Wild garlic leaves; not something I'd ever come across in Australia. Since buying them 2 weeks ago I've used them in risotto, frittata, salads and for this dish, laid across fillets of mackerel (I was going to wrap the fillets with the leaves, but wanted to crispen the skin when pan frying). 
We enjoyed a lovely Saturday early dinner - the first of the year eaten on our terrace! Fillets of mackerel with wild garlic leaves, pan fried in butter, blanched purple sprouting broccoli, and organic puy lentils (cooked with pancetta & onion, with fresh parsley from the garden) - the perfect seasonal dish!
You may have noticed I've been very lazy with my darling blog of late, so to continue the theme, I'll just stop yapping and let the photos do the talking.
The fit out of this place is uber cool. The walls are covered in recycled materials, there are large glass bottles hanging as lights, pots of rosemary on the tables, wooden bench seats and random chairs. The menu is written on blackboards on the wall. There's an area out the back that's being turned into a courtyard and was in full sun on Saturday.
We started with coffees and they were excellent. The place is Italian so we shouldn't have been so surprised. As LITRO didn't officially open for another half hour, we settled in and read our papers until the kitchen was open, at which time we ordered one of the several organic lagers on offer and a 1/2 litre of prosecco, along with bruschetta and the charcuterie plate. Everything was delicious. The toasted bread with the ripe tomatoes was particularly yummy.
LITRO is open for dinner and polenta, pasta and other simple Italian staples are on the blackboard menu. The kitchen is very tiny so they seem to be relying on great uncomplicated produce - a recipe for success we hope! The little postcard we picked up says they'll be opening for breakfast and lunch soon - can't wait! 
It was very easy to make, such a pretty colour, and lovely served at room temperature for lunch on Good Friday. I had made bread stuffed with leftover caramlised onion the night before to go with our cock-a-leekie soup, so I sliced up the leftover bread and fried it - the perfect thing to offset such a virtuous soup! 
I recently won the new cookbook from 
I made the dough for the pastry and over the space of a couple of hours, folded and rolled it every 10 minutes, sometimes adding little dollops of butter. 
Of course, when you go to that much trouble to make your pastry, the best thing to do when you finally get it in the oven (after carefully shaping fish and boats on top of the pies) is to completely forget about it and burn it if at all possible.
As you can see, I achieved the blackened look rather well, but fortunately the pastry still tasted delicious, not to mention the gorgeous creamy fish pie. 
Saturday night, glasses of prosecco in hand, music playing, 12 happy & excited faces. We were about to cook our own dinner! 
We were greeted by Jimmy (originally from Melbourne) who would be our chef instructor for the night and he quickly put many minds at ease by informing us we'd be doing the prep for the 3 course meal and he would then cook it and serve it and all we had to do was then eat it. The class was to be super informal, not big on technique, but just a fun night. And this it was. It was the perfect thing to do with a big group of people with varying cooking abilities - if you cook frequently, you won't learn anything ground breaking, but you will definitely have a fun night.
We made spinach & feta spanikopita to start, moussaka and then tiramisu. Not the most adventurous menu, but easy to put together whilst clutching a glass of wine, having a dig at the (quite frankly, inferior) efforts of your neighbours and posing for photos.
The food was rather delicious, and my only gripe was that I would have preferred to have eaten my moussaka and dessert from china ramekins/bowls rather than plastic. However using plastic containers did facilitate taking home what we couldn't eat - which was essential as servings were generous.
I've since heard from a couple of people that The Kitchen run great cooking classes during the day for young children and young adults. It's a fun place to go for a birthday party or hens night and we certainly enjoyed it. (With special special thanks to A for the photos) 
4. Earl grey & chiffon cake with marscapone icing
I couldn't help but feel a little like the poor relation when reading the instructions to beat my mixture on a certain setting with a certain type of beater on my gleaming Kitchen Aid mixer, whilst in reality making a complete mess with my Dualit magic wand beater, which is rather more like using an extremely energetic jack hammer. Whilst I'd like to insist that I really do need a Kitchen Aid in order to use the book, unfortunately the cake came out beautifully with my hand held appliance.