Technically, gravy is any sauce made with meat or meat drippings. Growing up in East Harlem, we always called the Sunday sauce “gravy.” In fact, we didn’t refer to it as pasta; it was “macaroni.” I’m not sure why it was called gravy, but that’s just how it was, and it’s been that way forever. Over the years, we gradually started calling it sauce, but the term “gravy” still brings back so many wonderful memories.
When I was growing up in the 1950s, Sunday dinner at my maternal grandparents’ home was a weekly tradition. My grandmother, Nanine (Anna), did most of the cooking, but as my aunts grew older, Grandma relaxed and let her daughters take over. There were 14 children in the family. Sadly, two died when they were very young, and my Aunt Angie passed away at 21. The remaining 11 all had at least two children each, and every Sunday, we would all squeeze into a five-room apartment in a broken-down tenement on 113th Street and First Avenue in East Harlem.
The men always ate first, followed by the women and children. After eating, the men would go into the living room to smoke and listen to the Yankees game on the radio. In our Italian family, the men were the breadwinners and were treated with priority. Occasionally, arguments would break out between the brothers, but that was all part of a typical Sunday. By Monday, they’d act like nothing had happened.
I miss those days when the entire family would gather at Grandma and Grandpa’s.
If you’d like to learn how to make “gravy” the way we did, check out my YouTube video on Nanny’s Italian Kitchen. Don’t forget to subscribe (you’ll need a Gmail account) at this link.