Cooking with PW: Italian Dinner Spread

Dear PW,

Have I mentioned I love 50s food photography? There’s just something about it that mesmerizes me. I love the juxtaposition of the bright colors and gorgeous serve ware, with the largely kooky and unappetizing food concoctions. It’s so wonderfully macabre I just can’t get enough!

While nursing my injured foot I started doing some introspection and realized I had a desire to take much more time on all my posts and make them more fun, stylized and playful. And as soon as I asked myself how I wanted to re-think my cooking with PW posts, I knew the way forward. 50s style food photography here I come!

Now I must say, that I wasn’t counting on any of these dishes here to turn out kooky, but just look at that Italian Cream Cake. It looks like a fluffy football on a plate. I clearly don’t know how to assemble a layered cake.

But despite its ugliness, it tasted divine as did the pasta, salad, and oh yeah you can’t forget the wine!

Cooking with PW

However in all honesty, my fancy Blendtec blender did not desire nor could seem to muster the motivation required for actually blending the anchovies in the Caesar Salad dressing to a smooth consistency. Therefore, my dressing has chunks of anchovies throughout it. I lied by omission to my husband about this. He didn’t mention noticing it, so let’s hope he wasn’t lying by omission either.

On another note, how do you like my serve ware? It’s all true vintage which makes my heart swoon. And that dress I’m wearing? Real vintage too, specifically from the 50s.  I wonder what the gal who wore this was like. What did she stress about? What were her passions? Was she in love? Did she have children? Did she cook big Italian food spreads like this one? I like to imagine she did.

But most of all I imagine she liked red wine as much as I do.

Thanks for always inspiring me, P-Dubs. You’re the bomb and I hope you know it.

Recipes:

-Pantry Pasta (pg. 238 of Come And Get It)

-Caesar Salad (pg. 187 of A Year of Holidays)

-Billie’s Italian Cream Cake (pg. 241 of Food From My Frontier)

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