Okay.. next up.. prepping for dinner, We didn't really have much idea of what we wanted to make -- just some random ingredients and a few ideas.
So, the soup. Christina had found this great recipe online and we did our very best to follow it but you know, I think we have RDD -- recipe deficit disorder. We start out with ALL the best intentions .. but we get led astray so quickly. She had bought a bunch (about 10 - 12 of them, a little bigger than golf balls) of little vine tomatoes at the Italian grocery and the recipe called for us to roast those, a sliced onion, garlic cloves and some carrots in the oven til they were nice and soft. We drizzled them with olive oil and sprinkled a little salt on them (and added a little more granulated garlic, just for good measure) and roasted them for about 45 minutes.
Once cooked, we dropped them into the blender with about 2 1/2 cups of milk and 2 cups of water and a few leaves of basil. Blend, blend blend, into the bowls, add a dollop of greek yogurt and a sprig of parsley. Done!!
Christina had this gorgeous little fragrant muskmelon, about the size of a large softball. We sliced it and wrapped some fresh, thin prosciutto around it, topping it off with a slice of cherry cheddar cheese.
This was one of those discoveries from the fridge -- not on the plan at all but came up really delicious. The muskmelon was sweet but subtle and no one flavor overpowered the others.. the cherry cheddar gave us a little sweet and a little tang and the prosciutto gave just a teensy bit of salty. It was like the perfect bite.
Next we sliced a small baguette and brushed extra virgin olive oil on top. We popped that into the oven at 400 to toast while we started to prep the meat-a-balls-a.
Now, this occurred organically -- and I don't mean we got it all from the fields.. I mean we found a recipe that told us how long and at what temp to cook meatballs, and we made up the rest.
We started with about 4# of meat -- a combination of beef and pork that's usually sold as "meatloaf" at the store. You could certainly use any ground meat for this, but I think I would shy away from using turkey or chicken and in fact I might have preferred to use a combination of beef and lamb or even beef and venison. These meatballs were hearty chunks of meat. In the bowl, we combined one egg, a mixture of different spices that included parsley (1/4 c. fresh), dill (1TB), garlic powder (3 tsp), chopped onions (one small onion), rosemary (2tsp) , sage (2tsp), salt (pinch/dash -- you don't need very much), white pepper, italian breadcrumbs (3/4c), paremesan cheese (1/4c), olive oil (drizzled over top) and spinach (a good sized handful, shredded by hand as shown on the left).
Now, you have to know, you gotta use your hands to mix this all together and it's messy so if you aren't one who likes to gets their hands messy or get food under your fingertips, wear latex gloves.. there's no other way to do this effectively. You won't get all the spices mixed in well enough. Once they're all mixed together, roll the meat into balls, about the size of your palm when you cup your hand. Yeah, I have man hands, my meat-a-balls-a gonna be BIG!
Lay them on a baking sheet (you might want to put down some tin foil to help with cleanup, as we learned, this will create some mess) about an inch apart from each other. They go into the over for about 25 to 30 minutes at 425 .. but you have to watch them. They'll turn a gorgeous color of dark golden brown and they'll get firm when they're done - but you're still going to have to take one out and bust it open to test it -- don't worry, you won't regret it.
So the bread comes out of the oven and we put a small amount of triple cream brie on top, then pop them back in quickly to get the brie to melt down a little. Meanwhile, we sliced some fresh figs thinly and when the brie had melted for about two minutes, we pulled the bread and placed a slice of fig on top. The heat mellowed the brie considerably -- it was like rich butter, but the fig on top gave it just enough tart and sweet. It was the hit of the night. I could have made a meal of just these little bruschettas. There wasn't a thing missing.
While the meat-a-balls-a were baking, we boiled up a package of pasta, al dente. We heated the sauce I brought down from home and set the table for the festa!
I can't believe I actually forgot to mention dessert! In fact, dessert was SO delicious, and gobbled down SO quickly, there was no time to get the camera out before there was nothing left but crumbs. Once again, the mystical combination of salty and sweet has found its way onto my table again (big surprise, right?) We basically took a square container of ice cream and cut it into slices, then quartered it. Each of those little quarters was pressed between a pair of saltines. Yes, that's what I said; a pair of saltines. Ed wasn't convinced of the potential for scrumptiousness of this combination and asked for ice cream between graham crackers instead. I liked my two little sammiches so much, I bequeathed my graham cracker sammich to Ed without even trying it. This is ingenious and delicious -- and the size is just right, too!
So this was Festa Italiana, folks. Please let me know if you need or want clarification on any of the dishes we made -- I'll be happy to give you what you need or if you have an idea or a question about what I think might work as a substitute.
