The Challenge- Day 3
Today we had our good friends Mimi and Ralph over for dinner, along with my son, his wife, our daughter and her significant other.
For an appetizer I made a dish called Pepperonata. I chose this because we had 6 bell peppers from the CSA that I needed to use. Pepperonata is a melange of peppers, onions, and tomatoes , cooked in olive oil with spices, capers and a splash of vinegar. The mix is slow cooked until the ingredients have softened and melded together. I remember my mother making this when I was a child. We used to eat pepperonata on saltine crackers. So good!
We started our meal with a beautiful salad of heirloom tomatoes, fresh mozzarella balls called Ciliegini, and fresh basil drizzled with a balsamic glaze.
Kristen’s boyfriend is vegetarian so I am making the tortellacci recipe I posted yesterday without the prosciutto. This recipe is rich enough to serve as the main dish but can also be used as a side pasta or first course.
In my continuing efforts to empty the freezer, all the meat that I cooked today was from the stash in my freezer. I made a big pot of “Sunday gravy” which is what we Italians call spaghetti sauce. I made the meatballs with ground beef and veal. I also added a few country style pork-ribs and veal shanks to the sauce, along with Italian style chicken sausage. You ask why chicken sausage? Because, of course, that was what I had in the freezer!
I realize as I am writing each day about my challenge that I am creating a dinner diary of sorts. I just finished reading Dinner: A Love Story by Jenny Rosenstrach. It was a great read and the author has kept a dinner diary of all her dinners going back about 14 years. She started this when she and her husband got married. I am 30 years into our marriage, but my challenge is helping me to not only create a dinner diary but also capture favorite recipes for the blog as I work my way through all the food in the house. I am also having to improvise and use what ingredients I have on hand, which sometimes leads to a new and better recipe.