The first time I met Spanish Chef Miguel Maestre at the Taste of Sydney food festival, he asked which company I was from. I answered that I was from a food blog called Not Quite Nigella and he proceeded to tell me how much he loved Nigella. He was over the top, effusively friendly, self promoting, not shy or short of ego and doing about a hundred things at once while telling me all about everything that he had achieved and flashing a whacking great big diamond in one ear. Then he asked me to invite Nigella to his restaurant El Toro Loco.
Mr NQN whispered to me “I think he thinks that you’re from Nigella’s company”.
“I know” I whispered back.
Clearing my throat I told him “Sorry but I’m not actually from Nigella’s company. I don’t even know her. My blog is just called Not Quite Nigella”.
“Oh great!” he said stirring the paella and giving me a taste.
“Well we’ll leave you as I’m sure you’re going to be busy…”
“OK well I’d love to see Nigella any time in the restaurant. Call me ok and we’ll get her a table. I would love to meet her!”‘ he said waving goodbye.
Moral of the story? Don’t try to talk to people when they’re trying to do a million things at once 
If you are having a rough day where you are juggling lots of things, or if you are like me and just like making delicious food out of run of the mill ingredients then you might just love this five minute Spanish potato omelette which is made using regular potato chips that have been crushed. This was from his new book called Miguel’s Tapas. I should mention that most of the recipes are not of the supermarket potato chip variety but of the proper Spanish food variety.
This dish however is brilliant in its simplicity and number of ingredients. You could of course use any potato chip you like and the whole thing is done and dusted in less than ten minutes (although I understand that omelettes themselves aren’t particularly painstaking creatures). The aioli or garlic mayonnaise is a must and I served this with some olives and salad.
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Like children, you should never favour one parent over the other. When we went to celebrate a late Father’s Day this year, as we had booked into Garfish Kirriblli for Mother’s Day, we booked into Garfish Manly for our belated Father’s day. It was aided by the fact that I had a $50 gift voucher from the nice people at Garfish. You see they had seen my review where I was a bit confused at why a sauce was taken away and then replaced and then charged for and sent me the voucher as a way to make up for it. And whilst I never expected them to do that, I did think that it was a very nice way of them to respond.
We make a booking at the Manly Garfish which sits opposite the ferry wharf. Interestingly, even though they have our booking, there is no table set aside for us and we received the best available table at the time. As we were eating at 1pm and most of the restaurant was already full this meant that the table was pretty far back form the front and from the view. I think if anything, dining a bit earlier might nab you a prized front table in front of the view. It is an airy, chic very North Shore and Manly dining space with maximum views and lots of light colours and a bar at the side. And there are huge flatscreen televisions which play footage from the open kitchen.
Ze instruments of torture!
Wood fired focaccia with house made taramasalata $7
I was hungry as I had missed breakfast and it was getting onto 1:30pm so we ordered some quick tummy fillers. We could have the foccacia with caramelised garlic and rosemary but I am a taramasalata fiend so it was a no brainer for me. The bread is warm and buttery and soft and my mother and I are big fans of the spongey bread and the creamy dip.
Sour dough with EVOO and za’atar $3.50
None of us were particularly smitten with the combination here. Perhaps it was because we all really loved the foccacia or maybe none of the three elements really stood out for us.
Live Southern Rock Lobster $84.50
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Dear Reader, have you ever been afraid of your fridge? A few months ago I was terrified of opening my fridge as it contained within its four chilled walls 6-7 litres of jiggling jelly. It was a distinctly wobbly reminder of my recent jelly escapades where I had made an underwater jelly cake. Mr NQN had steadfastly refused to commit to consuming any more jelly after hoovering through three litres of the stuff. I didn’t want to give him PTSD of jelly but I did have a recipe I wanted to try – a cousin of jelly dare I say: the panna cotta. I didn’t know if he would reject it under the umbrella of “too much wobbliness in one year” or whether he would give this a go.
It was a little while back when I was invited to a special lunch organised by Nespresso to launch their new Kazaa limited edition blend where Masterchef season one contestant and now caterer Justine Schofield cooked us a coffee themed meal. There was a tender venison fillet with a coffee and red wine sauce and dessert, a vanilla and honey panna cotta with a coffee caramel sauce. And I was very happy to see among the goodie bag delights was Justine’s recipe for the vanilla and honey panna cotta.
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Chef Luke Mangan
This past Christmas was the season for food books and amongst the many cookbooks that were released, there is amongst them an autobiography of chef Luke Mangan called “The Making of a Chef” published by New Holland. Luke Mangan is known as the chef behind Glass, Salt and the P&O cruise Salt restaurants as well as having the honour of being the featured Australian Chef at a Princess Mary of Denmark pre-wedding dinner. I was sent a review copy and sat down to read it one evening. The first thing that struck me was that it was written like it was a direct translation of Luke talking which took a little getting used to.
It’s best approached as a “how to become a chef” guide for an upcoming young chefs or kids inspired by the whole Masterchef phenomenon. He explains the pitfalls and highlights of being a chef. He is however a very different chef and it’s a different book than Anthony Bourdain’s Kitchen Confidential. Luke Mangan uses celebrity names from the likes of Richard Branson, Princess Mary and Bill Clinton like Bourdain uses expletives. There’s no sex, drugs and rock and roll-well there is the latter in the form of Chris Isaak being a diner but nothing quite as juicy as one may have hoped.
Mangan can also polarise people-he writes of his time making enemies writing a popular food column but it appears honest, like it is making some amends and well as touched with a bit of chef’s trademark arrogance. From many reports he is also a very generous chef too. When I tell him of how I used to dine here at Glass when I worked in advertising he invited me back any time for a meal and I had heard of him extending similar invitations to others.
I was also invited along to the Sunday Magazine reader launch of his book at his restaurant Glass and see that Luke is busy flitting around and drumming up sales of the book. He tells me that the event sold out within hours (he is holding two dinners in Sydney and two in Melbourne) “I could have done four events here” he says excitedly. He greets everyone at every table with a handshake (and a pen for signing in the other hand) and he is friendly and warm if fleeting.
Bread-sourdough and fruit sourdough with Luke Mangan olive oil
The bread is excellent-warm and with a lovely light crackly crust my favourite was the slightly sweet fruit bread and is offered with the Luke Mangan olive oil which is a lovely drop.
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“Soooo what shall we do today?” I asked Mr NQN pacing the floor of our apartment.
“I dunno. Go for a bike ride?”
“No, I only do two challenges a year thanks” I replied not mentally ready to take up my third ability nemesis. For most, driving a car, swimming and riding a bike are normal everyday activities. For me, aka an uncoordinated version of Woody Allen, they’re numbingly frightening challenges. And reserved for momentous occasions.
“How about we go for a walk?” he suggested.
“I’m not that desperate for something to do” I snorted and left the room.
In truth I was quite desperately bored on holidays. I’m used to having a huge list of things to do and I knew these holidays were meant for relaxing but relaxing was so….dull. The dishes were all washed, the floor was clean and I had even cleaned the dishwasher strainer thingy which goes to show how truly desperate I was for something to do away from the computer which was the key activity that I was supposed to avoid (and the one that would prove the most alluring).
So far the highlight of my day was a petty act of revenge on my mother. She likes to call on the phone and when she has finished talking she simply hangs up without saying goodbye. I call it “Jack Bauer’ing” (of the TV show “24″) and time and time again she would cut me off while I was mid sentence with a “click” of the phone and I’d howl “She Jack Bauer’d me!” to Mr NQN. Today I had managed to do it to her – mid sentence no less!
Yes clearly I needed a hobby if this was the highlight of my day…
How to pitt a cherry with a chopstick. From Lisa’s fab site Bake, Bike, Blog. Step 1: Hold the fat end of a chopstick against the hole in the cherry.
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