Cooking Italiano - Part 1

I did a fairly good job of photo documenting this adventure but not a great one.  Because of all the cooking, I'm going to break this down into two or three posts.  This first has to do with the prep day.

I am getting better and better at organizing my menus so that I do more and more of the work ahead of time so I'm not cooking like a maniac til just before the guests arrive and then collapsing from exhaustion about the time we eat dessert. So on Friday I was cooking up a number of the components of my meal.  Unfortunately, I did these right after work so I was rushing around and didn't take my step-by-step pictures

Roasted Peppers

These are for a salad that is part of the antipasto course

Then:

Sweet and Sour Onions

These are small onions cooked in water flavored by vinegar, salt, sugar, raisins, tomato paste, parsley, and bay leaf.

When the onions are cooked you remove the parsley and bay leaf and boil down the liquid until it is just about all gone.

Followed by:

A Strong Tomato Sauce

This is a goodly dose of oil cured olives (maybe 6), garlic (I think 4 large cloves, and anchovies (6 again) cooked in olive oil

Tomato paste (about a half of a 6 oz can) is added and cooked some more

White wine to deglaze

About 2/3 of a large can of imported Italian tomatoes.

Cook for 20 minutes and then blend.

And finally:

The Pasta 

In this case Polenta

One batch of Polenta makes a lot so I put it in little pans so I could freeze some.

You let it cool then cut into pieces and fry it before you serve it.

Next post - some detail cooking pictures.