Thursday, October 25, 2007
Review: Donatella Pasta Sauces
Jarred pasta sauces rarely catch my attention because there are already so many of them, a number of which are quite good. You can add another name to the latter: Donatella. That's the moniker both of the company and of owner Donatella Arpaia, who is also a Manhattan restaurateur. Her PR firm sent some sauces and a bottle of olive oil. I'll focus on the sauces, as getting various types of oil from virtually anywhere in the world has become comparatively easy.
The "Essential Sauce" is a passata di pomodoro, which translates as tomato puree. That's a bit over simplified. These are fresh San Marzano tomatoes cooked with celery, onion, basil, and garlic, all of which they claim are also fresh and not dried. Even without simmering the sauce for ten minutes with some olive oil, as they suggest, it has a marvelous tomato flavor, napping the pasta well, and can become a foundation for sauce variations, as you like.
The ready-to-serve sauces are puttanesca (prostitute's sauce, incorporating olives, capers, and some anchovy), marinara (garlic and basil), and arrabiata (red peppers with some garlic). They're all solid flavors, though I would have liked a bit more kick in the puttanesca, as I'm used to it with the traditional capers and some hot peppers. But you should be able to open any of these and expect a decent covering for your pasta.
And now for the "but." These sauces carry a hefty price. Go to the web site and you find that the Essential Sauce is $10 for one jar. Ouch. That almost makes the jarred trio of marinara, puttanesca, and arrabiata seem reasonable at $24, or $8 a jar. I tried providing a Boston address to see what shipping would be to someplace other than my neck of the boondocks, but I got the following message: "No Shipping Rates available for your shipping address." Does that mean free? Who knows? Perhaps the problem is that the sauces are supposed to be available at some Whole Foods and ShopRites in the Northeast. Ah, the vagaries of trying to shop on the web.
The "Essential Sauce" is a passata di pomodoro, which translates as tomato puree. That's a bit over simplified. These are fresh San Marzano tomatoes cooked with celery, onion, basil, and garlic, all of which they claim are also fresh and not dried. Even without simmering the sauce for ten minutes with some olive oil, as they suggest, it has a marvelous tomato flavor, napping the pasta well, and can become a foundation for sauce variations, as you like.
The ready-to-serve sauces are puttanesca (prostitute's sauce, incorporating olives, capers, and some anchovy), marinara (garlic and basil), and arrabiata (red peppers with some garlic). They're all solid flavors, though I would have liked a bit more kick in the puttanesca, as I'm used to it with the traditional capers and some hot peppers. But you should be able to open any of these and expect a decent covering for your pasta.
And now for the "but." These sauces carry a hefty price. Go to the web site and you find that the Essential Sauce is $10 for one jar. Ouch. That almost makes the jarred trio of marinara, puttanesca, and arrabiata seem reasonable at $24, or $8 a jar. I tried providing a Boston address to see what shipping would be to someplace other than my neck of the boondocks, but I got the following message: "No Shipping Rates available for your shipping address." Does that mean free? Who knows? Perhaps the problem is that the sauces are supposed to be available at some Whole Foods and ShopRites in the Northeast. Ah, the vagaries of trying to shop on the web.
