Last year I went to a launch party for Russian Standard held by a Russian Billionaire. Now please understand that I don’t start off every post with a line like this and billionaires aren’t my usual folk. It was held at one of the most expensive places to hold a function (on the North side of the Sydney Opera House under a huge marquee). Models in fluffy white hats slinked past and hors d’oeuvres laden with caviar and sashimi wafted past in lavish amounts. At about 9pm the Russian billionaire arrived and left a few hours later citing an early breakfast with Lachlan and Sarah Murdoch as the reason for not staying out later.
I wondered to myself, how do they know each other? Do billionaires join a secret billionaire club and was rule No.1 “Please photocopy all bank statements and post them to us for verification”? And sure he may know Rupert but how does he know the kids and most importantly… what did they serve for breakfast? Caviar may seem a little extreme for an Australian breakfast (and he probably bathes in the stuff) but toast with jam or cornflakes seems like you haven’t quite made an effort for your international guest.
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| April 18th, 2010 by Not Quite Nigella
There are some things that I never really thought to include on my site. Poaching eggs was one of those things that I presumed everyone knew how to do although it was something that I hadn’t done very much until recently. All of this anticlockwise or clockwise water swirling action put me off and the idea of wasting several eggs in the pursuit of doing one perfectly poached egg was something I thought was best left to the professionals.
Then on my story about Whisk & Pin a reader commented about the difficulty in poaching eggs so I realised that there may be more out there that have wasted countless eggs, swirled vinegared water, prayed and crossed fingers. This method is a foolproof one and one that has been successful for me ever since I came across it in the new Masterchef cookbook and they have noted that this is how the professionals do it.
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| February 6th, 2010 by Not Quite Nigella
I received the Masterchef cookbook quite a while back and had yet to crack it open. The recipe that I had been anticipating sadly wasn’t there (Poh’s deep fried meringues) but I did see some dishes that I really wanted to cook. I wanted to make these lace pancakes as I adore pancakes in every shape and form and these to me were quite unusual and I was intrigued about their texture.
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| January 31st, 2010 by Not Quite Nigella
I know I scared you there for a moment didn’ t I? Don’t worry Dear Reader, this hasn’t turned into a health and well being blog. Rest assured I followed this brunch up with a slice of bacon and a poached egg. This is more my softly, softly approach to health and fitness although I should divulge my lack of credentials for this task. I’ve never been hired in a professional capacity to offer fitness advice – my inherent laziness prevents me from doing this. Not so much a code of ethics but a code of incompetence.
Case in point: we recently went to Jenolan Caves in the Blue Mountains over the Christmas break and there were three different leves of cave tours from easy tracks to strenuous. I leaned over and whispered at the the woman behind the ticket counter:
“Umm look I’m able bodied but very lazy. Tell me honestly, which level would suit me?”.
She laughed – perhaps she has heard this before, and gestured at the crowd in the line behind me. There were pensioners, the middle aged and small children.
“I think you’ll be fine with the strenuous level dear” she said chuckling.
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| January 17th, 2010 by Not Quite Nigella
In my perfect world there would be a few things that would be de rigeur. Firstly daily massages would be on the agenda as would be a driver at my beck and call. I would have enough power and influence to commission non stop episodes of Dexter, Mad Men, 30 Rock and Glee so they would never go on hiatus and I would resurrect Arrested Development, the only show on tv to make me feel like I have a normal family. Shoes would never hurt, clothes would always fit and the sidewalk would be made of that wonderful spongy stuff that you find outside of pubs.
And I would never overcook or burn anything.
Elisabeth of Bavaria
Sadly this isn’t a perfect world and in my haste to perfectly caramelise these little babies, I may have gone just a leetle beet overboard with the caramelisation in parts. I should rewind and explain what these are. Kaiserschmarrn are Austrian pancake squares, where Kaiser of course means King and Schmarrn means “mish mash”. I have become rather fiaxated on Austrian food ever since my trip to Austria. Of course like many things with a history, there are many legends about it and one of them has Elisabeth of Bavaria, the wife of Emperor Franz Joseph rejecting these when she was given them as they were too rich for her as she wanted to maintain her small waistline. So instead Emperor Franz Jospeh ate them after saying “Now let me see what “Schmarrn” our chef has cooked up” and liked them so much he finished both serves.
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| January 5th, 2010 by Not Quite Nigella
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