Let Us Sing Praise to the Meatball

In the course of trying to get my desktop organized—not the desktop on my computer but my actual desk whose top is littered with files, notes, clippings, books and other things one can’t make disappear with the double-click of a mouse button—I came across a bumper sticker I never got around to sticking on a bumper. It was a gift from my daughter for my last, as in most recent (I hope), birthday.

It reads: IT’S NOT THAT I’M OLD/YOUR MUSIC REALLY DOES SUCK

As bumper stickers go, it’s not bad. However, I have displayed and seen others that were better.

USE AN ACCORDION GO TO JAIL is something of favorite, as is GREAT MUSIC ISN’T AS BAD AS IT SOUNDS. My hands-down favorite, however, is one I saw on a dilapidated VW Beetle in Malibu: WHERE AM I? WHERE’S MY CAR? The driver appeared to be serious about his questions.

The message conveyed by Courtney’s gift to me is that while I’m perceived to be old, my age has little bearing on my having license to demean the music of the young based on its artistic merit or obvious lack thereof.

I can live with that.

What little I’ve heard of what today’s young people call music is not my cup of tea. I don’t know if it has artistic merit or any intrinsic value. It doesn’t to me. I can’t understand the lyrics. The tempi are mechanical—relentlessly insistent with nary a hint of syncopation—and there are no shifts in dynamics (most of it is just deafeningly loud).

Just recently an older friend of mine explained the difference between hip-hop and rap to me. I did not know that rap is the musical element of the culture of hip-hop. All this time I just thought they were two different kinds of music that I couldn’t tell apart.

Quite frankly, I don’t give a damn about pop music. I stopped listening to it in 1976, when I quit having to play it to eke out a living as a musician. My last professional gig was with an acoustic piano-bass-drums trio at a high school prom in Rantoul, Illinois. There were three requests for “Stairway to Heaven” and one for “anything by Blood, Sweat and Tears.” Since we were musically averse to electricity and therefore could not duplicate the soaring guitar riffs of Led Zeppelin, our pianist played Eric Satie’s “Gymnopédies,” which was on BS&T’s second album, on a slightly out-of-tune upright while the bassist and I went outside and smoked something.

It was shortly after this that the pianist, a very talented guy whose name I won’t reveal, abandoned his musical career to become a tax attorney.

Shortly after that, I learned that gymnopédies is not even a word. It was made up by Satie. I’m not sure if it should be italicized.

I was raised on jazz and classical music. But on those evenings when my parents weren’t home, my sister and I would misbehave by listening to Dick Biondi on WLS, an AM radio station that played the pop music of the day. The Everly Brothers were a big deal then. So were Dion and the Belmonts, Del Shannon, The Chiffons, the Big Bopper, Doris Day. And Elvis.

It was dreadful music—clearly a youthful, somewhat rebellious reaction to Sinatra, Crosby and Nat King Cole—but you could at least hear the lyrics, as inane as many of them were. Imagine Rosemary Clooney singing “It’s My Party” or Dean Martin rendering a cover of “Chantilly Lace.”

It was also the age of the novelty song and that’s what I was reminded of when I found that bumper sticker about my being old. Nothing today could compete with the hideous inanity of those tunes. Weird Al Yankovic has written and performed parodies and spoofs in recent times, but in my day we had songs that were actual parodies of themselves.

Sheb Wooley had a major hit with “Purple People Eater.” Who of my generation, at least those without any extenuating mental conditions, could forget Brian Hyland’s “Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie Yellow Polkadot Bikini” or Sam the Sham & The Pharaohs’ “Wooly Bully?” And oh, how we danced (not this we, actually) to “Monster Mash” by Bobby Pickett and the Crypt Kickers.

LIKE MANY AMERICANS, I grew up eating spaghetti and meatballs, and lamenting the fate of a single meatball in the wistful camp song “On Top of Spaghetti,” written by Tom Glazer and recorded with the Do-Re-Mi Children’s Chorus.

Everybody sing now:

On top of spaghetti all covered with cheese
I lost my poor meatball when somebody sneezed
It rolled off the table, it rolled on the floor
And then my poor meatball rolled out of the door…

There are several more stanzas but, much like the “Star Spangled Banner,” nobody much remembers them. It’s OK. We all get the point.

In Italy, spaghetti and meatballs can be found only at the most touristy of places—places where the menus feature pictures of what you might eat, sort of like at Denny’s where it must be feared that some customers might not know what a stack of pancakes should look like. Traditionally, spaghetti is something you eat first (il primo) and meatballs would possibly follow (il secondo). (It should be noted that in areas of Puglia, Basilicata and Calabria, marble-sized meatballs are commonly served with short pasta and sauce.)

Some four million Italians immigrated to American shores between 1880 and 1920. About 85 percent of them came from a southern Italy impoverished by the political and economic circumstances of the time. Northern Italians were not welcoming to them and so they came to the United States—and brought with them their memories, the Cosa Nostra, and the basic elements of their cuisine: pasta, tomatoes, garlic, basil and oregano.

Meat was a luxury in southern Italy. In the boroughs surrounding Ellis Island it was comparatively cheap. In Nebraska it was practically free, but what self-respecting Italian would move to Nebraska? Meatballs were a common and economical way to consume beef (rabbit, lamb and pork were widely used also) in the old country and they became a more everyday thing in the New World.

But meatballs weren’t perched atop heavily sauced spaghetti until non-Italian Americans were drawn to Italian restaurants. They were used to having a starch (usually potatoes) accompany their protein and Italian-American chefs combined the two courses for their customers and unwittingly created an iconic American dinner.

Jimmy’s Spaghetti House, a small, family-style restaurant in Melrose Park, Illinois, an Italian enclave on the western edge of Chicago, was where my family ate Italian food when we weren’t at the Interlandi house.

It was a wonderful joint with red-checkered tablecloths and candles in Chianti bottles—other things you don’t find readily in Italy. The salad, which preceded every meal (another American convention), was crisp iceberg lettuce with loads of stuff piled on top: peperoncini, salami, giardiniera and tomatoes with a simple dressing of olive oil, red wine vinegar, garlic and dried oregano, and finely grated Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese. Cheap red wine was poured from carafes into jelly-jar glasses.

And then there was the spaghetti and meatballs. It was a huge bowl of spaghetti with a ladle of marinara plopped on top (the Italian tradition would be to lightly toss the pasta with the sauce) along with a couple of meatballs the size of tennis balls, and more sauce and grated cheese.

Today, I prefer my meatballs with a very simple tomato sauce and some rapini, broccoli or zucchini and onions fried in olive oil with garlic and red pepper.

But if Tony, the chef at Jimmy’s, were around, I’d order the spaghetti and meatballs, tuck the gingham napkin under my collar and dig in. Buon appetito!

Meatballs alla Jimmy

I prefer to grind my own meat and whenever possible, I use a mix of 70% chuck and 30% short rib, ground twice through a medium blade. That represents half of the meat mixture. The other half is equal parts of pork and veal, coarsely ground as well.

2# ground beef
1# ground pork
1# ground veal
½ cup flat-leaf parsley
½ cup diced onion
6 cloves garlic, finely minced
¾ cup plain bread crumbs
1½ cups grated parmesan cheese
4-6 eggs
1 cup ice-cold water
Salt & black pepper
A few gratings of fresh nutmeg
1-2 tsp. red pepper flakes

Season the onions and garlic with salt and black pepper and fry in olive oil until soft, but not browned. Let cool. Combine with other ingredients, adding the eggs as needed. Cover and refrigerate overnight to allow the flavors to develop. Form into 2-1/2 ounce spheres (about golf ball size). Bake on a sheet pan for about 20 minutes at 475º.

Tomato Sauce

Heat three tablespoons of extra-virgin olive oil in a small saucepan over medium heat. And 4-6 cloves of finely minced fresh garlic and a teaspoon of red pepper flakes. When the garlic has softened, crush the contents of one 28-ounce can of San Marzano tomatoes by hand into the garlic and oil. Season with salt and pepper. Let simmer for 20-30 minutes. Just before serving, tear a small bunch of fresh basil leaves and stir into the sauce.

Broccoli Strascinati

¼ c. extra-virgin olive oil
1# broccoli florets or rapini, zucchini
½ medium-sized onion, sliced
3 cloves garlic, smashed
½ tsp. red pepper flakes
Salt

Heat oil over medium-high heat. Add garlic until just before turning brown. Remove. Add onion and broccoli; cook, until lightly browned, 6-8 minutes. Add 2 Tbs. water. Cook 2-3 minutes. Add red pepper; cook another 2 minutes. Season with salt.

Photography, inspiration and Italian Groucho mask by Courtney A. Liska