My parents used to throw wonderful dinner parties.  Okay, Dad hosted, but to be honest, Mom did all the work most of the time.  I remember Dad's colleagues and their wives, couples who were friends, out-of-town friends coming for cocktails, conversation and a terrific meal.  Mom was a fabulous cook, even before she took six weeks of lessons at L'Ecoles des Tres Gourmands in Paris.

I don't get a chance to throw many dinner parties.  I've had friends over for 4th of July gatherings, Boat Parade parties, and book club.  These are usually snack and appetizer type things, except for book club where all I do is bake brownies and order pizza.

Yesterday, I had three friends over for an actual sit-down dinner.  I'd wanted to make dinner anyway, but this one came with a special request.  My co-worker's husband was jonesing for a real Italian meal.  His wife isn't Italian and, by her own admission, not much of a cook.

Ahh... the pressure.  While I was looking forward to the event, I also felt the weight of living up to someone's expectations.  We who are Italian judge all Italian cuisine by one main criteria -- Is it as good as our mothers and grandmothers used to make?

Breaking that down, the most important aspect of the meal is the tomato sauce.  The pasta is merely the vehicle that delivers the sauce to the mouth.  Trust me, if the spaghetti makers of the world all halted production tomorrow, we'd use bread, spoons or whatever means necessary to get that rich, spicy, aromatic, flavorful red sauce to our tastebuds.

I promised a menu of basic spaghetti and meatballs.  I learned this from my Grandmother Stella, practiced with my non-Italian mother who also learned it from Grandma.  (My mother's non-Italian mother made sauce in a completely different way.  Never had the heart to tell her I didn't like hers that much.)  I've prepared this meal countless times, but I still worried that suddenly, for no apparent reason, I'd screw it up and the food would turn out tasteless.  For the record, I don't have a recipe with exact measurements of vegetables and seasonings. 

The list of ingredients is engraved in my memory but the amounts are judged by eye and taste.  I start with this much onion, that much green pepper, that many thin slices of fresh garlic, sauteed in a healthy dollop of olive oil.  Add a few cranks of salt and pepper, the herbs and spices, crushed tomatoes and so on.  Dump in some wine and water . . . stir . . . bring to a simmer.  Let it simmer for a few hours, stir regularly, taste and add a little more of this or that as necessary and so on.

A similar method applies to meatballs which I first bake and then add to the sauce for thickening and flavor.

Before long my house smelled like Sundays at Grandma and Grandpa Stella's home.  I stood at the counter arranging ingredients for an antipasto style salad and inhaled the aroma.  I also reverted to childhood and sampled the sauce at least once by dunking in a small chunk of bread.

With great anticipation, I put the meal on the table, served my friends and waited for them to twirl their first forkfuls and taste.

They liked it.  They really liked it!  Pleased that I'd upheld the honor of my Stella and DiMartino ancestors, I dug into my own plate and enjoyed sharing the meal with good friends.

So, blog readers, any of you have a family meal that you like to make for your friends?

Mary -- My dear husband once invited a friend over for dinner. This was a comparatively new friend, so I didn't know much about him at all. My husband asked me to amke lasgana, which I did, grateful for the ease of the meal preparation. Not until after dinner was eaten did I find out I had fed Irish lasgana to an Italian. Thank God, he raved about it, but I nearly killed my husband.:)

I can't think of any family recipes, because I'm too busy drooling from your descriptions!

I hate when I notice typos days after I originally post the blog. It was L'Ecoles de Trois Gourmands, not Tres. Although, the women were very much gourmands. Julia Childs's cookbook partners were the teachers.

Hoper, it's the same sauce recipe that came in a close second to Mme. Ball's the year we competed at the Match. Unfortunately, I didn't cater to the vegetarian voting bloc or that trophy might have been mine! *sniffle*

There's one that friends ask me to make all the time. Black Bean soup with ham shanks and lemon slices. YUM!

I'm happy to say I was fortunate to be one of those friends at the dinner, and it was AWESOME! Love you Mary!