Thanksgiving!

We had a small Thanksgiving at our house this year and always looking to try new recipes we chose to have an Italian meal - more in the future on our geographical cooking tendencies but we did use cooking (international night) to introduce our kids to different cultures around the word...

For some context on what we had for Thanksgiving - I used to travel fairly frequently to northern Italy to the Bergamo region and always had one of my all-time favorite dishes when I was there - Casoncelli. We always swore we would try and cook this meal if we could ever find a recipe we could use. A long story short - we never were able to find the recipe because we were spelling it so wrong! But, this fall we found a new cookbook titled il viaggio di vetri - a culinary journey by Marc Vitri. It just so happens he trained as a chef in the Bergamo region of Italy and has an outstanding recipe for Casoncelli - see we know how to spell it now!!

We pulled pretty much the entire menu for our Thanksgiving dinner from Vitri's cookbook. Our menu was

•     olives, cheeses, meats (Prosciutto and Italian Salami) and
      crackers for appetizers;
•     Casoncelli with crispy sage and pancetta - completely
      made from scratch;
•     Grilled zucchini with mint and orange;
•     Grilled rib-eye steak with fresh tomato salad;
•     Flourless chocolate cake, pumpkin pie and lemon bars for dessert.

... and, of course, a little vino!

We'll cover the recipes later but, needless to say, it turned out fantastic!

-- Ray