Be Ready for Spontaneous Get-Togethers

This week I'm collaborating with the entertaining blog Hip Hostess! Hip Hostess is writing about last minute entertaining made easy. Check them out here.

Italians love to get together to eat, but Italian dinner parties are rarely formal affairs. After a friendly conversation or chance meeting with friends, both parties agree on a date a few days in the future, and a dinner party is born. I absolutely love this part of the Italian culture. The invitation to an easygoing and relatively unexpected dinner party creates an atmosphere of exuberant anticipation, giving the evening a youthful, carefree freshness and providing an opportunity to enliven the spirit. When we spend our vacation in Italy, unplanned dinner parties play an important part in the Italian experience.

How to have your own spontaneous pizza party:

1. Pick up the phone and call your friends and invite them to a pizza party that night.
2. Many pizza restaurants sell their dough raw; if you don't have time to make your own dough, ask around at your favorite pizzeria.
3. Use a pizza stone to replicate the effect of pizza cooked in an authentic pizza oven. Preheat it as the oven comes up to a temperature of 500 - 500 F (260 - 288 C) (Gas mark 9), and let it heat for at least 30 minutes before you slide the first pizza on it. Bake your pizza f or 6 - 7 minutes, or until the crust is browned and bubbly
4. Use my tomato sauce recipe below as a base sauce for the pizza.
5. Use fresh mozzarella - the kind that comes in balls packed in water - as your first layer.
6. Grate real Parmigiano-Reggiano in a food processor or with a Microplane grater to sprinkle on top.
7. Use freshly sliced prosciutto, salami, or capocollo meats. Make sure your cold cuts are fresh and moist. Arrange the meats on top of the pizza after it has come out of the oven to avoid overcooking.
8. Lightly saute slices of zucchini, eggplant, and artichoke hearts in extra-virgin olive oil. Drain on paper towels and set aside to use as pizza toppings.
9. Set out a jar of Nutella and have a small bowl of sugar ready to make an amazing dessert pizza.
10. There are many great toppings you can use on your pizzas. See below for more ideas.

Rosanna's Tomato Sauce

MAKES 6 SERVINGS

1 large carrot
2 ribs celery with leaves
1 onion
4 cloves garlic
1/2 cup (120 ml) good quality extra-virgin olive oil
2 (28 ounce) (794 g) cans San Marzano tomatoes
1 teaspoons (6 g) sea salt
1/2 teaspoons (3 g) sugar (if necessary)

Chop the carrot, celery, onion, and garlic (this can also be done in a food processor).

Put the oil in a large saucepan and place over medium heat. When the oil is hot, add the chopped vegetables and saute over medium heart until just soft, about 5 minutes.

Puree the tomatoes in a food processor, then add them to the pan. Add the salt and sugar if necessary (I find that the San Marzano tomatoes are usually sweet enough on their own). Let the sauce simmer, uncovered, for 1 hour, stirring occasionally.

Daniela and Vito's Out-of-This-World Pizza Toppings

What exactly you choose to put on each pizza is completely up to you and your guests, but there are a few things you can do to make your pizzas truly extraordinary. First, use the best quality ingredients for your toppings: homemade sauce, locally grown and preferably organic vegetables, freshly sliced cured meats, and good quality cheeses. Second, don't be tempted to overload your pizza with too much sauce and cheese, which can result in soggy, sloppy crust.

Sauces
Rosanna's Tomato Sauce
Extra-virgin olive oil

Cheeses
3 large balls fresh mozzarella cheese, cut into 1-inch (2.5 cm) slices
1 cup (100 g) freshly grated Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese
1 cup (100 g) freshly grated Pecorino Toscano (aged Tuscan sheep's milk cheese)

Vegetables
Zucchini, thinly sliced lengthwise, sauteed in olive oil until golden, and drained on paper towels
Yukon Gold potatoes, boiled, peeled, and cut into cubes
Eggplant, thinly sliced lengthwise, grilled or sauteed in olive oil, drained on paper towels, and cut into 1-inch (2.5 cm) lengths
Small yellow onion, peeled and roasted until soft and lightly browned
1 bunch baby arugula, washed, drained, and spun dry
1 (14-ounce) (396 g) can artichoke hearts in water, drained

Meats
10 thin slices prosciutto from Parma or Norcia, Italy
15 to 25 thin slices  Genoa wine salami
15 to 25 thin slices copocollo
10 thin slices pancetta
3 mild Italian pork sausages, grilled or broiled until cooked through, then thinly sliced

Dessert toppings
1 (13-ounce) (371 g) jar Nutella
1 cup (200 g) sugar

Have fun!

With love,

www.rosannainc.com

Diner En Blanc

As the last traces of summertime disappeared into the fast approaching autumn, a group gathered in historic Gasworks Park for a magical evening of food and friendship. The ingredients were unusual enough catch the attention of a few hundred Seattleites:  secrecy, creativity, synchronization, camaraderie, delicacies, and champagne. We were also instructed to dress a certain way: all in white.

I’m talking about Seattle’s very own, and very first, Dîner en Blanc (French for Dinner in White). The original Dîners began in France in 1988. Since then, Dîners have been happening all throughout Paris. Recently, food and performance art enthusiasts have orchestrated their own Dîners, far from the Seine and the clanging bells of Notre Dame Cathedral. The New York Times even ran an article about the event, “How 10,000 People Keep a Secret,” which came to Seattle, WA this summer.

Though the Dîners appear spontaneous to the uninitiated onlooker, this gastronomic flash mob in fact requires quite a bit of planning. In past blog posts and in my book, I’ve sung the praises of spontaneous dinner parties. However, a Dîner en Blanc is essentially the opposite of a spontaneous gathering. Unlike a spur-of-the-moment get together, a Dîner can’t happen without foresight and coordination. But all the planning gives the event a Byzantine, theatrical charm all its own.

The New York organizer Danile Laporte said it well: “Part of the event is the journey there.  To think ahead, to get ready, to get the table, to prepare your picnic, to choose your outfit.  Not making it easy is part of the allure.” 

These dinners, with their secret locations and semi-costumed festivity, unfurl much like a piece of theater. They create the same magical, exuberant, unexpected, co-created spectacle, both for the participants and the observers. The magic is the result of the preparation, born of the desire to set apart a space and time to create something extraordinary.

The scale of this Dîner was quite large. But that doesn’t mean you can’t arrange a similar type of “happening” in (or near) your home. All it takes is a little initiative and creativity, which becomes a reality with the collaboration of a group. A group, by the way, could be as tiny as three people. So, I encourage you to gather your friends to create your own Dîner en Blanc…or rouge (red,) vert (green), or bleu (blue)!

A little something out of the ordinary goes a long way. A special night like this creates not just a memorable evening, but a sense of wonder and a childlike delight that lasts long past the last guest vanishes into the night. 

Read about Seattle’s Dîner en Blanc in The Puget Sound Business Journal: “Elegant Flash Mob Dîner en Blanc a Success.”

www.rosannainc.com