We love hosting dinner parties with an Italian flavour. Any excuse to have a house full of people and mountains of delicious food to enjoy together, talking the evening away over wine. But that doesn’t mean that the focus is off the food.
If you serve a bad meal in Italy, it will be remembered for decades to come!
We thought we would share our ideal evening with you. In Italy we don’t rush dinner, and it comprises of several courses:
The Aperitivo: This is seen as an opener to the meal and small alcoholic drinks will be served alongside some small nibbles.
We would recommend serving Prosecco or Vermouth here, with our Green Olives, stuffed with Piri Piri and Chilli and Honey Peanuts to snack on.
Antipasto: This is usually when guests take their seats at the table for a slightly heavier starter course, where cold easy-to-eat dishes are served.
For this course, our Antipasto Selection is perfect, together with Crostini, and a selection of cold cuts such as delicious Truffle Mortadella and Antipasti Misto.
Primo: The primo course tends to be a meat-free affair, consisting of pasta or gnocchi, served warm.
A small dish of Gnocchi tossed in our delicious Green Basil Pesto with a liberal grating of Parmesan would be perfect to serve for this course.
Secondo: This is the main meal – usually a grilled or roasted piece of Meat or Fish, accompanied by the Contorno, the side dish, which is usually roasted Vegetables or Polenta.
We would recommend keeping this dish simple with a well-seasoned piece of roasted Lamb or Beef, together with Grilled Mixed Vegetables as the side dish. You could serve your Insalata course, which is simply a leafy salad, together with the main meal. We would recommend tossing it in Balsamic Vinegar Of Modena together with some Sundried Tomatoes to add depth.
Formaggi e Frutta: When Italy does cheese so well, you can’t help but dedicate an entire course to it. Enter the cheese boards and seasonal fruits.
We have lots of gorgeous cheeses like Bontazola Gorgonzola, Burrata in Foglia or Pecorino Fantasy that we would recommend serving alongside slithers of crisp Apple, Grapes and Figs.
Dolce: You can’t end the meal without something sweet, and we Italians do this course best.
This is where you can cheat with our help – choose from our vast selection of mouth-watering sweet treats like our Lemon Cannoli, Cannoncini With Hazelnut Cream or Barchette With White Chocolate Cream.
Digestivo con Caffe: Italians like to have a short, strong black Coffee at the end of the meal, which is drunk quickly and followed by a small alcoholic beverage to aid digestion and conclude the meal.
We recommend using our Moak Organic to make Espressos for everybody and choose from either Limoncello or Grappa for the end of the meal Digestif.
We wish you all the best with hosting your Italian-style dinner party! Don’t forget to share photos of your feast with us!
Carlo & Andrea Diforti