Meatballs with Sausages: Breaking the Code of Silence

They must live within a lie. They need not accept the lie. It is enough for them to have accepted their life with it and in it. For by this very fact, individuals confirm the system, fulfill the system, make the system, are the system.  – Vaclav Havel, The Power of the Powerless

This is going to take a minute, so if you’re just here for the recipe feel free to skip on down.

I got my first job at sixteen in an Italian restaurant/pizzeria owned by the people who lived across the street from us. The place was a retirement of sorts. The mister was formerly of the stock market, Alabama bred but with a mid-American accent learned out of professional necessity. Get him laughing and Gadsden came out. The missus was from Brazil. They both spoke English, Spanish, and Portuguese. She added French, German, and a bit of Italian. Their son who helped run the place spoke all of those but German.

They were all clever as can be. (And still are. I see them almost weekly, but this is a nostalgic anecdote and there’s power in “were.” It creates for the reader a sense of being transported, and once frame of reference is changed the experience is more immersive.) There’s an old saying that a gentleman is someone who’s as comfortable in the company of pirates as of kings. As a trader, he spent time with New York financial power players. She was practically Rio aristocracy. They could pull off Ma and Pa shop keeper. No problem.

I remember one afternoon, the missus complimented a woman on her purse. The woman, in her thirties and from the over-the-mountain community (we know because she managed to get that in), was working out whatever insecurities she needed to work out by implying that (a) yes it is a nice purse, (b) you’ll never be able to afford one, and (c) what would a shop keeper know about fashion accessories anyway. The missus gave a Brazilian smile and nodded. “It really is nice, though.”

The snot paid and left with her to-go food and the smile turned to me. “Can you believe that little bitch?” except from her it was “bee-itch.” “She doesn’t understand money,” she said. “When I was a teenager there was a girl whose job it was to carry my tennis racquet.” Then she giggled and went outside to weed the window flower boxes.

The grandmother – the missus’s mother but I was (still am, but see nostalgia above) friends with her son and so always saw their family from his perspective – would come to visit from Brazil. She’d stay for months, spending her afternoons at the restaurant. Like her daughter, she knew a mess of languages, but she didn’t speak English. Other than with her family, interactions were limited so she’d sit in a booth by the bar all afternoon and read. She became a summertime fixture; part of the background. Employees hardly noticed her.

Like at any restaurant, employees at this place bitched. They never got the hours they wanted. They thought so or so was stealing tips. The customers were assholes. Usual stuff. Occasionally they’d bitch about the owners. Everybody does that in every job, but occasionally they’d go too far and occasionally when they went too far they’d do it front of that old woman in the background, not caring because she didn’t speak English.

It was mostly newer hires, people who had only been around a couple of weeks or so that made that mistake. They’d never know why they were fired. I knew the family well enough to know that while the grandmother didn’t speak English, she understood nearly every word. It was right there in eye-catching come-read-me fonts for anybody to see, held up, spine out and cover facing. I don’t know how they missed it.

Hold on to that for a second. I’m starting a second, seemingly unrelated anecdote.

My paternal grandmother was born in 1920 or 21 and grew up in Michigan, right outside of Detroit. As a girl she was interested in airplanes, so at fifteen when she found out about an operation giving flying lessons near her home, she jumped at the opportunity.

Eventually she was deemed competent enough by the instructors to help out around the place. I’m not sure if she gave lessons herself, but the air school also sold rides to paying customers in little two seaters. They’d give a lap around the area so you could say you’d been in a plane, which few could in 1935. Family lore says she flew ticket holders up on short circuits.

I don’t know if she had a license. My grandfather told me that at age thirteen he paid a nickel to city hall for his first driver’s license. I imagine if she did need anything, it was like that. She wasn’t flying a spitfire so an instrument test couldn’t have been all that complicated. Speedometer, fuel gauge, temp. If you could land and not die, I imagine you passed.

She wasn’t supposed to do any of this. It’s not that her parents would have said she was too young. They would, but it wasn’t that. Flying was just something nice girls from Grosse Pointe didn’t do. I don’t know how she pulled it off for as long as she did. Did she say she was at the library? Did friends cover for her? She had to get there and back. I can’t imagine rural airfields were a on bus route.

It all came crashing down when her older sister’s date thought it would be the cat’s meow if he showed his gal the wild blue yonder. They get there and there’s the pilot, my grandmother. The sister ratted her out and my great-grandparents put an end to Grandmommy’s piloting days.

She continued on as a passenger. She and Grandaddy travelled extensively to the East, back when it was still called the Orient. He was in rubber, and there was rubber there, so they’d mix tourism with business when opportunity allowed. They went other places as well, eventually retiring to Annapolis, where she indulged a life long love and established a Mary Garden at St. Mary’s Church.

For those unfamiliar, a Mary Garden features flowers that have picked up names related to Mary or have religious connections: The Gentle Virgin, also known as Pink Geranium, Mary’s Eyes or Forget-Me-Not, and Lenten Rose are examples. Unfortunately, not every variety that thrives in walled Bourbon Courtyards does so in a Maryland back lot a one wood’s distance from the touristy harbor. Confronted with this inconvenience my grandmother improvised, telling a features reporter she “made up some of the Mary names, and figured it was OK since the medieval people had done the same thing.”

My mother first became a grandmother in 2006 when my son was born. A year and half later my wife and I had dinner plans and mom volunteered not just to take the boy for the evening, but to take him overnight. We had not done this yet. A night alone? Obviously we said yes, made pick up arrangements, outlined dinner, bedtime, and breakfast routines, and spoke to a woman who had raised three children as if she was a teenager with a bookmark somewhere in the middle of Kristy’s Great Idea.

We should have been more specific. For whatever reason, that morning we went to Mom and Dad’s an hour earlier than we’d discussed the night before. At around eight in the morning we walked into my mother’s kitchen to find Jimmy in his high chair, covered in chocolate ice cream and sipping from a Coke he and Mom were apparently sharing. Busted, caught red handed, she did the smart thing and went on the offensive. “I’m the grandmother,” she told us. This was practiced authority; no wavering under our j’accuse eyes. “When he’s at my house, he gets what he wants.”

This post is about making meatballs, and it’s my hope that by the end of you’ll be comfortable and confident in doing so at home. But if you learn anything else, it should be that, as the three anecdotes above detail, grandmothers are duplicitous, self-interested, conniving, and not to be trusted.

They’re groomers. They build allies among the young, bribe them with hard candy and a blazing red “Costzon Ride On Push Car for Toddlers, Licensed Mercedes Benz Sliding Car w/Steering Wheel, Horn, Headlights, Under Seat Storage, Foot-to-Floor Riding Toy for Boys Girls 1-3 Years” that “has to stay at Gramma’s house, but you can come over and play with anytime you want, [mood change] if mommy daddy let you.” Us vs. them, and Us is holding all the coffee cake.

Once the bond is sealed, they begin to collect. Case in point: among the worst offenders are Italian grandmothers, so called “Nonnas.” They work mostly in food. Their legions of well-fed progeny will tell you all about Nonna’s sauce, Nonna’s lemon cake. She “slaves all day in the kitchen to make these,” her minions say. “That’s love on a plate, right there.” Soma. The big Sunday afternoon lie. Repeat often enough after Mass and it will be regarded as truth.

As these meatballs will show, it’s all herbaceous scented smoke and mirrors. I’m of that world; famiglia. I’m breaking omerta here, but something faster than osteoporosis needs to take these charlatans down a peg. You’re looking at about twenty minutes of actual work. The rest is maintenance; brief interruptions in an afternoons of leisure.

Nonna’s Deception Meatballs

• 1 ½ lbs. ground chuck
• 2 slices white bread
• milk
• 1 egg
• ½ yellow onion, diced
• 4-6 cloves garlic, minced
• handful Italian parsley, chopped
• rough ½ cup grated Parmesan or similar
• ¼ tsp nutmeg, ground
• salt and pepper to taste
• olive oil
• breadcrumbs
• tomato sauce
  • 2 28 oz cans whole tomatoes
  • 2 carrots, diced
  • ½ yellow onion, diced
  • 2 ribs celery, diced
  • 4-6 garlic cloves, minced
  • basil, fresh or dried, to taste
  • oregano, ditto
  • red pepper flakes, to taste
  • salt and pepper to taste
  • bay leaf (optional)
  • olive oil
• 1 ½ lbs. Italian sausage – Not part of the recipe, but nice stewed with and served alongside the meatballs.

The bread takes some attention and you’ll want it to cool a bit so get this step out of the way real quick. Remove the crust and put them in a small skillet with enough milk to soak through plus.

Over medium heat stir the bread around with a fork, mashing when you think it’ll help, until you have a porridge-like consistency that you would hold up as an example to an eager student as “too thick for a slurry.” Take off heat and cool.

If you’re adding sausages to your ragu (that’s a Nonna affectation that will serve you well) get them started in a 12 inch skillet with almost enough water to submerge, set over high heat, and partially cover. I set the skillet top on but an inch or two off center. You want steam in contact with the sausage, but more importantly, you want the water to boil off.

Eventually, the water will boil off. Pull the sausages out to rest when that happens. They’re ready. But that’s off in the future. In the meantime, assemble your meatball ingredients.

Put the meat, garlic, onion, parsley, nutmeg, and Parmesan in a mixing bowl.

Crack the egg and add that. The bread not-slurry should have cooled enough for handling. Add that too. Generously salt and pepper the mixture, add a few glugs of olive oil, and mix thoroughly with your hands.

Set up an assembly line. Bowl o’ meat to plate o breadcrumbs to baking sheet. Golf ball sized is good, then rolled in crumbs to coat.

Put the meatball sheet in an oven preheated to 400° for 25-30 minutes, or as any nonna worth her salt well knows, enough time to work your fingers to the bone in a hot bath and get out just as it turns towards tepid. Work, work, work.

You can go ahead and make the sauce while the meat cooks if you like. I went for a labor-intensive stroll by the creek with my wife instead and made mine afterwards, but it’s up to you. You’ve got all afternoon.

Sauce takes no time. There are pre-made versions, but pretending you spent all afternoon making a sauce that tastes like Ragu instead of ragu is a deception too far for even the most prolific granny. Maybe a great-grandmother could pull it off if she thinks her audience sufficiently cowed.

Pour a few glugs of olive oil in a sauce big saucepan. The meatballs and possible sausages are going in too, so big is a must. My Dutch oven exists for such things. Sautee the onion and carrots over medium high heat until the onion starts to shine and the carrots dull. Add celery and make them dull too. Add garlic and within a minute add the tomatoes. Tear them up in a mixing bowl first. Then add them, juice and all. Throw in your herbs and red pepper flakes and bring to a boil. Salt and pepper lightly. You want to bring out the brightness, but the salt will be augmented by the meatballs as the sauce leeches oils or whatever it is in Parmesan that adds flavor to liquids. Reduce to a simmer. Taste after 5 minutes and if you’re satisfied with the direction, add the meatballs, cut the sausages in half to let them get leeched by the sauce too, and add. Come back to stir every thirty minutes for the next 2 ½ – 3 hours. Just let it go at the lightest simmer.

That’s it. You’re slightly tethered but otherwise free for nearly three hours. With a pause button for stir breaks, you could almost watch a DiCaprio movie in that time. The sacrifices you make. And at your age.

Correct for salt and serve as is or over pasta – rigatoni is a favorite at my house.

Now you know what aged (Shakespearean pronunciation with -ed given it’s own syllable) Italian grandmothers don’t want you to know. Or at least I assume they don’t want you to know. Both of my grandmothers were sweet Irish girls. My maternal grandfather was the Italian. He made the meatballs. Didn’t make a big deal out of it.