Engaging stories of love, joy, comfort and friendship with proven scrumptious, healthy recipes, we celebrate LOVE as the secret ingredient for wonderful food!

Make Nonna’s Pomarola Sauce Recipe Now!

October 3, 2016 by Mary 14 Comments

Tomatoes galore!! It’s the season and with the abundance of tomatoes from my garden, right now is the time to make Nonna’s Pomarola Sauce Recipe that I learned from my friends in Italy when we visited in July for Bianca’s wedding.

It was funny, when I first tried to make this, we were all texting back and forth running from Warsaw (with Agata) and Milano (with Bianca, the granddaughter) and Arezzo (with Tiziana, the daughter) on ingredients for the recipe but I had already started with carrots and onions before I learned from Tiziana, that Nonna only uses garlic, oil, tomatoes, salt, chili flakes and a little bit of butter at the end. That’s it! Simple is always best, isn’t it? Although I met Nonna at the wedding, she only speaks Italian, not my strong suit.

So make this simple clean tomato sauce, called Pomarola Sauce, that just lets the richness of the tomatoes shine through. Think of this as “summer in a jar” ‘cause that’s what it is!

Of course you skin the tomatoes easily after a dip in boiling water, but then you have to remove the seeds by hand. This takes time!! But it is worth it because I made it again this past week, cooking the tomatoes with skin and seeds and then putting it through the mill to remove it all and you know what? The resulting sauce was not as sweet and it was much thinner.

Woman deseeding fresh tomatoes outside in the yard.

Notice the wine to get through this process of deseeding the tomatoes. Luckily it was a beautiful day the weekend before last!

Deseeded tomatoes in a plastic bowl on the grass.

Here’s a whole bowlful of deseeded tomatoes!

So it’s up to you but the work beforehand does pay off.

Here you go with the official recipe from Nonna!

NONNA’S POMAROLA SAUCE – makes four 14 oz. jars of sauce

¼ cup of olive oil
5 large cloves of garlic, minced
11 lbs. tomatoes, skinned, seeded and chopped
Salt, preferable French Grey Salt, to taste
¼ – ½ tsp. red chili flakes
1 Tbs. unsalted butter

Bring a large pot of water to boil. Drop tomatoes in and leave in for one minute. Remove with a slotted spoon and let drain. When cool enough to handle, peel the tomatoes, remove all of the seeds (it is tedious but worth it) and chop.

Heat the olive oil and add the minced garlic and salt. Saute for just a minute and smash down the garlic with a fork, just like Nonna does it. Stick your nose in the pot and breathe in the delicious garlic aroma.

Add the chopped tomatoes and bring to a boil, lower to a simmer. Simmer slowly for two hours, uncovered, stirring every so often. When thick and lovely, or as Nonna says, “It is ready when the tomatoes are ready.” Ha!

Add the chili flakes and off-heat, stir in the butter until melted. That’s it!

Store in clean glass jars and freeze or you could actually can them if you want to. Follow the specific canning instructions for that.

Nonna's Pomarola Sauce on fusilli in white bowls.

Have a dinner like this in the winter – Pomarola Sauce on fusilli. Simple, clean and rich tasting all at once!

My apologies to you for being out of commission for a bit. Our son got married on September 9^th with a big reception at their house in Brooklyn on September 10^th!!! Here they are leaving City Hall in a rice shower.

It was quite the party, delicious cheeses and appetizers followed by Turkish food and a huge spread of homemade desserts. His new wife did such a sweet thing. She went on Facebook, found and printed photos of everyone who made a dessert and put it as a stand-up card next to their creation, so everyone knew who made what. Isn’t that so SWEET??!!

Hope you have a great week and get your tomato sauce made for a little summer in a jar this winter.

Halloumi with Griddled Vegetables

September 27, 2016 by Mary 8 Comments

Today we’re spreading the LOVE with a guest post from Rachel Stinson. She reached out to me with a post about halloumi, a cheese with which I was unfamiliar with and excited to learn about. Halloumi /həˈluːmi/ or hellim is a Cypriot semi-hard, unripened brined cheese made from a mixture of goat’s and sheep’s milk, and sometimes also cow’s milk. It has a high melting point and so can easily be fried or grilled. (Wikipedia)

Rachel Stinson has always had a knack for writing, food, fashion, and places. Blogging has combined all four for her with an added bonus of enthusiastic audiences. She expertly analyzes real estates and restaurants with respect to pricing and people involved and can express her opinions in an unhesitant, engaging manner.

Without further ado, here is her recipe!

I’m going to start with a rant, a cheese-o-phile’s rant. It resulted from my last trip to the supermarket. I strolled my way through lofty racks stacked up to the brim with tempting confectioneries and gloriously tinned food. As I approached the cheese section, my heart skipped a beat. I was almost tempted to grab four to five of those yellow cheese blocks wrapped in flashy packaging and toss them in my cart.

But, I didn’t. I felt a sadness descend me as I realized the disturbing monotony wrapped in the name of ‘cheese’. I had tasted all of these brands and they all tasted the same to me. I needed something purer, cruder, and closer to unique hand-crafted cheese. I needed something like the splendid cheese I had once tasted at Operation Falafel, Dubai. That’s when I found Halloumi.

It was love at first bite and now I am addicted to this Cypriot cheese for life. It’s still largely saved from adulteration and carries the true taste and essence of the ‘cooked curd’ cheese category. For this very reason, I use Halloumi in lots of my cheese recipes. My favorite one I’ll share with you:

HALLOUMI WITH GRIDDLED VEGETABLES

225 g Halloumi cheese
2 shallots
100 g frozen broad beans
2 courgettes (zucchini)
1 small bunch of asparagus
1 Tbs. capers
½ bunch of flat leaf parsley
200 g ripe cherry tomatoes
½ bunch of sweet marjoram or oregano
2 Tbs. olive oiL

Shake together all the dressing ingredients in a clean, dry jar. Once thoroughly mixed, put the jar aside.

Boil the broad beans for 5 minutes or until soft. Drain out the boiled water and pass beans under cold water to cool them off. Once you can comfortably touch then, peel off the beans’ white outer skin.

Cut the Halloumi into slices a width and shape of your choice. Trim off unnecessary asparagus leaves. Slice together asparagus and the courgettes longitudinally. And let loose some olive oil over the three.

Get your griddle pan warmed up over high heat. Toss in the Halloumi, asparagus, and courgettes drenched in olive oil. Cook until they are nicely charred and emanating a tantalizing aroma. Then, set them aside in the same pan.

It’s time to cut the shallots into rings and halve the tomatoes. Then pick a flat platter and layer by layer add the shallots, the tomatoes, and the griddled mixture of Halloumi, asparagus, and courgettes.

Fine chop the fresh herbs to sprinkle with the luscious dressing.

Halloumi with Griddled Vegetables tastes even better with friends. So, as much as you want to savor the entire platter all by yourself, call over some cheese lovers and have a grand Halloumi party. Thank me later.

(Photo credits: Shutterstock)

Faces of Hunger Film Festival in NYC

September 13, 2016 by Mary 6 Comments

On October 14^th I’ll be heading over to NYU for the annual Faces of Hunger Film Festival. Faces of Hunger is dedicated to increasing awareness of food security issues in the United States of America and is run by Palms for Life, an NYC based non-profit that works globally with organizations on-the-ground to provide access to food, water, education, and sanitation.

If you’ve been reading my blog for a while, you know fighting world hunger is one of my main missions in life, and it isn’t just a problem in developing countries. Here in the USA one out of seven children live in food insecure households. And don’t even get me started on the sheer amount of food waste in our country; that was a whole post on its own already! One powerful statistic I saw on the Faces of Hunger page is that if we cut food waste by 25%, we would have enough for everyone to eat. We have to hold ourselves accountable and commit as a country to make a change!!

I welcome you to register here for the FREE event, I think tickets are only available for another day or so, so take advantage and join us!

They will also have an auction with various items including an annual subscription to MARY’s secret ingredients. Remember, each box supports our partnership with the global organization Feed The Children, so if you can’t join us at the event, you can still buy a box and support the cause while enjoying our curated surprises to help you make memorable meals.

Pasta with Fresh Tomato Sauce and My Italian Dinner

September 3, 2016 by Mary 17 Comments

We are still basking in the memories of our European trip and this post is about the Italian part. Our friends in Italy are so generous. They are generous with their time, their attention and their gifts. Tiziana so graciously took me to buy the best cheeses in all of Italy – award-winning Pecorino’s in many different “flavors.” I bought two different kinds (now I wish I would have bought more…) plus some Parmigiano. I bought 3 large wedges but ended up giving two away to each of my kids. Why was I feeling so generous at that moment???

Tiziana was so gracious in equipping me with an insulated bag with a cold pack plus another suitcase that I could put all the cheeses in and check the bag for flying. And did I tell you about the olive oil? Every guest at the wedding got this can of olive oil pressed from olives from the olive trees in their yard!

This is THE BEST olive oil – so fruity, so pure, so DELICIOUS!! I wish to never run out of this but that is really wishful thinking since I only have two cans.

On Sunday night of that amazing weekend in Italy, if you can imagine, Andrea and Tiziana had yet another dinner party. These are the parents of the bride who held a party in their home for 50 people on Friday night, hosted the wedding on Saturday, which started at 5 pm and ended at 5:30 am and then had about 20 people for dinner on Sunday night, with Tiziana making yet another pasta dish – pici with her mother’s pomarola sauce – so delicious!! Not yet knowing how to make that, I came home and immediately made this pasta with fresh tomato sauce – twice already!

Super quick and easy Pasta with Fresh Tomato Sauce.

My Italian Dinner - bowl of fresh sunny gold pasta sauce

You can also use sunny gold tomatoes – super sweet and delicious.

The tomatoes are so abundant, fresh and flavorful this time of year, perfect to make this dish. It’s so darn easy and quick too. I didn’t have any basil in the city so I substituted sorrel in the first picture.

Parsley would have worked too – the little bit of green is nice.

Here is this very simple recipe to make a perfect and satisfying meatless meal:

PASTA WITH FRESH TOMATO SAUCE – serves 6 as a main course

1 lb. dried pasta – I used spaghetti
Coarse sea salt or Kosher salt to salt the pasta water

SAUCE:
2 lbs. fresh tomatoes – preferably heirloom or sunny gold, washed, dried, cored and chopped
¼ cup of olive oil
1 large clove of garlic, grated
Salt to taste – preferably French Grey
Black pepper – fresh ground to taste
Pinch of red chili flakes

Torn basil leaves or sorrel or flat leaf parsley for garnish

Combine all ingredients for the sauce in a large shallow bowl.

Cook the pasta in ample boiling water, salted to taste like the ocean. Start testing the pasta 2 minutes before the lesser time on the instructions. You must have the pasta al dente. No one likes overcooked pasta. Before draining, save some pasta water.

Immediately place drained pasta in the bowl with the sauce ingredients, adding 1 – 2 Tbs. of pasta water, to make the sauce adhere to the pasta better and toss all to combine. Garnish with torn basil leaves or sorrel or parsley. Serve immediately.

That same Sunday night in Italy, Cristina, Tiziana’s best friend and my sweet Prada buddy (she took me to the Prada store) came to dinner with a jar of her favorite Tuscan meat sauce – she said Tiziana knows cheese but she knows meat!! She brought the best bresaola I have ever tasted. And she brought her favorite Tuscan cookbook for me that is thankfully in English and Italian! I don’t know how she even found the time to go get these gifts in between the Prada trip and dinner that night. Everybody was so SWEET!! Cristina asked if I had room in my suitcase. Heck I’d find room come hell or highwater.

Just take a look at this book – beautiful and I want to make about 99.9% of the recipes…

Tuscan cookbook open to bean soup recipe.

I cannot wait for the weather to get a little cooler to make this soup!

Tuscan cookbook open to Pici pasta recipe.

This pasta dish sounds amazing too!!! Don’t worry, I will share!

And how sweet this is because every time I see the book, read or use a recipe, I think of Cristina and Tiziana and our amazing time in Italy. All the wonderful memories come flooding back – the scenes, the conversations, the sunsets, the lavender, the cypress trees, the food, the wine, our four kids all dressed up and bouncing around in an open jeep, hair flying, not caring, and the most beautiful wedding.

We all have been continuing the conversation via email, discussing our kids and recipes. Soon I’ll share with you Tiziana’s mother’s recipe for the Pomarola Sauce. I made it once already last weekend, but not the way Nonna makes hers so I want to make her recipe exactly and share that with you.

But for now, let me share with you a little dinner party we hosted for our good friends, Margaret and Wayne, the first Saturday we were back. My appetizers were the two different kinds of Pecorino along with some bruschetta with truffles that I bought at the airport. Super delish!

Then I served my gazpacho soup garnished with avocado.

Then I made some pici pasta I picked up at the Pisa airport and served it with Cristina’s sauce and OMG – it was sooooo good!! A garnish of basil was all that was needed. Dinner served!!

Then I served a salad of greens from my garden – lettuce, sorrel and basil with tomatoes, radishes and chives – tossed with a champagne vinaigrette. A good light clean palette cleanser,

and then we finished up with this strawberry rhubarb crisp with a little vanilla ice cream.

So don’t “labor” this weekend! Make this pasta with fresh tomato sauce, with LOVE, so super easy, and kick back and relax!

Best Strawberry and Rhubarb Crisp to make now!

August 28, 2016 by Mary 15 Comments

Just out of the oven!

While rhubarb is still fresh and plentiful, and the strawberries are plump and sweet, make this strawberry and rhubarb crisp, serve it warm with some cool vanilla ice cream and watch your guests ask for seconds. Seriously. This happens a lot!

This original recipe calls for all rhubarb and is from the first Union Square Cafe cookbook. I, however, prefer the addition of strawberries. You decide.

So our oldest son is getting married in just two weeks!! I can’t believe it! I can’t believe that I’m old enough to have a child getting married. This is the one who lives in Brooklyn. He and his fiancée bought a townhouse together last October and have been renovating it ever since. They are doing an amazing job of transforming this house. It’s been a ton of work and so exciting to see.

Their wedding will be a very private affair at City Hall with just the immediate family and four very close friends. We will be only 14 people at the ceremony on Friday, have dinner together and then a bar party for everyone afterwards. On Saturday, they are having a party for about 75 people at their house and instead of having a wedding cake, they have asked for family and close friends to bring a dessert. I plan on bringing two double recipes of this! Aunt Ginny from her side has wholeheartedly approved via email. I trust that there are other rhubarb lovers out there too!

The rest of the party will be catered. What kind of food? I have no idea and I am staying out of this one. I do know he’s putting in a dance floor in the backyard and they love to dance! So it should be great fun!!

Strawberry and Rhubarb Crisp - raw fruit

Ready to go into the oven!

STRAWBERRY AND RHUBARB CRISP – serves 6 – 8

TOPPING:
3/4 cup flour
1/3 cup brown sugar
1 1/4 tablespoons sugar
1/4 teaspoon cinnamon
5 1/3 tablespoons unsalted butter, softened
1/2 cup toasted walnuts

FILLING:
1 pound rhubarb, cut into 1/2-inch pieces
1 lb. strawberries, hulled and cut in half, if big
3 tablespoons unbleached flour
3/4 cup sugar

Vanilla bean ice cream for serving

Preheat oven to 400 degrees.

In a bowl, combine the first 4 ingredients. Work in the butter until the mixture is crumbly. Add the toasted walnut pieces.

In a 8” x 8”, 2 quart square ovenproof serving dish, toss the rhubarb and strawberries with the 3/4 cup sugar and the 3 tablespoons flour, to coat evenly. Scatter the crisp topping evenly over the surface of the fruit. Bake for 35 minutes, or until the rhubarb bubbles at the sides and the topping is crisp and brown.

Serve warm, with LOVE, topped with vanilla bean ice cream or a drizzle of heavy cream.

A Visit to Poland

August 21, 2016 by Mary 30 Comments

Castle Square in Warsaw.

Have you been to Poland?

I know, it somehow does not have the romance and allure that Italy, France, Spain or England has. But I’m telling you, it should!!! I am here to become the next Polish ambassador and promote tourism there.

Just kidding, but seriously, if you haven’t been, you should put this on your bucket list.

Poland might not be on your radar because the country was far behind Western Europe and the US because of its communist past. However, it’s changed so much over the last decade that Poland has transformed by leaps and bounds, with new highways, high speed rail lines, skyscrapers popping up, and (most importantly for me) an outstanding restaurant culture. Honestly, we didn’t know what to expect from the country, but I have to say I loved it and was very impressed! Additionally, your dollar can go really far here. For example, a 20 minute taxi ride will cost only a few dollars. At this time, one dollar roughly equals four zlotys!

With Poland, we were visiting our son, Zach and his fiancée, Agata, in Warsaw where he just finished his Fulbright year, working on his Yale PhD dissertation in History. Agata is also working on her PhD in Comparative Literature. Both, smart cookies. For our son, because of his focus, he is the ultimate tour guide, sharing all of his historical knowledge and facts about each place we went. Besides being a proud mamma, I learned a whole heck of a lot!

We did tons of walking – at least 6 miles every day, in Warsaw, Krakow and Mława. Actually in Krakow we walked 11+ miles! Needless to say we ate and drank with abandon and I actually did not gain any weight!! Yay, because the Italian wedding was afterwards and I needed to make sure I’d fit into my clothes!

Castle Square sidewalk cafes.

Poland is beautiful, and super, super clean, with sophisticated restaurants and cool coffee cafes. I noticed that people take the time to really relax and enjoy life with a walk in the park or a leisurely cup of coffee, and they are not always on their phones. We spent most of our time in Warsaw, the capital. As you may know, much of central Warsaw was leveled to rubble during WWII. Well Zach told us the story of how before WW II started, some prescient (or lucky) architecture professor sent his students out to the old city to draw all the buildings there as an academic exercise to learn how they built in those days. Luckily those drawings survived the war, so after everything in the square was leveled, they were able to refer to those drawings and rebuilt everything in and around the square just exactly as it was. Isn’t that amazing??

On our second day, Zach and Agata, in their newly bought car, drove us to a village near Mława, where my father’s family is from. There in the street, we met an 88 year-old man (Agata and Zach translated for us) who was helping his grandkids sweep the street (I told you they were very clean). This village elder actually knew where my grandparents’ family plot of land was, before they left to go to America and settle in St. Louis. The house is not the same but I was able to stand on the same ground. Honestly, it was chilling and thrilling. I was filled with an indescribable emotion. It was very intense.

The village, Korboniec, outside of Mlawa – the street where I’m from.

A visit to Poland - the 88 year-old man.

Here I am with the 88 year old man, Mr. Zywiec, who remembers my family.

Mary standing on the land once owned by her relatives!

Here I am standing on the land once owned by my relatives!

My cousin, Bob, says that our grandfather left from Bremen, Germany with his brother in 1905. They were both going to be inducted into the Russian Army and wanted to get out of town. In those days “Poland” did not exist. It was part of the Russian, Prussian, Austro-Hungarian empire. My grandmother had a one-year old child, (Bob’s dad) and was pregnant with a second child (our Uncle Eugene) when she came by herself in 1906.

As Bob said, “You know they didn’t make the trip on a luxury liner. Now you know where we get our determination and perseverance.”

It must have been quite a trip.

This village is served by a church and graveyard in a neighboring town. There, dozens of my distant relatives are buried and some of the tombstones have pictures. Agata could clearly see the family resemblance. Crazy, isn’t it?

The Museum of the History of Polish Jews in Warsaw.

We also visited The Museum of the History of Polish Jews in Warsaw, which was totally engrossing and beautiful with so much information, you could spend an entire week in there. This museum just won Museum of the Year for all of Europe!! The exhibits are all amazing and unique.

We had the best meal ever at this restaurant called Nolita in Warsaw!! It was Zach’s birthday present, an 8-course meal that was better than Eleven Madison Park here in NYC.

Seriously.

Nolita foie gras bon bon with reduced port, beet and blood orange juice on a bed of crumbled brioche.

Nolita’s foie gras bon bon with reduced port, beet and blood orange juice on a bed of crumbled brioche.

Nolita's fish course - lobster sashimi, elderflower, samphire.

Nolita fish course – lobster sashimi, elderflower, samphire.

Nolita’s birthday presentation.

Surf and Turf dinner in Krakow. Notice the line of salt.

Just look at these! Every dish was beautiful and scrumptious with no unnecessary foam – all great, DELICIOUS food. At the end of the meal I got to have a conversation with the chef, who trained all over the world but primarily in London and Paris. He said his philosophy is not to have any unnecessary tricks, but elegant, good solid food. My kind of man.

Poland is a must-see place!!! We’re excited to go back next July for Zach and Agata’s wedding in the southwestern part of the country, which is just beautiful with mountains and castles from the Middle Ages.

You all should put Poland on your list for your next big trip!

Just take a look at these pictures for a mini tour.

Making potato pancakes at the breakfast market – Targ Śniadaniowy in Warsaw on Sundays. This was the best ever potato pancake!! They also set up a playground for the kids that you can see behind her.