November: Al Forno Conchiglie — The Dinner Party Resolution

When I was 17, I went to Al Forno in Providence, RI for dinner with my dad. It was honestly one of the most magical dinners I can remember. We sat outside under twinkly lights. I ate a baked pasta with one million cheeses and we split a crostata for dessert. When I started cooking and hosting dinner parties at 22, I discovered the recipe for that baked pasta with a million cheeses on a friend of a friend’s cooking blog. It was just as I’d remembered — insanely good. So after toying with a menu of different complicated seasonal veggie sides for this month’s dinner that all seemed fine but weren’t thrilling, I abandoned my FreshDirect cart and went with something I could get excited about. But this time, when I went to google the recipe many more people had published it, or published their take on it since. I didn’t want to risk deviating from what I knew had worked previously so I dug up the friend of a friend’s cooking blog version.

With one luxe cheesy item taken care of, some might have chosen to go light with the other dishes, but instead, I decided to just lean in. Adding an insanely complicated salad from Che Fico (with cheese), a spinach pizza (with cheese), and a butterscotch pudding. Lean cuisine, this was not.

On the morning of the dinner party, I started with the butterscotch pudding — an interpretation of Nancy Silverton’s Budino from Mozza by way of Smitten Kitchen. Never having made pudding before, I was shocked at how easily and quickly it came together. With two moms coming over, both with boys under 2, I popped it into jam jars with lids, just in case they had to run before dessert. Over confident after my pudding triumph, I then set out to make the optional salted caramel. Now, I watch the Great British Baking Show, so I know from caramel. One of the most classic plots of the show is when someone will say that you can’t take your eyes off caramel, then take their eyes off of it, and then it burns. So you see where this is going. I made 3 batches of caramel. One burned, one didn’t burn, but I thought it burned so I put it in “the bin,” and then the third burned. I moved on.

I am still using that wooden box from FD that I got in March and loving it.

Then when I went to pull up my baked pasta recipe, the friend of a friend’s cooking blog was down!! I started to compare the other recipes online and they were all different — like very different. Cooking times varied from 8 minutes to 30. I had no clue what I was going to do, so I decided to wait until the very last minute to make a call. The website did finally go back up, I followed its directions, and then felt like the pasta should have cooked for longer. Such is life. Despite being underbaked, I think everyone felt well taken care of.

One more dinner party to go!