My (fiance’s) Idea on a Mediterranean Dinner for Love and Friendship Appreciation

Love is still in the air!!
And friendship is always there!
At least in our house and your house!

To start with, I would like to address little bit of background behind this post. This semester, my fiancé takes a course on Mediterranean diet and Italian cuisine. The Mediterranean diet centered around fish and seafood as protein source, lots of vegetables and fruits (at least 50% of your daily meal), limit use on meat and dairy products, and moderate consumption of wines. The lifestyle involves supporing local farms and farmer markets and having meals together. In the final project, the student has to prepare a three-course meal based on what they have learnt from the course, enjoy it with someone and give a short presentation about that. The title of his presentation would be “My Idea for a Mediterranean Dinner“ to embrace love and friendship. Me and his all-time best friend are the guests of honor in this project.

Let’s have a look at his menu, shall we?

Antipasto – Appetizer

The first course is a home-style salad with homemade avocado dressing. This recipe was inspired from my friend’s family (shout out to Dr. Ciota’s family) and from when I tried to create a healthy dressing for his weight loss plan. In the original dressing, mayonnaise, vinegar and sugar are used, while in our version, we used avocado, olive oil, apple cider vinegar and mesquite honey – a local product of Arizona. The dressing can be paired with any green vegetables available to you. Excluding vinegar and honey, you will have a great alternative to mayonnaise to spread on our breakfast toasts.

Primo – Entrée/Main course

The main course is a simple Angel hair with shrimp. The original recipe was from Academia Barilla suggested in the course. Instead of using “bottarga”, we used Vietnamese dried shrimps, which is kinda similar to “bottarga” in terms of preparation, and it gave a great visual effect like “bottarga” did. This recipe was very quick and easy to make, yet it was so delicious.

Dolce – Dessert

It’s time for dessert! He decided that he needed something to “cheer him up” for working full-time and being a full-time student. So he picked “Tiramisu”. Shout out to Vincenzo’s Plate with the classic, traditional tiramisu. Surprising to me that making tiramisu was very easy. And we added some fruit layers (strawberries and mangoes) alternately with the ladyfingers layers because the texture, the sweet & (slightly) sour taste of these fruits paired well with the tiramisu. I wish we could have some mango juice in hand for a more consistent taste. Nevertheless, our first try was still really good!
(FYI, tiramisu means “cheer me up”.)

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And that’s it for his three-course meal dinner.
What do you think about his idea?
Do you think that he deserves an A+ for his effort and presentation?
Let me know in the comment, please!
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