Playing host (day 5)

It’s the final full day that Daphne, Serene and Nick are spending in Rome and in the morning, we went off to the palatine hills. This area used to be the location of a huge imperial palace. For me, it was interesting to see the ruins up close and I tried to imagine how grand the area would look like originally.

I think it’s worth spending time to look around here, besides the entry is included here as well as for the colosseo.

By the way, I realise only later that I didn’t take much pictures in here, but you could see more of it in the video at the end of the post below.

Instead, I took more pictures of … ahem … food.

Cart and I took our guests to Genzano, which is slightly out of Rome to have lunch at one of our favourite places to eat – Trattoria Dei Cacciotori! This is a small, family run restaurant where they specialise in game.

We’ve been here several times, like valentine’s day, or Ferragosto or with Jerrick, not to mention Sayanee and Chinmay :p

The irony is that Cart is vegetarian and I’ll only eat seafood when I’m out so we’ve never tasted their specialities. But that doesn’t mean that other’s couldn’t :p

Like the cold appetizers of assorted cold meats below.

Right in the middle there, the orange looking bits of string is horse meat. Serene and Nick were game to try it, but poor Daphne looks traumatised.

This is Daphne’s papadelle (egg pasta) with hare.

This is Nick’s wild boar which he claims to taste “boar-ry”

While Serene had partridge, but I forgot to snap a picture of it and it had already bite marks on it :P

This is Cart’s ravioli with ricotta and spinaci and he was showing everyone how the right way of having the filling is to have just a little bit of spinach to the ricotta cheese so that it would not be overwhelming.

And this is my gnocchi with asparagi!

THIS IS JUST LOVE LOVE LOVE! OMG OMG OMG! I usually order the Piccantine ai funghi porcini, but for a change, I thought that I’d try something different and I totally LOVE my gnocchi. It’s a creamy from the cheese, sweet from the asparagus, almost orgasmic sensation and all the while, I was going mmm … till the end of the meal.

Le sigh. I got to bully Cart into making them for me about a week later after the guests have left and I still love it! I’ll love anyone who makes me this!!! Too bad asparagus season is over

And then we drive off to Nemi, a small town which is famous for it’s volcanic crater lake and also of their wood strawberries!

It was such a beautiful day in Nemi. Serene was especially enamoured with this town till she proclaimed that she wanted to marry a pastry chef here so that she could eat strawberry tarts whenever she wanted

Again, no much pictures here, but do check out the video I took at the end of the post below :-)

Oh if you were wondering what this picture is doing here … we stopped for a bit at a designer outlet called Castel Romano since the three wanted to do some shopping.

And I was admiring this pretty and elegant Valentino dress.

And this is me AFTER buying my Valentino dress! Look at how happy I look!

Marina? Are you sure? That bag sure looks small for a dress. And indeed, you are correct, for 1. I didn’t buy a dress  and 2. That paper bag isn’t mine in the first place. But I was just sharing the happiness in touching a high end designer item

After our quick stop we then ended the night over at Squisitò which is a restaurant which I liked for their seafood. This is the same place where Cart and I met Mr Karaoke for this year’s valentine’s day

Initially I thought that we could cook something for the trio but since they offered, we would never say no

And so, here are what we ate :

This is the bruschetta with tomatoes and mozzarella.

This is fried mozzarella

This is Cart’s pizza with cheese (I think it’s mozzarella) and cherry tomatoes … How many times did I type mozzarella so far? :p

This is my baked dory fish hidden underneath baked potatoes. Daphne had one too! It’s suspiciously similar to the one I had during Valentine’s day this year :p

This is Serene’s seafood risotto which is to die for! You can taste seafood in every bite. It’s that generous. I think I’ll have this the next time I visit :-)

At this point of time, I think it was still too stuffed to have dessert but Cart finished off his meal with Pastiera Napoletana, which by the way, we tried making them earlier last month.

And the trio shared among themselves a babà – which is a type of cake stuffed with cream and sometimes any toppings you want.

Like strawberries.

Or nutella.

I was so amused when Nick posted this up on his wall :

Hehehe! But I think we did eat quite a lot this time round and I was totally horrified to see the scales shooting all the way up to 68kg the next day!!! Yikes!  (and to think that just about 5 years ago I was complaining that I was so heavy at 56kg)

Nevertheless, Cart and I really enjoyed hosting the trio and accompanying them around. We had fun! And hope that the trio had fun too! And we hope to see them really soon, be it in Rome or in Singapore :-)

Check out my video montage below (which took forever to edit and upload) *guilt trips you*

Music by Girovaghi Noturni