more thoughts on red sauce
This started as a response to eccentric_hat's comment on my last entry and then it became kind of long, so...
Living in Long Island, we are kind of surrounded by red sauce places ('red sauce' being shorthand for 'italian-american as opposed to authentic italian') and, you know, red sauce doesn't always get a lot of love from 'serious foodies.' There was one Anthony Bourdain show - I forget if he was in NY or Italy - but he was talking about Italian-American food, and how it developed historically as a response to abundance by a generous people used to scarcity. If authentic Italian food is something like ribollita or panzanella (both of which are absolutely delicious btw) - food made from garden vegetables, leftovers, stale bread, scraps - then it makes sense that when you move to America and you can afford to buy a lot of meat and cheese that you will demonstrate your newfound affluence by cooking with those kinds of ingredients. And I thought that was bang on and absolutely fit in with my conception of Italian-American identity, one strain of which is "generosity sometimes to the point of absurdity." And I think you might see the truest expression of that strain when it comes to food and entertaining. I know that whenever Dan and I host a party we always end up buying WAY, WAY more food than any rational person would think we need - just because the absolute worst thing that could happen would be to run out of food. For the pre-wedding pool party my in-laws hosted, my father in law ordered something like thirty pizzas for forty people. Does it make sense? Is it rational? NO. But the Italian-Americans I know whose identity as Italian is important to them - people like my father-in-law and my boss - that's a part of who they are. And so when viewed in that context, an Italian restaurant plunking down a chicken parm dish that consists of two breaded/cheesed chicken breasts, a ton of red sauce, and the equivalent of a box of pasta as a reasonable meal for one person to eat makes a lot more sense to me.
So the thing about Parm was that they've taken this impulse and sort of refined it. The meatball hero I had at Parm wasn't the hugest meatball hero I ever had - though to be clear, it was substantial. Instead of going for sheer size, the idea was 'OK, the meatball parm is a legitimate dish that should be taken seriously - how can we make it better?' The NYT review pointed out that the meatballs were more like patties, so they didn't rocket out the back of the hero, which induced me to order the dish, and which I appreciated. The ratio of sauce/cheese/meat was right. The bread was good - not too hard or soft. So yeah, it was awesome. But if you dismiss ALL of red sauce and insist on only eating risotto or whatever - that's fine. But you're missing out.
Living in Long Island, we are kind of surrounded by red sauce places ('red sauce' being shorthand for 'italian-american as opposed to authentic italian') and, you know, red sauce doesn't always get a lot of love from 'serious foodies.' There was one Anthony Bourdain show - I forget if he was in NY or Italy - but he was talking about Italian-American food, and how it developed historically as a response to abundance by a generous people used to scarcity. If authentic Italian food is something like ribollita or panzanella (both of which are absolutely delicious btw) - food made from garden vegetables, leftovers, stale bread, scraps - then it makes sense that when you move to America and you can afford to buy a lot of meat and cheese that you will demonstrate your newfound affluence by cooking with those kinds of ingredients. And I thought that was bang on and absolutely fit in with my conception of Italian-American identity, one strain of which is "generosity sometimes to the point of absurdity." And I think you might see the truest expression of that strain when it comes to food and entertaining. I know that whenever Dan and I host a party we always end up buying WAY, WAY more food than any rational person would think we need - just because the absolute worst thing that could happen would be to run out of food. For the pre-wedding pool party my in-laws hosted, my father in law ordered something like thirty pizzas for forty people. Does it make sense? Is it rational? NO. But the Italian-Americans I know whose identity as Italian is important to them - people like my father-in-law and my boss - that's a part of who they are. And so when viewed in that context, an Italian restaurant plunking down a chicken parm dish that consists of two breaded/cheesed chicken breasts, a ton of red sauce, and the equivalent of a box of pasta as a reasonable meal for one person to eat makes a lot more sense to me.
So the thing about Parm was that they've taken this impulse and sort of refined it. The meatball hero I had at Parm wasn't the hugest meatball hero I ever had - though to be clear, it was substantial. Instead of going for sheer size, the idea was 'OK, the meatball parm is a legitimate dish that should be taken seriously - how can we make it better?' The NYT review pointed out that the meatballs were more like patties, so they didn't rocket out the back of the hero, which induced me to order the dish, and which I appreciated. The ratio of sauce/cheese/meat was right. The bread was good - not too hard or soft. So yeah, it was awesome. But if you dismiss ALL of red sauce and insist on only eating risotto or whatever - that's fine. But you're missing out.