Italian meal

Plate of antipasti

It’s been months in the planning; I think we have been talking about doing an Italian dinner with friends since christmas! But tonight it is going to happen!!

I started the morning with a good old spinning class, so I don’t have to feel so guilty when enjoying the delicious food tonight and after a shower I went on to grocery shopping. Our menu is:

Antipasti

Spaghetti Tetrazine

Rigatoni with homemade sauce with catalan sausage

Insalata caprese

Pannacotta with lemon and buttermilk

Antipasti

Initially we were going to make various crostini, but we figured it would probably be too much food. M. and P. will be the ones coming tonight and I know that M is very picky when it comes to food. Well, that is maybe an understatement; there is not much she likes at all! She likes plain spaghetti with ham and cheese….. that is her favorite meal… So it’s going to be a challenge if she likes this or not. But to be honest; she never complains, just doesn’t eat it! So maybe not the best people to make a meal for in the first place, but they are very good friends and in theory she likes “Italian” (not sure if her favorite ‘Italian’ meal deserves that name though..:)) Anyway, we cheated with the antipasti, as I got them from the Italian catering company in the

Antipasti

city. They have fantastic stuff, so a little cheating is ok. And let’s face it’; it’s not as if I am going to make my own sausages anyway! And it looks good doesn’t it?

I’ve chosen some garlic shrimps, black marinated olives (without the garlic as there is plenty of garlic in some of the other stuff!), manchego cheese with membrillo, vitello tonato and some pepperdews filled with cheese. To go with that we will have some Italian toast. It’s probably already too much.

For our main course we will be having two variations to pasta. One with spaghetti. It’s from Jamie Oliver’s book ‘Italy’ and it is called spaghetti Tetrazine. It’s basically chicken, mushrooms in various types and lots of cream. Put it in the oven with some good parmezan and done. So we have prepared the sauce for that and will finish it later, so we can pop it in the oven and forget about it.

Next one is a creation of our own, so I don’t know yet what we’re gonna throw in but the base is tomatoes and spanish sausages that we rolled into small balls. (split the skins and roll the inside into small balls) We will probably ad zuchini to it, oregano, basil, garlic and for the rest we will see how it tastes by then and if it needs anything extra. The balls are made, which is the biggest job, so it’s basically tossing in the pan and should be done in no time.

Next to that we will have my favorite Italian salad; insalata caprese with home made basildressing. I bought a lovely piece of buffela mozarella at the Italian deli this morning and various shapes of tomatoe and ofcourse lots of fresh basil.

And for dessert we will be having lemon buttermilk pannacotta.

Ingredients for lemon buttermilk pannacotta

I’ve made that a while ago as well, so the recipe you can find already here via the link above. It’s very simple and lovely. Instead of the raspberries, which are really not good right now, we’re having blackberries. I’m gonna crush them, add some sugar and leave it for a while and then put it on top of the pannacotta. They are done and in the fridge to get firm.

Lemon juice and zest

So all in all… lots of food to eat, so we’ll probably be eating the same tomorrow… And with pasta, it always seems to taste better the next day anyway, so no punishment really…:)

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Tagged as: chicken, dessert, food, pannacotta, pasta, recipe, shrimps, tomatoe