Tonight's gonna be a good night

So why were we buying lots and lots of fruit yesterday? To take, as a joint offering from ourselves and Marco and Maddalena, to Terese and Zeppa’s house of course…

A few weeks ago when we were at the pub, Terese (who owns it along with Zeppa) asked us if we would like to go to dinner at their house on 6th July, with Marco and Maddalena. Naturally we said yes, and for sometime I was under the illusion that it would be just the six of us, not us and another thirty. This is one of the significant differences between entertaining British style and entertaining Italian style. In Britain, you can manage a dinner party up to six or maybe eight; anything over that then out with the chicken drumsticks and on with the buffet. In Italy, entertaining means dinner means everyone sits down to a meal.

This is, of course, helped by the fact that the sun shines, the weather is dry and you can set up a long row of trestle tables covered in paper tablecloths outside on the veranda – as we saw when we arrived at their house in Curetta, just outside Servigliano. Moreover, everything is very relaxed. The table isn’t set? Just give us the stuff and we’ll do it. The pasta needs serving? I’ll just take this massive bowl of tagliatelle and wander around dishing it up. Nor is there any pretension about tableware or settings: thirty people eating, just use the plastic pasta plates sold in abundance in supermarkets (though I have noticed that meat is always eaten from ‘proper’ plates; there are certain standards that cannot be compromised).

As with all eating in Italy, nothing was hurried. Pasta first showed its face about 9, meat course about an hour after that then fruit and desert – accompanied by vino cotto* - turned up somewhere around 11. In between, there was the usual wandering, changing of places and refilling of wine (much of it homemade, and very good on this occasion). An interesting diversion occurred early in the evening with what I like to think of as a Mills and Boone moment – when a quite dashingly handsome dark haired man in a white shirt rode past on a chestnut stallion. Maddalena and I came over all unnecessary, and though I kept a weathered eye open for the following four hours there was not even a glimpse of him coming back. He must have taken the scenic route home…

*Vino cotto is a fortified wine that is made by slowly cooking the young wine musk for 15 hours till it is reduced by two thirds. It is then left to mature in whatever bottles are to hand (ours came in a German beer bottle) before opening and enjoying – maybe with biscotti to dunk. Most families have a supply of their own and take pride in producing one superior to their neighbours. I am all for that spirit of competition – or should that be competition of spirits?