A while back I was invited by Sizzling Communications to a tomato sauce launch. I was excited as I am not invited to events like this often, so I checked the calendar, told @WineGuyTO to make his own dinner and off I went.
At the top of a downtown condo, Louise Prete Fine Foods had set up some lovely displays of their sauce and pictorial homages to Italy. A homemade sauce , inspired by Michael Malleau’s Nona, we tasted the pomodoro e basilico sauce in many forms throughout the night. The sauce is quite simple in ingredients, rich, thick and flavourful. Michael gets his tomatos directly from Italy and stews them for 3-4 hours before they become sauce.
Bruschetta and 13th St wine
Lasagna
Meatballs
Pizza
Some Italian non-alcoholic beverages, quite tangy!
We tried the sauce as bruschetta (not pictured) in individual lasagna cups, with a meatball and lastly on a square of pizza throughout the night, interspersed with both red and white wine from 13th Street Winery. During the night, there was a fresh pasta making demonstration with guests as participants, which Michael and guests then used to make a dish in front of everyone.
Michael and Alexa Clark stretching out the fresh pasta.
Michael cooking the fresh pasta.
We all left with our own jar of sauce to try for ourselves at home. I heated it up and did a simple spaghettini dish with nothing added, so we could taste specifically for the sauce.
Our thoughts: nice texture, some spice but not too much, overall a good sauce. What I did not like was the big chunks of tomato and garlic, even though I like a chunkier sauce, I felt when I found a whole clove that it was too much. So I may have mushed some of the chunks smaller.
Would I buy this? Yes, though we do not eat pasta often in our house, I would use this as my pizza sauce base.
Thanks to Mary Luz and Sizzling Communications for the invitation and Louise Prete Fine Foods for the jar of sauce. All thoughts and opinions are my own.
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