Dinner for Papa & Evelyn

Saturday night we had a 6 course tasting menu for dinner... at home. We started off with a roasted butternut squash soup with sage (yes with the leftover squash from Friday night's risotto) and then my sweetie made a wonderful dish of tenderloin scallopini from one of our Roseda tenderloins that he sliced, rolled and quickly panfried, then layered with parmesan and pancetta. I've never seen such marbling on a tenderloin.

We followed that with a chopped salad of fennel, romaine and spring onion tossed with a simple lemon juice and olive oil dressing. It was very refreshing

At this point we were getting a bit full but we soldiered on with a small risotto cake, made from last night's risotto milanese. Fried in the pancetta/tenderloin grease, they were a delightful taste before the main course.

I had decided for the main course that I would make a recipe I had found in a Bon appetit magazine years ago for Baked Ziti with Spicy Pork and Sausage Ragu and I managed to find it again on Epicurious as I recycled most of my magazines a few months ago. It's a good thing I started early as it took me most of the day to make this. The pork was cut up and browned in pancetta grease then a mirepoix was added to this mixture and after stewed with red wine for a few hours. (A good time to take a walk around the neighborhood) The nice thing is then I froze half this mixture for next month as it makes a good 10 servings even though they say 8. We paired this with a marvelous chianti classico riserva from Castello di Meleto and felt very very spoiled.

We finished off the evening in front of the fire with Evelyn's classic lemon meringue pie, the meringue perfectly browned, served with a lovely champagne. We rolled into bed Saturday night.