Sunday Gravy

I always thought that mobsters in the witness protection program aren't supposed to draw attention to themselves.

Apparently, that is not the case with "Goodfella" Henry Hill. He has a new product out called "Sunday Gravy", even though I NEVER heard anyone in New York ever call marinara sauce gravy.

But, for just under $15 (shipping is included), you can get yourself some of the stuff Henry's been cooking up in prisons since he was a tot!

http://www.sundaygravy.net/

For a 16 oz. jar?

HA

I saw something on him recently on tv, maybe A&E, Court TV, or the History Channel. Anyway he seemed like the ultimate self promoting loser SOB. Even when I originally saw the film, I couldn't quite believe he was as lily white as presented. Personally I put him up there with Vallachi, or Stephanopoulis. Do whatever it takes to get up the ladder, then turn around and screw over the people that put you there. I wouldn't put a nickel in his pocket. I'd rather buy the Soprano cast cookbooks. This coming from an Italian American BTW.
(I also seem to recall that Hill was tossed out of the Witness Protection Program after taking a drug bust while under its protection, he should swim wit da fishes dat one)

Vayo con Queso

My Sunday gravy is either sausage, chicken or pork chop.

Paul E. Smith
Knoxville, TN

quote:

Originally posted by Sundancer7

My Sunday gravy is either sausage, chicken or pork chop.

Paul E. Smith
Knoxville, TN

Cool!!!!!

quote:

Originally posted by stevekoe

He has a new product out called "Sunday Gravy", even though I NEVER heard anyone in New York ever call marinara sauce gravy.

"Sunday gravy" (generic--I can't speak to Henry's) is not marinara sauce. Technically, although Italian-American, it's a lot closer to Neapolitan ragu. It is the product of long, slow cooking of various meats (bracciole, sausage, meatballs, pork chops, even pot roast) in a tomato-based sauce or "gravy". After cooking, the meats are generally served as a second course (secundi piatti) in Italy and the "gravy" is served over pasta as a first course (primi piatti) though, in the US, they are usually served at the same time. It's called "Sunday gravy" because most families only have time for the long cooking required on weekends.

Here's one recipe in case you may want to try making it yourself (this is for the gravy only--if you want to cook the traditional meats in it, you brown those and substitute for the pork/chicken parts at the end of the ingredient list). As you can see, it may be worth $15 a jar:

quote:

Italian Gravy

2 28 Ounce Cans Tomato Puree
1 6 Ounce Can Tomato paste
1 Quart Chicken Stock or Beef Stock, See

2 Cups Dry Red wine
1/4 Cup Olive Oil
2 Yellow Onion, Peeled and Minced
6 Large Garlic cloves, Chopped
2 Ribs Celery with leaves, minced
1 Carrot, Grated
1/2 Cup Parsley, Chopped
1/2 Pound Fresh Mushrooms, Chopped, Optional
1/2 Teaspoon Crushed Red Pepper Flakes
1 Tablespoon Crushed Oregano
1 Teaspoon Dried Rosemary
2 Bay Leaves
1 Tablespoon Dried Basil or 2 T. Fresh
2 whole Cloves, Optional
1/2 Tablespoon Black Pepper, Freshly ground
2 Tablespoons Salt, Or to taste
1 Teaspoon Sugar
1 Pound Pork neck bones or chicken backs
and necks

In a large pot, place the tomato puree, tomato paste, Chicken or Beef Stock and wine. Heat a large frying pan and add the olive oil. Saute the onions, garlic, celery, and carrot until they just begin to brown a bit. Add to the pot along with the remaining ingredients. Bring to a light boil and then turn down to a simmer. Simmer for 2 hours, partly covered, stirring often. Remove the bones and discard or make a private lunch of them. Skim the fat from the top and discard. Store in the refrigerator covered, in either glass, plastic, or stainless steel. It will keep for a week. Use for pasta topping or for any other dish calling for Italian tomato sauce or gravy. This freezes very well.

Marinara, by contrast, is much simpler, generally meatless and fairly rapidly cooked.

quote:

Originally posted by BT

"Sunday gravy" (generic--I can't speak to Henry's) is not marinara sauce. Technically, although Italian-American, it's a lot closer to Neapolitan ragu. It is the product of long, slow cooking of various meats (bracciole, sausage, meatballs, pork chops, even pot roast) in a tomato-based sauce or "gravy". After cooking, the meats are generally served as a second course (secundi piatti) in Italy and the "gravy" is served over pasta as a first course (primi piatti) though, in the US, they are usually served at the same time. It's called "Sunday gravy" because most families only have time for the long cooking required on weekends.

Here's one recipe in case you may want to try making it yourself (this is for the gravy only--if you want to cook the traditional meats in it, you brown those and substitute for the pork/chicken parts at the end of the ingredient list). As you can see, it may be worth $15 a jar:

quote:

Italian Gravy

2 28 Ounce Cans Tomato Puree
1 6 Ounce Can Tomato paste
1 Quart Chicken Stock or Beef Stock, See

2 Cups Dry Red wine
1/4 Cup Olive Oil
2 Yellow Onion, Peeled and Minced
6 Large Garlic cloves, Chopped
2 Ribs Celery with leaves, minced
1 Carrot, Grated
1/2 Cup Parsley, Chopped
1/2 Pound Fresh Mushrooms, Chopped, Optional
1/2 Teaspoon Crushed Red Pepper Flakes
1 Tablespoon Crushed Oregano
1 Teaspoon Dried Rosemary
2 Bay Leaves
1 Tablespoon Dried Basil or 2 T. Fresh
2 whole Cloves, Optional
1/2 Tablespoon Black Pepper, Freshly ground
2 Tablespoons Salt, Or to taste
1 Teaspoon Sugar
1 Pound Pork neck bones or chicken backs
and necks

In a large pot, place the tomato puree, tomato paste, Chicken or Beef Stock and wine. Heat a large frying pan and add the olive oil. Saute the onions, garlic, celery, and carrot until they just begin to brown a bit. Add to the pot along with the remaining ingredients. Bring to a light boil and then turn down to a simmer. Simmer for 2 hours, partly covered, stirring often. Remove the bones and discard or make a private lunch of them. Skim the fat from the top and discard. Store in the refrigerator covered, in either glass, plastic, or stainless steel. It will keep for a week. Use for pasta topping or for any other dish calling for Italian tomato sauce or gravy. This freezes very well.

Marinara, by contrast, is much simpler, generally meatless and fairly rapidly cooked.

I didn't call it marinara -- he did!

http://63.134.193.125/ZenCart/index.php?main_page=index

quote:

Word on the street is if you eat any marinara sauce other than Goodfella Henry Hill’s Sunday Gravy, you’re just a regular schnook.

For that matter, while I realize that "schnook" is an Americanized word, I never knew that the Italians were pilfering from the Yiddish!

Need to hold up a bank in order to buy some!
He looks deranged on the web site.

Also, see: http://www.roadfood.com/Forums/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=5684&SearchTerms=Italian+gravy

From the website: "Henry Hill says using store-bought spaghetti sauce is no way to enjoy true Italian cuisine. Store bought spaghetti sauces are to fine dining what The Sopranos are to true Mafiaosi (sic)."

Update: and the different between a store-bought spaghetti sauce manufactured in a centralized depot/warehouse and a web-site purchased sauce manufactured in a a centralized depot/warehouse (in North Platte, Nebraska, according to the site) is exactly???

Wow, looking at Henry Hill on his website really exemplifies the "glamorous" life of a gangster.

Holy crap, he got rode hard and hung up wet, didn't he?
I don't get the difference between what he's selling and what's at the grocery store either.. and to think Ray Liota played him in the movie.. (excellent movie, btw)

Sunday gravy can be any tomato sauce cooked long and low to which meats are added. Among the meats are pork and/or beef roasts, sausages, meatballs, brachiole -- whatever. Although there's a whole thread on this somewhere, gravy is commonly used to mean a tomato sauce among Italians, mainly those from Southern Italy, in the Northeast part of the United States, although there are those who will insist they've never heard the word used to refer to such a sauce.

We only make that on holidays now, in my family. Season the beef, sear it & drop it into the sauce to finish the cooking process. To die for. We've never called it gravy. Serve w/homemade pasta, bread & salad. Always eat the salad last. Don't know why.

Yep. delicious. I grew up with that stuff.

quote:

Originally posted by Michael Hoffman

Sunday gravy can be any tomato sauce cooked long and low to which meats are added. Among the meats are pork and/or beef roasts, sausages, meatballs, brachiole -- whatever. Although there's a whole thread on this somewhere, gravy is commonly used to mean a tomato sauce among Italians, mainly those from Southern Italy, in the Northeast part of the United States, although there are those who will insist they've never heard the word used to refer to such a sauce.

Dearest Michael--that is precisely what I said above and I also mentioned the other "whole thread" but for your benefit, once again see: http://www.roadfood.com/Forums/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=5684&SearchTerms=Italian+gravy

At those prices his product will end up in a wherhouse alom side the Billy beer. As for the gravey vs. sauce thing I have yet to see in a grocery store a jar of tomatoe gravey, but plenty of pasta sauce. ciao Chow Jim

We used to make marinara, and we used to make tomato sauce. Marinara is a quickly cooked sauce containing nothing but: olive oil, garlic, onions, plum tomatoes, salt, pepper, oregano, fresh basil and crushed red pepper. It's very light, and very loose, and is designed to be reduced in the pan before the pasta is added.

We used to make tomato sauce (this was in a restaurant, of course, so not all of this stuff would be readily available at home) with: some veal bones (the ankle, below the osso buco), pork bones and/or skin, very coarsely chopped onions, carrots, garlic and celery, some prosciutto skin, red wine, plum tomatoes, oregano, bay leaves, red pepper, s&p. If the spirit moved me I'd toss in some rind from a reggianito parmigiana. It cooked for about three hours. And before anyone says anything, this has no sausage or bracciole or meatballs, because this is the base sauce for cooking them.

The big difference is this: sure, you can put tomato sauce on your pasta, but many people find it too heavy. Personally, I find a well-made marinara on fresh tagiatelle to be one of man's great achievments. Tomato (red, Sunday, gravy) sauce is for making other stuff.

It's what you should use when you make baked pastas such as lasagna or baked ziti. It's what belongs on top of the meat and below the cheese in chicken/veal/eggplant parmigiana. It's what you should cook your bracciole, meatballs and sausage in. The reason is that in these preparations, if marinara is used it doesn't add enough flavor and, most importantly, it waters out the dish. If you eat lasagna and it's all "broken" and soggy, that's probably the culprit.

The key to either of these sauces, but especially marinara, is the right tomato product. You'll never get what you want with generic American tomatoes, or crushed tomatoes, or anything else but Italian San Marzano plum tomatoes. If you have dead-ripe fresh plums, and they're good (some of the newer cultivars have, even when ripe, the consistency of golf balls). The whole idea is that the tomatoes quickly break up and melt into a silky, delicate sauce that doesn't require tomato paste.

Marinara recipes calling for sugar, wine, thyme, dried basil, tomato paste, long cooking or cheese are just inauthentic.

quote:

Originally posted by Scallion1

You'll never get what you want with generic American tomatoes, or crushed tomatoes, or anything else but Italian San Marzano plum tomatoes.

A couple of years ago I would have said the same thing. But more recently, I tried Trader Joe's canned plum tomatoes. I find them almost indistinguishable from San Marzano and, given the periodic embargos and tarrifs on tomato imports (as we have trade fights with the Europeans), more dependably obtained. Even if you won't agree they're as good as San Marzano, they make a good backup if your source of the real thing is temporarily out of stock.

Incidentally, my main use for canned tomatos is not the sauces we've discussed but another quickly cooked one, putanesca. I saute some minced garlic; add a can of one of the high quality tomatos we're discussing;, throw in some red pepper, oregano and freshly grated black pepper; and saute until the tomatos start to break down. Then I add black olives (purists use some sort of Greek or Italian olive in brine, I perversely like the plain old American canned ones) and capers (quantity to taste--I use about 2 tbsp) and simmer a few more minutes. Just before it's done, I add a can of anchovies (chopped) and 2 or 3 tbsp chopped fresh parseley.

Most of this can be accomplished while your pasta is cooking. The traditional pasta is probably perciatelli (buccatini) which is like fat spaghetti with a hollow center but I use spaghetti (DeCecco is my favorite brand)

quote:

Originally posted by stricken_detective

We only make that on holidays now, in my family. Season the beef, sear it & drop it into the sauce to finish the cooking process. To die for. We've never called it gravy. Serve w/homemade pasta, bread & salad. Always eat the salad last. Don't know why.

It flushes you out.

It seems that gravy is different in different parts of the USA. It seems that in the northeast, it has a tomato base, in the south it contains everything from chicken, sausage, bacon or whatever. I noticed that in Minnesota, they call it a sauce and it is mostly white.

Paul E. Smith
Knoxville, TN

I interviewed Henry Hill once over the phone (I'm in radio).
He doesn't hide anymore because most of the people who wanted him
dead are dead themselves or otherwise out of commission.
All the Italians I work with call it Sunday gravy.

quote:

Originally posted by Captain Morgan

I interviewed Henry Hill once over the phone (I'm in radio).
He doesn't hide anymore because most of the people who wanted him
dead are dead themselves or otherwise out of commission.
All the Italians I work with call it Sunday gravy.

There is an old saying, Revenge is a best dish served up cold. Chow Jim

Many years ago, eating Sunday dinner at my Italian girlfriend's house, it was called gravy. Same with my brother's girlfriend. Same with some of our friends famililies. We're in the NE, Long Island NY.

quote:

Originally posted by stevekoe

I NEVER heard anyone in New York ever call marinara sauce gravy.

I've been hearing Italian-Americans in New York call their tomato sauces of all kinds "gravy" my whole life. Not all of them, mind you, but lots of them. The term "Sunday Gravy" was usually reserved for the long-cook sauces that sat on the stove from early Sunday morning till dinner time.

They also called just about every kind of pasta "macaroni".

Most of this can be accomplished while your pasta is cooking. The traditional pasta is probably perciatelli (buccatini) which is like fat spaghetti with a hollow center but I use spaghetti (DeCecco is my favorite brand)


I'm not a big bucatini or percatelli fan. I find it almost impossible to eat without winding up with sauce/gravy/olive oil all over my shirt.

And to each his own, but I prefer Del Verde or Barilla. There's something about the texture of De Cecco that I dislike.

I grew up in a zero-generation Italian kitchen. They were ALL from Italy! And there were always GREAT debates over what kind of sauce (they NEVER called it gravy) with the gnocchi, with the pappardalle, with the fusilli, with the spinach and ricotta ravioli, with the plain spaghetti, the lovely stuffed manicotti, the stewed squid, etc. etc. They did (and I do when I can) canned all their tomato products for the winter season. Slaughtered their own pigs, had great gardens, made their own wine. We never heard of "Sunday Gravy"....Nona cooked the sauce accordingly to what it would accompany.

I guess that, given that my father immigrated from Italy, I can be called "first" generation, I am in a similar situation to lleechef. We never used the term "gravy" when referring to any tomato-based sauce in English, and I never heard any other Italian-Americans in my neck of upstate New York use that term, either (can any other upstaters back this up with their experiences?). Sundancer, when I grew up in that part of the Northeast, the word gravy pretty much only referred to a brown sauce made from pan drippings of turkey or beef...and honestly, I never cared for it (still don't).
I only heard the term gravy used in reference to a tomato-based sauce when I was with Italian-American friends from Long Island...which leads me to wonder...did this whole gravy/sauce controversy begin when Italian immigrants to a particular region wanted to make a distinction between types of sauces in English, in the same mode as the distinction between salsa/sugo?

In the south, gravy is a brown sauce made from the drippings of about anything. Turkey, chicken, pork chops, beef, sausage, bacon or whatever. It is available at almost every restaurant in the south.

You may not care for it because you were apparently raised on something different and I understand that.

Mamaw Smith to my knowledge never made a tomato based sauce or gravy.

I do not think I have ever had it. However I think I would enjoy it.

Paul E. Smith
Knoxville, TN

Sundancer,
Certainly you've had marinara sauce (or, er, gravy) on pasta, n'est pas?
The Bear