Gravy or Sauce?

Ask any Italian-American to describe what his mother cooks on the stove every Sunday morning, and the answer splits right down the middle.  Is it gravy or sauce?

Growing up in the middle-sixties in the suburb of New York called New Jersey, I never knew there was a way to ‘order’ pizza.  My four-foot-nothing great grandmother brought it up from her cellar every Friday.  The smell of oregano, fresh tomato, and broiled cheese filled her house.

It wasn't until I was sixteen that, to my amazement, I found out people called a phone number and had pizza delivered.  I thought it was a dish of my own family’s creation.  Of course, it was not the kind of pizza I ate at home.  Nor did it have that certain irregular perfection, but for the first time in my life, I realized there were other Italians in America.

When I was six, I wasn't allowed out of my back yard.  At eight I graduated to the front yard.  At ten, I roamed the block like a mad Bedoin looking for goat milk.  It wasn't until I reached the ripe old age of twelve, that I realized the world was bigger than a dead-end street in Brick, New Jersey called “Acapulco Drive’.

Dishes like menesta and beans, cavatelli and broccoli, and ciambotta, were staples on our table.  Black coffee was what my family drank after dinner from tiny white cups.  Anisette was drizzled in it – milk was never an option.  Peppers were always roasted, and chicken soup contained pastina.  Most of us took it for granted.  Now I feel like my heritage is a green-patina tint on a long forgotten past.

When I was sixteen, I came home from school with a bloody nose and a three day sentence in detention.  My mother hit the roof.  She demanded an explanation.  I told her a boy, on the bus, insisted what she cooked for four hours every Sunday morning was ‘sauce’.  I stood my ground.  I adamantly told him it was ‘gravy’.  For that I got a punch in the snoot.  It was the first time I was struck by another person, and the last.  I promised my mother if anyone ever insulted her cooking again, I would strike first, and answer questions later.  Her laugh was both inspirational and confusing.

As a grown man out of college - raising a family - and cooking my own pot of ‘gravy’, I realized the answer.

When someone says, “If it’s red, it’s sauce – gravy is brown,” they are mistaken.  I respond in a kind, but firm voice.  “In cooking, the color brown denotes meat, and meat makes gravy.  Red is a dominant color in food.  Tomatoes are red - therefore whatever they are cooked with becomes red.  But, once meatballs, sausage, braciole, and pork bones are added, ‘tomato sauce’ becomes gravy.

Since the bloody nose in High School, I have come to realize one thing – never insult a mother’s cooking.  But, as an intellectual, I feel compelled to examine the root of a preconceived notion.  The answer is simple:  “When you put meat in it – its gravy.”