It’s been a long time since I’ve sat around a kitchen where someone else has delighted me with a cooking dem. Last night I realised it had been far too long, when I took my son along with me to the new Enrica Rocca cookery school.

I’ve often thought about that fabulous Italian restaurant and cookery school owned by Enrica that was situated in Chelsea, Wynberg, when I first visited in 1998. She’s been living in London for some time now and offers cookery classes in Venice, too. I could have kicked myself a few years ago when I was there and didn’t make contact.

Luckily Emma, who used to own the fabulous Pasta Freddi branches in the Cape (where you could stock up on piles of their homemade pasta and sauces) has now taken over the school in Constantia, where she cooks authentic Italian dishes.

When we arrived I eyed the plump eggplant bushes laden with purple shiny beauties, which immediately reminded me of the melanzane parmigiana dish that I ate all those years back at the restaurant. Suddenly, I had a craving.

Enrica made it by dipping the slices of eggplant in flour, frying them off and layering them between a passata, basil leaves, mozzarella and parmesan, before baking it to a soft mass of yumminess.

Last night, whilst sipping wine and talking all things food in Emma’s kitchen (I was next to Anél Potgieter , winner of the recent Eat Out DStv Food Network Produce Award for the best local food blog) we watched her prepare bite-sized zucchini eggs that we ate straight out of the muffin tins.

We rolled our own arancini di risi, which are balls of cooked arborio rice flavoured with saffron powder and enriched with egg, butter and parmesan. After they had been left to cool, we all had a chance to fill them with beef and a square of mozzarella before breading and deep frying. It’s quite a technique to get perfect, and we ended up with some bigger balls than required. As soon as they left the deep fryer – and between mouthfuls of bread and just-sliced prosciutto from Emma’s prized professional slicer – we passed around half a lemon and the salt pot and ate these sublime morsels.

Her fish dish also went down a treat, stuffed with spinach, parsley, parmesan and herbs, then wrapped in paper, lacy transparent Parma ham, and then baked on sliced potato.

We drank coffee in designer cups and I got to decorate the hazelnut torte, which our group couldn’t decide whether to have with espresso glacé or just a sprinkling of icing sugar. We ended up doing half and half.

I woke up this morning feeling like I could just eat handful of rice balls, and now I could definitely do with that leftover slice of torte di nocciole e caffè.

Abigail