Italian summer menu, buffet style

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Menu plan

• Starter: stuffed cherry tomatoes - prawn and mango salad - cacciatore salami in slices
• First course: mediterranean cold pasta - rice salad with shrimps, peas, bell peppers
• Second course: cuttlefish salad - roast chicken salad
• Dessert: fruit salad served with ice cream balls
• Matched wine: Valdobbiadene Prosecco.

Meal, buffet style to spend a summer day in the company of friends with ahead dishes

• - I believe the highest aspiration of all people who receive friends and relatives is to be able to enjoy their company in peace. I thought about this menu with the specific goal to sit down and talk nicely without having to lose pieces of conversation because the stove and oven draw my attention continually.
• - Here are a list of dishes you can prepare ahead. It's enough to plan them carefully, following my tips you can read in every recipe.
  But the real strong point of this menu is that you can serve it in different ways.
  In fact I kept the typical structure of an Italian menu: starter, first course, second course and dessert.
  You can respect this structure in the classic lunch or dinner where guests are seated around the table and pass the dishes from one to another.
  But you can revolutionize this traditional structure preparing a table with all your dishes except for dessert. Each one will serve himself according to his own taste and then all guests can sit at the dinner table or in places suitably prepared in the party area. The choice is yours.
• - Most of the recipes in this menu serve 12 except for prawn and mango salad and cuttlefish salad. But I remember you I give some tips in every recipe to make your own shopping list easy to do.
  Please, keep in mind that, every time you have to prepare several courses, the portions are smaller than usual, so you can multiply for at least two if not three times those ones suggested in the recipe.
• - I suggest fruit salad served with ice cream as dessert. You can find summer fruit salad ideas and homemade ice cream cake in our directory for cakes and desserts.
  
• - My husband and I suggest to pair Valdobbiadene Prosecco by a firm that produces organic wines: Le Carline. We find their wines excellent and above all this one. They also sell via Internet and therefore it is easy to have their wines at home. All our guests who have tasted this wine have enjoyed it :))
  How many bottles do you need? keep in mind these figures. A bottle every 3-4 guests if it is served to pair the whole meal. But it is better to have no nasty surprises with wine and so ... you'd better to abound ;))
• - The last tip. Keep a bottle of arancino or limoncello in freezer to serve after your dessert.

Loretta