Mama Agata’s Fantastic Tomato Sauce

There is nothing better than a simple sauce with great ingredients. Susan and I spent the day on a hillside farm in Ravello Italy with Mama Agata. It was truly a great culinary experience. One of our many takeaways was a great tomato sauce that will be the foundation for many supper club menus.

Mama Agata is the former chef at the summer villa of a wealthy American woman on Italy’s Amalfi coast. She has cooked for many celebrities from Fred Astaire, Humphrey Bogart, Liz Taylor, Richard Burton, Jackie Kennedy to Woody Harrelson. Her daughter Chiara Lima now shares her Mama via what she calls cooking classes, but are more of Amalfi Coast culinary experience.

Check out the Mama Agata website:

The beauty of the Tomato sauce recipe is its simplicity and great ingredients. Mama Agata uses tomatoes she cans herself using tomatoes grown on her hillside farm. Between courses/classes you can walk around their farm and understand why everything tastes so good.

Check out the recipe:

The good news is that this recipe translates using ingredients sourced locally in the United States and elsewhere. I have added the extra step of pureeing canned whole Roma tomatoes in a food processor.

This sauce is simple and versatile. It works well by itself as well as in a myriad of dishes. It doesn’t call for added salt, but I like to add a pinch or two and just don’t tell my wife.

We had a great day with Mama. Towards the end of the day Chiara was telling stories of some the celebrities that Mama has cooked for and Mama interjected that she loved them all Except WOODY HARRELSON. It turns out that Woody is food purist and wouldn’t let his little girls eat Mama’s special lemon cake. I told Mama that her instincts on Woody might not be all bad.

Woody is a good friend of my cousins that live on Maui and a great guy. One day while we were visiting my cousin Virginia on Maui she got a call from Woody’s wife. We were preparing for a celebration of a friends passing. The plan was to take an armada of kayaks and surf boards out into the Pacific and spread the friend’s ashes. Woody’s wife called to ask if Woody could bring his fathers ashes to spread as well.

My cousin got off the phone with a funny look on her face as she told us about Woody’s request. Virginia’s husband Rich asked if we knew about Woody’s dad. It turns out that his dad was arrested for murder while Woody was younger. He got out of prison and was later convicted of murdering a federal judge. Rich then laid a bombshell. “Woody’s dad was also arrested on the grassy knoll the day that Kennedy was shot. You can Google it”. Rich closed with the warning: “You might not want to mention the story to Woody tonight at the party”.

Great story and an even better tomato sauce. Try it at your next supper club party.

If you enjoy this blog and similar other stories/supper club lessons subscribe to get future blogs at www.impromptufridaynights.com/blog and be on the look out for my book Impromptu Friday Nights a Guide to Supper Clubs due out from Morgan James Publishing on January 30, 2018.

Gluten Free

If you know someone who has celiac disease making sure their supper club menu is gluten free is essential. Celiac disease is a serious autoimmune disorder that can occur in genetically predisposed people where the ingestion of gluten leads to damage in the small intestine. It is estimated to affect 1 in 100 people worldwide

There are two approaches to making a gluten free menu:

Developing a menu of items that are gluten free. Researching ingredient lines to make sure a dish is gluten free. Segregating production to insure that there is no cross contamination from gluten based ingredients. Serving items so that those with gluten intolerance know what is safe for them.
Developing gluten free dishes, substituting gluten free ingredients (flour) for regular flour or other gluten free ingredients. This is a lot more difficult because you really need to test items. Gluten adds structure and texture to flour and plays an important role in cooking. You will need to add gums (guar or xanthan) and possibly eggs to get the desired results.

Taking steps to make sure your meal is gluten free isn’t all the hard. It just takes some knowledge and diligence. The hard part is that wheat based ingredients are used pervasively in the food industry and you need to be careful.

Gluten free has become a fad for perceived health benefits. The good news is that there has been a proliferation of gluten free products. The bad news is that many of the gluten free products are not really good for you. It is much like the fat free fad of the 1990’s and the tropical oil scare of the 1980’s. Manufacturers will make what the market wants. Unfortunately, the result isn’t always healthier products.

I have developed menus for events where we have had people with celiac disease. The menus have included both gluten free and traditional dishes. I start with a little research of labels delineating ingredients to make sure there isn’t any gluten.

See the worksheet.

The next step is preparing all the gluten free products separately to make sure there isn’t any cross contamination. I do a wash down of the workspace, cookware and utensils in between traditional and gluten free production. The final step is to label dishes and to provide ingredient lists to those who have celiac disease

Check out the recipe for Caramelized Shallot and Gorgonzola Dip.

People with celiac disease can have a hard time with food, but there is no reason they cannot enjoy a supper club dinner party.

When the hostess comes out in a negligee

When is it time to leave? This is one dinner party question that hangs out there. Following are some leading indicators

Dessert has been served

The end of a meal is usually a pretty good indicator. While I am not generally a dessert person, I do believe that if you are writing a menu that you need to have a dessert option. Following is my recipe for Vanilla Ice Cream with Berries and a Grand Marnier Sauce

Check out the recipe

There is no more wine

Conversation tends to dry up when the wine is gone. We did have one lively party where the host ran out of the wine he had bought for the dinner party and asked if I thought he should open a bottle from other wines he had. Silly question asked of the wrong person.

The host or hostess goes to bed

If either the host or hostess disappears it is probably a good time to leave.

The hostess comes out in a negligee

This has happened and while all were still having a really good time, it wasn’t that type of party

Someone starts washing the dishes

My parents loved to entertain and my father had a rule that you didn’t start cleaning up until guests had left. This led to some late nights, for my poor mother.

It is time to join another party

In our neighborhood supper club where there can be 5 dinner parties going on at once, we have on occasion had everyone head to one home for dessert and an after party. As you might guess the larger numbers have led to larger times.

Someone goes on a political, religious or homophobic rant

There is the old rule that you don’t discuss religion or politics at a dinner party. Some times old rules are good rules…

While there are no set supper club rules for this question, you probably will just know.

If anyone has other good indicators they would like to share, please list them in the comments below