I have some wonderful friends and any excuse to spend time with them is great. So when Maree, Lisa and I decided we’d start a cooking club I knew it would be super fun. We decided to call our club – J’Adore Cusiner – so I love cooking in French.
Our first get together was on Saturday and our theme was Italian. We decided that vino was an important aspect of our club – here’s cheers to that!
Maree had very kindly put together files for each of us, labeled with our names, and with the recipes all typed out for the three courses we were going to tackle.
Here we are, back from the shops and studying up on the recipes
There was lots on the go, and here is a shot of Maree and Lisa working on the Tiramisu, which we had to do early because it needed 3 hours minimum in the fridge.
Lisa then turned her attention to the stuffing for the roast pork – sage, proscuitto, apricots – plenty of good things.
Hard at work….
Here I am cutting up the pancetta to go with the potatos, while Maree washed the pork. Sounds strange, but the best cut of pork we could find had some apple and sage marinade on it and we wanted to stuff it a different way, so was sort of like giving it a bath.
These roasted up very well and throwing in garlic cloves, still in their skin – they turn out completely magic!
Maree bravely stuffing the pork – not afraid to get her hands dirty
Then the mains was all prepped and ready to roll
Maree then started working on the tomatoy sauce to go on the pasta
And I stared on the pasta, which I was a little nervous about, because we didn’t have too much time to make sure it was perfect.
Oh yes, a glass of wine was never far away
Concentrating hard on rolling out the pasta sheets
Its working!
Making it thinner………..
Then next up, which I didn’t take a photo of was the girls hard work turning the pasta sheets into little spinach and ricotta ravioli squares. They did amazing work and we were a little nervous about them exploding when we cooked them, but there was no time to stress, had to race upstairs and get ourselves ready and the place looking neat and tidy for our guests arrival.
The table looked quite flash all set I thought.
Maree had even made menus – in Italian!
So with the guests here it was time to get the entree ready. And sucess – no ravioli explosions!
Look at everyone smiling!
So here is the entree – pretty tasty
And we got positive feedback from the boys
Next up we had to carve the pork. We had to take the crackle off because it made it very tough to cut, but we got there
And the spuds were super tasty!
Here it is all served up with the green beans, which I had worked hard to top and tail 
Then dessert, thought the strawberries would be a nice addition.
Here is the lovely Lisa with her Tiramisu!
Yum!!!
And what Italian meal is complete without Limoncello!
6 smiling, happy people
Great crew – can’t wait until next time!
And the next time is French themed – ooo la la!
