BOOtiful songs, SPOOKetti and a FANGtastic time
Halloween buffet
One of the requirement for Italian citizenship is spending lot of time in the kitchen. In my free time I like baking, cooking and experimenting with new food flavors, like Italian, American, Asian, or Latino.
Me and my family live in a small country town in NC that doesn’t offer such a great variety of originalItalian food, but still, big chains groceries offer some “basic” Italian food items and I usually rely as well on some Mexican food that gets very close to Italian food in flavor. Here below you can find pictures of some of the food I prepared for my Halloween music recital, but again, I think those are good ideas to put on your table in other types of Halloween events as well, or simply to have a Halloween dinner with your family (I cooked some of this food for my husband and my son, we ate Halloween food while watching a Halloween movie…sounds fun, right?).
SPOOKetti I added some food color to the boiling water, cooked the spaghetti al dente, then drained them with cold water; in a bowl, I placed enough cold water to cover them and added again the same food color, stirring. I covered the bowl and let them stay for 30 minutes. At the end of this process, you need to complement the pasta with a sauce, and I’d suggest something that has a color contrast to your spaghetti color: for example, if your spaghetti are black, you can use a cheese cream, like a Parmigiano cream sauce or a Pecorino cream sauce, so you’ll have a contrasting white sauce; if you choose a brighter color for the spaghetti, you can go for a darker sauce, like a green basil pesto or an orange sun dried tomato pesto (like the one that I used in the picture with my dark blu spaghetti).
Mummy Meatloaf I used a very simple recipe for this “polpettone”, that I learned from my mom: first I cooked the ground beef with some soffritto, then set it on a side. I grind together the prosciutto, eggs, parmigiano and the bread soaked in milk, then mix it together with the ground beef. Roll open the dough (I found the Wewalka puff pastry European style at Walmart), then place all the mix trying to give it a mummy shape, cut the edges of the the dough and used them to create strips to cross over and covering the mummy. For the eyes, I used some edible eyes that I found at Walmart. Put in the oven for 20 minutes at 185C (365F) and enjoy!
Monster Mashed Potatoes I cooked throughly the potatoes and then on a different sauce pan melt some butter and milk; slowly blended the mix with the potatoes and added the desired food color to the mix. I also chose extra ingredients like a little bit of bacon and some Philadelphia cheese.
Brain-o jell-o (gelatina) I happen to find a brain mold for 3$ at Party City, so I did this as well, as it is a classic. Measure how many cups of water you need for your mold, then bring the water to boil in a saucepan. Once to boil, turn off the heat and I stirred in two cherry Jell-o gelatin packs and one normal gelatin. Put in the refrigerator FOREVER; no, just kidding, but it takes a while to get set, like one whole day, so plan ahead. Enjoy your disgusting wobble gelatina!
Skull pudding This mold as well, I found it at Party City for 3$! I could have used the gelatin also for this one, but I wanted to do something different, so I used the nuez D’Gari gelatin dessert (yes, the name is gelatin, but I can assure you the consistency is more like pudding), that I usually find at my favorite tienda (Mexican or Latino store have plenty of pudding flavors), but there are some also at Walmart in the Mexican aisle food. Measure how much milk goes into your skull gelatin mold, then bring it to a boil. Once to a boil, turn of the heat and stir in a whole pack of budino. Refrigerate, and after few hours it should be set.
Bloody Merengue The white color of the Italian merengue gets in contrast with the edible red blood (I used Betty Crocker red writing decorating gel) and my husband worked on the edible glass. I find this cake to be the perfect center piece on your table for a Halloween party!
Ouija board Tiramisu The recipe for the original Italian tiramisù is pretty simple, given you have all the right ingredients. I was able to find a good Mascarpone cheese and the Savoiardi (otherwise none as Lady Fingers) at Publix, but I know that sometimes you can’t always find them, so you can substitute the mascarpone with ricotta and the Savoiardi with the Nilla biscuits (although you’ll have to balance the sugar in a different amount). Alcohol is optional, but I usually use Marsala or Rum. For the decoration, I used again a Betty Crocker black writing gel and referred to a picture I found on internet to make the cake look as an actual Ouija board.
Killer Croissants with tuna salad These are the small croissants I bought at Walmart filled with my insalata di tonno: I mixed some yellowtail tuna with some Philadelphia cheese, red food color and some mayonnaise (I bought the McCormick mayonesa that you can find in the Mexican food aisle of any Walmart, just because it has a more similar flavor to the Italian mayonnaise). I used some cupcake toppers to make them even more creepy!
Broom sticks I found the Alessi’s Grissini (bread sticks) at Publix store again, but if you have issues finding those, you could go for some standard long pretzels. I bought the sliced Provolone cheese and cut it in many thin strips, then used the chives to tight the cheese strips to the grissino (which I broke in a half).
Spider pizzas and Eyeball pizzas This idea is very kid-friendly! I once again used the Wewalka puff pastry European style, as you can give it the shape you want. For the spider pizzas, I gave them the circle shape, put some tomato suace on them and then cut the black olives (you can use the large olives cut in a half for the body of the spider and small slices of the medium black olives for the legs of the spider). For the eyeball pizzas, I just put some mozzarella (that is gonna melt) and the half of a green pimento olive (that kinda looks like an eye).
Boo cheese No doubts, my 2 year old son loved to eat those! I just bought some Halloween cookies cutter from Amazon and shaped the cheddar cheese slices. Of course with those cutters you can also bake some Halloween cookies!
Frankenstein Punch My son got crazy for this! I used the green Hawaiian punch from Walmart and added a little bit of 7Up. At Target, I found edible eyeballs that are basically chewing gum, they float and they look creepy; if you’re serving his in a glass, you can top it with black writing gel (I use the Betty Crocker decoratin gel from Walmart). If there are no kids around, to give it a more Italian taste, you can add the Martini white Vermouth to it!
Werewolf Punch I used the red Hawaiian Punch from Walmart again, and added some Ginger Ale, with the chip flat edible eyes that will sink at the bottom of the jar and melt…ew! For the alcoholic version, you can use the Aperol.
Witch’s Brew Grape soda and Schweppes tonic water, that gets to this drink a purple color, then added some sprinkles mix to make it bubbly. Campari is a good match if you want this drink with some BOOze.
