Mi piace la pancia! Our Italian Sunday Dinner

I like my tummy. Even when it’s full. But this was crazy.

This Sunday’s dinner was Italian themed, which was a wonderful breather from all the Asian stuff I’ve been eating lately. I knew there was going to be pizza and pasta, and a great few other things that dad decided to put in. It’s funny because everyone came early…or on time this week. I guess being late for the Sunday dinner has it’s own drawbacks – – you miss out on the food and more importantly, you miss out on the stories.

Our starters came in the form of a salad, which had some tatsoy, baby arugula and other mesclun greens. It was tossed in with some Feta cheese, cramelized walnuts and kalamata olives. The dressing was a simple vinagrette with a little dill. Simple, but wonderful, the leaves were all fresh and crunchy. The baby arugula provided a slightly bitter and spicy bite to the salad, while the tatsoy provided a delicate sweet touch to everything.

Next came the fish, which was odd, but that’s only because we based the food that was going to go with the wine. And so came the lapu-lapu cooked in parchment. This was absolutely heavenly that my uncle had seconds. The fish was cooked in it’s own juices and a little olive oil along with slices of lemon, olives, peppers, onions…It was so simple and yet so magnificent! I didn’t want to have seconds because I had a bad feeling there was a huge amount of food again tonight.

Then came a minestrone that I never got to taste because my dad found the veggies too tough and so he gave a piece of his mind to our poor chef for that night. But anyway, if he says so, then so be it…I had a feeling it would be a welcome skip. :p

Yes and so it was because our next course was a simple platter of salami milano and spianata, a wonderful, stinky, but wonderful cold cut, much like a salami cut lengthwise but bolder in flavor. That slight funk you find interesting in the milano is concentrated in the spianata. I couldn’t help but eat a bunch but I decided to grab a few cocktail onions and baby gherkins from the fridge just to cut down the richness…so i could eat more. 😀

Then came the pizzas. The pepperoni was delicious with double the typical pepperoni pizza in a bed of tomato sauce and cheese. But the quattro formaggi was better. It was a delightful mix of mozzarella, blue cheese, goat cheese and vintage cheddar…I LOVE CHEESE! With a sprinkling of basil chiffonade. This was definitely delightful, and the blue cheese was just the absolute perfect touch to the pizza. Parts of the pizza had the goat cheese, and parts were more on the blue cheese. It was a wonderful and surprising mix of flavors and textures in every bite!

BOOM BOOM BOOM. I think the meatballs made the sound. It was huge..it was more than huge…it was extremely fat…it didn’t even look like a meatball anymore! My uncle described it as horse’s ****s. Oh my. This meatball is not democratic. It looked like it fell out of a planet in star wars…it look like it could kill you if ever it fell on your head.

But it was wonderful. The pasta looked like and afterthought. The tomato sauce was just tangy and a slightly sweet, a perfect accompaniment to these humungous, mozzarella stuffed meatballs. They were so big that I had to split one. Cets passed but he later took a few pieces from me since it was so interesting. This was definitely the biggest freakin’ meatballs, anyone has ever served to me. And it was fantastic.

Ah finally the last leg of the dinner. We had a tiny cheese platter that I decided not to touch.. but it looked interesting, i just was too full trying to recover when this one came.

Then we had a wonderful slice of cassata each. This non-traditional version of cassata, with layers of ice orange ice cream and studded with tiny dark chocolate chips and a few dried fruits were served with a tangy raspberry sauce and a a smooth and smokey caramel sauce. I was too full to finish my slice but then i loved the little chocolate chips i found in the ice cream. The cake was also glazed with a little liquor too. YUM!