Cooking Lessons
Written by Danielle Salerno
How to Make the Traditional Sunday Sauce
First, gather your ingredients. You will need:
● A complicated yet fiercely loving relationship with an overbearing, volatile Italian-American mother from New Jersey who demonstrates her aggressive love via the food she makes, passes on recipes like they are the Elder Scrolls, and who dies too soon, leaving you bereft and mourning all of the recipes (and therefore all of the love) she never got the chance to share with you; struggling to remember every detail of the ones she did, as if forgetting an ingredient or a step means losing a little piece of her love, an affront to her memory.
*If you don’t have your own, store bought is fine!
● 4, 32-oz. cans of whole, peeled tomatoes in their juices. Whatever’s on two-for-one sale at ShopRite will work here. Make sure to lie and tell the family they are the good tomatoes imported directly from Italy. Hide the cans all the way down at the bottom of the recycling bin, where even Aunt Geraldine won’t snoop.
● 2 cans of tomato paste
● Enough garlic to kill a small vampire army - measure with your (presumably still-beating) heart.
● Your mom’s fresh, homegrown basil. The second planting, since the first always dies by virtue of planting it too soon - her fervent compulsion to ground herself by digging hands into soil in her desperation for the end of winter depression obscuring her discernment of when the last frost will be. Desperation basil has a certain bitterness to it that is unsuitable for this recipe. So, the second planting - the one that contains a self-deprecating chuckle and a sigh - that basil.
● Red pepper flakes that remind you of the pizza place down the street from the house you grew up in, where you got into a screaming match with her over something inconsequential in the parking lot, gravel crunching under pacing feet and squealing tires as she left you there with your tears and your leftover slice.
● Olive oil, of course! The stuff in the giant aluminum tin, sticky with old spills from too-hasty pours by too-small fingers, struggling to tilt a container designed for bulk discounts. Not the much more expensive, much more manageable cut glass bottle gathering dust on the top shelf of the pantry where those little fingers can’t get to it. Hoarded and meted out by a strict, precise measurement - going rancid long before she can find an occasion she deems special enough to waste it on.
● Salt and pepper to taste.
You’ll also need your kitchen tools handy. I cannot stress enough the importance of a good quality, all-purpose chef’s knife. The one with the 10-inch blade that was part of her wedding set. That you had to earn, slowly graduating over your lifetime from the small, cheap utility knife you almost sliced your knuckle off with when you were 9; to the slightly better quality and certainly trendier Santoku blade that came in a plastic clamshell from the discount home goods store that you bought with your allowance when you were 12; and finally to the 8-inch chef’s knife that is part of the same wedding set - the smaller twin - when you are 14. You’ll only inherit the 10-inch blade by legacy, when she’s no longer around to wield it. You will sob when you use it for the first time, which you will blame on the onions.
And you’ll need a cutting board to go with it. None of this cheap, plastic nonsense! You need a good slab of butcher block, older than even your mom, warped from age and constant use over generations, with a crack running down the length that has been there longer than you’ve been alive. It is barely functional and probably a health hazard, but you must never throw it away until it literally breaks into pieces along the crack one day as you aggressively peel a waxy turnip, long after she is gone; the popping sound it makes as it splits asunder will echo in your ears for the rest of your life.
A standard, 8-quart Dutch oven.
A large wooden spoon. This is a necessity. If you don’t have one, set the intention to receive one, because (fun fact) you cannot buy new wooden spoons in a store. There is no such thing as a “new” wooden spoon. You either inherit them from a long line of “superstitious” Italian women in your family or they appear, ancient and scarred, in old cabinets, at estate sales, garage sales, antique shops, or perhaps one day, one just manifests, as if from the aether, in your utensil canister. No one knows how it got there. No one asks. Best not to think about it too much.
Instructions:
Cry. A lot, or at least enough to fill the Dutch oven approximately ⅔ to the top. It may feel excessive. At times, it may feel impossible. Sometimes the tears just won’t come, even when you want them to. Even when you need them to.
You don’t rush a recipe. Timing is everything, and how long it takes can vary from cook to cook, from kitchen to kitchen. Take as long as you need. This step is important, because salted water is the only effective way to season pasta. You can’t salt it after it’s been cooked. It just won’t work.
Smash the crystal wine glass on the tile floor. Or against the cabinets. Sully their sterile beigeness with messy drips of burgundy. Let them leave their mark in this place that was once holy and is now forever marred by the shape of what’s missing.
Did I forget to list the chianti in the ingredients? You should’ve been drinking this whole time. Until your lips are stained and your face sets into a permanently dour pucker and your head pounds. It’s the tannins. They add a complexity to the sauce that is hard to name, but essential for depth of flavor.
Give up. Turn off the stove, leave the dirty dishes in the sink and let them pile up as a monument to your hunger that will always go unsated. Let the lingering scents of basil and fried garlic hover in the air like a specter. Let it haunt you a bit, until it all reduces and concentrates, the flavors melding together into something piquant and rich.
This is what makes homemade, from scratch recipes so unique. Store bought sauce will never be able to replicate this.
Once everything has simmered for a good, long while, you’ll need to stir the pot. This is also the time to add any delicate specialty ingredients, such as your dad’s new girlfriend, the distinct aroma of scandalized Sicilian aunts, or job loss due to excessive bed rotting.
These ingredients can be difficult to handle, so proceed with caution. Always remember to wear gloves and wash your hands. A good home cook is organized and cleans as she works for the best and healthiest results. You wouldn’t want to inadvertently poison your family with salmonella, or resentment.
That’s it! The sauce is done. Serve a heaping ladleful over cooked and drained pasta and enjoy, as much as it is possible. Remember to manage your expectations. It will never taste the same as when you made it with your mom. You will need to make your peace with that. But although the flavor will always be slightly off, the effort you go through to make it from scratch will be noticed and appreciated by your dinner guests, and may even lead to your older relatives calling you by your mom’s name when you serve it to them, which is the highest compliment a home cook can ever expect to receive.
If you decide to tackle this recipe, I’d love it if you would leave a comment below to let me know how it went! Like and subscribe for more authentic, homemade Italian American recipes! Buon Appetito!