Celebrate the warmth and joy of an Italian summer at Bella Italia: chance to win a £250 voucher NOW CLOSED

[AnnMumsnet]

One of our Mumsnet Family Friendly members, Bella Italia say "Italians are known for enjoying the good things in life- savouring the things which really matter: family time, relaxation, sunshine and of course great meals cooked with great ingredients! At Bella Italia, we share this passion, and you can now get a taste of the Italian summer with our new menu.

Start your meal with our Taste of Italy Antipasti platter with cured meats from the north and south of Italy and enjoy it over a lovely glass of Aperol Spritz. Our new Salmone Limone pasta, is the perfect summer dish, made using pasta from Italy’s oldest pasta maker, the Agnesi family, and it’s their craft which you can enjoy in many of our pasta dishes. To top it off, add a little sunshine to the end of your meal with our delicious Limoncello meringue pie."

Check out their new video here:

To celebrate the new summer menu - share on this thread what your favourite Italian summer dish is - add your favourite(s) to this thread and you will be entered into a prize draw where one MNer will win a £250 Bella Italia voucher

Bella Italia are also giving you the chance to create lovely family memories at Bella with their fabulous Kids Eat Free offer - get your code here

In bocca al lupo
MNHQ

Home made pizza is a great meal to get the kids involved in! Love mine with summer veg like peppers and tomatoes!

Wild mushroom risotto with loads of Parmesan cheese, rocket & crispy grilled prosciutto crumbled over the top

Garlic focaccia

Gelato and lots of fresh fruit

Lashings of chilled prosecco

A grappa or limoncello shot to finish

Anything Italian, al fresco, chilled wine and a bit of sunshine!!! Heaven on Earth!!!

Just avocado, mozzarella and tomato with olive oil and some lovely bread. And some chunks of parmesan cheese. Heaven.

Love a caprese salad and if I could afford a pizza oven in the garden, my own pizza with sundried tomatoes and goats cheese.

And a gelato and prosecco to finish off.

We had an amazing starter in Florence... Pecorino cheese, pear, honey and walnut, it was so delicious that we continue to have it at home

We also love cured meats and any Italian cheese with a bottle of red wine and ciabatta

Really hard to choose my favourite Italian dish as there are SO many. Really love a good pollo milanese though - juicy chicken, fried in crispy breadcrumbs, served with some lemon and either a crispy salad in the summer or warming spaghetti with tomato sauce in winter. YUMMY

My Puttanesca:
225g dried spaghetti
120ml extra-virgin olive oil
4 medium cloves garlic, thinly sliced
4 to 6 anchovy fillets, finely chopped
Large pinch red pepper flakes
60g cup capers, drained & chopped
60g chopped pitted black olives 400 can whole peeled tomatoes, preferably San Marzano, roughly broken up by hand
Small handful minced fresh parsley l
50g finely grated Pecorino Romano or Parmesan cheese, plus more for serving
Ground black pepper

Place spaghetti in a saucepan and cover with
water. Add a small pinch of
salt. Bring to a boil over high
heat, stirring occasionally to
prevent pasta from sticking.
Meanwhile, in a medium skillet, combine 6 tablespoons oil, garlic, anchovies, and red pepper flakes. Cook over medium heat until garlic is very lightly golden, about 5 minutes. (Adjust heat as necessary to keep it gently sizzling.) Add capers and olives and stir to combine.
Add tomatoes, stir to combine, and bring to a bare simmer. Continue to simmer until pasta is cooked to just al dente. Using tongs, transfer pasta to sauce. Alternatively, drain pasta through a colander, reserving 1 cup of the cooking water. Add drained pasta to sauce.
Add a few tablespoons of pasta water to sauce and increase heat to bring pasta and sauce to a vigorous simmer. Cook, stirring and shaking the pan and adding more pasta water as necessary to keep sauce loose, until pasta is perfectly al dente, 1 to 2 minutes longer. Stir in remaining olive oil, parsley, and cheese.
Season with salt and pepper. (Be generous with the pepper and scant with the salt—the dish will be plenty salty from the rest of the ingredients.
Serve immediately with more grated cheese at the table.

Best served at a leisurely pace and enjoyed with wine, bread and a big family or lots of friends.

Arancini followed by carbonara, with plenty of prosecco! Yum!

Insalata Tricolore every time followed by a risotto...

Ice cream - the Italians invented it and I love it.

Antipasti and bread. With a nice Italian red.

Cheesy salsa wraps with creme fraische and salad and chips and wine

Adore Italy, spend every summer there. The genius of Italian food is its simplicity. Favourite dish: strangozzi al cacio e pepe - egg-free Umbrian pasta tossed in olive oil and sprinkled with creamy cheese shavings and black pepper. Or scrambled eggs with summer truffles. Perfect.

Risotto with lemon
Tomato, mozzarella and basil salad
Lovely bread
Olives
Icecream affogato
lashings of Prosecco

I love deep fried courgette flowers. They are so special. I enjoy drinking limoncello at the end of a meal.

Right now an Aperol Spritzer is my favourite taste of Italy, having had a magnificent few at a festival a few weeks ago.
otherwise...so hard to say.
If I am cooking myself, I love Luganega sausages with lemony potatoes.
At a local restaurant: I don't know what it is called, they serve fabulously light and crisp vegetables in batter: courgettes, aubergines etc, upright in brown paper. I could eat them all night.
Spaghetti a la vongole has to be a winner in some category.
My Italian chef neighbour makes some choux pastries, like eclairs, but the filling is some exquisite pistachio paste - green with the same texture as crème anglais but so-o-o-o fragrant and sweet.

So my menu would perhaps be:
Brilliant bruschetta and an Aperol Spritzer
The vegetable batons in batter
Spaghetti vongole
Eclairs with pistachio crème filling with an espresso

I have a taste for frascati, so cold it is almost frozen - though it isn't v fashionable at present. Don't know why - perfect summer drink

4 cheese pizza with rocket and chilli oil, washed down with a pitchet of rose!!
It's about the only thing I can remember how to say In Italian from my 6 months living there!!!

I love to share several plates of cicchetti so possibly tuna tartare, caprese salad, spaghetti carbonara, meatballs and garlic prawns with some bread and olives

Parma ham and rocket pizza with a few bottles of Peroni.

Courgette flowers stuffed with shreds of buffalo mozzarella and an anchovy, dipped in thin batter, and fried.

No idea what it's called, but our host made it for us at lunchtime, using flowers freshly picked from his vegetable garden (and by the following lunchtime there would be new flowers, ready to pick). A taste of heaven, and one of my best Italian food-memories.

And Zuppa Inglese ice-cream!

Oh, and thin, savoury, minimally cheesy pizza-by-the-metre.

My favourite Italian Summer dish would be a platter of Antipasti accompanied by a Mozzarella, Beef Tomato and Basil salad, ciabatta and olive oil / balsamic dips.

Risotto with lemon and chicken, and a nice glass of proper lemonade

Thin crust wood-fired pizza con funghi and black olives please! Accompanied by a side salad, a very cold white wine, and a cool breeze wafting in across the marina as the sun sets and the lights twinkle all around. Salute!