On Sunday night my friends Tim and Nicole invited me over for a lovely dinner and the Pixar film Ratatouille. I arrived at 4:30 with a bottle of red wine to go with dinner. We started the film promptly so that we would have time to finish it and have a nice dinner on the deck afterwards.

As some of you might know, I am not a huge fan of animated movies… but somehow I let Tim and Nicole convince me to see this movie. I am glad they did because I actually really did enjoy it, which was shocking to me. The film was cute and it revolved around one of my favorite subjects – cooking. I love cooking and cuisine, (obviously!) but rats, not so much – thank goodness they were animated. But Pixar makes their rats very realistic, so there were a few minutes where I thought there was a rat cooking in a famous French restaurant…!

Tim, Nicole and I enjoyed dinner after the film concluded. On the menu tonight was another Jacque Pepin recipe – this one however, I was a little nervous for… roasted sausage, onion, potato and garlic. Now I love garlic, potatoes and onions. But up until Sunday I had never tried a real Italian sausage. I am pretty sure that I’ve tried turkey sausage and chicken sausage… and I asked Tim if our sausages for tonight were either of these kinds. The answer was “no!”

Doesn’t this look good!? The garnish is fresh, flat leaf parsley from the “garden” of herbs that Tim grows on the deck! I definitely enjoyed an onion, potato, and two cloves of beautifully roasted garlic (smashed over a piece or two of french bread – my favorite!) and I bravely tried half of a sweet Italian sausage. To my surprise I thought it was fantastic! After I was done with my half I went back for another quarter 🙂 It was really a great dinner.

The salad was definitely on the top of my list on Sunday night. It was a bed of green leaf lettuce mixed with romaine garnished with sliced radishes (who knew I was such a big fan of radishes???) with a homemade dressing of freshly ground pepper, red wine vinegar, dijon mustard, extra virgin olive oil, and a dash of sea salt. It was a highlight, and I definitely had seconds of the salad.

Dessert was amazing:

An Apricot Clafoutis. As Jacques Pepin says (so correctly!) a clafoutis is somewhere between a sweet omelet and a custard. It is the first clafoutis I have ever consumed (or at least knowingly!) and I loved it. It had a light consistency but it was also rich with flavor at the same time… a great summer dessert! Here is the link to the recipe: Apricot Clafoutis. I cannot wait to make one sometime soon! If you make one, let me know how it is!

That about wraps up my awesome Sunday night dinner with Tim & Nicole. It was a lot of fun and the perfect way to end a weekend.