Humor will not be tolerated!! -Portia

check out my blog for an awesome tomato-butter sauce.

Having served a mission in Italy I was indoctrinated into the "right" way to make spaghetti sauce - starting with fresh ingredients and cooking them all day. Also serving the sauce separately. But of course there really is no "right" way to do spaghetti sauce, just personal preferences.

And it is okay to be silly about it.

I usually just put the cold sauce straight onto the warm spaghetti noodles on my plate/bowl/whatever-is-available and it tends to be palatable. Then there's much less cleanup. I also lick my plate/bowl/whatever-is-available - it makes it that much easier to clean.

vorpal blade wrote:Having served a mission in Italy I was indoctrinated into the "right" way to make spaghetti sauce - starting with fresh ingredients and cooking them all day. Also serving the sauce separately. But of course there really is no "right" way to do spaghetti sauce, just personal preferences.

And it is okay to be silly about it.

Having never been to Italy, I'm curious. I've heard that American-Italian food is radically different from anything the Italians actually eat. Is this true?

it is true, bigcheese. pizza is nothing like pizza here. there's hardly any crust. and gelato!! man i miss gelato. and i miss pici! that is my favorite type of pasta, and you can't find it over here. and they don't really use oregano (at least, they don't in siena.)

Imogen wrote:and they don't really use oregano (at least, they don't in siena.)

Really?!? That's so awesome, because the main reason I always make my own sauce is that I hate oregano! I think it's the only herb I don't like.

thebigcheese wrote:

vorpal blade wrote:Having served a mission in Italy I was indoctrinated into the "right" way to make spaghetti sauce - starting with fresh ingredients and cooking them all day. Also serving the sauce separately. But of course there really is no "right" way to do spaghetti sauce, just personal preferences.

And it is okay to be silly about it.

Having never been to Italy, I'm curious. I've heard that American-Italian food is radically different from anything the Italians actually eat. Is this true?

Pizza is generally different over there than it is here. But pizza varies a great deal from city to city in Italy, and even from pizzeria to pizzeria. some towns are known for a certain type of pizza. One town had a deep dish pizza they were quite proud of. Generally the pizzas I had there had less tomato sauce than we do. There has been some exchange of ideas on pizza, and I think sometimes in Italy you get pizza as made by someone who is copying what he thinks Americans want and expect. It seems like oregano is generally present, but I don't remember for sure.

Everywhere I had spaghetti in Italy the spaghetti noodles were long and unbroken. They were served with a little butter or oil to help keep the noodles from sticking. Usually the sauce is served separately and you put it on yourself. As I recall. I don't think it was much different from American spaghetti, except the sauce is usually made from fresh cut tomatoes cooked slowly all day. Lots of garlic, usually. Sometimes there was no sauce except butter. Often the sauce did not have meat in it, you had to ask for that specifically.

I'm not the best one to answer your question.