Hello, and happy housewarming to me!  Two weeks after my move, and I’m ready to entertain.  Though in all honesty, I entertained two days after I moved, with a three course lunch for my Papa on Father’s Day.  Who knew I could make a three course meal with so little unpacked?!

I’m LOVING my new kitchen; it has bench space, it has gas cooking and wonders of wonders, I can stand in it and still talk to people, AMAZING.  And who were those people, I hear you ask?  Karinda, of course (though a little tired after just returning from a European honeymoon, lucky lady!), Steph G and Sarah L.  All of whom have to come back to continue enjoying the lovely bottles they brought with them – SO MANY!  Speaking of which, we did start the evening off with the much loved Piper-Heidsieck Champagne (each time I type this I need to check how it’s spelled), followed by The Elephant in the Room Chardonnay – the name and the story begged me to try it – as well as a lovely Chardonnay Steph G brought, a Domaine Asmara Shiraz AND a Pinot Noir brought by Sarah L.  Apart from Karinda who made it to an exceptionally respectable 11.30pm or so before departing, the rest of us were up until 3am!  No nanna’s here that night 😉 and I’m normally a total nanna!

Joining the Champagne were hot pink devilled eggs (recipe from Not Quite Nigella, click here for the recipe) as well as little sweet potato bites, both a yummy way to start the night.

I think you’re all aware of my recent burrata obsession; so of course, I wanted to start with it for the entrée.  As we’re now into Spring, I wanted the entrée to be light and fresh and immediately thought of asparagus.  I searched Pinterest and found this Quick Roasted Asparagus with Burrata and Gremolata recipe from the Fork Knife Swoon blog but unfortunately for me, I couldn’t get any burrata, wahhhhh.  I forced myself to settle, or so I thought,  for buffalo mozzarella instead. Who knew it was just as delicious, but in a slightly less runny but still ridiculously creamy way?  It was the perfect entrée and I’d make it again in a heartbeat.  Yum.

I was at my Mum’s in Melbourne in July and was going through her cookbooks (don’t you always go through stuff when you go home? I always end up ‘borrowing’ stuff to bring back) and found this little gem of a cookbook titled ‘500 Recipes for Parties’ by Catherine Kirkpatrick, first published in 1963. When I  saw the ‘Spaghetti alla Bolognese’ recipe, I almost fell off my seat as it was pretty damn close to what a traditional Bolognese recipe should be, and people, this was 1963!  The recipe was part of a menu plan for ‘Parties for the 20-plus Age Group’, so after converting the measurements from imperial to metric, I decided to double the recipe after (230g beef and 113g green bacon just didn’t seem enough!).  The meat used in the recipe called for sirloin of beef, minced; unfortunately, my local butcher wasn’t willing to mince such a little amount so now, the KitchenAid Stand Mixer food mincer attachment has gone on the must haves list.  Instead, I just had to use your everyday beef mince – a little sad to not be cooking the exact recipe.  Never mind.  So, what else was in this Bolognese?  Well, we had butter and olive oil (didn’t actually know olive oil was available back then!), the green bacon, an onion, two carrots, a celery stick, the beef, a strip of lemon peel, a bay leaf, tomato puree, beef stock, dry wine (the recipe didn’t say which kind, so I went half half), salt, pepper, nutmeg, double cream and parmesan.  So as you can see, very similar but just a little different.  After a quick google, I took green bacon to be un-smoked bacon which like the burrata, I couldn’t actually find around here, however no one seemed to mind!

Both Steph G and Sarah L were expecting a rich, meaty dish.  Sarah L thinking it should be quite thick but still saucy and Steph G not expecting to see visible vegetables.  Rather glad I served this to the adult Steph G, as Steph G had a strong dislike to Bolognese during her teenage years!

To my surprise, both Steph G and Sarah L gave it an overall score of 14 out of 15, that’s huge!  And they both ate two bowls too!  Though I must note I serve less than the recommended serving size so they really didn’t eat that much more 😉  So you would be starting to think that we have a new winner – WRONG!!  Karinda’s much lower score of 10.89 brought down the overall average score to 12.963 (remember, Karinda has had nearly all of them), bringing it in at a not so shabby 2nd place.  I mean, wow, well done recipe from 1963!

To finish off the food portion of the evening, we had a chocolate custard cake from the delicious magazine’s website which is an easy cake that bakes into three layers: a base, a custard middle and a sponge like top.  Now, I’m not sure if I used the right size pan (thought I did) and I think my egg white folding technique may need some work, as whilst the cake had layers, they were rather thin!  I quite liked the flavour though, and I believe the ladies did too.  From there, the singing and dancing started!

Now I did suggest in my last post that there will not be many more Bolognese nights, but the next one is assured, as a colleague from work sent me an interesting recipe – stay tuned!

Until then…

Buon Appetito! xx

P.S.  A teensy little confession…in my excitement, I may have forgotten to add the cream to the Bolognese.   No one appeared to miss it mind you though I added it to the leftovers the next night and I think it cut through the richness of the smokey bacon, which wasn’t supposed to be there anyway!  I’m thinking we’ll need to do this one again, when I have the food mincer, so I can make it exactly as per the recipe. Ciao!