Hollywood blockbuster movies like the “Godfather” and ”Goodfellas” suggest through the artistry and imagination of filmmaking and written into a screenplay their truth about the making of tomato sauce or better known to Italian Americans as the Sunday gravy. Italian Canadians know it best as Sunday sauce. To some this Sunday sauce can be considered an art form of in itself as this sauce appeals to our senses and emotions as no two Italian’s ragu will taste identical.

As an adolescent on Sunday mornings, I remember being awakened by the aroma of meatballs frying and the sweet smell of simmering tomato sauce permeating the entire house.

What is “Sunday sauce?” You ask any Italian and they will know exactly what you are talking about. There are plenty of adaptations out there on this sauce but on the whole most Italians use meatballs, Italian sausage, braciole and pork spareribs slowly simmered in a tomato sauce. My mom’s version of braciole varied with either a flat piece of beef, veal or pork stuffed with garlic, flat leaf Italian parsley and prosciutto rolled up and tied with butcher’s twine and fried and cooked until browned, and then she would add it to the already simmering tomato sauce. It is the braising of this combination of meats that will add the intensity of flavour from the caramelized meat into the tomatoes making this sauce a thick and rich ragu for your choice of pasta. Removing and serving the meat from the sauce is normally used as the second course for the Sunday meal.

Depending on what mood my mother was in that particular Sunday morning, she would either make braciole only or the meatballs and spareribs or just the sausages and the braciole. If company was coming that specific Sunday, then she would incorporate all four types of meat as with the visiting relatives that would mean more people at the table therefore more meat was required for the second course.

There are a number of meatball recipes out there using various types of ground meat and a variety of spices and other ingredients rolled together by hand and cooked by frying, baking, steaming or braised in a sauce or stock. There are even “meatless” meatballs to satisfy vegetarian palates and fishballs made with seafood.

How one makes meatballs depends as much on one’s cultural background as on individual taste. Practically every culture out there has their own variation of the meatball. Who hasn’t heard of Swedish Meatballs? IKEA locations around the world serve Swedish meatballs at most of there cafeterias, once you have purchased that Billy Bookcase and the onset of hunger pangs begins you can get your fill of Swedish meatballs and then continue to shop till you drop. In Germany their meatballs are made from ground beef, veal or pork and sometimes mixed with either ground salted herring or anchovy, onions, eggs and spices and are eaten with a creamy caper sauce.

Other meatball recipes of various ethnicities can include “pulpety” from Poland. “Pulpety” are usually made from seasoned ground meat with onion and mixed with eggs and breadcrumbs or wheat flour roll soaked in milk or water. Fried “pulpety” are larger than typical cooked ones. They can be round or flat in their shape and are usually served covered in variety of sauces such as tomato or a kind of gravy thickened with flour as well as mushroom sauce. The Chinese, Portuguese, Romanians to name a few more also have their own meatball recipes.

In Italy, meatballs are known as “polpette” and are generally eaten as a main course. My recipe incorporates the two courses on the same plate. This tradition of Sunday sauce evokes a powerfully personal experience related to the fortitude of family ties and memories so I have integrated this practice with my version of Sunday sauce with Spaghetti and Meatballs alla Rizzuti.

Marlon Brando as Vito Corleone in “The Godfather” may have uttered this line if he had used my meatball recipe, “I’m gonna make him a meatball he can’t refuse!”