Sunday, April 10, 2016 

When I was growing up, mom and dad (he was the better cook, a natural) would make Bolognese sauce (aka meat sauce for the uninitiated) on Sundays when we didn’t go to grandma’s house for the same. We didn’t call it Bolognese then, we called it gravy, as most Italian-Americans did in those days. The American families had their brown gravy. We had our red gravy. You would never eat pasta at a friend’s house, unless their parents were Italian. Non-Italians used ground beef—anathema to us Italians. To tell the truth, I haven’t had a good Bolognese since my mom last made it for Thanksgiving maybe 20 years ago. I won’t order it in a restaurant and surprisingly, I never attempted it. Why bother! Only grandma and mom and dad knew how to make it. They would take a wonderful cut of beef (“Go ask Ben the Butcher. He knows what cut to give you.”) and some pork and some veal (see Ben the Butcher). Nothing was ground. God forbid! That was for making meatballs. Another dish I never tried to make.

It is seriously surprising that I never attempted the sauce and the meatballs. I love to cook and have the stove of stoves: a Bluestar. Years ago, in the early 70s, I went through “Beard on Bread” and baked nearly all the recipes. I also went through the two volumes of Julia Child’s “Mastering the Art of French Cooking,” long before what’s-her-name ever thought of broadcasting her accomplishments online for doing same.

But I finally made a Bolognese sauce. I bought the meat from a local farm store. All grass raised, hormone and antibiotic free. Years ago, we would not have thought to ask or look for such items. It wasn’t necessary. We ate well. I am also in the process of making meatballs. No one, but no one could duplicate what grandma or mom had ever made. My brother and I liked them crispy—before they were added to the saucepot—OK, the gravy pot. The smell of the sauce was fantastic. The waiting for it was painful. Mom would always relent, warn us not to ruin our appetites, but give us each a piece of De Filippo’s bread to dip into the sauce. We’d savor every drop. I can still picture myself standing by the stove, on a little stool, perched precariously over the bubbling pot. If child services had ever seen me, I would have been spirited away to some household where the woman of the house would probably have opened a can of tomato paste, added water, and called it whatever Americans called their sauce. But I needed to breathe in this deliciousness, this life, this love.

As I ate my organic pasta today (chiocciole to better hold the sauce), I wondered why I had suddenly caved in. What made me do it after all these years? I love cooking! Why didn’t I make this dish sooner.

The answer is simple: I wasn’t ready to be next in line. I wanted to hold my mom’s meatballs, not mine, in my memory. Mom was the expert. She is the last in the family to hold the secret to making the best gravy in the world. She is the last in the family to hold the secret to making the best meatballs in the world. But now, as mom lies in bed with her nebulizer, straining for a decent breath, it was time for me to rise to the occasion. I am daughter, wife, aunt, and great aunt. It’s now my turn to take the torch and hold the pot of gravy high for my family. So here I am, making gravy and meatballs in memory of Grandma Raffaela, Grandma Giuseppina, dad, Aunt Tillie, Aunt Angie, Aunt Chris, Aunt Vera, Aunt Michaelena, Aunt Jean, and Aunt Josie and many more in our family and hoping that, even though mom won’t eat the pasta or the meatballs, she might smell it. It might bring her back to happier, healthier days when we were all together on a Sunday afternoon, dipping our bread into the gravy and telling her how much we loved her and that she was the best cook in the world. Daddy would protest: “I taught your mother everything she knows about cooking.” You’re right, dad. You did. And you did an excellent job of it. My turn now.