The Sunday Sauce: Keeping the Family Tradition on the Front Burner
When I was a kid, my Old Man would spend each Sunday morning making a fresh batch of homemade marinara sauce. He comes from a classic Italian-American household and is third generation (my mom is third on her side as well). In his family (and then mine) his Mom cooked the traditional homemade sauce…the kind that needed all day to cook…and his dad made “the quick sauce”. The marinara sauce is a bit simpler in preparation, ingredients and cooking time…but in no way less tasty. His dad made it. His dad’s dad made it and so on and so on. How many people have eaten this stuff? How much pasta has been bathed in this over the years? How many times have I tried to duplicate the taste? Many…and I’m still trying.
Growing up, we would always have sauce on Sunday. The best times were during football season in the winter (I grew up in New Hampshire). We had a roaring fire and would set up some TV trays in the living room and feast on our trad Sunday pasta meal…which was not complete without garlic bread, salad and some of my Old Man’s (again, legendary) homemade meatballs. We’d watch the end of the 4:00pm game and then we’d get seconds and watch 60 minutes. These were great family times…and some damn good food.
The Old Man’s sauce really was the stuff of legend. I used to have friends who would ask to come watch football at my place on Sunday just to be there in hopes on being asked to stay for dinner. I had one very good friend (still is) who used to tell his parents he was going to church on Sunday night. He would go there and pick up a flyer or some type of evidence to prove that he was there. Instead of staying, he would show up at our house. My Old Man would have a plate of macaroni ready to go in the microwave. My buddy would walk in without knocking, go straight to the microwave and turn it, come in to a TV tray already set for him, eat and then leave in time to be “home from church”. This happened like clockwork.
I used to take some to college whenever I would go home and back. My buddies would sneak over in the middle of the night, take the hidden key to the house and try and steal a container of frozen sauce to cook up back at their house. Sometimes they would sneak in at night and heat up some sauce (even when I wasn’t there) and then accidentally wake up my Old Man. He’d come down (this is the wee hours of the morning) and help them out and feed them. To this day they all try and get the recipe from him. Nothing doing on that front.
My wife loves it too. She has begged me to get on with the tradition. Since we moved to Australia I have been making it more and more. It is not an every Sunday thing as of yet, but when we get the craving, I make the sauce. We usually share it with friends, too. Recently I made a Sunday batch. I took some snaps of the process. Here is a pictorial jaunt through the sauce making process. Soon enough some super-geek will enable smells and tastes to be uploaded to the internetas well. Until then, let your imagination do the wandering.
I am also including the playlist that I shuffle through when making The Sauce. It is full of blues, soul, country and roots music that was recommended/sold to me by The Kingfish, owner of Mojo Music in Sydney. The Kingfish’s real name is Nev, hence the title of my iTunes playlist: “Nev’s Nuggets”.
You need good music to cook food good. This list always stirs the pot. The Kingfish says that blues songs with food in the title are always good un’s. An album like Andre William’s “Rib Tips & Pig Snoots” is no exception…The Kingfish loves that one. How many songs with food in the title can you find…? The playlist is sorted by albums (middle column) and has 2,505 songs in it…more than enough for second helpings.
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