A home-cooked meal can rival the best restaurant in town in price and taste. Sundays are Italian night at our house. We start the gravy simmering at 4 PM and have an authentic Italian dinner ready by 5, so the kids can get to bed early. Gravy has a meat like sausage or ground beef, whereas sauce does not have meat.
We like to purchase the premade raviolis from Sam’s Club, called “Three Bridges” – because it’s easy and tastes good. We also like the Mimi’s brand that is made down in Hollywood, FL which has very little preservatives and fillers. It’s been hard to find in Hernando County though.
The base of our sauce uses two cans of crushed tomatoes and one large onion, sauteed until golden brown. We also chop up a couple of cloves of garlic and sautee with the onions before the crushed tomatoes are added to the pot.
The spices we use are simple: several bay leaves, oregano and basil. It’s best to let the flavors meld in the pot for at least 30 minutes. If you’re making gravy, Murphy’s Market sells some great sausage to use as the meat.
Make sure to brown the sausage in a pan, but you don’t necessarily need to cook it all the way through since you’ll be throwing it in the gravy to simmer for awhile. While the gravy simmers, steam some vegetables like broccoli or beets and make a simple appetizer of fresh mozzarella with sliced tomatoes and basil.
Be sure to drizzle extra virgin olive oil over the platter with some salt to taste. Most of the time we have the basil growing in our garden.
This is a satisfying meal that does not need a lot of prep, especially if you decide to use a store bought sauce. My favorite store bought sauce is the Bertolli brand organic tomato sauce.
Italian night can be unique every week since you can try different combinations of pasta and meat in your gravy.