It’s easy when busy to take things for granted but this year has been a year of fantasy. I have no idea what the next few years will hold so I want to remember this feeling of excitement and anticipation of things to come. I do appreciate every lesson that I’ve learnt and everyone that has taken the time to leave me a comment, to write me an email or sit down with me. Christmas is a good time to contemplate such things in the absence of Thanksgiving traditions.
Every year I learn things. Take for example last year when I went to Austria I discovered stollen. Now my experience with stollen up until them had been unremarkable. Stollen was something that sat on a supermarket shelf and tasted like stale fruit bread with icing. Then I visited Austria where stollen were made fresh and it was a revelation. I was then served stollen in Dubai at the Burj Al Arab’s 7 star afternoon tea and was blown away. Now that is stollen I thought to myself. Freshly baked fruit bread with a delicious icing top, surprise marzipan filling and served in thin slices.
The delicious marzipan centre
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| December 14th, 2010 by Not Quite Nigella
I’m an Afternoon Tea girl since forever. My High School friends and I would occasionally do afternoon tea during weekends desperate to play grown up. Wearing makeup, high heels, shopping and acting grown up high on high tea was the ultimate teenage weekend day for us. Bear in mind that I grew up in the 80s so the makeup was a tastefully dubious blue eyeshadow and pink frosted lipstick and the high heels were pastel pink pumps. We would spending our parent’s hard earned cash on Duran Duran records (yes these were pre CD times), frill skirts and tube skirts. Hot huh? 
A high of a more gustatory variety is finding the perfect scone. There are so many bad scones, masquerading as light scones but really playing the part of rocks or weapons. During afternoon tea, when faced with a three tier layer of sweet goodness, I always eat the sandwiches first, and then go for the scones as they are warm. The cakes go last as they are dessert of course. If the scones are good then I will eat them but if they aren’t fabulous I simply won’t waste the stomach space. I’ve left behind more scones than I have boyfriends
One place that does a terrific scone is the Tea Room at the QVB and Gunner’s Barracks (scene of the infamous kookaburra sandwich stealing incident). In fact they do my favourite scones ever. Their recipe was no doubt a highly protected secret but I thought I might cheekily ask if I could get the recipe. After all it never hurts to ask right? Fearing rejection I was delighted to hear a perhaps and then a resounding yes. I was even offered a scone making lesson at the Tea Room QVB location!
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| July 27th, 2010 by Not Quite Nigella
My favourite smells when I was young were very simple. They were clearly associated with my favourite foods. I’m amazed at how vividly they bring back memories for me and the merest whiff of it and suddenly I’m three years old again and running up and down the driveway chasing a ball or I’m a teen teasing my hair so that I got that fetching crown of big 80′s hair. I will spare you a picture of it.
One aroma that I adored was coconut. I used to buy anything coconut scented. Vanilla was a crapshoot. Sometimes it was that horrible artificial cloying vanilla and sometimes it was lovely. Coconut was always good and always reliable.
When I saw Juliana’s recipe for Brazilian Coconut Rolls aka Padarias I was immediately struck by how similar they looked to the Nigella Norwegian Cinnamon Buns, one of my favourite recipes ever but one where I had particularly embarrassing gorging incident eating several of them for lunch. I knew that if I were to make these, they needed to be with company. M had asked us over to her house and I’m rarely one to turn up empty handed.
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| June 24th, 2010 by Not Quite Nigella
I feel like I have a bit of a connection with Mother’s Day. No, I’m not a mother but having a birthday on May 8th means that often Mother’s Day overlaps with my birthday (or at least the Mother’s Day weekend). This year, my birthday is the day before and all I want is a simple birthday really. I told Mr NQN all I wanted was a few simple things: sushi and sashimi for dinner, a massage, the Stieg Larsson trilogy, a new Moleskine and I wanted to watch my favourite TV shows in bed. Who says I don’t have simple tastes?
And this bread. Yes I wanted this bread on my birthday.
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| May 6th, 2010 by Not Quite Nigella
Some recipes are just begging to be made. Be it either by name or by look, Monkey bread is a double whammy – not only does it sound cute (and trust me, no monkeys were harmed in the process of making these) but it also looks heart stoppingly good. Like the kind of thing you just stare at open mouthed for a good few minutes contemplating. Or perhaps maybe that was just me. I have a soft spot for monkeys and apes-my favourite simian is the mountain gorilla-a rather large looking but gentle creature. Chimps are all very cute until they start throwing their poo at the crowds whereas gorillas have a peaceful dignity to them.
My friend Kathy sent me a link to a Monkey bread recipe but sadly it required the use of biscuits in a can, a concept that was foreign to me as we don’t have biscuits in cans here so I kept it in the back of my mind until I saw a from scratch recipe by Deb on Smitten Kitchen. I was elated that monkey bread would finally be a reality. I wanted to change it slightly as I thought that the little dough balls could be filled with the Hershey’s cinnamon chips that we can finally get here (albeit at extortionate prices but hey I’m just grateful that we can get these).
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| April 13th, 2010 by Not Quite Nigella
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