• Blog
  • About
  • Recipes
  • Tips & Tools
  • International LOVE
  • Love Notes
  • Shop
  • Powered by MSI Media Group

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

Eleven pounds of fresh tomatoes in a box.

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.

Chopped tomatoes to make sauce in a Le Creuset pot.

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!

Homemade tomato sauce in glass jars with fresh tomatoes nearby on a cutting board.

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!

Wedding couple leaving NYC City Hall with rice being thrown.

My apologies to you for being out of commission for a bit. Our son got married on September 9th with a big reception at their house in Brooklyn on September 10th!!! 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.

Filed Under: Dinner, First Course, Lunch, Sides Tagged With: fresh tomato sauce, Nonna's Pomarola Sauce, pasta, Pomarola sauce, vegetarian, weddings

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!Olive oil from a private estate.

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 in a white bowl.

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.

My Italian dinner - sunny gold fresh sauceThe 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.

Tuscan cookbook.

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!Bruschetta‎, olives, fresh figs, cashews, and 2 kinds of Pecorino on a wooden board with a glass of white wine.

Then I served my gazpacho soup garnished with avocado.

Four white bowls of pici pasta with a Tuscan meat sauce.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!!

Fresh garden salad with heirloom tomatoes, radishes and chives.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,

Strawberry and Rhubarb Crisp just out of the oven

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!

Filed Under: Dinner, Vegetables Tagged With: easy meals, fresh tomato sauce, Italian, meatless meals, pasta, quick meals, quick pasta, vegetarian

Join 32k+ followers!


Never miss out on a recipe!

Subscribe to receive new posts via email:

Mary Frances

Mary Frances

Spread love through cooking.

Summer Favorites

Easy Cheesy Sautéed Squash The Best Potato Salad Super Quick Chicken and Summer Vegetables Stir-fry Chimichurri-ed Wilted Endives with Walnuts Chilled Curried Zucchini Soup with Apple Garnish Best Strawberry and Rhubarb Crisp to make now!

Categories

  • Appetizers
  • Breakfast
  • Brunch
  • Cocktails
  • Contest
  • Cookies
  • Cookware and tools
  • Desserts
  • Dinner
  • Events
  • First Course
  • Fish
  • Food Responsibility
  • Guest Post
  • Lunch
  • Meat
  • Pasta
  • Poultry
  • Products for sale
  • Salads
  • Sauces
  • Sides
  • Soups
  • Tea time
  • Travel
  • Vegetables

Pages

Blog
About
Recipes
Tips and Tools
International Love
Love Notes
Shop
Mary's secret ingredients

Blogs We Love

  • 1840 Farm
  • A Pug in the Kitchen
  • Cottage Grove House
  • Food, Photography & France
  • Food52
  • From the Bartolini Kitchens
  • Go Bake Yourself
  • Hotly Spiced
  • Jovina Cooks Italian
  • Lavender and Lime
  • Orgasmic Chef
  • Smitten Kitchen
  • Sophie's Foodie Files
  • Steven’s Wine and Food Pairings
  • That Skinny Chick Can Bake
  • The Pioneer Woman
  • The Squishy Monster
  • Tips on Food and Drinks
  • Yummy Chunklet
  • LOVE - the secret ingredient


  • GET IN TOUCH
  • E mary@lovethesecretingredient.com

· All Rights Reserved ·© 2016 Love- the secret ingredient. All rights reserved. Disclaimer | Privacy Policy Disclosure Policy Terms & Conditions