In that case my mother isn't Italian. She's stopped making her fabulous Porcini sauce (to go with rare steak) because it's fatty, but it's certainly not thick. And anyway Worcestershire sauce has always been a staple in our family.
Porcini. On rare steak. Does your sainted mother's recipe resemble this ? I note that it contains heavy cream, but that don't scare me.
It is true that many European meat sauces are made of butter, drippings, Worchestershire, wine, or herbs and run freely over the meat.
Nonetheless I have seen the lamentable atrocities I described committed on salsas, and under prolonged interrogation the perpetrators have confessed to Italian or French ancestry, or at least influence.
One has to admit that the very notion of a dip is not a natural one to most Italian cuisines (there is no such thing as Italian cuisine, only a few dozen if not hundred local ones), but thin sauces are known - you speak of "salsetta" for things with that sort of background. I should think that the background you are thinking of is pasta and pizza making, where thickness is a requirement because otherwise the sauce will flow off the dough.
Anyway, my mother's porcini-based sauce was simpler than that, I think, and I am certain that the fat used was not cream but the fat of cured, uncooked, unsmoked ham (Parma or Serrano type). Smoked or cooked ham would be too heavy, and bacon fat too strong a flavour.
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Re: Building up web hits
Date: 2010-03-01 12:07 am (UTC)Nose twitches. Mouth waters. Ears perk up. Whining in throat.
Date: 2010-03-01 06:13 am (UTC)this ? I note that it contains heavy cream, but that don't scare me.
It is true that many European meat sauces are made of butter, drippings, Worchestershire, wine, or herbs and run freely over the meat.
Nonetheless I have seen the lamentable atrocities I described committed on salsas, and under prolonged interrogation the perpetrators have confessed to Italian or French ancestry, or at least influence.
Re: Nose twitches. Mouth waters. Ears perk up. Whining in throat.
Date: 2010-03-01 08:18 am (UTC)Anyway, my mother's porcini-based sauce was simpler than that, I think, and I am certain that the fat used was not cream but the fat of cured, uncooked, unsmoked ham (Parma or Serrano type). Smoked or cooked ham would be too heavy, and bacon fat too strong a flavour.