Potluck Italiano #2

Longtime readers may remember an early post about a
potluck Italian dinner. Well we got together again for another round but with a slightly different guest list.

We started off with an antipasto platter. Don't you love how easy these are to put together by opening a few jars of this and that, and then artfully arranging things on a nice platter. We had salami, cheese, marinated sundried tomatoes, olives, gherkins, baby peppers stuffed with feta and melon wrapped in proscuitto. My tip for the day: remember that prosciutto and melon should be a one bite portion. Having a long strip of prosciutto dangling down your chin is not an attractive look.

Our next course was baked portobello mushrooms with pesto, tomato and mozzarella. If you like the taste of insalata caprese you'll love this dish because of its similar flavour combination. It would be a good option for winter time when fresh basil isn't available.

My non-cooking husband was up next and was determined to make his newly learned signature dish - Tuna Pasta Bake. It's the only thing he knows how to do other than poached eggs on toast or spaghetti/baked beans on toast. Well that's not quite true, - he actually makes a very decent salad. To be fair to the guy I barely let him in the kitchen except for clean up duty so he doesn't really have a chance to get creative. Our guests gave him a hard time because this particular dish is... shock horror... am I actually admitting this in public?.... made with the assistance of a packet of Maggi sauce mix and is not from scratch.

For our main course we had hearty meatballs in tomato sauce with basil and mozzarella served over fettuccine. To complement the meatballs I made green beans with garlic and almonds as well as my Sicilian pepper dish.



The finale was Tiramisu which was made with Frangelico and Cointreau for the booze component - it was a lovely flavour combination. To offset the richness I made a winter fruit salad of oranges and green kiwifruit. Even though I knew how I needed to cut the oranges I decided to google the technique and I came across two interesting blogs, Coconut and Lime, and The Scent of Green Bananas. These days when I'm searching for culinary assistance on the net I usually add "blog" to my search. I guess because I know that people tend to write about recipes and techniques they've actually tried that I trust them a little more. Sometimes I learn something along the way - did you know when you cut an orange like this the resulting piece is called a "supreme".


And what did we drink with all this wonderful food? We started off with some bubbles. No prosecco this time but a French bubbly followed by good old "Lindy", New Zealand's favourite methode traditionelle. From there it was onto a red (or four including two Chiantis), and a Matua Savignon Blanc which we had with the tuna dish. You could say we had a good night!

Ossi da Mordere

In Potluck Italiano #1 I promised to write about my adventures with Ossi da Mordere cookies in a separate post. Here it is.....

A few months back I attended an 8 week Italian cooking course at nightschool. I went with a girlfriend from work and we teamed up with another two people who were, by sheer coincidence, colleagues of my husband. In each class we cooked an entire dinner consisting of appetizer, main course, sides and dessert which we'd eat in the classroom accompanied by a nice glass of red wine - typically a New Zealand Pinot Noir. It was a very civilised affair despite the plastic wine glasses. Each week we'd be given recipes for the following week and we would take turns as to who was in charge of what dish so the same person didn't end up always making the same course. The week we made the Ossi da Mordere our sole male team member was in charge of the cookies and he made the innocent mistake of transposing the quantities of icing (powdered) sugar and cocoa powder. The "dough" if you could call it that, had the colour and consistency of dog doody and the taste was not at all pleasant.

Ossi da Mordere translates as "bones to bite" or "bones to chew". I have seen several different variants on the spelling and I don't know Italian so I have no idea which is correct. I have also seen the cookies referred to as "bones of the dead". Our tutor told us that in some parts of Italy the cookies are formed into the shape of skeletons. I think the bones thing in the name is in reference to that brittle, slightly holey look that old bones have which is what the cookies look like when you bite into them. I have read that they are made all over Italy around November 1 and 2 to celebrate All Souls' Day, in remembrance of deceased relatives. Don't let their name turn you off.

I have made the recipe several times and they are delicious when you get it right. Ideally they should be crisp and light with slightly chewy centres. The second time I made them I used a little too much egg white and they weren't so good as they didn't have the chew factor. You really do need a stiff, solid paste just the recipe says. The original recipe calls for whole almonds which you pulverise in a food processor. The lazy person in me wondered whether you could just save time and use pre-ground almonds and also whether you could mix the ingredients by hand to save on washing up. You know what? You can!


Ossi da Mordere

Ingredients
100 grams (3/4 cup + 2 tablespoons) blanched almonds (or ground almonds if mixing by hand)
200 grams (1 1/3 cups) icing (powdered) sugar
20 grams (scant ¼ cup) unsweetened cocoa powder
3 to 3 ½ tablespoons egg whites
Milk to glaze

Method
Heat the oven to 325 degrees F/160 degrees C
Grind the almonds to a coarse powder in a food processor fitted with the steel blade
Add the sugar and cocoa and process to a fine powder
Add the 3 tbsp egg whites & process to a stiff, solid paste
Add the additional egg white if necessary
Pinch off pieces of dough the size of a fat cherry and roll between your hands into balls. Do not flatten
Place 2 inches apart on baking sheets lined with baking paper
Lightly brush the tops with milk
Bake for 20 to 22 minutes
At first the cookies will flatten out and look like nothing at all, but given a few minutes, each of these little cookies will puff up and their tops will become cracked and shiny
Cool on racks

Recipe courtesy of Paula Harris

Paula is a multi-talented woman. Apart from her passion for things Italian she is a naturopath and holistic aromatherapist and I have recently discovered that Paula is a poet.

Potluck Italiano

Recently we joined two other couples for a potluck dinner with an Italian theme. To begin the evening we enjoyed a glass of sparkly Prosecco while listening to Deano singing Volare. The stage was set! We started off the evening with an antipasto platter and I made baked ricotta to go with sundried tomatoes, olives, pesto, prosciutto wrapped melon and some ciabatta.

My friends all thought it was hilarious when I pulled out my camera to take photos of the food during the night. The pictures are not the best but you'll get the idea. Here's our next course - Insalata Caprese as prepared by my husband. It's not quite how I would have assembled it but hey - he was in charge and that's all that mattered. As you'll learn over time, he doesn't cook!

Primo was a dish prepared by our host which I approached with much trepidation but was pleasantly surprised by. It's a traditional Sicilian dish called Bucatini con sarde. That's Pasta with SARDINES if you want a translation. The ingredients included fennel bulb, saffron, raisins and pinenuts and was absolutely delicious and not at all fishy. This photo was definitely not well posed but you get the idea. I will post Potluck Italiano #2 when I get the hang of writing and will include recipes.

Secondo was also a fish dish and alas I do not (yet) have the recipe nor can I remember the name. Let's just call it Snapper and Potatoes with Olives and Lemons. The snapper was cubed and dusted in flour and ground cumin, then pan fried in a little olive oil. Previously roasted potatoes were tossed in and the sauce was made with quartered onions, quartered lemons and black olives and then finished off with some chili and finally red wine vinegar. It was a perfect combination of sweet and sour.

Dolce was Vanilla Panacotta with Raspberries - silky creamy deliciousness which offset the tangy raspberries to perfection.





To serve with coffee I made Ossi de Mordere which translates to "bones to bite". They are little chewy chocolate almond cookies but I'll save my stories about them for another post as I in the near future with a different theme. It was a lot of fun. Recipes to follow sometime soon I promise.