The cooking, eating and travel blog of a hungry blogger from Sydney, Australia featuring original recipes, interviews and articles on all things food @ Not Quite Nigella

Monthly Archives: December, 2011

Rotorua, New Zealand

Posted in New Zealand Eating & Travel,North Island

I’m gutted. Truly, madly, deeply. If I could wish anything it could be to wish Mr NQN by my side because I’ve finally found a win win place for both f us to visit and that is Rotorua in New Zealand. I’m all about spa and he is all about adventure and quite honestly we end up doing my sort of holiday because I am small, opinionated and bossy and the planner he is easy going and doesn’t plan anything. See what a good match we make Dear Reader?

The Regent

rotorua food accommodation

Rotorua is a town of 70,000 residents but their top industry is tourism so there are plenty of places to eat out. And one of these places is The Regent. When we designed our apartment I was so smitten by the black and white rooms that I had seen on various design blogs that I decided that we would decorate our bedroom in the black and white colour scheme as I love its classic elegance. And when I step into The Regent the room is decorated in this chic combination of colours. Owned by the same owners of the new Black Swan Hotel their aim was to make it a hotel that they wanted to stay in. There is an outdoor area with a pool and even though it isn’t chilly we take a seat indoors.

rotorua food accommodation

The Regent Room houses the restaurant and cocktail bar and there are bone china fixtures on the walls, French style sofas and an indoor/outdoor fireplace. The hotel adjoins it and it is made up of a renovated area and a newer area.

rotorua food accommodation

We’re having problems deciding what to eat. I want to try anything local so after a while Kathy and I choose a few things keeping an eye out for the rocky road pavlova on the dessert menu. I know that servings in New Zealand tend to be on the generous side but you can’t help but taste a few things can you dahlinks?

rotorua food accommodation

Crispy fried squid, coriander, mint with palm sugar dressing $15

The crispy fried squid is very lightly coated and deep fried and is tender and sprinkled with black sesame seeds. The salad that it is sitting on is made up up coriander, mint and salad leaves with a chilli and palm sugar dressing that is a little too much on the sweet side for me although I’m really liking the fact that there is a good punch of spicy chilli there.

rotorua food accommodation

New Zealand mussels with coriander and spiced coconut broth $16.50

The mussels are plentiful, not too chewy and come with a creamy, rich and well spiced coconut broth that is mild on the heat.

rotorua food accommodation

Mushroom and potato croquettes with aioli $9

The croquettes are very soft and barely survive the transport from serving plate to share plate. They are part of the tapas menu which ranges from edamame beans, garlic prawns, braised chickpeas with chorizo and stuffed mussels. The croquettes are quite different to the tapas ones you find in Sydney with the fine breadcrumbs and tightly packed filling. The outside is made up of very crispy panko breadcrumbs and the filling reminds me of mushroom soup with pieces of mushroom and a thick mushroom sauce.

rotorua food accommodation

Regent antipasto platter for 2 people $29

41 comments | December 4th, 2011 - 5:00 am | Not Quite Nigella

Win 1 of 3 Copies of Bill’s Everyday Asian!

Posted in Competitions

So what does Bill Granger know about Asian food? Well, to be honest I wouldn’t have thought he’d know much about Portugal but his recipe for Portuguese custard tarts is one of the most delicious and used recipes ever. And it stands to say that Australians eat plenty of Asian food -and cook it too!

Bill’s Everyday Asian is a glossy hardback cookbook the simplifies Asian cooking-there are Chinese, Korean, Malaysian and Singaporean, Thai, Indonesian, Japanese, Vietnamese cuisines all in one book. Bill starts off explaining the basic Asian pantry ingredients and then follows with recipes like Thai green chicken curry, pork baguette with meatballs, Vietnamese pork chop, stir fried chilli pork, char-siu style barbecued pork ribs, beef rendang and bibimbap It’s more modern Australian Asian cuisine than hard core Asian cuisine but the recipes are mouthwatering nevertheless.

349 comments | December 3rd, 2011 - 5:00 am | Not Quite Nigella

5 Minute Enoki Mushroom & Shallot Omelette

Posted in Cooking and Recipes,Dinner recipes,Easy peasy,Lunch recipes,Vegetarian Friendly Mains

enoki mushroom omelette

I was interviewed the other day on the phone and the journalist asked me if I had any tips for any potential bloggers. One of the best pieces of advice I can give is to make use of the medium as much as possible. The advantage for blogs unlike print mediums is that we can lavish photo after photo on our pages. And because of that food photography is really important and honing your skills with photography is really important. I won’t ever claim to be a great photographer, I think I merely do a passable job and most of my experience is learnt through trial and error. And because of that I can always learn more.

enoki mushroom omelette

Dario Milano

enoki mushroom omelette

When Mr NQN and I were offered places at Dario Milano’s food photography class we both jumped at it. Neither of us have taken a class in photography but we are both very keen to hone our skills in the area and we wanted to learn from a working photographer with a great portfolio. And food photography is such a specific genre of photography. After all you have to convey the subject and make it look attractive but you have to make it look edible above all else.

enoki mushroom omelette

At his studio in Waterloo, Dario showed us all sorts of things-he has a slew of interesting props including these wooden boards that simulate tables which he had made up for him and he also told us some great places to rent props from. Most importantly he showed us how to make the most of the manual settings of the camera and photograph things with a softbox and external flash (something Mr NQN has been trying to show me what to do).

It was a four hour class with the second half of the class concentrating on food styling and he showed us interesting tips like how to make a glass of white wine using a tiny drop of yellow liquid food colouring (and here I was opening up an actual bottle of wine!). If you are interested, have a look at his site FoodPixels for the next workshop class.

enoki mushroom omelette

The photographed, uncropped and untouched photo that I took at the class

The class inspired me to keep taking photos and experiment with things. After all I have four stunning lenses from my fantastic sponsors at Sigma that I am completely in love with and I need to utilise them to their full capability. Dario in particular loved the Sigma macro lens and says that it is one of the best and best value lenses on the market.

This omelette was the first thing I photographed after the class. I knew it was the perfect item to do-well not because it was an omelette and Dario showed us how to photograph one, but rather because it was served on a black plate which is what I often have trouble with-chocolate cakes are another item I find hard to photograph. I know that I need to keep playing with it and that is just half the fun!

enoki mushroom omelette

Photo taken on automatic setting-the black plate throws the camera off and makes the omelette too light a shade

enoki mushroom omelette

Photo taken on too dark a manual setting

Could use improvement but a better manual setting

Oh and the omelette? Well it’s so easy and I think the longest you’ll wait is for your pan to heat up. The enoki mushrooms give the omelette a meaty but not tough texture and the green onions and oyster sauce and sesame round out the flavour. It is for those nights where you want a nutritious, healthy meal but don’t have the time nor inclination to order takeaway or slave over the stove.

So tell me Dear Reader, what sort of photography interests you? Food? Fashion? Nature?

enoki mushroom omelette

5 Minute Enoki Mushroom & Onion Omelette

Serves 2

1 tablepoon oil for frying
5 free range eggs
200g packet of enoki mushrooms
1/3 cup chopped scallions/green spring onion/shallots
A little chilli (optional)
Oyster sauce and sesame oil to drizzle over at end

enoki mushroom omelette

1. Heat your pan on a medium heat. Whisk eggs in a bowl and cut the bottoms off the enoki mushrooms and then cut the rest of the enoki mushrooms into inch long pieces. Heat some oil in the pan and add the eggs and then sprinkle over the enoki mushrooms distributing them evenly. Then scatter over some of the sliced green onions on top, add lid on top and cook until cooked-you can flip this over carefully to cook the other side too.

enoki mushroom omelette

2. Scatter some finely sliced chilli (large red ones are less hot), drizzle with some oyster sauce and sesame oil as well as extra green onions. I added some coriander just because I had some.

enoki mushroom omelette

63 comments | December 2nd, 2011 - 5:00 am | Not Quite Nigella

Brasserie Bread Gluten Free Baking Class

Posted in Cooking and Recipes,Cooking Classes,Gluten Free

brasserie bread class

Did you know that the difference between an artisan baker and a regular baker is in the hands? Specifically, artisans touch and examine each product at various stages using their hands and use their bank of knowledge to judge whether a product is ready and the senses determine when bread is ready rather than an alarm or a machine. So explains Matt Brock, teacher, baker and trained chef at Brasserie Bread’s very first gluten free baking class.

brasserie bread class

Brasserie Bread don’t make gluten free breads for sale because it would be difficult to ensure that breads are entirely gluten free with all of that flour in the air. The owners aren’t 100% convinced that there is a market for them but from doing gluten free recipes I know that there is and that gluten free eaters miss baked goods a lot because these are the items that are forbidden to them. Here at Brasserie Bread, they use organic flour from Toowoomba and today we are using a special blend of flour for our gluten free baking.

Everyone else has brought aprons along and out of the seven in the class, one woman has been living gluten free for years while another woman’s daughter was diagnosed as celiac at age two. She is a former baker and has been talking to Matt for a while and he has been giving her recipes to try. When her daughter was given the official diagnosis at age two (after much pushing for tests with the doctors by mum) she was devastated that it was her own cooking that had caused it. “I felt like I had poisoned her” she says, so she threw all of her baking ingredients and tools away and hasn’t baked since. She is now hoping to have some tasty gluten free recipes to take home so that she can begin baking again for her daughter.

brasserie bread class

We start with biga, which is a batch of old fermented dough. This is a technique they use in the bakery here as the biga has already a developed maturity and flavour to it and adding it to the newly risen dough gives it an additional flavour. Bigas can last in the fridge for 4-5 days and every time you make a batch of dough and allow it to rise, you take out 200grams out of the dough and put it aside as the biga for the next dough.

The basic idea behind baking is that gluten forms strands that trap the gases that are produced when yeast comes into contact with water, sugar and flour and the strands become longer as the dough rises. In gluten free baking there is no gluten to form strands so they use xantham gum to get the right level of elasticity to the dough. The difficulty is getting the light texture in gluten free bread and as a fellow class participant says “gluten free bread is either cake or lead.” Today we will be learning how to make gluten free friands, a trio of frangipane fruit tarts with a sweet shortcrust pastry or pate brisee, a savoury tart with a savoury shortcrust pastry dough and a 450g loaf of bread.

brasserie bread class

We start with the breads which Matt slices up an example of. It is coated in sesame seeds and is a soft, light loaf and reminds us of a cornbread. The flour mixture is one that they developed through experimentation and the bread recipe was the most time consuming out of the four items to develop. The flour mixture is 75% rice flour, 12.5% buckwheat flour, 12.5% millet flour with some besan flour, more buckwheat flour and xantham gum. Without the xantham gum, the texture would be very wet and sloppy but he warns us to use it carefully as too much can result in a rock hard loaf of bread. Guar gum can also be used as a substitute.

brasserie bread class

We start with our own mixture, already measured out for us, and add the water to the sugar and fresh yeast-they don’t use a sourdough in gluten free baking and sourdough is just a wild yeast that has been cultivated instead of using a compressed yeast. And a tip, if you use dried yeast, that is more powerful stuff than compressed and you only need to use half as much. We mix the yeast up with the sugar and water with our fingers and then mix in the flour so that they are well combined.

brasserie bread class

We add the olive oil and milk mixture (you can use water or other types of milk instead of milk) and then the yeast mixture and biga and stir vigorously to combine. Then using the dough scraper we scrape down the sides and form it into a ball in the centre of the bowl and cover it with cling wrap and leave it to develop.

brasserie bread class

Matt tells us that if you are using grains you can add them in at the end as they can cut the gluten strands in bread as they are like little razorblades. Also, always soak the seeds in milk beforehand as they can draw moisture out of the dough otherwise. Bakers also use salt to control the activity of bread as yeast does not like salt and inhibits the growth of yeast and they use it if they want to stop dough rising.

brasserie bread class

Our next task while the bread dough is resting is to make the tart shells. He has made two types of dough for us (we get the recipes for everything to take home with us) and today we will be rolling out the tart doughs and filling in cases to make sweet and savoury tarts-the latter for our dinner! Gluten free dough is said to be crumblier and therefore can be more difficult to work with than non gluten free dough although this is a pretty good batch of dough and works pretty much like a regular dough.

brasserie bread class