A Proper Sicilian Feast

I

t must have happened the last time I saw Goodfellas. Or perhaps it was the last time I saw The Godfather. Whatever the source, I've had a serious Jones for Spaghetti with Meatballs. Apparently, I haven't been alone. Shortly after I told a couple of friends about it, I discovered that I had a "guest list" for Sunday dinner.

For Sicilians—and for southern Italians as well—Spaghetti with Meatballs has a different meaning than it does for anyone who's had a meal at a typical Italian American restaurant. Remember the ill-fated Rocco's on 22^nd where he served a dish of spaghetti with two or three of Mamma's meatballs on top? That's not the way Italians do it, although in the interest of full disclosure, the last time I was in Rome, I saw a couple of trattoria menus that offered just such a dish on the menu touristica, tourist menu. But it's rare.

When Sicilians (and again, southern Italians) talk about Spaghetti with Meatballs, it's code for a first course of spaghetti with tomato sauce, followed by an entrée of meatballs, spare ribs (or pork chops), and sausages braised in tomato sauce, and accompanied by salad and bread. And that was the way my Sicilian grandparents served the dish as I was growing up.

I can only theorize that things changed—perhaps sometime in the fifties—when an enterprising restaurateur discovered that if the chef served the meatballs with the spaghetti, the restaurant could turn over the tables faster. Whatever the reason, we've come to think of Spaghetti with Meatballs as a single dish rather than separate courses.

Meatballs are the subject of endless debate among Italians, even today. The primary topic of the debate is meat. All beef? Beef and pork? Beef, pork, and veal? And what proportions? And then there's the filler. Breadcrumbs, or fresh bread ripped into small pieces? And Rocco's Mamma had a trick I had never seen before: she put onion and garlic in the Cuisinart, and pureed it with some chicken stock, then added it to the meat mixture.

Over time, I've settled on beef, pork, and veal in equal amounts for my meatballs. I also use prepared bread crumbs. This may get me some flack from foodie purists, but I'm unrepentant.

Regarding the other meats, I'm fortunate that here in this little piece of heaven in southeastern Connecticut, I can walk one block to Universal Market of Noank. A walk into Universal is a walk back in time. It's a store with an actual butcher ready to discuss and to serve your needs. You'll see no shrink-wrapped meat, and in all likelihood, your new friend behind the counter will hand cut your order from a larger, primal cut. So 'country-style' spare ribs are not a problem.

As for the sausages, my new friend at Universal is happy to describe their lineage in detail. They were made last Thursday by Frank and Sam Bruno at Westerly Meat Packing Co., about ten miles down Route 1 in Westerly, Rhode Island. Perhaps this is a bigger piece of heaven than, say, just the view of Fisher's Island Sound.

Another ongoing debate in the Spaghetti with Meatballs story is the sauce. Perhaps you'll recall Paulie Cicero in Goodfellas, sitting in his jail cell using a razor blade as if it were a microtome, cutting microscopically thin slices of garlic for the "gravy," with Henry Hill providing voice-over play-by-play commentary. Or Clemenza in The Godfather, lecturing Michael Corleone about the virtue of garlic in sauce.

I use my grandmother's recipe, which calls for two cans of tomatoes, 4 - 6 cloves of garlic, a couple of carrots, some red pepper flakes and some basil. I try to use San Marzano tomatoes, but if my local mega-store doesn't have them, I use Muir Glen organic. I also use plain old Bertolli olive oil. As I said in my second cookcook, Almost Italian, when Italian immigrants first got to America, producers made no distinction among pure, virgin, extra-virgin, or even single estate extra-virgin. Olive oil was olive oil.

Once the sauce is going, it's a simple matter to brown the spare ribs, and the meatballs. The spare ribs go into the sauce for about an hour and a half, the meatballs and sausages for about an hour.

Of course, any self-respecting Sicilian feast requires an antipasto. For this one, I fudged my feelings about locally-grown vegetables, and roasted several red and green bell peppers, and served them with some sopressata, and ciabatta.

Alas, it is wonderful, but not perfect here: I have no local supplier for Cassatta alla Siciliana, or Cannoli. So we had to forgo the dolci portion of this feast. It was okay, though. By then, I was seated among eight or nine WASPS enthusiastically waving wine glasses or shards of bread in the air, and saying, "aaaayyyyyyy, fuggedaboudit." Who knows what would have happened if I did have dessert?