Caprice salad with buffalo milk mozzarella, olive oil and fresh basil

Caprice salad: sun ripened tomatoes with buffalo milk mozzarella cheese
with olive oil, basil, black pepper and salt.

Photo © J E Nilsson for CMC, 2009

Planning is a big part of the fun to holding events. It’s a phase that allows you to be creative and fantasize the possibilities!

In a few weeks, we’ll be holding a dinner for friends with a French-Italian theme and thought that a lunch buffé the same day should set the stage for the evening event.

So far, we have thought that the following should be in there somehow:

Pictured above, a Caprice salad with tomatoes, buffalo milk mozzarella cheese from Campania, southern Italy, topped with fresh basil, a tasty low-acid virgin olive oil and marine salt. This salad is filling with the olive oil and cheese but it’s generally a light dish.

Bread, olive oil, balsamic vinegar with fresh basil and sea salt at Cheryl Marie Cordeiro

Dark bread served with sweet virgin olive oil and
balsamic vinegar and natural sea salt.

Camambert with calvados and plain crackers

Un-pasteurised camembert with some calvados flavoured apple marmalade on the side, if we can manage that.

Melon topped with sun dried prosciutto, Cheryl Marie Cordeiro

One of the best combinations ever, sweet and salty: sun dried prosciutto on a small slice of honey melon

Parmigiano reggiano with honey

Slices of Italian parmigiano-reggiano hard cheese, with acacia honey and
maybe some roasted walnuts on the side.

Salami slices from Italy

Slices of salami with rosemary.

Well, we can’t leave Italy without a few slices of Salami. Different areas of Italy specialize in different kinds and we’ll try to serve, from top to bottom in the picture above: finely ground salami Milano, mild with a hint of white pepper; in the middle, Spinata Calabra, thickly minced pork sausage with dried tomatoes and a chilli bite, and bottom, Magnifico Salami, medium large grounded ham with a sweet salty flavour.

We’re thus far enjoying ourselves with the brainstorming and more ideas might come up along the way. On the shortlist to be tried out soon is a garden salad with garlic, olives and sun dried tomatoes. We’ll see. What have we forgot? Anything obvious we should add? All ideas that can make a contribution to a French-Italian theme buffé are most welcome!

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