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Is Your Nona's Italian American Sauce "REAL" Italian? Maybe Not! · Family Tree Food Stories

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Nancy May: Hey everybody, it's Nancy and Sylvia once again from
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Family Tree Food and Stories.
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if you are a long time listener and we hope you are, and if you're new
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here, welcome because we wanna share a little bit more about what's going
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on in the future of family tree food and stories, because food isn't
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just about what's put on your plate.
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There's so much richness that's going on, and we are trying to find out a little bit
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more from you, what you're interested in.
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We know a lot of things that are going on, But we have created a survey and if
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you would be kind enough, dear listener, again, I feel like Bridger Tin Gentle
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Reader, one of my favorite shows.
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You get a glimpse inside of what happened , in Nancy's household.
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But anyway if you would go to the link at the bottom of the
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show notes on survey and just.
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Take a few minutes to let us know your thoughts and ideas and where
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you're listening from, and we would greatly appreciate that support As
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well as sharing the show with your friends, your family, and others,
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because as we say, Sylvia, what is it?
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Every meal is a story and every story is a feast.
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And let's get on with this feast, because today we are talking mumbo, italiano,
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every, everything's delicious, right?
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Sylvia Lovely: Absolutely.
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Let's go.
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I'm tasting that taste.
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In fact, I'm gonna do that for lunch.
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Because it freezes.
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Well, that's one thing.
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'cause as empty nesters.
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Bernie and I don't ever eat enough.
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You know how Italian food is, you make huge quantities of
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Nancy May: right.
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Nobody ever comes with, a
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small amount.
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Sylvia Lovely: yeah.
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So you either give it away or you freeze it and it freezes in these great
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chunks and it falls out beautifully.
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you go.
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Nancy May: thing is that when you go out to dinner with friends, other
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than I'm sure you only go to Azure Restaurant, but if you go someplace else.
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Sylvia Lovely: True.
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Yeah.
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Nancy May: If you go someplace else, don't you have that conversation
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like, well, what do you want to eat?
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Do you want Chinese?
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Do you want Japanese?
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Do you want Italian?
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You never typically ask, do you want American food?
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Sylvia Lovely: That's That's right.
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Although we describe ourselves as a New American, but I haven't
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figured out what that is.
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It's, it's high-end food but there's also comfort food mixed in there.
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And then our Italian, when we have an Italian special.
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A chicken parm or something like that, it goes over really well.
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Or if we have a special Italian dinner, it's always full.
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not so much game dinner that's probably the lowest attended.
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But the Italian dinners are huge.
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Nancy May: really interesting.
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I think it just evokes where we all want to get together.
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It's family, it's food,
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It's comfort, and I've never had a bad Italian meal, period.
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Sylvia Lovely: Well, I almost did, when I screwed up lasagna once.
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Nancy May: That
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Sylvia Lovely: you.
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gotta be brilliant to put lasagna together.
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I've concluded, and I'm not, but I got the entire set of ingredients
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all laid out and I was putting it all together like you're supposed to.
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And I realized at the end I hadn't put in the noodles.
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I mean, that's
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like essential.
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Anyway, what I did was I tried to squish 'em in, so it was
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a casserole, not a lasagna.
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Nancy May: Well, that's because you're Irish.
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You're not Italian.
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Sylvia Lovely: There.
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You.
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Okay, there you go.
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We have a certain kind of brilliance, but it's not that.
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But anyway Italian food is what we grew up in.
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America didn't come straight from Italy in the way we can imagine.
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It came through immigration and adaptation memory, and quite honestly, necessity.
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They came over here.
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They figured out what they could have.
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And I mean, these people were amazing in terms of how they adapted to
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the taste of Americans in the late 19th century, early 20th century.
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They started exceeding, the Irish who were coming in and droves in the late 19th and
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Nancy May: But
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It was the ingredients that they could get here, I guess.
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Versus the type of ingredients that you can get there.
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Now I have to say, the tomatoes in Italy at.
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Least around Rome and the Amalfi coast area where I had been, are the most
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delicious tomatoes I have ever tasted, except for some little tiny like grape
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tomatoes that Bob and I grew one year in an apartment that we were renting, and
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the front field had been a horse field.
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You can imagine how rich that soil was and the tomatoes
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never made it into the house.
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Sylvia Lovely: Oh, I know.
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Don't you love a tomato where you, it's like you eat it like an apple.
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Nancy May: And it's sun soaked
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Sylvia Lovely: and it drips down your,
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face.
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But yeah,
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Nancy May: well,
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Sylvia Lovely: hey Nancy.
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Talking about Nona.
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Why Nona?
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I mean, isn't there something, hint, hint on Netflix or was about
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Nancy May: gosh.
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There is, if you have not seen it, we'll put , a link in the show notes.
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There is a Netflix movie
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Nonas, which is Italian for grandma, basically.
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And it's all about this guy who works for the city of New York.
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I think it's the buses and the loss of his family, his grandmother, his
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mother, and I think Italian food more than any food has this connection to.
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Grandmothers stir pots and I can just, I can smell it
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Sylvia Lovely: in this movie.
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It wasn't his restaurant failing.
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Nancy May: It was failing and we don't wanna give it away, but
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ultimately it is resurrected with.
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A series of Nonas
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Who have lost their spouses and their family, and the kitchen again becomes
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a place of healing, not just for them, but for an entire community.
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Honestly, I do believe that a kitchen.
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Well, a home, but really especially the kitchen is the place that we
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all end up gravitating to at a party or at somebody else's house.
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there's something that is so comforting about the smell of cooking Sunday
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sauce, as they called it, right?
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Sylvia Lovely: Sunday sauce.
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Yeah.
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And
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it sis a long time.
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Well, I'm a grandma, but I'm not a Nona.
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That would be an aspirational goal.
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Okay.
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But let me go on and say that one of the biggest misconceptions is
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that Italy is a single, unified food tradition and it isn't.
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And this is interesting.
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I love doing this research because Italy is a relatively young.
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Unified nation, and that only happened in the mid 18 hundreds.
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I mean, they're just babies, right?
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Nancy May: compared to the rest of Europe.
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Sylvia Lovely: it was a patchwork of city, states, kingdoms and regions,
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and they functioned individually and independently for centuries.
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And food was the same way.
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So it was hyperlocal, extremely local.
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And that'd be like from one.
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Village to the next.
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It was shaped by geography, not by recipes.
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Mountain communities cooked differently than coastal ones.
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Inland islands and some of them are relied on pork grains preserved foods.
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Coastal towns leaned into seafood.
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What could be traded and what could be preserved, determined what the people
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ate, not cookbooks and not trends.
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Nancy May: And I think that's so important from the storytelling aspect
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that, we hear a. Of families passing down the history of the recipes and what
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happened in their households because Nonas didn't just cook from recipes
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she created from instinct and memory
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like her mother did.
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Now I don't, I didn't have a Nona either.
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My grandmother, I don't even remember her cooking 'cause she was in a wheelchair.
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I remember her brilliant smile and every time I saw her she
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just lit up like the sun.
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I look back at my grandma, we called her Grammy, and I just
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see this big grin and curly hair
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Sylvia Lovely: Nice.
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Nancy May: so it's a different type of grandma.
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But you have two kinds of, Italian grandmothers from the regions with
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the same kind of name like the Nonas but they create with different
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things and different dishes.
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Garlic and tomatoes to those that barely touch them.
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And meat, like you said, in different ways.
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Honestly, I think here in the United States that there
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is something similar North,
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Sylvia Lovely: Mm-hmm.
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Nancy May: east, west,
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and you end up, but for some reason we think of it as an Italian thing,
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And meat was expensive in Italy, but meat was expensive here, which
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is I guess why, well, my sister has cattle, so they butcher and
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was like, I'm not going to eat.
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Betty Joe, the cow.
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Sylvia Lovely: I know I'm a weenie like that too.
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Give me, don't tell me where it came from.
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Nancy May: But a bones create soup and specials and, small pieces of
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panachetta and just the sausage.
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The other day we were talking sausage with neighbors and although it's not
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Italian, we ate oh, I'm trying to think, drawing a blank on, but it was
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a spicy kind of sausage that we had bought at a local butcher figuring,
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oh, let's try what they've made there.
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It wasn't very good.
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It was
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dry and
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Not something that I really would've enjoyed.
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And Kathy, our local neighbor, said oh, it was chorizo.
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That's what it was.
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It was chorizo sausage.
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And I loved it up north when it's more dried.
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This was, yeah, not too good.
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But she says, oh, we don't cook with that, and we won't eat that.
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We cook with it.
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So it's a flavoring.
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Which is kind Like the Italian thing, right?
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You have the flavor of little, tiny pieces of meat that add to
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the stew that make it so rich, and it's about a restraint in balance.
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Sylvia Lovely: I love that.. , I'm gonna make your mouth water.
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Okay.
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I had to look this up because I just frankly didn't know the difference.
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What is panchetta?
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Bacon and prosciutto.
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I'll give you a quick primer on that.
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Okay.
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The panchetta is salt cured.
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Not smoked.
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And it's from the bottom of the pig.
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you can eat it raw, by the way.
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The
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Nancy May: I think of that fatty pieces
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Sylvia Lovely: Yeah, the
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Nancy May: like, like, a lot of fat.
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Okay.
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Sylvia Lovely: Yeah.
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Okay.
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So you move to bacon.
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Now, bacon, you cannot eat raw.
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It's cured and it's smoked, and it must be in the curing
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process if you're salt cured.
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I mean, I'm no expert at that list, but it would be a preservation thing.
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Now, prochuteo
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Nancy May: but smoking in the south, you, your
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Sylvia Lovely: yeah.
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Oh, absolutely.
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The smokehouse, I grew up going to my mother grandmother's house
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and they had the smokehouse where they kept all of those
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good juicy pigs.
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Like maybe, so the Irish probably, whatever.
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Prosciutto though.
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it's off the hind leg
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Nancy May: Ah,
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Sylvia Lovely: of the pig and it's dry cured and it takes a year.
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to do that prosciutto and you can eat it raw.
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In fact, that is the preferred way to eat it.
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It is frequently on charcuterie plates, for
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Nancy May: yeah, I've never heard of cooking that, but I absolutely adore it.
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I could eat about.
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Sylvia Lovely: Yeah.
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Nancy May: that
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Sylvia Lovely: I know, and I try not to, but
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yeah, it's
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so anyway, getting back, I just wanted to make your mouth water Okay.
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On that.
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So getting back to talking about Italian food because, seasonality
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mattered in Italy and you ate tomatoes and again, like you said.
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This is happening here too.
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A lot of people won't eat tomatoes now that are out of season.
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' cause I go into my
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local grocery store and it's like they taste like cardboard.
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But you know, one of the most interesting things that I read once cannot swear that
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it's true, but it was a long time ago that they did an experiment at , university
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of Florida, where they fed kids, hot house tomatoes versus freshly grown.
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They preferred the hot house ones.
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Nancy May: Really?
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Sylvia Lovely: taste buds have changed, but I think they're changing back.
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. So anyway that's a background of Italian food and then how it became Americanized.
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I.
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Nancy May: Well in Americanized, There was big flavors and big traditions, and
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it just became like an overabundance and.
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Meat was less expensive than it was over there.
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and flour was plentiful, and tomatoes, especially canned, were
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all available everywhere else.
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And it changed how people cooked.
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So I like the meatballs, that were like mumbo meatballs.
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Sylvia Lovely: Oh yeah.
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Oh yeah.
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Nancy May: meatballs and the Saturday Night Live meatball story.
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But we, well, I'll maybe I'll put the link in that one too.
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Sylvia Lovely: Oh, I'm intrigued.
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Nancy May: too many Schwety there there was a different kind
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of flavor that we moved into.
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When things are large, I don't think of flavor as much.
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I think of flavor in smaller, tinier little pieces.
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Maybe I'm wrong.
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What do you think
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Sylvia Lovely: Oh, I, think there is a real revolution in meat.
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Now, let me go back the other way, because of the new food.
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Table, or whatever you wanna call it, the pyramid at trying
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to encourage people to eat more meat because of the protein craze.
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I actually am trying to cut back on it and putting things together and
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going back to that old way of thinking.
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and one of the things about in Italy, and I've not been there, but it's, and
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I've heard about this, you have three, I gave a primo second, and they're
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small portions and an ending plate.
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And America, our dishes are full of all at the same time.
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We do a lot of the layered things, more layered things than they did in Old Italy.
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And I think.
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That is interesting and I've also went down the rabbit hole with sauce.
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You have tomato sauce, which is thinner and takes a long, cooking marinara
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sauce, which is cooking for a short time.
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And let me see here.
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And Sunday sauce with meat.
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So is those three different sauces and I'm not sure I could attest to knowing
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exactly, because I don't cook enough.
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Do you know that I a difference in those three things
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Nancy May: yeah , I didn't know they actually had different names, but I
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have to say, I am a meat sauce person.
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Don't give me
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Sylvia Lovely: Oh, I do too.
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Nancy May: tomato on, on pasta sauce without meat in it and, yeah.
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No, that's the way I grew up.
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Mom was not Italian.
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She was.
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From English, English, heritage, and my dad was, English German American.
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So yeah, that's
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Sylvia Lovely: you ate meat.
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Yeah.
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Nancy May: Tomatoes.
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Tomatoes seem to be the thing that brings everything together in at least in the
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opinion of American Italian, right?
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There's tomato sauce on pizza.
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There's tomato sauce on chicken parm.
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There's tomato sauce on, unless it's just oil and vinegar or butter and vinegar and
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then, or butter, I shouldn't say butter
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beer, but it's really an oil and garlic and a lighter sauce.
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But it's those two and so if you're listening in, you're true Italian.
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I apologize for my ignorance on this,
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but,
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Sylvia Lovely: Yeah.
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Yeah.
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Let us know if we're being ignorant.
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We'd love to hear from you.
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Nancy May: But I was in this grocery store, a local sprouts grocery store,
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and I can't help but hear this guy talk.
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He has a very New York accent,
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Strong Italian well that maybe that's not a strong Italian accent, but it
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was a very New York accent clipped and strong, and he was so instructional
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in explaining how this particular brand of canned tomato was the best.
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He swore by Cento, C-E-N-T-O.
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And then I asked him, so what is this?
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But then he also heard the mutti, the MUTI and Valfuta,
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V-A-L-F-R-U-T-A are the brands.
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He said, but he preferred cento because they all, well, all of
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them specialize in the San Marzano
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From Italy and years back.
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Now this goes years back.
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I had been introduced to a fellow who I actually got a call, from the FBI
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on, which is another story about how the tomatoes are selected.
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And this other guy who I got the call on, he was involved in some sort of
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nefarious acts, which I was not involved in, and I didn't even know it at the time.
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But he was an expert that searched these tomatoes in Italy for the
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right tomatoes for the particular.
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Company, that he was working with.
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And not the company and the individual have anything to do with, don't Call Me.
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Sylvia Lovely: Yeah.
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Nancy May: But it was fascinating to hear how they had to be certified
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San Marzano tomatoes in order to be included in these particular
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brands.
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Yep.
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Sylvia Lovely: remember that.
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Nancy May: Valfuta is known to be a hundred percent Italian grown
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tomatoes using steamed cooked process to put them in the cans, and the
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cento is known for the certified San Marzano tomatoes grown in.
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Sarnai NATO area, if I'm correct, it's probably nato.
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' cause C is hard in Italy.
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, And then the Pomo Dore, which was also another brand that uses
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a cherry tomato that sweetens it up a little bit, which I can see.
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But go and look at the cans and see what kind of tomato they
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are and where they're from.
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Very much like , olive oil.
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Sylvia Lovely: yes, of course olive
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Nancy May: If you don't look at the country of origin on the back of the
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olive
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oil.
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You have to be careful.
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'cause it could not be original Italian olive oil.
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It could be from, the Middle East or someplace else.
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And
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I had some olive oil that was
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really nasty.
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It was from the wrong region.
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Sylvia Lovely: Infused with something it can go bad and you
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don't wanna do that, but yeah.
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Before we take a break, I wanted to also say a couple of things.
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One, uniquely American dishes include things like chicken parm.
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Again, we're talking baked, layered baked zdi lasagna.
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They just.
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Make them differently here because we tend to layer things and you eat
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everything all in, one fell swoop.
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I guess it's a convenience thing that's a US kind of thing too.
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But I did wanna mention there's also pasta in the wheat in Italy and Europe.
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Is at least rumored to be of a better quality.
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It has less gluten.
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There's less additives because it's more highly regulated as
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far as what can go into it.
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And thus it is better for digestion.
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And I just hear this over and over, Nancy about how European wheat differs
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from ours and it tastes better.
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I don't know.
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what do you use when you go to, the grocery store?
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Nancy May: let's take a break because I wanna introduce that concept and that
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conversation that I've had with a fellow that I grew up with who now manufactures
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and produces and has an invented pasta machines, large commercial pasta machines.
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So we'll be right back.
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Okay, Sylvia, we are back and we're talking pasta and flour and the
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important things in making Italian food.
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Well, not that all Italian food has pasta, but a little bit more rich.
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And as I had mentioned, joe, a fellow that I had grown up with in high school.
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I didn't know Joe too well back then, but we've reconnected
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on Facebook and he corrects me when I'm wrong on Italian stuff.
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So, Joe, if you're
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listening, I
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Sylvia Lovely: Joe,
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Nancy May: hope you're listening.
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Sylvia Lovely: help.
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Nancy May: But the interesting thing is that , he's manufactured
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these machines that are very technical designed for commercial
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production of high quality pasta.
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he was explaining to me at one point that really the best flour is typically.
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semelina flour.
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Now different weights.
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So if you are doing home milling is a big thing now for flour.
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So you buy the grains
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that are from somewhere else that are more organic.
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And I guess more original grains than they are today, at least here in the states.
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Sylvia Lovely: Ancient grains.
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Nancy May: Ancient grains.
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Thank you.
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That's what I was thinking.
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Ancient grains.
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But you can mill it down to a double zero which is very fine.
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But I have been enjoying a brand which is in our closet, and I,
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it's like a thicker or a wider noodle, and it's a grainy selina.
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So I am now.
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When I go buy pasta, I really make sure that it has the Salina and
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the dorm wheat combination in it.
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but it's it's a little bit more grainy in flavor.
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It
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Sylvia Lovely: I've heard of it.
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but I have no idea where the name came from, but I wonder if
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it's some region of Italy semolina
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or
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somewhere else.
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I don't
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know.
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Anyway, a interesting factoid.
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Nancy May: But making pasta from scratch is a lot of fun.
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It's a
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Sylvia Lovely: Yeah.
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Nancy May: fun.
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Sylvia Lovely: Well I think I will
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pass
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on that, but,
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Nancy May: one.
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I'll have to make some
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Sylvia Lovely: but we do that at the restaurant.
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Make it make our own pasta, but again, we also buy it from a place
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that does that's our only job.
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So anyway, it tastes good to me.
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Alright.
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So.
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This is where people get hung up on authenticity.
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You hear people say, that's not real Italian food, and historically that
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might be true, but you know what?
20:13
Authenticity isn't only about accuracy.
20:16
It's about meaning Italian American food isn't a diluted version of Italian food.
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It's a new cuisine brought out by specific moment in history.
20:26
And again, just going back to what we said before, it points to the
20:30
adaptation and, utter brilliance of the immigrants who came over and
20:34
adapted their style and created in the meantime a whole new cuisine.
20:40
Nancy May: It's truly an American.
20:42
combination,
20:44
Sylvia Lovely: So the food didn't become less meaningful, it became layered,
20:47
and those layers are exactly what make it worth talking about and sharing.
20:51
And that's what Italian American food is.
20:54
It is something unto itself.
20:57
Nancy May: And it's about stories.
20:58
So before we go, I have this little story.
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There was an Italian barber Angelo that Bob used to go to in.
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New Rochelle New York and Bob would make his homemade wine with blends of things.
21:11
Now we're talking Italian wine, not necessarily with a barber.
21:14
It's Italian wine
21:16
with us, one day Angelo comes in and says Bob, you have to have some of my wine.
21:22
So he gives us this bottle of wine that he makes in his garage.
21:26
Oh my God.
21:27
We were talking about it yesterday.
21:28
He said, you could almost chew this wine.
21:30
It
21:31
Sylvia Lovely: Really?
21:31
I mean, was
21:32
Nancy May: thick.
21:33
Sylvia Lovely: I mean, No,
21:35
Nancy May: so so I guess that, blast through the idea that all Italian food,
21:40
whether it be wine or food, is good,
21:43
Sylvia Lovely: Mm.
21:43
Nancy May: not necessarily
21:45
Sylvia Lovely: There you go.
21:48
the myth.
21:49
Nancy May: And I have to say that some of the worst food that I've had
21:52
on my travels have been in Italy.
21:54
So
21:55
Sylvia Lovely: I love that.
21:56
I love that.
21:56
But let's eat Italian.
21:59
Oh, I mean, I'm about as far from looking Italian as you could get, but I love it.
22:05
Nancy May: Yeah, and I think the whole thing about Italian food and
22:09
families in general getting together, especially if there's some Italian
22:12
influence, is the banter that goes on at the table and the kitchen and the
22:17
And no, you don't do it that way.
22:18
Nona didn't do that way.
22:20
Yes, you did do it that way.
22:21
No, you didn't do it.
22:21
Let me show you how to do it.
22:23
it's.
22:25
It is all about the stories and the love and the connection
22:28
Sylvia Lovely: Yes.
22:28
Nancy May: and ultimately at the end, everything tastes good
22:31
because you're with people that you love and you care about.
22:34
Sylvia Lovely: Even my messy lasagna tasted just fine.
22:37
Nancy May: I can taste it right now.
22:39
Sylvia Lovely: Although, you know what?
22:40
Something you taught me you forgot you taught me this.
22:43
Put some wine, red wine in your
22:45
Nancy May: Oh.
22:46
Sylvia Lovely: sauce, right?
22:47
Nancy May: I have to tell you, lots of red wine.
22:49
In fact, I made some, the other day.
22:51
I made spaghetti sauce with meat.
22:53
Of course, I won't do it without meat, and about a half
22:56
a bottle of wine went in there.
22:58
And if that
22:58
cooks down,
22:59
Sylvia Lovely: yeah, I'm gonna do that.
23:01
Gives me an excuse to make some more.
23:03
I wanna do that.
23:04
Nancy May: Yeah, at New Year's we, I made a big plate or a
23:07
big, you can't do lasagna small
23:10
so I'm making a big tray of lasagna and I brought it over and knowing I am
23:14
not Italian, and somebody said, this is like the best lasagna I've ever had.
23:18
Is there wine in it
23:19
like That's how much wine I put in it.
23:21
Sylvia Lovely: I'm trying to limit my wine drinking, so if
23:23
I eat wine, it doesn't count.
23:25
Right.
23:25
Nancy May: You can chew your wine just like Angelo's and.
23:28
Sylvia Lovely: All right.
23:29
Well this has been great.
23:30
Nancy May: If you have a story to share about Italian memories,
23:34
Italian food, whether it be pasta or not, please come along and share
23:38
your stories with us at Podcast.
23:40
Family Tree, food and Stories.
23:42
There's a little button at the top that says, connect or share
23:45
your stories and let us know.
23:47
In the meantime, please share your stories with your friends and your families.
23:52
And share this show with them as well, because we'd love to have them
23:56
at our table too, every meal has a story and every story is a feast.
24:01
We'll see you soon.
24:02
We'll hear you soon.
24:03
And happy cooking, happy memories and manja.
24:07
Bye-bye chow.