Dinner, Italian Style

Last week, a few of my girlfriends and I had a fancy four-course Italian dinner, each of us in charge of one of the courses... It was amazing. Here's what we had:

Antipasto:
Alexa made an amazing spread of grilled vegetables, delicious meats, roasted garlic, olives, goat cheese, and artichokes. She also made focaccia bread from SCRATCH! Ugh, it was perfect.

Primo Piatto:
Traditionally Italians make pasta or risotto for the first course of the night. This was my responsibility! I wanted to do something authentic and different, and I found the perfect recipe in the Italy issue of Bon Appetit Magazine... Tagliatelle with orange and prosciutto. It sounds kind of weird, yes. I've never used orange in any Italian dish before. But I figured if it was in Bon Appetit, it ought to be good. Boy, was it. It wasn't super sweet from the orange, and cooking with fresh pasta totally made a difference.

Secondo Piatto:
Erin, who hosted the dinner in her lovely Queen Anne apartment, made chicken breasts stuffed with fontina cheese, prosciutto, and sage for the main course. Woo! The girl knows how to cook. And she uses amazingly fresh ingredients.

Dolce:
I'm so glad that Jessica chose to prepare something simple and refreshing for dessert: She made limoncello floats! You can buy limoncello at the liquor store, and I believe she used a lemon flavored gelato for the "float" part.