We recently had our February dinner party. This time we went with an Italian theme as mentioned in a previous post.

Things played out pretty much as planned. The only real change was that a few people had to bail so we ended up with 6 including me and Suzanne.

While we finished cooking the pasta, there was antipasti for people to nibble on. Top to bottom: sun-dried tomatoes, anchovies, grilled eggplant, artichoke hearts, and roasted red peppers.

We also had a selection of Italian cheeses.

The final bit of antipasti was a mozzarella roll. Suzanne got the cheese at the Fancy Food Show (possibly NSFW if you work somewhere uptight). It was a sheet of mozzarella rolled up into a cylinder. The idea is to unroll it, put stuff on it and roll it up again. Like a jelly roll or sticky buns. Suzanne filled it wirh sundried tomatoes and fresh basil. Neither of us are quite sure how we felt about the result. I later found a great way to put it to optimum use. That’s for a latter post.

Then there was the pasta. We cooked up some dried faro linguini that @daksis had given me to try. Very nice flavor and texture. Also I made (from scratch) a ricotta gnocchi. For sauces we had a basil pesto and an “almost” puttanesca (leaving out the anchovies as one guest was vegetarian).

Then there was dessert! Suzanne made an incredibly good Ligurian lemon cake with raspberries, and I made tiramisu from the recipe in The Silver Spoon (also see this, which includes the tiramisu recipe) which I recently added to my cookbook collection (at the suggestion of @daksis).

Throw in lots of wine and plenty of coffee, and we had a very pleasant evening.