do you cut spaghetti with a knife?

[gman]

Not so sure. My mom’s recipe for her ragú included meatballs, at times a roll of pork skin that wasn’t eaten, and the wonderful beef roll known as bracciole, which is very thin round steak laid out flat, pounded, then spread with chopped parsley, chopped hard boiled egg, small amount of chopped garlic and Parmesan cheese. You roll this up, tie it with cooking string, brown it in some chopped onion and oil and add it to the sauce. If done well, which I don’t always do, it’s magnificent.

Mmmmmmmm. Bracciole. We didn’t have it very often but when we did, oh boy. Same with cheese ravioli.

 

[reinaert]

There was a study done years ago on male college students to measure aggression.

The students were hooked up to sensors that measured stress. They were misled as to what was being tested for. During the setup the tester would deliver a mild personal insult, then record the sensor results.

What they found was that men in the south measured high on aggression. The conclusion was that in that part of the US men are more courteous with each other because they had to be.

The lowest response - NYC. Men are apparently used to rudeness and respond with "meh".

Heinlein stumbled onto that maxim with "an armed society is a polite society". I think he meant it approvingly, but a survey of cultures where decorum and politeness are de rigeur (Korea, Japan, medieval Europe, Quatorze France, England, the Old Confederacy, the Bay Area) might suggest an alternative reading: politeness is an adjunct of war and stasis.

 

[reinaert]

There is no word similar to gravy in the Italian language. There’s nothing in common between a tomato sauce and the typical meat gravy that Americans prepare.

My sense is that the word is something used on the East Coast or Midwest as part of the local vernacular, a tradition that continues even as its original purpose, whatever that may have been, has long since been moot — an americanata as Italians would say.

Sugo, sughino, sughetto — are the Italian equivalents of the English word sauce.

My Italian family has NEVER referred to a pasta sauce as gravy, but they settled directly in California and never lived anywhere else in the U.S. Again, macaroni refers to pasta of a particular shape, not all pasta. When speaking with family members there’s no need to substitute English words for proper understanding. It’s a point of pride in Italian cooking to pair the appropriate pasta with the specific sauce — not macaroni for everything.

I thought it was well known that spaghetti and meatballs originated in New York City. The meat course is separate in Italy, coming after the first course of pasta or soup. Meat can be incorporated in the sauce as in alla bolognese, but not as meatballs.

I've never heard this phrasing in Boston, Providence, Portland or any other part of New England, either.

 

[Emlee]

I still make Sunday Gravy from scratch every 6 weeks or so - on Sundays!!!!!. I usually have to tell people what it is when I talk about it.

Years back a friend in Ohio came across this cookbook somewhere, can’t recall where, and bought it for me.

 

[Nickyjo]

Years back a friend in Ohio came across this cookbook somewhere, can’t recall where, and bought it for me.

View attachment 67572176View attachment 67572177

Real Sunday gravy takes six weeks to make.

Actually is takes less than that. But Italian American comedian Pat Cooper said his mom started Sunday gravy on Tuesday. In reality it can be a 3+ hour process.