My mom is a full-blown Italian and naturally we have our own pasta sauce recipe. Every Sunday as kids (8 of us) we went over to Minnie’s, my grandmother Angela Carpinello, and ate meals of meatballs and pasta, fresh bread, and drank Coke from tin cups, the only time we were treated to such a special drink. She lived in the kitchen, and there was a steady low grade rumble from there from her doings and preparations, and her frequent chuckles. At age 87 I invited her over to my house for a 4th of July party and had her teach me everything I needed to know on how to make all the stuff. I was about 30. On a separate section you can read how to make her bread. The rest follows.
The Sauce: They swore by Cantadina tomato paste, and they were particular about brands. Two cans of water per can of paste gives the right consistency for the sauce. I use tomato juice from our own tomatoes, and thicken it with, you guessed it, Cantadina tomato paste. The meatballs and the rolled steak favorite brazhul (I believe the word is braccioli, but that’s how Italians pronounce it) are the main flavorings for the sauce, but on top they threw several (3-5) branches of what they called “voznegal”, or basil. The “b” came out “v”, and the back of the word I always thought was a variety, like negali or something. But the old man Nicola, Minnie’s husband, an immigrant from a town called Oscuali Satriano, grew it in his super fertile garden and we stored it in a paper bag under the sink. But I only add about 4-5 leaves that I grow and dry, and I usually fish them out. Because you can sure over-basil the sauce, so if you’re using dried stuff in a bottle use about a teaspoon or two per gallon of sauce. The oil from the meatballs floats to the top as it simmers (3 hours is needed, and stir it occasionally or it can burn on the bottom and ruin the thing), and that oil extracts some of the basil, and that’s why they laid it on top. And that’s also why they ran us off, again and again, as we dipped the bread in the top of the simmering sauce.
Meatballs: They key to this entire meal is the meatballs, so make enough of them. They last forever as leftovers, and make a great sandwich. And you can freeze them along with the sauce by simply scooping them into a freezer bag and dropping them into the freezer. Again, be sure to make enough of them. Use regular hamburger, because you want the fat content, and you cook them in a skillet and end up dumping all the cooking scraps into the sauce. You use two eggs per pound of ground beef, about a 3/4 of a teaspoon of salt and pepper both, per pound. I think so anyway. To be like them, I don’t use measuring containers or devices when I make this sauce, and judge it in the middle of my palm. You can over-salt and over-pepper anything, but that’s about the amount. Next ingredient: freshly chopped garlic. A lot. One whole garlic bulb per pound of beef is about right. Chop into little chunks, 1/8th to 1/4th inch. Two more ingredients. Parsley, about a tablespoon per pound of beef. And next and key: a generous amount of shaved parmesan cheese. About a half of a cup per pound, but I’ve never measured it. In our area is a brand called Frigo and to me it’s by far the best. After tossing all this in the fun starts: squishing it all together with your bare hands. It’s then necessary to thicken it up with saltine crackers (Zesta, of course). It usually needs a half of a sleeve of crackers to dry the mix so you can roll meatballs out of it. It depends on the egg size, and out here on the farm we have our own chickens and the eggs are big and we need extra crackers. They always used “large” eggs in their recipes, and never jumbo or extra large. It changes the ingredient ratio. But in meatballs, you just add the crackers you need. Roll the meatballs into golfball-size only a little smaller. A pound makes about 15 of them.
Cooking the meatballs is a little tricky. They always used skillets at low-to-medium heat, and the meatballs want to stick to the pan. But you want to deliver a nice cooking to them because that’s where the flavor is made. If the skillet isn’t hot enough this won’t happen as well, and if it’s too hot they fall apart when you turn them. So when it’s right, you turn them by gently pulling them away from the pan with a fork, and get a cook on several sides. One by one as they finish you scoop them into the sauce, which has been slowly heating on a nearby burner. When adding more meatballs to cook, just drop them in the skillet right on the scraps and leftover grease from the previous ones. When all are cooked, scrape all the scraps and grease into the sauce. They usually didn’t stir it, to allow the grease to accumulate at the top, where they layed the basil
Brazhul (Braccioli): This rolled round steak is a favorite of a lot of Italians for their pasta sauce. They use round steak, which you can buy everywhere, and one or two per batch of pasta sauce is advised. There’s never any left over. They first smear shortening (“crisco”) on the slab of round steak, which is usually 5 or so inches by 8-10 inches oblong. Then plenty of salt and pepper, and just like meatballs, add some parsley and shaved parmesan, and a generous sprinkling of chopped fresh garlic (do not consider store-bought minced garlic). Then you roll it up and wrap it with a string, the kind of string for cooking, made of cotton and no nylon or weird molecules. Then you cook it some in the skillet you cooked the meatballs in, achieving some searing on most sides of it, 5-10 minutes worth. Then plop it into the sauce. After 3 or so hours of simmering it falls apart when you use a fork to fish it out of the sauce to retrieve the string. So be sure to just use one piece of string per braj. You wouldn’t want to leave any behind for someone to find.
Ravioli: Nothing gives the Italian feeling to a meal like ravs. They’re fun to make, are so wonderful to eat, and are great as leftovers. And you can freeze them. Rolling them out and pinching them together, all of us, great fun. One “batch” makes about a hundred of them. Use five eggs, four cups of flour (Gold Medal), and 3/4 cup of water. Thats all. Again, depending of your egg size you’ll need to add flour as you make the dough. So when you put these three ingredients together, make three separate balls from it. It it’s too wet add some flour as needed. Set one on a table where you can roll it out to about 20 inches to two feet round-ish. (Be sure to cover the other two dough globs with wax paper or it will start to harden.) Using the roller, flatten the ball to round it out, going in several directions. Pat with flour, flip, roll, powder with more flour, rub it in, flip, roll, and after 5 flips or so it should be pretty thin, again, rolling out in several directions to make it round. And you have to make it thin enough to not be pasty, but not so thin that it rips when you try to make the rav. Then using a knife, or ideally a pizza cutter, which they didn’t have back then, make squares of 2-3 inches by cutting vertically and then horizontally. The filling we use is a pound of hamburger, one egg, and a package of spinach. Boil the spinach, drain, and add to the hamburger and egg and mix. No seasonings are added. Then using a fork or whatever, plop a marble-sized amount of this onto the squares. Then notify the army of pinchers, because nobody wants to miss out on that. Using a fork, and a little flour to dab the fork with so it doesn’t stick to the dough, pull the square dough piece over to enclose the spinach mix, and pinch on three sides to make the rav. We sprinkle a cookie sheet with flour and lay them out on it, and cover with a paper towel until time to cook them. You salt the water you’re going to boil them in, and the Italians were particular about salting the water, and yes, you can over-do this too. So a few teaspoons per pot maybe. Boil 20 minutes. Strain, pour onto a serving platter, and spread some of the sauce onto these and serve immediately.