The Importance of Courses

Good morning.

Here I am back from a long stay in Northern California. More about that in another post.

Today, I am going to write about eating in courses.
Serving meals in courses. Ways to have courses without help in the kitchen, even.

I was reading a good cookbook about how the Italians eat their main meal. If you think about it you can remember the familiar words, even familiar to those who don't really know Italian, like me.

First course in Italian is: Antipasti.  What is served before the pasta. This includes all appetizers, plain or fancy, raw or cooked. I have come to the conclusion that the lack of an antipasto is the main flaw in family meals in the USA. (If there are indeed family meals. Well, I know there are, if only between old couples who are used to the former ways of sitting down together to eat.).

The antipasto's main function is to take the edge off the appetite.  And to prepare for the main meal. This sounds so simple it's stupid, but it is important because, one, it does give the innards a chance to get prepared. And, two, it slows down the pace of the meal.  Too often, more than an hour is spent preparing dinner, and then we wolf it down in ten minutes and adios Jesus.  What's the sense in that?

If everybody sits down ( it's important to be seated for that course) then we get to come to the realization that dinner is served.  We sip our drink, our wine or our cocktail, eat our two crackers and an olive, chat a bit, anticipate, and take in a breath or two.  What's not good about that?

The cook is going to have to jump up for the finishing of the rest of the meal, but that just gives the diner or diners a chance to have another olive. Or another spoon of soup. Or another bruschetta. Everyone takes a breath, and, voila!! fifteen minutes has been expended on appreciation of all the effort that has taken place on the kitchen to feed us all.  The simplest antipasto I ever saw was the big bowl of cut-up apples that a young woman served while we waited for a stew. They were nice, they didn't take away the appetite, and they certainly calmed down the kids who were wild after a day at the zoo.

Second course in the Italian meal is the pasta. That is what logically comes after the antipasto.  It can be any free-standing pasta dish, or rice dish.  It is not a hog sized share. That means, nowhere near a main course serving. But it is another chance to appreciate the cook's efforts in another sphere; it gives us something new to talk about, something new to pour a drink for, and another chance to breathe. Right here let me say that for the family meal, this course can meld right into the next course, which is the main course...primi piatti.

Primi piatti means "first plates," and means the main course.  This is where the meat comes in if you are serving it. From a practical standpoint, the family meal should be melded with the pasta or rice course. But people are always writing in to Dear Abby telling how disturbed they are by their loved one's habit of eating all of one type of food on their plate, then the next, then the next. Do they not realize that those eaters are just trying to provide themselves with a pasta/rice course, a meat course, a salad course, and that that is a very natural way of eating?  

After the main course, it's salad or fruit.  Salad instead of dessert? Yes, and it's very satisfying. It freshens the palate, and you don't need anything more. You really don't crave it, once you are out of the habit of sweets at the end of dinner.

Italians mainly eat sweet pastry, pies and such, in the afternoon with coffee. Like merienda. That keeps that heavy sugar out of the end of the evening and besides, it is really delicious to have a sweet and coffee at four o clock.

I guess the main point of this, in such busy households as we have, with such harried cooks, is that we should have a seated appetizer before the main meal. This doesn't include the peanuts and cocktails or wine that  some people have as they cook or anticipate dinner.  But every meal needs a prepare yourself and take a breath course before digging in to the main dish.

Alas, in many households, dinner means rushing out, rushing in, and dumping a huge sack of semi-inedibles out onto the table so that everyone can grab for themselves. This prospect makes me feel so sad that I don't even want to contemplate it further! YAZZYBEL