Decided to use every square inch of granite counter in the big Santa Cruz kitchen and dirty every dish, utensil, pot and pan this weekend, in honor of Suzie and Todd coming down. The theme was the movie "The Big Night" (see it if you haven't) and the star is the Timpano (Timballo) de Maccheroni, baked pasta and other goodies inside a large "drum" of a pastry shell. Bonnie and David came, and (rather terrifyingly, but what the heck) born and made (respectively) Italians Eleonora and Roger.
Antipasti: Figs wrapped with a very lean domestic prosciutto, and dusted with pepper (I figured out afterwards that the reason my tongue/brain absolutely required the pepper was that my Jewish heart wanted the ham to be pastrami).
Roasted red peppers with anchovies, garlic, oil and vinegar. Roast them yourself and leave the skin on, it's probably good for you.
"Deconstructed bruschetta" -- I ran out of time to make toast and rub garlic on it, and all that, so plain slices of bread were served with a mixture of diced tomatoes, fresh oregano, chopped reconstituted porcini mushrooms, and salt.
Il Timballo:Had rigatoni, tomato sauce, meatballs (with currants), mozzarella & fontina, "mild chicken Italian sausage" from Shopper's Corner (a big hit), hardboiled eggs, and the crust from
this recipe, which was pretty hard and austere (and hard to roll thinly). Grated pecorino romano cheese sprinkled liberally in the meatballs and the sauce.
Il Disastro:The timballo fell apart when I was trying to invert it out onto the big ceramic serving dish, and worse, I managed to break the dish in the latter stages of the process. The pot should have been lubricated more with olive oil and the cook should have been lubricated less with red wine. But it tasted pretty good.
Sicilian-style cookies:From my memories of what we had in Taormina. I made a filling of marzipan and diced orange peel (dried and reconstituted but not sweetened). Then I made another half-recipe of the timballo dough, adding a bit of sugar. I made this into thin 3-inch disks and wrapped them around a pinch of the filling and a pistachio, then baked at 400 degrees until they started to brown. Then tossed them into the freezer so they'd be cool before the movie was over.
Eleonora and Roger brought
a lovely wine from the South of Italy.
Suzie and Todd left the next morning and I saw Bonnie around lunchtime, but no one wanted me to make them a morning-after-plain-omelet.
Cleanup is still in progress.
