Pranzo di Ferragosto

A few weeks ago when Greg and Bridget visited from Portland and we went wine tasting at nearby Maysara Winery in the McMinnville AVA, they had discussed the possibility of Ann and I celebrating Ferragosto with them the weekend after we returned from Alaska. This was the first time that I, or my full-blooded Italian wife, had ever heard of Ferragosto, the Italian Feast of Assumption celebrated on the 15th of August.

Having been in the software business with an Italian distributor, I did recognize that much of the country (a lot of Europe too) takes August (or a large chunk of it) off, but I was ignorant that there was a mid-month celebration. Deconstructing the term, I recognized ferr (as in the French jours fériés, holidays, feast days, celebrations) and agosto (the month of August after Augustus Caesar). 

The plan was that on the 15th of August, we would get together at Greg and Bridgets's house in Portland, watch the film Pranzo di Ferragosto, one of Bridget's favorite flicks, pop our pranzo into the oven, then dine on the two principal dishes from the film. Greg would make the fish dish and asked me to make the pasta. He sent me recipes for both dishes.

I'm not a recipe guy and in making Pasta al Forno, baked pasta, a dish I have made countless times, while I kind of adhered to the spirit of the recipe, I felt free to do my own thing. And I noticed that Greg did his own take on the perch and potato dish, doing halibut with a covering of white sweet potatoes instead. My meat sauce is made from a bit of home-made sausage, a bit of pancetta, and I augmented the mirepoix with reconstituted dried porcini. I added the porcini broth to the sauce as it cooked down.

Ingredients for my Ragù

Cooking Down the Meat Sauce

One Layer of Pasta, One of Mozzarella

Final Layer of Pasta, Then Pecorino Romano

When we arrived, we met their friends Will and Corinne, down for the weekend from Seattle where Greg and Bridget had lived prior to relocating to Portland. After introductions, we went downstairs to the wine cellar where they had laid out a beautiful array of cheese, charcuterie, and crudités which we enjoyed with sparkling wine.

After appetizers and sparkling wine, we watched Pranzo di Ferragosto, a charming film, if a little short. While the movie was nominally about a guy who gets hoodwinked into babysitting four elderly women, his mother included, while everyone else deserted Rome for the holiday, I found it to be primarily a love story about the main character's home of Rome. Certainly Rome is a major character in a movie full of characters, played largely by non-actors.

Back upstairs after the film, we put the pasta and the fish in the oven to cook and yakked for a good while. Once the two pre-prepared dishes had baked, we relocated to the dining room and started our own feast, followed by Corinne's arugula and fig salad, and then finishing with a delicate fig cake from a local Russian bakery. It's really a lot of fun to sit around a dinner table and chat over a lengthy meal, something that we don't do nearly enough of.