Today's Dinner for Friends

I enjoyed making dinner tonight for our friends Ivan & Iris, and Jack & Mary Ann:
- A simple Lombard antipasto salad of celery, walnuts, grana padano cheese, and olive oil (insalata di sedano e noci)
- Acquacotta Maremmana, a soup from the Maremma area of Tuscany. Acquacotta means, "cooked water." It refers to the fact that this soup is made with water rather than a broth. I combined two different acquacotta recipes. This one had onions, tomatoes, celery, carrots, swiss chard, eggs, garlic, and a bit of chili powder. It was poured over toasted stale Tuscan bread covered with pecorino Romano cheese. Many Tuscan soup recipes use stale bread (pane raffermo). I bought a fresh loaf of "Tuscan bread" from Fresh Market a couple of days ago and let it age. Of course, it was not real Tuscan bread because its ingredients included a bit of salt, which is not used in Tuscan bread.
- Stracotto alla Fiorentina - Florentine-style eye of round larded with carrots and pancetta, and cooked in wine, tomatoes, carrots, and celery, and simmered for a couple of hours. At the end, I made a sauce by using a hand blender to blend the vegetables.
- Panna cotta with a caramel sauce. It took me two attempts to make the caramel sauce. The first attempt produced a slightly burnt brick.
We had three nice wines:
- An Umbrian white made with Greccheto and Vermentino grapes and produced by Colle Solato. Colle Solato also produces a nice, every-day red.
- a 2008 Morellino di Scansano Maremma red with 85% sangiovese and 15% Canaiolo Nero produced by Mantellassi.
- a 2005 Casalino Chianti Classico Riserva