Homemade Italian Dinner

Homemade Italian Dinner
April 2, 2016

I had dinner with a group of friends all of whom are in this class to explore different combinations of wine and food. We decided to go with an Italian theme for this dinner because simply, we all like Italian food. Two members of the group also have Italian heritages.

In the picture to the right from left to right is Stephen, Allison, and Travis. Then in the picture below again from left to right is Stephen, Travis, Dakota, and myself, Philip.  

For this meal, we prepared a three course dinner consisting of an appetizer, entree, and dessert. Each course was paired with a different wine that we purchased at the Vintage Cellar.



The appetizer for our meal was a spinach and parmesan cortini and was prepared for us by Travis. The cortini was a piece of toast with a spinach and parmesan topping that also contained cream cheese and pine nuts. The wine we choose to pair with this food was a 2014 Cortenova Pinot Grigio and was from Delle Venezie, Italy. The picture to the bottom left shows the bottle of the Pinot Grigio we used. The picture directly below shows the Cortini appetizer.

By itself this wine had a floral smell and presented with elements of citrus, apricots, and melons.  The scent of the wine very accurately reflected the flavor of the wine. This wine really tasted like honeydew to me with maybe some other type of melon mixed in. This wine also contained citrus elements; more specifically tangerines. This wine was also very smooth and was semisweet.

With this addition of food the flavor profile of this wine was definitely changed, although not necessarily for the better in my opinion. The cortini really cut alot of the flavor out of the wine. The wine also became more bitter. I think that this wine was too light for the dense fatty flavors of the cream cheese and parmesan.

 Next up was the entree round. For our entree we decided to go with the classic Italian dish of Spaghetti. The entree round was prepared by Allison and Dakota. The wine we used for out entree was a 2013 Gabbiano Chianti Classico. The bottle of wine is shown below in the middle picture.

By itself this Chianti was a dark color and smelled of clove, blackcurrant, and other black berrys such as blackberry, raspberry. There was also a hint of pepper. The taste of this wine was peppery and spicy. I also tasted blackberrys. I thought that this wine was average in flavor by itself.

With food the profile of the Chianti definitely changed for the better. The spaghetti really brought out the berry flavor of the wine and mellowed the peppery taste. The finish of the wine was a little hotter though. I thought this wine became much better when prepared with food which is not surprising since Chianti is usually meant to go with food anyway. Also, just for fun I tried pairing this wine with the cortini appetizer and that had a similar effect on the flavor of the wine as the spaghetti.

Finally, for dessert we had a classic Italian dessert, tiramisu. Tiramisu is a desert that consists of a topping made of egg yolk, mascarpone cheese, sugar, and dark rum. The layers are made of finger lady cookies, coffee, and more dark rum. You alternate layers of the cookies and filling. The tiramisu was also garnished with semisweet chocolate.  The dessert was prepared by myself and Stephen.

The wine chosen for the desert round was a Canei Vino Italiano. By itself this wine had a pleasant smell of pear and other fruity and floral flavors. The taste was something along the line of apricot or peach and it was very smooth. It also had that mouth fizzing effect similar to pop rocks as this wine was slightly carbonated.  The wine bottle is shown to the right.

I don't think this wine really paired well with the tiramisu. They were two very different flavor profiles. The wine was very light and fruity and the tiramisu was heavy and chocolatey. So the wine didn't really add anything to the desert and the flavor profile didn't change a whole lot when paired with food. I think this wine would have been better had it been paired with a more fruity dessert. The tiramisu is shown in the picture to the left.