Covivium: Inadvertent Italian

One of my favorite things to do is have friends over to cook and eat great food. Here's the menu from last night's festivities. 

I recently received the annual harvest of prickly pears from my parents' cactus and prepared a prickly pear lemonade:

The thorns make prickly pears extra fun to work with. Looks like I didn't take a picture of the end product. This was just a matter of running the lemons and prickly pears through a power juicy and adding sugar and water. It was well received.

I was also given some  blue fin tuna caught in Mexico by my dad and bother and some pomegranates from my grandparents' trees. Taking advantage of the situation, I make a blue fin tuna crudo with pomegranate seeds, lemon zest, and a touch of olive oil for the appetizer:

This was great. The sweet pop of the pomegranate nicely countered the deeply flavored tuna, with the lemon providing a nice sharpness.

One friend prepared a lemon and fennel risotto:

Another made stuffed tomatoes:

Edie and I were feeling ambitious spent most of the day leading up to the party preparing a homemade lasagna. And I really do mean homemade. This was by far the most labor intensive dish I have ever prepared:

Homemade  Sauce

Homemade Pasta

Homemade Ricotta Cheese

Homemade Sausage with mushrooms

Roasted Eggplant and Italian Squash

Assembly Line

Everything together

Finished Product

The five or so hours of work this took was worth it. All three dishes:

Unplanned, but we inadvertently ended up with an Italian theme. 

For dessert, I made an ice cream flavored with three kinds of teas: A black tea for a strong base, a chai for some tang, and a Japanese cherry tea for a bit of fruit. Edie also prepared a chocolate chip short cake:

We also had a variety of drinks to go with dinner:

I liked the Gen 5 Cabernet a bit better than last time. The Beringer was what you'd expect. The Hirch Bourbon was really good with a caramel and vanilla flavor. This was my first introduction to bourbon and I will have to experiment more. The Banyuls was ok, kind of like a port without the backbone. We finished with grappa, which was appropriate given the night's food.