I couldn’t help but feel overwhelming gratitude as Katie and I stood on the back porch with four of our friends on Saturday night. It was finally getting dark and the neighbors were shooting off much better fireworks than I ever acquired growing up. We naturally formed a circle as conversation flowed, each person sharing stories and making comments, the kind of rapport you want from a small group of friends, especially if they’re meeting each other for the first time. To make things even better, we were each holding the cutest little glasses filled with Katie’s homemade Limoncello.

After everyone had a taste, the compliments came gushing out with the force of 1,000 Roman roundabouts. I told the story of our four-hour drive from Orvieto to Massa, how we navigated the country streets, cobblestone alleyways I wasn’t sure we should drive down and interstate highways, how the city centers stressed me to the max and how the final leg of the trip was 15 minutes of driving uphill on a two-way street that was basically one lane packed with hairpin turns and blind entrances to get to our agriturismo. We climbed the 100+ stairs to our room before finally settling down on the patio table outside with some fresh Limoncello we’d bought in Orvieto. We have a home video of the moment and you can see Katie’s entire life change the moment the citrusy libation graced her palate. Limoncello has been a minor obsession of hers ever since, so of course she had to learn how to make it when we got home, and we were more than thrilled to get to share it with our guests.

After telling this story, I recalled how before we left for our trip to Italy how adamant I was that we weren’t going to be “one of those couples” who vacations in Europe and then makes it a significant part of their personalities forever, but we undoubtedly have. The trip changed our entire philosophy on food and fellowship, not to mention art, community, leisure, humbleness, gratitude and, randomly, law enforcement. It led to us wanting to host a dinner party for a small group of friends on July 4th weekend … but make it 100% authentic Italian.

No burgers, no hot dogs, no janky fireworks, no American flags, no Lee Greenwood, no shitty beer … just authentic friends with intellectual minds paired with dynamite food made from scratch and with quality ingredients. And why not take it a step further and make it a seven-course dinner? Why not even make menus? Don’t threaten us with a good time!

Aperitivo: Italian Amaretto Spritz and Homemade Focaccia

The aperitivo was one of our favorite parts of Italian culture! Having to wait until after 7:30 most days for restaurants to open took some getting used to, but it was always a welcome relief to be able to sit down in a cool restaurant or on a patio in a town square to enjoy a craft cocktail and some savory snacks. Our aperitivo was an Amaretto Spritz made with Amaretto, orange juice, orange bitters, club soda and Prosecco, then garnished with a fresh cherry and a sprig of thyme from the garden. This tasted phenomenal and was the perfect summertime refresher and a great conversation starter.

In addition to Limoncello, while visiting Italy, Katie also fell in love with all the focaccia. She’s been wanting to make a batch for months now, so we thought this was a great time to do it. This was a pretty simple recipe but it packed mega-flavor! She topped this with a bit of EVOO, coarse sea salt and some rosemary fresh from the garden.

L’antipasto: Arancini

Arancini are a popular Italian street food that we really wanted to try but never made it happen during our vacation. Of course, we could have waited until we went back, but I decided to see what all the fuss was about by making my own! These were made with a creamy country-ham risotto that I prepped the day before and stuffed with mozzarella cheese, rolled in breadcrumbs then deep fried. I garnished with fresh grated parmesan and fresh parsley. DYNAMITE. I can’t get over how good these were and I’m very excited that we have a few extras to chow down on later.

Primo: Mushroom Ravioli

Our trip to Montepulciano included a stay at the Podere la Rocca agriturismo, a working vineyard in the heart of Tuscany. Our cottage was merely steps away from the on-site restaurant, and we were fortunate enough to get to take a pasta-making class under renowned chef (and vineyard owner) Chef Federico La Rocca. While we learned to make a variety of pastas, I was most impressed with the ravioli portion of the class. Additionally, I was blown away by the beautiful simplicity of how they served us our ravioli cooked in a very simple sage butter. I wanted to do the same thing.

The night before the party, I sauteed some portobello mushrooms with shallots, garlic and marsala wine. This was then added to the food processor with some parmesan, mascarpone and ricotta, then pulsed until it was not-quite puréed. That night, I also made a simple truffle compound butter. The next morning, Katie and I whipped up our ravioli dough (using the recipe given to us by Chef Federico) and used our Kitchenaid mixer attachment to roll our sheets. The filling was piped in, our raviolis were cut and they went into the freezer to await dinner time.

Homemade pasta cooks in a flash, so I was able to sling six individual servings in no time. I boiled the ravioli and as soon as a piece floated, it came out of the water, drained for a moment, then went straight into a skillet with fresh portobello mushrooms and a spot of the truffle butter. After a few tosses, it was garnished with parmesan and fresh parsley before hitting the table. 

This and the next course were paired with Italian white wines from Orvieto, though I do not remember what they were called. Mi dispiace.

Secondo: Balsamic-Braised Chicken

I wanted our main entree to be something that didn’t require much work and was just something different. I hit the jackpot when I found a recipe for Balsamic-Braised Chicken since it is, indeed, braised, meaning it more-or-less just went into the oven all in one pot for an hour. Here, I got to use leeks and fennel, two ingredients I’ve used more this year than ever in my life thanks to the Oppdrag: Norge project. The vegetables were cooked in the same butter/EVOO combo I’d seared my chicken thighs in before getting bathed in chicken broth and white fig balsamic vinegar. The chicken goes on top, followed by garden-fresh rosemary, and it’s braises for an hour.

After coming out, the chicken was melt-in-your-mouth tender, but we weren’t quite done! The chicken is removed from the Dutch oven and a healthy dose of mascarpone is added to the sauce to make an A+ cream sauce to top the chicken. This went over VERY well!

Contorni: Squash Al Forno

(in previous pic)

It’s cheating a little bit to consider contorni a “course” since it’s technically a side dish served with secondi, but it counts! We wanted to use produce from the garden, so I settled on Zucchini al Forno, which is basically zucchini fritters that are baked and served like a casserole (which, now that I write this, I guess means it’s nothing at all like a fritter). Unfortunately, our zucchini bit the dust in the weeks leading up to the party … HOWEVER, our squash is coming in strong, so I decided to try the exact same recipe only with a different fruit.

The results were magnificent! I think what I liked best about it was how simple it was. The squash was grated and drained, then bound with eggs and flour, seasoned with salt and pepper. I added a bit fresh grated parmesan cheese, but for the most part, it was the robust flavor of the organic backyard squash that carried this dish. An additional benefit: It needed to bake for an hour at the same temperature as the chicken, so everything went in and came out at the same time.

I made the squash filling the night before the party, so all I had to do at party time was cover the top with seasoned breadcrumbs and pop it in the oven. SMART!

Dolce: Cherry-Amaretto Tiramisu 

Not the best photo, but I was tired at this point, y’all.

When it comes to dessert, it doesn’t get much more Italian than a good tiramisu! But we wanted to take the classic up a notch or two, so in addition to the classic espresso-soaked ladyfingers layered with sweet mascarpone cream, we added layers of fresh cherries that were soaked in Amaretto! I love-love-love Amaretto anyway and I love-love-love fresh cherries even more, so I was incredibly excited for this course!

We made the dessert the night before the party so everything had time to soak and soften. To say it treated us well would be the understatement of the century! I would also say it was the perfect way to end a baller dinner party, but we weren’t quite finished yet.

Digestivo: Katie’s Handcrafted Limoncello (and then some)

To wrap things up, Katie split what was left of her homemade limoncello among the guests, which wasn’t much, but it made a huge impact! Everyone loved the crisp, refreshing finale to our dinner so much that they wanted more, and fortunately we could provide. We happened to have some limoncello leftover from Italy that we burned through … then we broke into the homemade limoncello my good friend Melisa made us … and we may have also gotten into the backup-backup emergency Limoncello we bought at the liquor store earlier in the week.

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One of our guests was a first-time visitor to our home and I was enjoying getting to know him on the back deck just before everyone else joined us. We connected on our similar heritage (his Norwegian/Finnish, mine Norwegian/Danish) and talked at length about how learning our ancestral heritage has helped us make some sense out of where we are in life and why we feel the way we do about certain things. We talked about how many civilizations around the world have vast histories and cultures that go back thousands of years. Yet here in America, we don’t exactly have that. Because of this, “American culture” is, in fact, world culture. By celebrating our Scandinavian heritage and by celebrating Italian culture, we were, indeed, celebrating America, just not in the aforementioned basic-bitch way.

E pluribus unum, “Out of many, one,” is one of our nation’s mottos. It’s scrawled on our government buildings and even on our currency. There is no America without international culture. There is no America without the immigrant, without the foreign dreamer. To put “America First,” is to put our brothers and sisters the world over first, for we came from them. We are them. And we’ll cease to be if we go without them.