I remember the very first time I cooked in front of a crowd. I was under a metre tall and my age was in single digits. My teacher had decided to do a cooking-at-school day. No wonder that with ideas like this, Miss Adams was my favourite teacher. The fact that she had a Farrah Fawcett do, flares and cork platforms which was the epitome of style at the time also helped and I also liked the sound that her bracelets made when they clanked together as she wrote on the chalkboard.

I was assigned the pikelets. Having never eaten them before and being plied with Chinese food during my childhood, these were quite a reveleation to me. Somehow, using a few ingredients, we measured, mixed up a batter and dropped them in the electric frypan and a minute or two later, out came fluffy delicious to eat pikelets. And of course we had real butter. Having grown up on margarine as my father felt that butter wasn’t good for you, the taste of real butter was intoxicating. I still recall standing there nibbling on a buttered pikelet in a blissful state wondering how on earth a bit of mixing and measuring produced something so good. I suppose this was my cooking revelation.

I’ve reproduced the recipe below as it was given to me – I call them kid proof directions. I have adapted the plain pikelet recipe to include nutmeg and have added fruit mince to it which I think makes the Christmas holiday last into another day. Today is a day where fortitude is necessary should you be engaging in some hand to hand combat. No I don’t mean a Christmas with relatives gone wrong. You know what I mean – the post-Christmas Boxing Day Sales.

So tell me Dear Reader, I’d love to know, how was your Christmas? What fabulous things did you eat and what exciting things did you receive? I was lucky enough to receive this gorgeous Rabbit lamp, an Alannah Hill headband, 30 Rock on DVD and a brand new television to watch Dexter and Mad Men on from my beloved Mr NQN!

Nutmeg Pikelets with Fruit Mince

An Original Recipe by Not Quite Nigella

1. Mix  1 cup self-raising flour, pinch of salt, 1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg and 1/4 tsp bicarb.

2. Mix 1 egg,  1 cup milk, 1 tsp vinegar and 60g butter.

3. Add 1 to 2, stand 5 mins.

4. Heat a frypan on medium heat and add butter and oil to the frypan. I used egg rings to try and keep them as circular as possible although I do think there’s a real charm to a freeform pikelet. Once the top has started bubbling, carefully flip over and cook other side.

5.  Spread with butter and top with 3 tablespoons of bottled or homemade fruit mince or as much as desired.

This month’s Daring Bakers challenge was an exciting one for a couple of reasons. Two of my favourite bloggers were hosting: Anna from Very Small Anna and Y from Lemonpi and they had chosen something that I had been dying to make for quite a while: a gingerbread house. This year Christmas crept up on me and the excitement I had at making this quickly faded when I glanced at the calendar. You know the movie scene where the pages are ripped from the calendar in fast succession signifying the rapidly passing time? I swear every time I looked at the date I felt like Christmas was running away from me in blocks of days or weeks.

Occasionally Y would email me and ask how the Gingerbread house was going. I’d answer her that it was going well and last week I told her that it was scheduled for the weekend but then the date came and passed. You see I had to battle fellow Christmas shoppers in the Bondi Junction car park (which never has enough spaces at the best of times, let alone Christmas time). I’d come home from Christmas shopping exhausted, hot and irritable. Not a good time to turn on the oven to make gingerbread.

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“My being anglo saxon is a complete accident of birth because that’s not how I feel or how I act. I feel totally at home in Europe, Spain or France or Italy.”

So says TV chef, cookbook author, food judge, restaurant critic and patron of charities Lyndey Milan when I meet up with her at her Waverton office to discuss all things food including cooking for kids, food bloggers, my legal issues with ACP, the notorious Gordon Ramsay and everyone’s heatthrob Anthony Bourdain and read on for a chance to win a signed copy of her new book “The Best Collection”…

Lyndey with her mother Isabel Hall

How and where did u grow up? Was there a focus on food?

I grew up in Australia. Mum and dad were just really good home entertainers. Mum was a really good home cook. We grew up with the hospitality at the table. There was always room for someone else at the table. I was the youngest of four and we all sat up by the table we all used our cutlery, we all conversed so there was all of that.

So when did you first start cooking?

I was about 16 and my mum and dad went away for 3 months. My next sister and I and my brother lived nearby so I burnt the kitchen down a week before they came home (laughing).

What were you cooking?

Oh god yes mum and dad left on the Thursday and we had our first dinner party on the Saturday. I was 15 and a half and Lesley was 21. I came home from school and of course I was the only one there and you do what you’re never allowed to do so I put some chips on and I went to turn the tv on and I got engrossed in the tv and the chips were all on fire and I stupidly did what you’re not supposed to. I didn’t smother it, I threw water all over it. Well this black smoke welled up and absolutely blackened the kitchen so it then died down and went out.

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