It was the last mixed lunch, and the penultimate lunch, of the year, and it was a triumph, with a gratifying 65 members and guests on hand to enjoy the meal from Roger Straiton and Ian Witter, with the feminine influence of Annie Straiton and Chris Witter much in evidence.

We started with some inventive canapes from the Witter team: white anchovies over a tangy capsicum sauce on crostinis, and a magic mix of tart egg tomatoes, a bit of basil leaf and rich buffalo burrata (mozzarella around a mix of the same with cream) on a toothpick. They were well matched by an opening round of Salinger, a superior local sparkler, with various other bottles including a very dry Warramate rose made on malbec grapes.

Then Team Straiton came to the fore, with deboned lamb legs crusted with Moroccan spices and roasted, then carved pink and served with a tabouleh of couscous and chopped tomatoes, parsley and mint, shaped into a mini-Xmas pudding and coated with a "sauce" of yoghurt with mint. There was extra colour, and flavour, on the plate with a scattering of ruby-red pomegranate seeds, plus green in the form of baby peas and once-peeled broad beans. The colour on the plate was wonderful (and festive), but not at the cost of great flavour especially in the meat, although there were unavoidable differences in texture and doneness. The accompanying wines were from Spain and Italy: a 2008 Trapis monastrell (mourvedre/mataro) and a 2011 Allegrini valpolicella. The former was dark and intense but a bit hard and extracted; the second softer with good balance of fruit and tannins and better with the food.

We stayed overseas with the cheese, a slightly crumbly and quite salty semi-hard cheese which most placed in France or England, but which turned out to be a Cabot's cheddar from Vermont USA. A pretty good example of cheddar, matched with simple dates and walnuts, and with a 2002 Saltrams Mamre Brook shiraz from Barossa, and a 2008 Chardonnay from Den Mar in the Hunter. They were both interesting, the shiraz showing ripe fruit underlying an alcohol of 15%, but developing a slight volatility with age; the white still young but with some Hunter toast characters, more regional than varietal, and a better match for the cheese.

The coffee, supplied as usual by Forsyths through Spencer Ferrier, was a medium roast bean from Colombia, full and flavoursome, as was a Pedro Ximenes rich sherry, green/ brown and lingeringly sweet.