Dream it, cook it, eat it

For the past couple of months I have been playing with the idea of themed "dream-it, cook-it, eat-it" dinner parties. The idea is simple. Gather a group of friends, the necessary ingredients, some great wine and a five course menu plan. Engage everyone in the preparation of the meal from start to finish. Of course, this means that there can't be any long lead time items but there are plenty of tasty meals that can be cooked and consumed in under three hours.

My first pass at this will be an Italian-themed meal. Five courses: l'antipasto, il primo, il secundo, il contorno and il dolce (not to be confused with il Duce, of course). The key is to be willing to dine slowly and make an entire leisurely evening of it. The hard part is deciding which terrific Italian dishes to make. These are some of the ideas I am toying with. For l'antipasto thinking of some combination of crostini, bruschetta, mozzarella in carrozza, calamari and caprese. For il primi, fresh made pasta (the fun part is making, kneading and rolling it) with fresh grated black tartufo, carbonara or perhaps putanesco sauce. I am holding out for osso buco for il secundo. Some eggplant or spinach would make a tasty contorno. I am dying to try something I had in Florence last summer for il dolce. It was a super light and fluffy dark chocolate ganache with rose water whipped cream. To top dinner off, some espresso and grappa. Still playing with the wine pairings for the meal. Will try to stick to Italian wines. Need to do some more research.

I will try to pull this particular effort off in the next couple of months. I am also thinking about what might be next. I would like to do something like this every three months or so. For Winter, I am considering a French country theme. Spring seems like it would be a good time to try Spanish tapas. Summer? Not sure yet. But I get ahead of myself. For now, I will focus on the Italian dinner.