Sundays at Ma's

I have in my oven right now a meal that to me will always be in my memory as Sunday dinner. Growing up, we would always have a wonderful dinner after church on Sundays. We began preparing it on Saturday mornings. When I speak with my non-Italian friends, their families did the same thing, but Sunday dinner for them was pot roast or ham or something with mashed potatoes and green beans (my mother-in-laws specialty).

But anyone who is Italian knows that Sunday dinner is always pasta.

We would begin preparing the sauce (tomato) on Saturday mornings. I think I was around twelve when this became my responsibility. My mother would cook the meat (meatballs, beef roast, pork roast....whatever was her fancy or maybe on sale) and then on Sunday morning, before we went to church, we would combine the meat and the sauce and put it on the back burner of the stove on low. We would eat around 1:00 or 2:00 in the afternoon. Usually my grandmother would make the rounds between our home and her other two local sons, Joe and Frank (Lou was in New York). One week at our house and another at someone else's house.

She would sometimes make homemade cavatells or gnocchis and bring them over and that would be the pasta for the day. My father like percitelli (my least favorite pasta....too messy) He also liked rigatoni (another one I didn't prefer). I was strictly a spaghetti enthusiast.

It didn't matter what the pasta...I always ended up speckled with tomato sauce before the end of the meal. Percitelli (I have no idea how to spell it) was fat tubular spaghetti. The sauce would lodge itself into the tubes and then when you tried to twirl or slurp it....the red stuff would spray everywhere. Sort of like blowing it through a straw.
I was well into my thirties before I finally mastered the art of twirling my spaghetti on a spoon. As a small child, I'm sure I just slurped and covered myself with red. I even broke out into a rash at which (to my horror and sorrow), my mother thought I was allergic to tomato sauce and for some time I was not permitted to eat it. It was a nightmare. I was forced to eat a boxed meal of beef stroganoff, the closest thing we could find to spaghetti because the beef was actually in the form of meatballs. I ate it, watching everyone else twirling spaghetti and laughing and mocking me in my dilemma!

I don't recall when we finally realized I wasn't allergic, it was just the acid from the tomatoes. This probably happened when I began to eat without covering my face with sauce. At this point in my spaghetti history I began twirling my fork into my bowl, wrapping mountains of spaghetti onto it and then shoving it into my mouth. I was usually done eating in about four bites. (Of course, asking for seconds). Hmmm. Why am I fat?

What I am making at this time is my father's favorite meat and that is brociole. I literally will crave this stuff. I'm not sure why I only make it once or at the most twice a year. It's really not hard to make. At least, my version is so much less complicated than my mother's version.

Braciole begins a very thin piece of steak, about 1/8 of an inch thick. It is long and narrow. You fill it and roll it to form a jelly roll looking thing and cook it, then cook it more in the sauce.

I am topping cavatells with braciole today. I will be giving you the recipes for our spaghetti sauce I grew up making and bracioles.

There is a whole story behind the complicity of my mother's bracioles. After rolling the bracioles, my mother would take a toothpick and tie the end of a long piece of string to it. She would stick the toothpick into the braciole towards one end, near the seam, and then wrap the string around the braciole. Roll, roll, roll. The string would cover the entire roll and then end at the other end, tied to a second toothpick that was stuck into the braciole towards the very other end of the roll. This was to ensure that the meat would not unroll while frying or in the sauce.

Here is how we differ:

1. I do not use string. (too messy)

2. I bake mine, I do not fry mine (the braciole....not the string)

The reason I don't like the string thing is because unrolling that little rolled meaty thing is like having a tug-a-war with a piece of meat. But instead of it being a "mud tug" over a puddle of mud, it's a "tomato tug" over a pool of spaghetti sauce. Either way, you get the same results. You are sprayed, speckled, covered with sauce.

Here's why, first you must find the toothpick that the wrapper ended with. You pull this out and then begin unrolling the meat. I challenge any of you to see if you could do this without sauce splattering and spraying all over you... the meat plopping back onto your plate into the yummy sauce and it splishing and splashing like a fish out of water. Seriously, it's such a messy process and I always felt guilty about the state of my clothing afterwards. How DO people do this without making a spectacle of themselves!!!!

My mother had a very interesting reason for doing it this way. When she was growing up...back in the day....my great grandmother would take one braciole and wrap it in an extra long string. It was a game for the kids. They would begin unrolling their meat and end up standing on their chairs because the strings were so long. But the one who found the longest string won. My mother says it was great fun! I don't know what they won. But I think it should have been an apron.

Now, about frying the meat. I don't like anything fried, not because I'm health conscious, but because I don't like the mess it makes. Grease splattered everywhere.

I know what you're thinking. I sound a bit obsessive compulsive about being clean. It's not that. It's just that I hate to clean and want as little slop as possible so that I don't have to scrub it up. So there...it's just that I'm lazy. (No Ma, I have not turned into you yet. At least not in that way.)

So, with all of that out of the way....here is how I make bracioles and spaghetti sauce.

Spaghetti Sauce

4 - 28 oz cans of crushed tomatoes

4 small or two large cans of tomato paste

2 TBLs olive oil

2-4 cloves of garlic (minced)

1 medium onion (chopped)

The following herbs to taste:

oregano

basil

parsley

salt

pepper

or you could just use Italian seasonings

***balsamic vinegar (my own addition, I'll explain why later)***

In a large pot, on medium high heat saute garlic and onion in oil until transparent. Add tomatoes and paste and seasonings. Make sure you stir this all together to combine it nicely and thicken the tomatoes with the paste. When sauce begins to bubble, turn it to low and cook for two or three hours.

**A not so important note, but a little piece of interesting information....When I was beginning to learn this process, we would begin, as I said earlier, on Saturday mornings. The sauce would cook on low all day, stirring periodically, to make sure it didn't stick on the bottom of the pot. When I say "all day"...I mean until around 10:00 PM at night! Then on Sunday mornings we would cook it some more for about 2-4 more hours. Usually by the time Saturday night came, the sauce would actually be a paste and on Sundays we would have to add water to it. One time when I was preparing it for some friends, another Italian friend of mine added sugar to my sauce. (The scoundrel!!!! Touching MY sauce!!!!!). But I must admit, she was right. It was pure acid. I really don't like it cooked this long anymore and the longest I'll cook it on the stove top is two or three hours. I now add a sprinkle of balsamic vinegar (believe it or not) to reduce the acid taste. It sweetens it nicely. Do you do anything to reduce any acid flavor? Some people I've heard add cucumbers or carrots or a potato.....sounds strange to me, but if it works....I say go for it!

These days if I want to cook my sauce a long time I put it in the oven on low or I cook it in my crockpot on low.

Braciole

4 pieces of round steak

You could buy these already flattened for braciole, but they will cost more. When you are done flattening them, they should be approximately 12 inches long, 4-6 inches wide and 1/8 inch thick.

About 1 cup (or more....be courageous and experiment) of Parmesan or Romano cheese (grated fine).

The following to taste:

salt

pepper

parsley

black pepper

garlic

***You may want to use toothpicks to keep the meat from unrolling, but it may not be necessary***

If you did not buy your meat readily prepared for braciole, take your piece of meat and place it in between some plastic wrap and pound the begeebers out of it until it's the correct thickness and easy to roll up. This is a fun activity for the family that's really ticked off at each other! Hurt the meat....not the family.

After the "pounding party", release the meat from it's plastic prison and lay it in front of you. Sprinkle 1/4 of your cheese, covering the steak. Next 1/4 of all of your herbs (to taste). I love my bracioles spicy so I take at least one or two and pour the black pepper on it. (Today I didn't have toothpicks and all I could find to hold mine together were some kebab skewers. I broke them in half and pierced my rolls with them. The spicy ones are the rolls with the pointy ended skewers...shoot....or is it the unpointy ends....dang! I can't remember!!!)

After repeating the process with all four pieces of meat and skewering meat with toothpicks, place into a deep baking pan (pot pan) and bake on 350 degrees until the meat is no longer showing any pink. (or red) When the meat is cooked through (drain any grease), add your sauce (recipe above)...just enough to cover it and bake on low for several hours until the meat is tender. I love it when the meat falls apart. Although some people don't like it that tender, so just bake it until it is hot and bubbly.

My favorite way to eat this is topping cavatellis (it's cavatelli, cavatell...excuse the missspellling.)

So enjoy! Remember, I really want to know how you keep your spaghetti sauce from being too acidy.