Recipe(tried): An Italian Dinner for Tonight! Pepper Involtini, Fiesole Style Pasta, Sicilian Summer Salad, Grilled Jumbo Shrimp

AN ITALIAN DINNER FOR TONIGHT

These days I had been helping my friend Carmen in the decoration of their model house for a housing project at Coamo known as Haciendas Santa Ana. Carmen is a dynamo but today I decided that I was too tired for going shopping and I prefer to cook. I think I will cook Italian and I will share with my neighbors. This is the Menu for tonight. Buen Provecho!

PEPPER INVOLTINI
(appettizer)

4 bell peppers (several colors will look nicer)
1/2 cup pitted black olives (the sweet, unspicy variety), minced
3/4 pound fresh ricotta
1/4 pound bacon, sliced
The leaves from several sprigs of marjoram
Olive oil
salt and pepper.
Wooden tooth picks

Quarter the peppers, discarding the seeds, and broil the resulting strips skin-side up to loosen the skins, then scrape the skins off. Preheat the oven to 450F (220C). Combine the ricotta, minced olives and marjoram leaves in a bowl, seasoning the mixture with salt and pepper, and adding just enough olive oil to make it creamy. Spread some of the mixture over each of the pepper strips. Roll up the pepper strips, wrap each with a slice of bacon (half a slice will probably do), and stick them with tooth picks to hold them together. Put them in a lightly oiled pan and bake them until the bacon is crispy and done, about a half hour.

FIESOLE STYLE PASTA

1 pound package of Penne
2 ounces Prosciutto
1 tablespoon flour
2 tablespoons butter
1/2 pint milk
1/3 cup cream
Salt and pepper to taste (this will depend on how seasoned the prosciutto is)
1/2 - 3/4 cup cooked fresh green peas (optional)

Make a b chamel sauce by melting a tablespoon of butter and carefully stirring in the flour to keep lumps from forming. Cook until the mixture is a pale brown, then add the milk, a few drops at a time, stirring all the while. Continue cooking over a low flame till the sauce thickens somewhat, and then stir in the cream, heat through, and set aside. Meanwhile, set the pasta to cook in salted water. Shred the prosciutto and lightly saut it in a large skillet with the remaining butter. Add the b chamel sauce and the peas to the prosciutto and keep the sauce warm. When the pasta is just shy of being cooked, drain it, turn the flame under the sauce to high, and finish cooking the pasta by tossing it in the sauce. Serve with grated cheese to taste. Serves four.

SICILIAN SUMMER SALAD

Salad, well salted: With a little vinegar and lots of oil, stirred well adding freshly chopped mild onion, shredded lettuce hearts, tender celery leaves and stalks, chopped ripe tomatoes, quartered hard-boiled eggs, salted or pickled capers (rinsed), anchovy filets broken into pieces, fresh oregano, a little salt, pepper, a sprinkling of vinegar, and lots of olive oil. Very simple. You can add shredded fresh Parmesan Cheese.

GRILLED JUMBO SHRIMP
Serves 4

4 1/2 pounds (2 k) large scampi (jumbo shrimp, the kind with claws that resemble small lobsters) (Langostinos for us)
1 cup rice
Fresh ginger root
Tabasco sauce
Chopped cilantro or cilantrillo
Lemon
Fresh tarragon
Olive oil
Salt
Peppercorns

Wash the scampi, split them up the middle, rub them with olive oil, salt, and freshly ground pepper, and cook them on a griddle or in a hot oven. Prepare the rice with 1 tb olive oil, salt and pepper, 1 cup of water and slivers of fresh ginger root, peeled. Cook covered for 20 minutes until all water evaporated and the rice is cooked. Heat a third of a cup of oil until it is hot but not crackling, and flavor it with a few drops of Tabasco sauce, a couple freshly chopped coriander or cilantrillo, salt, and freshly ground pepper. Squeeze a lemon and whisk it into the oil, so as to obtain a smooth emulsion. Mince the tarragon and add it to the sauce. Arrange the scampi on a bed of rice, pour the sauce over them, and serve.

For dessert cold melon, peeled and cut, serve in glass cups with 1 Tb Quantr and powdered sugar as garnish.