Menu:Spicy Sopressata and Cucumbers
Pomegranate Cosmopolitans
Roasted Caprese Salad
Tagliarelle with Truffle Butter
Roasted Asparagus
Chardonnay
This meal started when we were at one of our favorite stores, Dean and DeLuca. One of our favorite meals is a picnic lunch of items we pick up from their great selection of cheese, olives, salami, bread, etc. Their spicy crab dip and truffle fries are also delicious! While we were shopping, we spotted a box of Cipriani Tagliarelle. We had seen Ina Garten use this on one of her shows, so we picked up a box for a later meal. 
All the recipes for this meal come from the Barefoot Contessa: Back to the Basics cookbook. We love Ina's recipes. In fact, Katie calls her my girlfriend. (Really, Katie is my only girlfriend.) We often eat in courses spread throughout the evening, preparing the next course as we go along. We started with a little appetizer of olives, sliced spicy sopressata, and cucumber. This is a great combination: the cool, crisp cucumbers really help cut the richness of the sopressata. We paired these with pomegranate cosmopolitans.
After enjoying our appetizer, we moved on to the salad. You must have sweet, ripe homegrown tomatoes for caprese salad, but since we didn't get our garden planted this year, we haven't had good tomatoes. When you slow roast supermarket tomatoes with a little olive oil, garlic, and balsamic vinegar, their juices become super concentrated and their flavor intensifies. These roasted tomatoes, paired with fresh mozzarella and a chiffonade of basil made for a very fresh and flavorful salad—one of our new favorites. 
Writing about and posting pictures of this pasta will not do this amazing dish justice. How can you go wrong when you toss super thin pasta with heavy cream and white truffle butter then top it off with fresh chives and shaved Parmigiano-Reggiano? It has become our favorite pasta of all time! The recipe made four servings, and there wasn't a bite left.