slith and concrete......

[Deleted]

Jul 10, 2010 7:15:59 GMT 10 shatnerswig said:

ragu =tomato sauce with meat marinara= simple meatless tomato sauce also call gravy

Please Wiggy, dont call Pasta sauce "gravy" I have a few italians in my family that may kill you for that.

[shatnerswig]

Jul 10, 2010 8:37:41 GMT 10 @darrylmckay said:

Jul 10, 2010 7:15:59 GMT 10 shatnerswig said:

ragu =tomato sauce with meat marinara= simple meatless tomato sauce also call gravy

Please Wiggy, dont call Pasta sauce "gravy" I have a few italians in my family that may kill you for that.

yea its controversial even between italians some call it gravy others call it sauce ... i just eat it lol

[slith]

hehe. Cover their mistakes with tomato sauce and cheese. Ooops did I just say that?

[shatnerswig]

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Sauce or Gravy?
Moving in another direction, I recently got the following letter: "I was witness to a heated discussion at my brother's dinner table last evening. We were raised that it is sauce; my sister-in-law was raised calling it gravy. I've spoken with Italians who have called it sauce, and some who have referred to it as gravy. Is it a regional thing? Is it gravy when it is cooked with meat? *(I've received that explanation). Please advise and potentially stop a divorce from occurring."

Fools rush in where angels fear to tread, so this is right up my alley. In Italy there are sugo and salsa. Sugo derives from succo (juices), and refers to pan drippings from the cooking of meats, rich meat-based sauces along the lines of sugo alla Bolognese, or thick vegetable sauces (which often, though not always, go over pasta). A salsa is a semi-liquid-to-liquid raw or cooked sauce that's used as a condiment. It can go over pasta, for example pesto alla genovese, but can also be used to season other dishes. For example, salsa verde is wonderful over boiled meats or potatoes, as is mayonnaise (salsa maionese in many cookbooks). If a sauce is especially delicate, it may be called "salsina."

The passage from sugo/salsa to sauce/gravy obviously occurred when immigrant families settled into new neighborhoods in the US, and is, I expect, an Italian-American family/neighborhood tradition more than anything else. Some immigrants translated the Italian for what they put on their pasta as gravy, while others translated it as sauce, and the translations have been passed down through the generations, becoming law in the process. People get amazingly passionate over things like this.

Since I associate gravy with meat drippings thickened with butter and flour (something that's not at all common in Italy, though I have encountered it in Piemonte) I call what goes over pasta sauce when I refer to it in English. As is all too often the case with Italian food, there's no right answer here, and I'll be quite interested to hear other people's ideas.

[Deleted]

I was always under the impression italian/amercians call it gravy, the ones who have been outta the old country for too long.

[shatnerswig]

Jul 11, 2010 19:48:35 GMT 10 @darrylmckay said:

I was always under the impression italian/amercians call it gravy, the ones who have been outta the old country for too long.

nope more of a neighborhood kinda thing i remember when i was a kid my friends grandmother who was right off the boat used to call it gravy .. her english wasn t that great but still everyone in that family called it gravy i remember eating over their house once and i was asked how much gravy do i want on my pasta .. i remember thinking GRAVY? what the hell is this about expecting you know like brown gravy that you put on mashed potatoes ... but when they served it the mother brought out red tomato sauce .. i was relieved , but other italian families i knew would call it sauce. go figure confused the hell out of me too ;D

[Deleted]

Intresting, maybe its a north/south italy kinda deal, My wifes family are from the north, so to them its always sauce.

[shatnerswig]

[blacky]

sorry i thought this was a gay thread about slith and concrete :Phahaha

[slith]

Jul 16, 2010 1:40:34 GMT 10 blacky said:

sorry i thought this was a gay thread about slith and concrete :Phahaha

Good laugh. You Brits!!!!