Della serie: cene italo/spagnole

Our italian/spanish dinner this week was hosted by Crissy, and a new nationality was represented: Peru, thanks to David :)
We're getting better and better and this time we spoke Spanish almost all the time, and Luisa tried to read the Italian cookbook that I brought. We exchanged sayings too .. for example: how do you say 'to be extremely tired' in a colorful way? Lucas, Crissy and I couldn't come out with an American or Italian saying, whereas we found out that in Mexico they say
'cansado como una cucaracha fumigada' (tired as a fumigated cockcroach, stanco come uno scarafaggio spruzzato con l'insetticida) :) :)
And in Peru they say
'cansado como el caballo de los bandidos' (tired as the horse of the bandits, stanco come il cavallo dei banditi) .
So if some readers want to help.. can you find an Italian/American saying for this?!?
The dinner had a 'Halloween' theme, since we are so close to October 31st. So here is our guest Crissy holding the bleeding skull:

More pictures and some recipes below.

For the dinner we were supposed to bring food typical of our countries. So I took the book that my Dad gave me: 'Cucina di tradizione del Piemonte, Ricettario a Fumetti' by Alberto Calosso and Piero Gallarino (e' bellissimo! Chiunque si interessa di cucina dovrebbe prendere questo libro, e' davveri simpatico, c'e' un pazzo cuoco-cartone che produce ottimi piatti e li illustra :) ). It's a book about cooking from Piemonte, my region. I took a recipe for a soup, because I thought there would be too much other food to make a pasta.
It was really good, so I share the recipe with you (slightly cut down on the butter).
Zuppa di cipolle (Onion soup)
Cut very finely 2 kg onions (~5 medium/big onions). In a pan, put 50g (1/4 stick) of butter and melt it, add the onions and cook very gently for ~20 min. In the meanwhile, melt 30 g (~2 tbs) butter in another pan, add a spoon of flour, and ~ 1 l vegetable broth (I added this much as the recipe said, but I think it's too much, so I had to cook it for a while later to evaporate some liquid) and salt. After the onions are done, blend them to obtain a sort of mousse. Add to the broth. Bring to boil and cook until it's of the thickness you like. Then, add 3 tbsp sour cream (panna da cucina, se ce l'avete a disposizione), mix, and serve hot with crostini (pieces of bread cut and toasted in a pan where some butter (~1/2 tbsp) was melted previously).

Also Lucas cooked! He made cornbread, the style that his grandmother used to make it:
Lucas's grandma's cornbread

Mix 1 lb cornmeal, 1 broccoli bunch cut into pieces, salt, 1 small onion sautee, 1/4 lb melted butter, 12 oz cottage cheese, 4 eggs beaten. Put in a pan, so that it's about 1 1/2 inch thick. Bake at 400 F for 30 min. It was very good!!!

Luisa made a chinese dish, which she explained is commonly cooked in Mexican households of her region, due to the strong influence of Chinese immigrants.
It was very good, but I can't remember the name!

Mariana made the 'Sopa de gato' (soup of the cat), which is neither a soup nor does it contain cat meat :) - but it's a stir fry of tortilla, chorizo and cream. Very yummy :)
(sorry, the picture is blurry).

And Crissy made a wonderful 'Italian roast', which was beef and vegetables slowly cooked in a crockpot with tomatoes and spices for 10 hours. It was delicious.


The dessert was a mixed cheesecake (we didn't make it though) :)
Very good, I couldn't resist trying transparent slices of 3 of the 4 flavors.

I also made another dessert, taken from the Piemontese cookbook, but since I transformed it into a Halloween dessert, I'll describe it in another post.

I just wanted to post a few pictures of the guests of this dinner:

Crissy and David
Luisa and Jorge
Mariana and Trino
Marta and Lucas