Sunday Gravy at Rao's - LA Weekly

hi welcome to rails in los angeles i'm frank pellegrino jr owner and host and today i'm going to show you how to make sunday gravy and you'll love it so the first thing you need to do when you're making sunday gravy is decide upon what meats you want to incorporate you have some flexibility so you can use veal you can use beef you can use pork and so what i suggest is taking a look at the recipe seeing what you like and you can add subtract whatever the case may be but what is the most important is that you find the best quality meat you can and i suggest going to your local butcher or the butcher in your supermarket hey how you doing that's what i'm doing and select the meats that are right for you and make sure they're of the best quality that you can find and then when you get home yeah open up the book or take a look at the recipe that michelle has provided to you and you get cooking it's really simple it's straightforward it's not rocket science by any stretch of the imagination the only ingredient that you need to bring to this equation is a big smile and the confidence that it's going to come out great and it will as long as you're smiling it's good first put your olive oil in you add some garlic cloves i smash them because i believe it releases more flavor as it heats up in the oil once that garlic in the pan starts to shimmer you add your meats because then you know the oil is at the proper temperature to sear so you go through the searing process once all the meats are nicely browned you remove them from the oil set them aside and then you take two cups of water or depending on how much sauce you're going to make and you add some tomato paste you whisk it together in a measuring cup and then you pour that right into the oil and the sucks and the juice from the meats and then you stir the socks to make sure that the pan on the bottom is pretty much clean so you're deglazing the pan and once you've done that you'll add your tomatoes which are san marzano whole peeled canned tomatoes and you bring that to a boil stirring frequently once you start to see the sauce take its shape and the tomatoes break down a little bit you'll put it to a high flame you'll put your meats back in you bring it to a boil you let it boil for a few minutes reduce it to a simmer cover it and go back every half hour look at it stir it if the sauce looks like it's getting too thick you'll add a little bit more water you can always add more water you can't take it away so do so sparingly and in two hours you have a beautiful sunday gravy it's hard to believe i mean it's hard to believe that your original restaurant is still there after 125 years in new york but what i also find hard to believe is that there that it's still a family business which has grown but it's still all about your family how do you explain that the explanation believe it or not is real simple it's all about one thing it's about oh it's about mom and pop and it's about you grow up doing something like my my my granddad who was the chef at rios who got the three stars from the new york times she learned how to cook by living with her mom my great grandmother she learned that she would her job was to be next to her mother next to the stove cooking so in essence that's all we really knew how to do and we didn't intend to go out and do it and just my uncle vincent said hey annie the chef quit you want to come in and that's how it all worked there was no aspiration of it was simple this is this is what i do i'm gonna do it you like it great i want you to like it it's the best i can do of course and somehow that translated and you were never allowed to deviate from the process or the steps of whatever that recipe is even the recipe might not have even been written down but i would be next to the stove with my granddad in the kitchen at the restaurant oh my god i mean i get yelled at i get poked i get hit with a spoon no you don't do it that way this is the way you do it and there's no rhyme or reason it's just don't ask any questions this is how you do it and so ultimately i think to answer your question is the restaurant on 114th street was truly an expression of our households but you got to keep in mind our households at the time were tenement buildings you know i had 10 people living in my grandmother's and grandfather great grandfather and grandmother's apartment you know this six brothers and a sister and everybody in the neighborhood you know so everybody's kind of extended family as it already is and then being introduced to that environment my own self as a young boy and growing up in my own family's household where it was the same thing the people coming and going it was as though we had a restaurant in all in our home regardless not even knowing we had the restaurant so it's not about the restaurant it's about our love of our culture and who we are and our love of basically this is all we know how to do so we might as well do it people like it and we can make a living but it's not about the living part it's about the sharing part and we're blessed to be able to make a living from sharing from here you

Channel: Erik Glode

Views: 12,673

Keywords: erik, glode

Id: MfEbUO0I2DI

Length: 6min 33sec (393 seconds)

Published: Wed Mar 30 2022