Ten Courses? No Sweat! Cooking in Jim’s Kitchen

Does the thought of cooking a ten course dinner party make you sweat? Not me! Not as long as my favorite foodie friend Jim is by MY side!

Our long awaited dinner party was scheduled for a Sunday evening. So Thursday was our major league shopping day, and Friday was venue decorating day. “Plan Ahead” is always our motto!

 

Bright and early on Saturday morning I headed to Jim’s amazing kitchen to begin prepping for the meal.

Please keep in mind our Sunday dinner location venue did not have a stove or an oven! So we prepared many of our courses in Jim’s kitchen. Then on Sunday we transported the dishes to the venue to add the finishing touches. (We did have two hot plates to boil pots of water to cook our pasta.) Luckily Jim has two refrigerators and a garage countertop and storage area that is cleaner than many folk’s kitchens. So storing all of our creations overnight was no sweat at all.

Homemade Pasta? No Sweat For These Foodie Friends!

Remember the pasta that started this whole ten course dinner idea? My big concern wasn’t making that pasta from scratch. The real challenge was making sure our pears were exactly the right level of ripeness for this dish. And these were perfect!

I actually bought them ten days earlier, and left them on my countertop while Peepaw and I took a week long trip to Door County. And by the time we returned they were the perfect ripeness for our dish. Eventually I’ll share my actual recipe for this dish, but here are the steps we took to create it.

Our pasta dough came together beautifully.

And our little “purses” turned out exactly as I had hoped.

Those little beauties spent Saturday night in Jim’s refrigerator.

Next I whipped up this ricotta cheese, eggs, oil cured olive and fresh parsley creation. Perfect for our cheese course. I’ll be sharing this recipe too!

And Jim whipped up his famous Tiramisu. (He has made it so often he doesn’t even use a recipe anymore.)  No sweat for Jim!

We kept our meat course quite simple. And Jim headed to the grill to put the finishing touches on these beautiful Italian sausages. Your choice…either chicken and pork.

We “cheated” when it came to Biscotti. I bought plain ones at Aldi, but then we dipped them in chocolate and added slivered almonds to some of them. (We are all about giving our diners choices! )

That Saturday I was totally in my happy place. Cooking in a chef’s dream kitchen. And sharing that beautiful kitchen with my BFF Jim.

Our idea of a ten course rustic Italian dinner is about to become a reality, and I can’t wait to share the evening with you!