Dinner Party

Last night I had the pleasure of hosting a small dinner party with some of the wonderful women I work with.

The idea is that once a month each of us would take a turn to host a dinner.  This was meant to inspire us to cook things we had been wanting to try, as well as give others an opportunity to get some good recipe's; not to mention have some laughs!

So at 7pm on a rather wet and windy night they arrived bearing gifts of wine and flowers and we kick started what we hope will be a monthly catch up.

As I had Wednesday off work I was able to do nearly all the major cooking and preparation the day before, hence making it possible to get a three course meal to the table between arriving home from work at 5.30 and having guests arrive at 7pm!

For Entree I baked a Simple Leek and Ricotta Tart from Donna Hay's book Instant Entertaining.  These are such simple things, but a very yummy!

For Main Meal I cooked Lamb Tagine with Dates from my World Kitchen Morocco book.  This was a lovely wedding gift from one of the wonderful J's friends and we actually use if quite often.

Not to mention we were given this beautiful Targin from my lovely Auntie J and Uncle B as a wedding gift as well, so we try to use it as much as we can! 

As usual I used the recipe in the book as inspiration and as such my version was slightly different and had a few things added - but it looked the same and tasted fantastic!

For desert I made a Chocolate and Hazelnut Tart topped with fresh Strawberry's:

This is actually a very simple recipe and doesn't take long to whip up; it looks much more complex than it is!

I have promised to pass on the recipe so I will type it up post on here as soon as I can (it is currently handwritten in my recipe book and I have no idea where it came from originally!).

I had an absolutely wonderful night and haven't laughed so much in ages.  I am so looking forward to the next one!