It was sometime during the 1960’s when I learned the greatest gift for any Italian cook: How to make the “sauce”.
A traditional Italian “meat sauce” is not the same as a traditional Bolognese.
The meat sauce is particular to each region in Italy and varies based on how your Grandmother learned to make it, with recipes passed down through generations of daughters and sons.
Grandma C. used a lot of olive oil to start, adding in a 6-7 oz. piece of London Broil, which was placed in the pot for the flavor it offers. The olive oil came in giant “Gemma Oil” cans, available at a little neighborhood market, right on the same street my grandparents lived on. Grandma would add the tomato sauce once the London Broil had been lightly seared on both sides. Sometimes it came from a can, but often, it was from tomatoes fresh from their garden, which backed up to the old train tracks in Cortland, New York. I still remember them grinding the tomatoes to separate them from the skins.