Sandy's been Cooking For My Birthday Dinner.

So back to you Sands .....
But before she starts here she is looking beautiful in Piobbico prior to a hard day in the kitchen.

While Peter has been hunting and gathering and playing boy stuff with Doriano I have been happy to hang with Jason and Ashley at La Tavola. To my experience the best cooking school we attended last year. In fact I wrote an article on them in Good Organic Gardening a few months back.

They don't give recipes on the day instead they are emailed later but really Jason wants to share his technical knowledge and show you how to make the ingredients shine with as little fuss as possible. Then when you return to your home experiment with the techniques using his methods along with your local fresh available ingredients.
Just as an idea of a typical class today we cooked a menu which we shared with Doriano and his family making 9 of us for dinner. I think Jason was very conscious he was an American teaching Italian cooking to visitors and now cooking for our local friends who are very critical of Italian food and how it is prepared.

The dinner was, as usual, antipasto to start so we made roasted autumn vegetables pumpkin carrot and fennel and baked then for 1 hr finishing them with EVO and very good aged balsamic! Shaved cauliflower this was a knife skill and a bit tedious but worth the effort. Very and I mean VERY finely shave only the 3 mm heads of cauliflower and toss with salt and pepper and oil just before service. We also did a farrow salad with red apple, pomegranate and rocket dressed with a simple vinaigrette.
Then a wonderful duck ragu which we had cooked for the full 4 hrs of prep time. The duck was then removed from the bone and the finished ragu was served with Tagletelli.
Then we had a wonderful pork rib roast which had been slow cooked again for the 4 hrs and served it with a potatoe and cabbage mash.
To finish we had poached some little pears in Red wines served with Mascarpone.

I must say our Italians family were amazed and thrilled that I with Jason and Ashley had cooked them all dinner. So a really good result and a truly great and traditional dinner to share with our Italian family on Peters birthday and our last night in Piobbico.