Italian Recipes?!?

Question

Alright so I'm in culinary arts and next week is my cooking week which is Italian food. I have some recipes in mind but does anyone else have any good ideas has to be:

Main dish

Soup

Dessert

Side dish

PLEASE don't say basic's like:

Lasagna

spaghetti

cannoli

manicotti

I'm thinking about doing manicotti for a main dish but would like other ideas.

Answer 1

If you really want to knock the socks off your instructors, make Ossobuco. I don't have a recipe, but it's braised veal shanks.

Soups are pretty easy--Italian Wedding Meatball Soup should be pretty easy to find, and of course there's the old standby--Minestrone.

Side dish--Risotto. It's challenging to make, so if you are preparing all of this, you might want to save this for another time, when you've had some chances to practice it. It really isn't hard to make, but the timing has to be just right--cook it too fast and the rice ends up crunchy, cook it too slow and it's mushy.

Desserts--don't get me started. How about a fresh fruit tart with Zabaione? Try making it with Moscato di Asti instead of Marsala--you can actually taste the efferevesence of the wine come through in the sauce.

I used to work for a fine dining Italian restaurant and had the honor of working with a chef FROM Italy. The whole concept of the restaurant was to keep it authentic--not American Italian, so I was exposed to lots of great dishes. I'm not a cook, by the way--waitress, but I LOVE food, and am totally in love with really good traditional Italian cooking. The idea is to keep it simple--not a ton of ingredients, but use fresh ingredients, and never over-power one with another.

There is a great book written by an Italian food expert named Lynne Rossetta Kasper (Kasper's her married name, Rossetta tells you her heritage). It's called The Splendid Table, and it's not only a great recipe book, but goes into great depth about the history of traditional Northern Italian foods, like pancetta, Parmagiano Reggiano and Balsamic Vinegar. You might want to see if the library has a copy for your assignment next week, but I strongly suggest you buy a copy for your own Cookbook Library.