I have a strange little story to tell you about my family and Almond Croissants at the risk of sounding like complete neophytes. When we were young, my mother reported having no problems feeding my sister and I as babies (no shock there right?). I could be easily bribed with food as a child and as I grew up on a strict “Chinese food only” policy, I simply, desperately longed for treats from other countries.
Knowing this, my father used to try and entice better grades out of me by bribing me with food. But knowing that my I was always rummaging through the kitchen cupboards he sought out a different place to hide the food which would magically appear once I had done my homework. When he bought some almond croissants, he thought of the best place to keep them overnight-the boot of the car!
When he presented me with the almond croissant I sniffed it. “Why does it smell like petrol?” I asked him.
Click here to read the full story
| March 27th, 2011 by Not Quite Nigella
My friend Gina once told me of a friend of hers, a male college buddy that had invited her and her friends over for dinner. He wasn’t much of a cook and quite poverty stricken as most university students tend to be (she also told us that he would come out to eat with an empty wallet and a fork to spear bits off other people’s plates). As if to spectacularly illustrate both points he served up a single course of plain boiled rice to his dinner guests.
“Do you have any soy sauce or ketchup?” Gina asked him and shaking his head offered them salt to have with their rice. She declined. Little did he know that if he had three ingredients in his cupboard, four if he wanted to stretch it, he could have cooked the girls a lovely meal. Yes, three ingredients. And one of them is Vegemite.
Vegemite for kids-or me!
Yesterday I posted about Nigella Lawson’s Masterclass at the Melbourne Food and Wine Festival. During it she cooked a dish originally from Italian cookbook writer Anna Del Conte that would immediately send people’s head whipping around for a double take. Vegemite spaghetti. She assured us that despite its rather kitsch and alarming sound, it was in fact delicious and if I’ve learnt to trust one thing it’s that when she says that it’s delicious, it usually is. I will admit that Vegemite isn’t usually to my taste and every time I say it I feel terribly “Un-Australian” (whatever that may mean).
Since it had three ingredients plus parmesan cheese it was easy for me to try it. I used the Barilla wholemeal spaghetti which is the only wholemeal pasta I like although it is near to impossible to find at the store! I was recently sent My First Vegemite which is a less salty version of the savoury spread and I decided to use it here. Embarrassingly, I preferred it but not after spying the note that it was recommended for children 1+ years old. I guess that would be me!
The spaghetti was in fact quite nice. It reminded me of a treat that I make myself once every 6-12 months. When I or my mother make soy sauce chicken I keep the salty, caramelised sauce for another day and use it as a spaghetti sauce. It’s not a dish I make often as there is an absence of vegetables but I figured using wholemeal spaghetti would work in my dietary offset program (like carbon offsetting but for diets). And after trying it I must say that sure it’s not magazine spread beautiful but it tastes very good indeed.
Click here to read the full story
| March 15th, 2011 by Not Quite Nigella
Do you remember when 10c bought you a treat that lasted in your memory for the longest time? That when you bought it, you retreated from from your friends and the rest of the world and sucked the existence out of a toffee (and in the process ate bits of waxed patty paper, a job hazard if ever there was one). Do you remember school fêtes that would offer an additional chance of culinary joy for children with trays of food that was ordinarily reserved for those fantastic things called birthday parties.
If you had asked me between the ages of 6-10 for my dream menu it would have consisted of: pink and white hued coconut ice, golden honey joys, light jam and cream filled sponge cake and pikelets with a jam and cream. Yes it appeared that I was a pint sized member of the Country Women’s Association. Every time a fete was held I was given 20c and carefully, and with much consideration, I would buy one of these things based purely on size-whatever looked the biggest had to be the best.
Click here to read the full story
| March 10th, 2011 by Not Quite Nigella
I’ve had quite a few jobs in my life. It’s not a particularly varied CV nor anything particularly exciting but Dear Reader, if you are so inclined, please guess which job of the following do you think was the hardest and which one was the most fun?
1. Telephone market researcher
2. Teaching English to Japan Air Lines flight attendants
3. Teaching English to Japanese children
4. General Manager of a chain of five designer shoe stores
5. I.T. Account Manager
6. Media assistant/planner/strategist
7. Food blogger
If you guessed that being the GM of a designer shoe store was the most fun then I am afraid that you would be wrong. I hate to shatter any illusions but playing with $1,000 pairs of shoes isn’t all that it’s cracked up to be. Presumably my image of prancing around a store trying on designer heels was just a quixotic fantasy. In reality it ended up being the most difficult job I’ve had. I had to visit one of the five stores every day and oversee the staff and help them with sales. Sounds easy? Well not for me. Sales doesn’t come naturally to me and I only find myself genuinely waxing lyrical if I absolutely adore something. And sales doesn’t call for conditional raves.
I wished I had the uncaring, cursory compliments of one of the store managers who would stride by a customer, look down at her and say “Stunning, just stunning” and then turn away on one heel with the sale sewn up. Somehow the customer would be immediately convinced that the shoe was in fact stunning and Carrie Bradshaw was mere moments away. Being able to sell is a gift and sadly one I am not keenly bestowed with.
Click here to read the full story
| February 24th, 2011 by Not Quite Nigella
I know for the most part that society dictates that if you are over the age of say …25, one has to act like an adult and behave properly. After all, who wants to do business or carry on an adult conversation with someone that asks “Have you ever wanted to live in a tree?” (wouldn’t it be fun?). My attempts at being adult or sophisticated are foiled for the most part by my innate clumsiness. Recently I was at a fancy media dinner by myself and I was nervously negotiating the vegetables that sat in the centre of the table. I had bought a new dress for it and thought that I was carrying the charade off very well.
“Would you like some vegetables?” I asked the man next to me.
“Umm… your sleeve is in the sauce” the man said to me looking alarmed. And there it was, the cuff sitting in the glistening sauce. People were dabbing at me and I felt as if I were a toddler that had spilled my cup of formula. I felt as chic as a bag of Cheetos.
I first heard of these from my dining companion Laura aka baking Wonder Woman. She mentioned that I should make a Snickers Rocky Road in passing and unable to hear the sentence that followed thereafter that I asked her to back up. A what rocky road? I haven’t eaten a Snickers bar for about ten years and from memory there were nuts, caramel and nougat. It wasn’t bad and it was the one I preferred to its sister product the tooth achingly sweet Mars bar. I asked her to email me her recipe but well of course I couldn’t wait. When we went shopping I saw Snickers bars on sale for $1 each and shoved six into the trolley and bought some roasted unsalted peanuts and chocolate and I had the makings of an adventure.
Click here to read the full story
| January 31st, 2011 by Not Quite Nigella
What is NQN up to now? 
NQN on Facebook
RSS
