Pasta and Co.

Servus!

Just so you all know that this isn't a food blog, here is a picture of my dog:



Her name is Una. She's a good dog.



That being said, weekend before last we met with our friends Dirk and Rita and had a wonderful evening of food and drink and good company. Since Rita is a big fan of Italy, we had ourselves a regular feast!

The first thing that needed to happen was that I needed to start making the bruschetta at about 0730 on Saturday morning. I mixed tomatoes with some olive oil, fresh basil, garlic, salt, pepper, and grated buffalo mozzarella. Always use the buffalo mozzarella - it tastes loads better than the kind from cow's milk. I took a baguette, sliced it, and toasted it in the oven for about 3 minutes and then rubbed a clove of garlic on each of the slices. I then piled on the mixture and put the whole thing back in the oven for about 8 minutes.





It was hard not to eat any of those bad boys as the came out of the oven!

So on to the next appetizer! Anelli de Ricotta... I got to make a whole bunch of very thin pancakes!





Once these were taken care of, I spread a mixture of ricotta, spinach, and parmesan on each pancake and rolled them up and cut each into about three pieces. These went into a oven form and then were covered in the rest of the freshly shaven parmesan.





Since we were going crazy and had a lot of mouths to feed, there were two different kinds of pasta sauces. Cause, you know, we might not have enough food...

There was Dirk's bolognese sauce:



Then there was Rita's cream and shrimp sauce with green onion:



Both of these were, as you can imagine, very light sauces that left plenty of room for appetizers and dessert...













Now, there is soething that it really bothering me. Anna made both a traditional tiramisu (the kind with real cream, Amaretto, raw egg, etc. Not that cheap kind!) and an American cookie cream for the kids. Both of these were delicious beyond comprehension but I HAVE NO PICTURES OF THEM!!!! I am ashamed, as they were really the dot on the i for what was a really great evening of food and good friends.

I bid you Peace,

Jake