The Italian sauce recipes included here have been perfected over time through many adjustments to the amounts and types of ingredients used by my nonna and me
Italian sauces are essential when preparing an authentic dish. As a child, my Nonna and I made these sauces in her tiny kitchen, and they made all of her amazing dishes complete. She never used a recipe, but they were always perfect every time.
Her sauces always begin with a base, whether it’s tomato, cheese, or cream,
Let’s start with tomatoes. Usually, we begin by pouring boiling water over the tomatoes to remove the skin but using whole canned tomatoes is less work. She arrived during the Great Depression, so buying tomatoes wasn’t an option. Instead, we used tomatoes she grew in her garden. Nevertheless, we always started with some type of tomato, and the ingredients we used after that influenced the sauce we were preparing.
Cheese sauces were always tasty. Sometimes we made Alfredo or simply added cheese to the pasta. An example of this is similar to adding cheese in Cacio e Pepe. The different types of cheese dictated the flavor and texture of the sauce. Creamier cheeses like Fontina or Grana Padano added a nutty, buttery flavor to the sauce. One of my favorite cheese sauces is Carbonara, where finely grated sharp cheese is added to egg yolks, then cooked at a very low temperature to create a rich creamy sauce for wide pasta.
Cream sauces have always been the perfect complement to any type of seafood or poultry dish. Some typical ingredients for cream sauces include white wine, butter, and lemon. The process for making a cream sauce involves starting with the thinnest ingredients first and reducing each one until a thick, tasty, creamy sauce is achieved.
