Mangia, Mangia

DISCLAIMER: The following contains a gratuitous amount of food pictures, which may or may not have gotten out of hand due to the amount of red wine consumed by the author. Proceed at your own risk.

So the second official installment of our supper club went down this past weekend-- Italian night. Though a better name might have been No Carb Left Behind. Because seriously. What would Italian food be without bread and pasta? Olive oil, cheese and wine. Maybe not so bad.

So let's get started. We began with antipasto:

The platter was comprised of homemade burrata (yay, Lexi and me!) doused with extra virgin olive oil, cappicola, hard salami, mortadella (a fatty, pistachio and black peppercorn studded Italian bologna of goodness), grilled artichoke hearts, prosciutto, Gorgonzola stuffed and Mediterranean olives and a nutty, picante hunk of Parmigiano Reggiano that we simply hacked to pieces and devoured. When the tray hit the counter it was a bit of a feeding frenzy. Shameful I know, but it was that kind of unabashed hunger that sets in after a few glasses of good red wine that leads you to--for lack of a better term--stuff your face. But we had several glasses by this point, and no one noticed my ferocious feasting. I think? There was no judging. Check out my plate:

And the platter after about 7 minutes:

It was like Shark Week. Oh, and those olives were strewn about our Caesar salads in case you thought they may have been wasted.

Okay, on to the main dish: LASAGNA. My sis and her boyfriend whipped this up with veal and pork red sauce, super fluffy and herby ricotta and about 14 bags of mozzarella. What I loved about it was A) I did not have to make it B) I did not have to clean the dish and C) There was enough sauce so that even after it baked the whole thing was still super moist and saucy. Not necessarily in that order. Check out Chris's masterful cheese and sauce placement:

Oooh and my beautiful sister:

And our dog, Penny, patiently waiting for a rogue piece of salami, cheese or anything edible:

Don't feel bad, she's half basset hound, so she naturally looks sad. This helps when lobbying for scraps. So dinner was insanely carbolicious, and included even MORE wine, warm bread and the lasagna in all it's stately glory:

Pretty table, huh? So I think by this point the amount of wine consumed was right around 4 bottles, and there were 4 of us so that's pretty easy math. Which explains why my dessert of homemade cannoli (okay the filling was homemade) was postponed...until the next day. We were all extremely full and tired by the end of dinner and to be quite honest, a 90's music dance party complete with strobe light spontaneously broke out and we were having too much fun to pause, even for dessert. So I divied up the shells and the filling and we enjoyed them--albeit separately--the following day. 

Here's my recipe:

Cannoli Filling

Yields: Enough to fill 12-14 large shells

Ingredients

2 cups whole milk ricotta cheese

1 cup mascarpone cheese, at room temperature

2 cups dark mini chocolate chips

Zest from 1 lemon

1 cup powdered sugar

1 tsp cinnamon

1 tsp vanilla extract

Seeds from 1 vanilla bean pod

Directions

Whip cheese in a mixer until fluffy, about 2 minutes. Add remaining ingredients. Pipe into shells and dust with additional powdered sugar, if desired.

Should look something like this: 

(My sister's) Or this:

(Mine) So beautiful and delicious! All in all the night was a success and we are already group texting about Greek night. Um feta cheese? Yeah, stop it. So excited.