Mr NQN and I were recenty watching the tennis. Well actually I was busy trying to figure out how to remove channel 1 (the sports channel) from our television but Mr NQN was fixated on the sport on tv. You see his doppelgänger Rafael Nadal was playing.
He was watching intently and when tried talking to him I realized that he was not responding because he was busy willing Nadal to win as he was rapidly losing his grip on his game. After staring intently at the screen as if he were his coach Mr NQN visibly relaxed when Nadal recovered from his game. He had been tensely channelling all sorts of well wishes and good vibes to Nadal in an effort to help his famous twin. I too remember watching tennis and truly thinking that if I concentrated really hard that I could somehow control the outcome of a tennis match – even if I knew that the match was pre recorded and the outcome already decided!
If I could control anyone’s mind today I would tell them that this double chocolate crêpe recipe is one of the simplest most divine desserts or breakfasts you could try. It’s a simple concept, a crêpe with the crepe made rich with cocoa and then spread with Nutella. If you have any chocolatey inclinations-and who doesn’t, doubling the chocolate factor via a pre-made spread like Nutella makes it easy and delicious. Rolled up they’re like fat chocolate cigars. No mind bending games necessary. Make these for your mother this weekend and it may help her forget about the 24 hours of labour that she endured (my mother still throws me a disgruntled side eye whenever that subject comes up).
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| May 6th, 2011 by Not Quite Nigella
When I was a teenager I was obsessed with magazines. My obsession started when I had to do a project on magazines during High School which necessitated my father buying me one and I was hooked on them every since.My preference was for fashion magazines like Cleo, Cosmopolitan and Dolly. There I was standing in the queue one morning before school trying to buy Dolly magazine when a man in the queue looked down at the cover and said, not unkindly, “Wouldn’t you like to look like her?”.
I paused and looked down at the cover. No offence to supermodel Sonia Klein but I actually didn’t want to look like her. Truth be told I wanted to look like Wonder Woman. But the point was there weren’t many people around on magazine covers and on tv that looked like me back then. In fact I can remember very few indeed. I just smiled at him but the thought niggled at me on the ride to school. I suppose he thought that everyone wanted to look like a model but the chances of me turning into a 6 foot tall freckled blonde were entirely remote-we’re talking alien abduction from a crowded shopping centre likely. Now when I turn on the television there there are lots of people that do look like me and in newspaper and magazines (although perhaps not the covers! 
)
Things are also very different in terms of food. When I was growing up there was simply Chinese and Italian food but now we have a plethora of different cuisines and Asian cuisine seems particularly popular in Australia. Items such as palm sugar are now easily available at the supermarket as are all sorts of unusual items that would have only been available at speciality shops a couple of decades ago.
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| April 24th, 2011 by Not Quite Nigella
Transplanting one culture into another is always an interesting experience. Take the example of my parents. They were both born overseas and met here as students in Australia where they married and had children. As a result they and my sister and I became part of Australian culture. However they still do things with their very own twist with habits formed from when they grew up in Singapore and Hong Kong. Sometimes it’s as though they only got half the brief!
My father bought a barbecue-because of course that’s what Australians do you see. However in our case the barbecue sat covered in the garage, spotlessly clean and only gets to see daylight once every five or so years. Come summer there aren’t barbecued spreads eaten on tables on the grassy lawn (the lawn of course has been tiled over as my parents are not at one with nature). The last time the BBQ was used I witnessed my father going downstairs to barbecue the meat only to take it back upstairs to eat in the proper dining room.
This barbecue recipe necessitated taking out the BBQ again. It was a bit of a production as it was several years since its last outing but I promised them that it was worth it. You see the whole idea behind cooking a brick chicken or spatchcock is that firstly, splitting the bird in half makes it quicker to cook. Also the idea of using a heated brick on top means that the meat cooks very evenly and that the legs are cooked before the breast has a chance to dry out with the added heat and pressure from both top and bottom. The bricks act very much like a pizza stone in retaining heat. My father, a naysayer if ever there was a definition of one, kept saying the whole time “This won’t work, this won’t work” and the whole time I was confident that it would.
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| April 20th, 2011 by Not Quite Nigella
I’m not a particularly snoopy wife. for the most part I trust Mr NQN and the only thing that I’m likely to spring him doing is hiding computer parts and hoarding things as he loves collecting junk mail and computer parts. However, he does like to see what I’ve been up to on occasion. Nothing like going into my email which he is welcome to but seeing what I’ve been looking up on the computer on occasion or even what I’ve been saying on twitter or facebook.
One day he said to me “Mon cheri, your google searches are very strange.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“Your history shows that you googled ”If you tasered someone in the balls, would they die?’ and ‘Where can I pilot a jet fighter plane in Sydney?’…”
“Well, haven’t you always wanted to know the answers to those questions?” I asked him.
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| April 12th, 2011 by Not Quite Nigella
Once a week Mr NQN and I go over to my parent’s house for dinner. Much of the time my mother cooks but occasionally she and I will cook together and she shows me how to make dishes that we grew up eating and the results end up on the blog. Going back to the house I grew up in is always fun in a nostalgic way. Gone are the Duran Duran posters that used to plaster my walls and ceiling but there are still fun things to show Mr NQN including pictures of me growing up and various phases that I went through with fashion.
As a child of the 80s I have a much more embarrassing photo album than most. As someone with poker straight hair, the typical hair of the 80s teenager was of course volumes aplenty of curly hair and if you weren’t blessed with it naturally, it came via the frying of the locks with a spiral perm.
One evening, after we had come back from my parent’s house I found myself tagged in facebook by an old high school friend who lives overseas. It was in a photo from high school. Are you ready for it? I will warn that it simply screams 80s (see my sweater and pink pants). There I am looking quite unlike me now on the bottom right of the picture.
Sydney Girls High School-class of 80′s fashion
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| April 6th, 2011 by Not Quite Nigella
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