A Chester Drive to Remember

I happen to spend a lot of the time on the motorway, most of it stuck in traffic! As I’m sure all of my FB friends know too well from my rants and public displays of outrage 🙂 But this day was different, the traffic seemed a lot easier to deal with and the sun was shining a little bit more than normally. I was on my way to my first ever cooking school at SDB Kitchens with our own personal Italian chef, Antonia, flown in especially. Honoured doesn’t cut it! On arrival I was amazed how gorgeous the various kitchens were and apologies to Gino, but I kept losing concentration while I was looking at the last marble worktop or imagining which one would look best in Rose Cottage. There was a few of us there and we were all treated so well with amazing homemade nibbles (I’m really doing them an injustice as I can’t remember the Italian name, where’s Gino?) and a glass of wine or juice to get us in the mood for cooking! Wine isn’t just for the dishes 🙂 Now I’m not going to go through the full menus, there’s been an amazing infographic provided below for both of the dishes. I’ll pick out certain elements as it’s been an amazing experience. I’ve never heard of Guanciale before and this was used with the Spaghetti, you can swap this for various hams as it’s a really salty meat but it actually was perfectly balanced with the tomatoes. The two dishes were Spaghetti Amatriciana and Tiramisu which I absolutely love. You know when you’re not really hungry, after the small snacks I wasn’t but the smells from the Amatriciana were to die for. If you’ve seen the video, there’s a bowl with the tiniest bit of spaghetti at the bottom. This is the best bit! All of the flavours in the dish will have gone to the bottom of the bowl and soaked into the spaghetti. So if you have a special guest, make sure they have the last bit and tell them why. Your welcome. Our chef was very helpful and with limited English, answered questions very passionately. It’s great SDB had one of the only working kitchens in their showroom and if you look close all of the appliances are as they would be in a standard kitchen and to the top spec. We finished off the day with one of my favourite desserts, Tiramisu. Luckily there was no alcohol in this one, normally Amaretto and we were advised that there’s no alcohol in the original and that’s how we were going to have it. I was also welcomed to a Bialetti Espresso Maker and it’s a delight! The coffee is used to gentle soak the fingers in and it has to be from bean NOT INSTANT! It was an amazing experience with great food, great kitchens and a really nice experience put on by SDB Kitchens and thank you for the invite Gino. I have loads of amazing images from the day but the ones of importance are the recipe. See below and comment if you’ve ever made these before and if the recipe is different from yours.  ]]>