braciole and it had both raisins (!?!) and pine nuts in it like this. It was a great experience and I got rave reviews for a half Irish, Half Dutch kid from the Adirondacks.
Anyone interested in trying to do their own there was apparently an excellent version of sunday gravy that did the ribs for braciole substitution that popped onto my DVR in the last week or so. Pretty sure it was a new episode.
Ailuridae
@TrishB:
Nice. My mom is from Watervliet and my dad is from Lansinburgh and as kids we moved up off exit 13S on 1-87. The Italians in question were likely brooklyn/yonkers/queens transplants (their accents were definitely different than mine or my parents)
@sfinny:
I would never add sugar to canned tomatoes (I never add sugar to just about anything though except brown sugar with some asian dishes). They have a wonderful natural sweetness. To be honest the best recipes for canned or fresh tomatoes that are simple come out of Mark Mittman’s How to Cook Everything (the yellow, original one). His raw sauces for tomatoes are staples for me in the summer when i have fresh herbs and tomatoes.
jeffreyw
@Ailuridae: That link let to a yummy looking recipe, indeed! I’m gonna have to cast about for another recipe though, the pine nuts are just stopping me cold.
kindness
Great pitching in the Atlanta/SF game tonight. Lincecum was good. Go Giants!
Ailuridae
@jeffreyw:
You don’t like pine nuts or find them obnoxiously expensive? When I got the braciole in question I had never heard of pine nuts or raisins in it so you should definitely be able to find a better recipe.
Ailuridae
@kindness:
Lincecum was good in the sense that Jennifer Connelly is passable. That was a dominant performance and for those SABR dorks like myself at least as good as Halladay’s awesome game yesterday.
jeffreyw
@Ailuridae: It’s the all of a sudden high dollar penalty for using them.
Anne Laurie
@jeffreyw:
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I have subbed pistachios for pine nuts myself (Trader Jo’s reduced-salt pistachios in the shell are what passes for the pantry staple in our house), and I’ve heard better cooks than I assert that walnuts are just as good if not better than pignoli.
On a related topic, among the Italians and Italian-Americans in the Bronx neighborhood where I grew up, it was considered anathema to put sugar in your red sauce. “Sure, you think it was your Nonna’s ‘secret ingredient’, but she kept it secret because she was ashamed of herself for taking the easy way!” A true Italian cook was supposed to be able to caramelize the tomatoes enough to make further sweetener unneccesary, which takes time & practice. Adding sugar was a short-cut for… well, you’ve heard of pasta putanesca? Anyone who didn’t love her family enough to cook sauce properly was no doubt spending her (or sometimes his) time pursuing other socially disruptive behavior :) . Or so I was told.
WereBear
@jeffreyw: OMG. What a crew.
greenjeans
Try whole grains. Ditch the meat. Enjoy a healthy planet.