How To Throw The Best Italian Dinner Party Ever

You walk into an Italian Restaurant - the whole experience is just wonderful - the smells, the atmosphere and hopefully when your order is delivered - the Food. The background noise is all a part of the experience - it's often at a higher frequency than most restaurants but it's all part of the fun.

How To Throw The Best Italian Dinner Party Ever

How To Throw The Best Italian Dinner Party Ever

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How To Throw The Best Italian Dinner Party Ever

How To Throw The Best Italian Dinner Party Ever

Why not take this same experience back to your own home and create a more intimate and less busy Italian dinner Party? A dinner where people can enjoy a more leisurely dining experience within the comfort of your own home. A night where you can share your favorite Italian recipes with people who are important to you - or maybe even try out some new recipes?

Italian Food never seems to lose its popularity. There's often a feeling of comfort and contentMent attached to Italian Food and the flavors are simply sensational. So, just how do you host a great Italian dinner Party then?

1. Planning - In your planning, consider who you will invite and check the foods that they don't like or can't tolerate and set the date and time well in advance.

2. Invitations - Will you just invite your friends by sending them an email or can you do something a bit more creative with your invitation? You could attach a note to something very Italian. I saw a suggestion of sending the invitation attached to a small packet of biscotti or you could incorporate the colors of the Italian flag as the background (three vertical columns - green on the left, white in the middle and red on the left) on your invite.

3. Atmosphere - Do you want red and white checkered table Cloths with chianti bottles as candle holders with wax dripping down the sides - just to give it that really authentic look? Or a plain white, red or green table Cloth?

Try to get hold of some background Italian music like some opera for example. Some of Italy's best singers generally have included Enrico Caruso, Luciano Pavarotti, Andrea Bocelli, Mina and Claudio Villa.

4. Food - since Italians are renowned for taking great pleasure in their food, wine and the company of their friends dinners can often go on for hours. Italians see meals as a time to spend with family and friends instead of to gain immediate sustenance.

The number of courses served can range from three to six courses (called portate) or sometimes more courses!

You'll no doubt have some lovely smells permeating into the house before your guests arrive - you could also slowly bake some garlic bread in the oven so the smell is wafting through the house as your guests arrive. This will really let your guests know they've come to the right place!

You could start with antipasto which literally means "before the meal". This is also the traditional first course of a formal Italian meal.

Rather than hors devours offered on trays that guests enjoy before they are seated at the dinner table, antipasto is served at the table and signifies the beginning of your Italian meal together. An antipasto plate is usually placed at the center of the table. The antipasto dish doesn't even getting numbered as one of the courses.. it's just a given.

Diners are given small plates on which to place their choices. Traditional choices can include cured meats (prosciuito, mortadella, smoked ham and salami), marinated vegetables, olives, peperoni (marinated small peppers - not the meat called peperoni) along with an assortMent of cheeses (like provolone, bocconicini and mozzarella).

The first course primo piatto (also referred to as simply primo) or minestra may consist of soup (minestroni perhaps?), Pasta, gnocci, risotto or polenta - this should only be a small portion like a cup or so. This is a dish rich in carbohydrates.

The second or main course is called secondo piatto or piatto di mezzo which usually consists or Fish or meat. Traditionally veal, Pork and chicken are the most commonly used meat, at least in the North.
The side dish is called contorno and may consist of a salad or cooked vegetables. A traditional Menu features salad along with the main course.

The first dessert which consists of cheese and fruit is called Formaggio and frutta - the cheese and fruit is usually served together.

Then it's onto Dolce - dessert such as cakes or cookies.

You should also serve coffee/espresso known as Caffè.

Finally, Digestivo or "digestives" which are liquors/liqueurs like grappa, amaro or limoncello - sometimes referred to as "coffee killer" or ammazzacaffe.

All these dishes sound great and I imagine when people see the number of courses it may seem a bit daunting but you only need serve as many courses as you choose. I have discovered a great website hosting 3000 free recipes from around the world. Under Italian, I noticed they offered 217 recipes so I'm sure you can find all you need there.

How To Throw The Best Italian Dinner Party Ever

Italian Coffee

Espresso, caffè normale and cappuccino are types of Italian coffee, and one might wonder if there are as many types of coffee in Italy as there are Pastas. Quite surprisingly, there are and just like Pasta, Italian coffee is also an art form linked to many customs and traditions. Be it a caffè corretto shot down like a drink, a cappuccino and brioche that would make a lovely snack, or a granita di caffè con panna to chill off from the hot noon sun, Italy has a coffee drink for every occasion and every mood.

Italian Coffee

Italian Coffee

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Italian Coffee

Italian Coffee

The most famous of the Italian coffees are the cappuccinos -- the café corretto and café latte. Cappuccino is prepared with espresso and milk. A cappuccino is commonly identified as 1/3 espresso, 1/3 steamed milk and 1/3 frothed milk. Cappuccino is preferably served in a ceramic coffee cup to retain the heat, instead of glass or paper that is a comparatively poorer heat retainer. Café corretto is a coffee "corrected" with a measure of grappa, cognac or any other alcoholic content. Latte is Italian for milk, and café latte refers to coffee prepared with a larger measure of hot milk in it rather than coffee.

There are many other styles of Italian coffee, and they have all become world famous. In fact, Italy is the coffee house of the world, and has contributed to the enTire world many different styles of coffee that have so become a part of our culture and lives. Even espresso had its origins in Italy. It was from Italy that Starbucks got most of their coffee recipes and rose to fame quickly in the West. Despite all the progress and spread of the coffee culture, Italy still remains the coffee capital of the world.

Italian Coffee

Italian Food Culture

The Italian Food culture concerns not only what we see at Italian tables or in a rich Italian restaurant Menu.

Italian Food Culture

Italian Food Culture

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Italian Food Culture

Italian Food Culture

It is something much deeper in the Italians ' DNA.

Italians have some beliefs that go beyond education or tradition.

Concerning Pasta

An easy example could be the Pasta shapes and their seasonings. Considering that among dry Pasta (the ones you usually buy inside paper or plastic bags that last for long) the difference is only the shape of it, nothing else, the shape itself is something very important for Italians.

There's a traditional Pasta sauce recipe from Rome region called Pasta all'amatriciana (it's a tasty sauce made with tomatoes and bacon). Usually it's served using the bucatini Pasta (kind ofhuge spaghetti with a hole in its middle). An Italian woman was disgusted hearing her hAirDress telling her colleague that preferred it with short pasta. She said: "don't ask me why. It just is as it is. Amatriciana must go with long pasta. How can one imagine of Cooking it with short pasta? " The same goes for dough with oil and garlic (garlic and oil), you probably will never see it served using any other pasta that isn't spaghetti.

Cappuccino

A lot of people around the world drink coffee and milk. In Italy, people use to drink cappuccino- coffee and milk with addition of milk foam.

"All around the world people drink coffee and milk whenever feels like doing it. Italians will never ask for a cappuccino in theevening! Why? It is just as it is. It's not time to have a cappuccino. Cappuccino is for breakFast!

Italians do not accept someone who asks a cappuccino after, or even worse, together with dinner. They really twist their nose when they see someone doing it.

Drinking

In Italy there are bars everywhere. There are many small cities, having about 1.500 inhabitants that have about 20 bars.

It happens because drinking in Italy is associated with greetings. When an Italian meet a friend, it's natural to "drink something together".

If it happens to need a drink to someone seat besides you, never turn the jar or the bottle against the natural way of your hand. For example, if you have the jar in your right hand, the glass mustbe on the left side, never behind, on the right side of your right hand. Otherwise it may not bring good luck.

Meals

In many countries it's common to eat a salad as entrance.

Not in Italy.

Italians eat salad as a side plate for the second dish. Now you can find some tourist restaurants in main cities that propose rich salads for the tourists ... but Italians never ask for them!

Italians hqve liked to lunch time. If you like to visit Italy and want to have lunch, pay attention to restaurants ' closing times. Usually after 2:30 pm the kitchens are all closed and you'll have to eat a sandwich. If an Italian is traveling outside Italy, he will probably look for a restaurant during lunch time. If he doesn't or cannot findone, and finds one at 03:00 pm, he'll probably say that is not hungry anymore, that he uses to eat at that time otherwise he loses his hunger.

Italians trust their Food. While most of the tourists look for local Food, considering it part of the vacation, it's very common to see Italians looking for Italian restaurants while abroad. They seem to be afraid of new and different Food.

They begin to open themselves to new food when go outside Italy more often and learn to appreciate and trust foreign cuisines.

Trusting and loving Other than their own food, Italians hate when people try to mix other food cultures with Italian ones. An example? Never add ketchup to pasta dish! You cannot imagine how your Italian friend will stare at you if youtry to do so.

The interesting in all these is that they don't do it for being presumptuous, but they really believe you're wasting your taste. Italian culture still has a lot of "musts" that go with generations that just follow it without knowing why it is done in this or that way.

Italian Food Culture