Cena di donne italiane - a casa mia!

This month I decided that our Italian women dinner would be a little different. Instead of going to the restaurant, I wanted to host the dinner at my place, and I asked everyone to bring a dish typical of their region, or some wine in case they didn't like to cook.
I already mentioned how varied Italian cuisine is, and so, I though it would have been a pretty nice experience for all of us! In fact, it turned out to be a very good and fun dinner.. and we had plenty of wine :) :) :)
This is a picture of all the people who attended, and if you read more you can have a look at our menu.
Left to right, top to bottom: Marta, Angela, Danila, Giovanna, Ross, Cindy (top); Donnaliz, Julie, Ross, Antonella (bottom).

Appetizers
French cheese and crackers
Eh-ehm - this was brought by Antonella.. not really typical of Rome.. but this diversion was very appreciated :)
San Francisco salad
One of our friends is American, from San Francisco - our group welcomes anyone who speaks Italian, and so we have a few people who are either married to Italians, or lived in Italy for a while, without being born there. So, the San Francisco salad was a mixture of green, boiled shrimp, avocado with a 'Thousand Islands' sauce, and Cindy also brought the typical bread from San Francisco, i.e. sourdough.
Peperoni con la bagna cauda
This is a real Italian dish, and to be more precise, it's a Piemontese dish! So it comes from my same region, but it wasn't made by me. Luisa prepared it and it was delicious. It's roasted peppers served with a sauce made with a lot of garlic, anchovies and olive oil, which has boiled for a long time, until everything is dissolved like a delicate mousse. I love it. :)
Entrees
Risotto alla Milanese
This was made by Ross. It's 'rice Milano style'. It's basically just rice, saffron, butter and parmisan. I'm not sure if it's baked, and not only cooked in a pan like a usual risotto.
Melanzane alla parmigiana
I must have had already quite a lot of all the wine, at this point, considering how bad of a picture I took :)
Anyway, these are 'eggplants parmigiana style', and are typical from Sicily. They were made by Maia, and they were delicious. She explained to us that she sliced the eggplants, put some salt on them for ~30 min to remove the bitterness, rinsed them, then fried them in olive oil. Then, she made different layers of eggplants, tomato sauce, parmigiano cheese, ending with parmigiano as the last layer, and she passed them in the oven for a few minutes to make the cheese melt. They were really good!
Desserts
Dulce de tres leches and Bunet
'Dulce de tres leches' (on the left) is a typical South american/Mexican dessert, and it was brought by Julie. It was really good. The name means 'cake of the three milks', due to the fact that you use three kinds of milk to soak it into (condensed, evaporated and cream). It's a soft and sweet dessert, which I already tried in the Mexican version made by Luisa, and it's really good. 'Bunet' (on the right) was the Piemontese chocolate/amaretti pudding that I already gave the recipe for - I made it, and I was pretty happy of how nicely it layered. I also made some of my good biova bread to go with the dinner.. and the two big loaves were all gone in the end!!

Cena delle donne italiane

I still haven't had time to write a note about this nice 'Italian women' dinner that we had a few weeks ago, before Thanksgiving. A group of Italian (or Italian speaking) women that I belong to meet every month to try new restaurants in the Triangle Area and chat freely in Italian with no husbands, boyfriends or kids around.
Our november meeting was at the Restaurant 'Grasshopper' in Durham. I really enjoyed it. They make 'fusion' Asian cuisine. The food is very good, well presented, the atmosphere is nice, and the prices are very reasonable.

This is an example of what Danila and I ate:
It was Panang Style Prawns
And these are the nice friends I was with:
After me, from the left, Luisa, Danila, Elisabetta, Marilena and Laura

Cena di donne italiane!

Once per month I meet a group of Italian women, or women who live in the Triangle Area and who speak Italian. This group was founded some years ago by a few women, and now, whenever they meet some new Italian woman who seems nice, they invite them to the meetings.
I really enjoy them, I began to attend more frequently only recently. It's really nice for many reasons. One, is that we speak Italian. :) Then, we all share a similar experience - being foreign in the US. Often, the women are married to non Italian people, so it's always interesting to hear their experience, and for example an interesting topic is always what language they speak to their children and between each other.. There are all possible varieties. Sometimes the kids don't speak Italian at all, especially if only one parent is Italian, but other times they speak it to the Italian parent, even if the other spouse doesn't speak Italian at all!
We also have some American women in the group, either married to Italians, or who have lived in Italy for quite a bit, and who speak Italian perfectly, with amazing little accent.
Mostly, all the people are very nice so it's always a pleasure to meet them.

Moreover, each time we try a different restaurant, and we try to explore all types of cuisines. Last time it was Greek. Actually, I suggested the place, since I had been there a few times for lunch and it had always been very nice. For the people who may happen around here and want to try it, the place is called 'Spartacus' and it's actually in Cary. I had always gone when the buffet was there, and to be honest, I think it's better than the actual meal 'a la carte' like we had on Saturday. Also because looking at the menu you realize that it's a bit of a mixture, with some mispelling both of the Greek food and of some Italian food that they make (ehm.. notate la bruchetta :) ). But anyway, the appetizers (that are similar to what you find in the buffet) were really good, and I wanted to show them here:
From the top left (the pinkish thing), you're looking at taramosalata - a fish spread, then on the right melitzanasalata - eggplant/garlic spread, then hummus - with chickpeas, and at last scordalia -a garlic/walnut spread, with feta cheese, tomatoes, peppers and vine leaf rolls in between. In the center, tzadziki (yogurt and cucumber). It was actually very good, served with warm pita bread.

The other appetizer that we had was also very good, and the idea was quite nice, so I think I may try to reproduce it: feta and mozzarella cheese, mixed together and baked, with some hot spices on top and some alcoholic liquid that they lit on fire when they brought it to our table. They extinguished the fire by squeezing lemons on top. The taste was very intersting and the presentation was quite scenic. Unfortunately I wasn't ready and I didn't take pictures of the firing moment. :)

Per i miei lettori italiani.. mia mamma e mia sorella, per pura coincidenza, mi hanno appena mandato la ricetta della taramosalata.. se volete avventurarvi a provarla, eccola:

Taramosalata
Ingredienti per 6 persone
Uova di pesce (bottarga) g 100 – 5 fette di pancarrè ammollate nell’acqua – limone – olio extravergine d’oliva
Tempo: 15’
Raccogliete nel frullatore le fette di pane ammollate e non strizzate, circa 100 g d’olio, la bottarga privata della pellicola di rivestimento e tagliata a fettine, il succo di un limone. Frullate a bassa velocità fino a ottenere una salsina omogenea.

Sembra facilissima, ma dubito che io trovero' la bottarga qui negli States. :)