Red Onions... Bella Williams

Red Onions, Red Wine, Red Meat

n my fourteenth birthday my dad taught me the family Sunday gravy recipe. To many, “gravy” brings to mind pan drippings or broth, but for New Jersey Italian-Americans, it refers to a meaty red sauce. Gravy serves a few purposes in my family, from cooking meatballs to dressing pasta. The recipe has been passed down through my family for generations, but never the exact same way twice. It changes by generation, by season, and by week. Sometimes, depending on the weather, we’ll add different ingredients to the gravy, like cinnamon in the colder months. My dad makes it sweeter than his mom did, with red onions and more wine. I tend to go heavy on the seasonings, with the exception of red pepper flakes. My dad says the meal was originally used to stretch a little bit of food to feed a lot of people; the meatballs would have been a lot less meat and a lot more breadcrumbs. We still feed upwards of a dozen people every week, but these days we have sausage and oxtail on the menu too. One constant change is that every new generation adds more garlic than the last. he Sunday dinner recipe isn’t the only long-running practice I’ve been entrusted with preserving. My family is Catholic, with its roots in faith traditions from Ireland, Italy, Samoa, and Taiwan. We celebrate St. Patrick’s Day with corned beef and Christmas Eve with La Vigilia, or The Feast