You make it sound easy but I’m still impressed with the pasta making. Interesting your pasta maker wouldn’t make the type of pasta you wanted. Good thing you were at his mercy.

Again, you make your dinner preparation sound very easy. For me, that would be another story. LOL! Interesting to read how you plan it out. Everything does work out. Thanks for sharing all this with us!

Paz

Normally I wouldn’t make pasta, but I specifically wanted to use fresh pasta, and when the guy near me who makes it wouldn’t make semolina pasta for me, I had a choice of going with the plain flour/egg pasta he offered or making my own. Truthfully, especially because I have this silly pasta machine that someone gave me, that was easy - I literally tossed the ingredients into the machine, set it to “mix” and let it go for ten minutes. Then turned it off for an hour, came back and switched it to “extrude” (with the fettucine die on it) and it squirted fettucine out like nobody’s business.

In terms of timing - almost everything for these dinners is done on the day of, unless there’s a reason to do it in advance, like something that needs to sit for a day or two. I tend to shop the day before, and then start cooking mid to late morning the day of. For this dinner - I made the pickled peppers a few days before when I realized I wasn’t going to be able to find pickled cherry peppers, which gave them at least a few days to sit in the brine; and I made the gelato the night before. The rest - day of. I know it looks like a lot, but… let’s see, Friday morning I started around 10, popped out to the store for a couple of things I’d thought of since shopping the day before. Then, the first thing I do is write out a sheet of paper with every dish on it, what I have left to do, and how it’s going to be plated, right down to the garnish and sometimes a quick sketch - some of that will change as the day proceeds, but it makes sure I don’t forget something basic. By 11 I started the risotto - that was easy - chop an onion and the pancetta and open the package of rice (I’d remembered to pull out the beef stock from the freezer the night before, but even if I hadn’t since I was bringing it up to a simmer, it just would have taken a few minutes longer. All old to the point where it was spread out and cooling on a pan about 40 minutes. Didn’t have to do anything with that until just before cutting and cooking the cakes later. Cleaned the mussels and stuck them back in the refrigerator - 5 minutes or so. Most time consuming was making the cookies - the batter was easy, but I only have enough room in the oven for about a dozen at a time and I needed two dozen or more to make sure I had good looking ones - so it took three rounds in the oven, total about 45 minutes. The gelato was already done from the night before (that’s more a function of how long your ice cream machine takes to mix and freeze the stuff). Made the pasta, 2 minutes to throw stuff in the machine, then later about 10 minutes to extrude it all and hang it up to dry. Pork chops - all they needed was a little trimming - 5 minutes. The beans I’d thrown in some water to soak but since they were fresh, didn’t need much. Put them in a pot to simmer for a couple of hours, later added a chopped shallot and some chopped radicchio. Other than that, a few minutes here and there to pre-chop some garlic, slice the peppers, pick the herbs. So all told, other than the final cooking it really only took about 2½ or 3 hours to make all this stuff, spread out over the day. It just seems like a lot.

You mention veal stock for the risotto. Where do you get the veal stock? Boiling veal? Is there a substitute?

Paz *bowing before the Cooking Master*