3rd Annual Cooking Contest

This year "Rialto" (Luca's old apartment) held their third annual cooking contest. For the weeks leading up to the evening everyone was talking about what they were going to make, how good it's going to be, and how they're definitely going to win. 

There were 

9 people cooking, 

4 people preparing desserts, 

 21 people eating and voting. 

The evening always goes late, with a traditional late start, however this year everyone was much better with timing their dishes to come out pretty much right after the person before them. We started eating at 10 p.m. and didn't finish until until 2a.m. Everyone practically rolled out into the streets. 

The photos are never very appealing and I regret not taking more.

Luca prepared Pappardelle with a wild boar sauce

 Lorenzo prepared mini ribs- the photo doesn't do them justice but these were absolutely exquisite.

 Barbara prepared meatballs along with some stuffed potato cheese rolls

 Leo prepared pappa al pomodoro which is a mix of bread, tomatoes, garlic, and basil 

 Illaria prepared Eggplant Parmesan

 These are my mini chicken tacos 

 Vittoria prepared a gratin- potatoes with sausage

 And last but not least- Matteo made homemade pasta and cooked it up with pumpkin and bacon

For the "Salati" category Matteo won first place with his pumpkin bacon pasta. He definitely deserved it! He put in a ton of work making the pasta by hand, baking and carving the pumpkin. Second place was Leo's Pappa al Pomodoro, which despite the picture was actually incredibly flavorful and delicious. The eggplant parmesan came in third place, however everyone doesn't think it deserves third place and we think there was some biased voting going on. 

This year there were 4 dessert: 2 cheesecakes, 1 pie, and 1 chocolate cream cake. 

 The first picture is the Coffee Cordial Pie, then the New York Mocha Hazelnut Cheesecake and below a lemon cheesecake that was served with a raspberry sauce. Unfortunately I didn't get a picture of Luca's Pan di Stella cake which was 3 layers of nutella, whip cream, and pan di stella cookies!

 Matteo also won the dessert category with his Coffee Cordial Pie, but he only won by a fraction of a point. My Mocha Hazelnut Cheesecake was tied and so we had go down to the decimal point. 

Counting up the votes!