UNA FESTA DA ME

Today I have done some entertaining myself, for a change, and very happy about it I was, too! I didn't know these friends were coming till about 5 pm yesterday, so it was a bit of a mad dash to think what to prepare, go shopping and get cooking.

Last night I whipped up my "standby" chicken pâté, using chicken livers, sour cream [well, ordinary cream with a dash of lemon juice, as you can't get sour cream here; all cream here has a different texture from the kind on sale in the UK, by the way] and a goodly splash of mandarinetto liqueuer. Then I made a ragù bolognese to go with the obligatory pasta, mainly because it does not contain tomatoes, to which one friend is allergic; instead, you add a little diluted tomato purée to the mixture. For dessert I tried out Nigella's idea of using pandoro as the base for a sophisticated trifle and can report that it works very well. I'm sure the fact that the pandoro I had to hand contained limoncello helped the flavour along! [The recipe is in Nigella's Feast book.]

Then this morning I got some fine Parma ham from the superb Sfiziosa deli along the road. Parma ham needs no embellishment as part of your antipasti. No time to make my own bread, so pane arabo, also from the deli, had to do. I made some bites of fresh cherries and Asiago [a mild-flavoured, non-crumbly cheese] and also of cherries and chunks of mortadella [above] and plonked a dish of olives, together with one of fresh almonds, on the table as well. As a main course I served "Mediterranean chicken" , the recipe for which I posted here a few weeks ago. All was enjoyed and lunch lasted till 6pm!