We start the night with some charcuterie and cheese with some powdered olive oil. Of particular interest was the dry beef which we found entirely by accident at the local grocery store. It wasn't the best of the cured meats, but it was different and interesting when compared with the pork.Paired with Chianti and Pinot Grigio, it promised to be a good start to the meal. Still, the best part of the appetizers by far were the crackers. Sharon made those from scratch.
On our test run, Sharon and Anita found some recipes for the crackers online and an interesting note on one of them: "Once you start making crackers you will not stop and you will never buy them again". I can see how that would be true. The crackers were very cheap to make (flour, olive oil, water, baking powder and salt for the base).
For the day of the meal, Sharon made red pepper crackers, curry crackers and, my favorite, saffron crackers. They were all delicious.
The meal consisted of a grilled Caesar salad (we lightly grilled the Romaine lettuce and drizzled with home-made dressing and topped with shaved pecorino cheese, anchovies and croutons. Following the salad, we had lasagna two ways. Anita made a great and surprisingly light meat lasagna (with italian sausage) and Sharon made vegetable lasagna (with mushrooms, zucchini, fennel and a great white béchamel made with dried mushrooms). Yep, there were no complaints for either one of those.
Dessert was my responsibility and I opted for a lemon pomegranate panna cotta with candied lemon peel, a pomegranate syrup and some of Anita's cookies. They took a while to layer to get the desired effect, but patience paid off.
Dinner would not have been the same without our friends (plus we would have ended with a lot of leftovers ;-) Seriously, this was another Phoenix evening with the warmth that characterized them (so much indeed that the next day we hit a high of 45). All evening we had good humor, great conversation and yet another opportunity to catch up with our neighbors.
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