The reason this sauce is closer to our family traditional pasta sauce is that it has sugar and she is cooking the pasta in the sauce. According to my recollection Grandma Capp always started her pasta sauce with tomato paste and made sweet sauce. My mom did her's the same way, probably because my dad liked it that way. They both cooked the pasta in the sauce. The problem with that is that the pasta continues to soak up the sauce which makes leftovers a little soggy. Solution = Eat it all!
About the meatballs. My grandma or mom did not use Italian sausage to make their meatballs. They just used ground meat. In those days you couldn't buy Italian Sausage at the grocery, and we only made it once a year. Nowadays almost all grocery stores have Italian Sausage and since cooking at home is becoming more and more popular there are lots of recipes and many people have mixers with grinder attachments making it easy to make your own. At some point in the near future I will post a recipe for Italian sausage that has been passed down for a couple of generations. I really like the meatballs made with half Italian Sausage and half ground beef. The combination is wonderful. Either way I use fresh onion, garlic, celery and a little parsley and mince it up finely. Add some parmesan cheese, bread crumbs, and an egg or two mix it well and form into balls. In the old days they didn't use bread crumbs but took some stale bread and moistened it with water and worked it into the meat. The pieces of bread are a little larger but work just fine. I like big meatballs about the size of a handball. Two is enough for a guy. I like to fry them in olive oil until they are good and brown, they flatten out a little so they are not strictly balls any more but thats the way I remember them. Do not be concerned if they are not done, just brown them, they will finish cooking in the sauce.
I cook my pasta separately but out of convenience not tradition. Catie is right about the pasta soaking up the goodness of the sauce. I do not include the sugar, as my wife and I prefer a more sour sauce. Try it both ways, I assure you sugar in the sauce is authentic.
By the way the sausage / beef combination makes a killer meatloaf too!
This is my Grandma Capp the original Italian Grandmother, all her grandchildren have great memories of her.
-Johnny-
For you meat lovers out there. Try browning beef spare ribs, then drop them in the sauce. My mom used to use stew meat but back then stew meat was not lean. You need something with some fat on it like spare ribs. You could combine the two and that would be good. Give it a try
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