“Honey do you mind vaccuming today?” I asked Mr NQN last Saturday.
“Errr okaaay….later” he said looking at me with a measure of suspicion. I’m sure he wondered how a perfectly lovely weekend day had suddenly turned hideous.
About twenty minutes later, I heard some expletives from the lounge room. “&*(&(&(!!” he yelled and then repeated it for good measure. “I’ve put out my neck!” he said woundedly.
“How? You were just sitting there on the couch playing on your phone!” I asked.
“I dunno, I just did” he said. And with that he limped off to the bedroom to sleep off the rest of the day.
Now, I’m not accusing him of faking it, I think that he had really hurt himself but I couldn’t help noting the coincidence in timing. Our plans to do the grocery shopping were aborted and I spent the rest of the day cleaning. And I was bored.
I decided that the weather was perfect for a spot of baking. If you remember last Saturday in Sydney, it was a summer day that was little cooler than usual so the oven heat wouldn’t be too much of an intrusion. Alas, as it was grocery shopping day, our fridge and pantry supplies were running low and I could only make one item that sat on my “to cook” list. One that I found on Jenny’s blog Practically Perfect.
It fit the brief exactly. I didn’t have any bread so I needed to make some for lunch. I had flour, salt, beer, cheese and green onions and it was a cinch as it didn’t require any kneading or proving at all. Just a stir of everything in a bowl and a stint in the oven and then we had our perfect bread for your Australian male specimen.
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| January 25th, 2012 by Not Quite Nigella
On the whole, Chinese people are considered to be quite superstitious No better evidence can be found than with Chinese New Year and the symbolism food plays at a Chinese New Year banquet. There are noodles which are served as they are long and signify a long life. Then there are a slew of round red and gold items to symbolise coins or money. I never really thought of my parents as superstitious-I have mentioned that we grew up in a house numbered 44 with the much dreaded number 4 which is double bad luck. But then again my father made sure to get a car license plate with the number 8 in it which is good luck as it sounds like the word prosperity (sensing a money theme here? 
).
In the spirit of being a bad Chinese daughter, I certainly didn’t go into any major money making professions-I was expected to become a doctor, lawyer or accountant but alas I went into advertising and then blogging. And when I travelled overseas I collected trinket after trinket as a gift for my parents. I never really noticed that there was no evidence of these items around the house and it was only when I was cleaning out a basement cupboard that I found a whole lot of my gifts. Apparently I have a knack for choosing gifts with motifs that signify bad luck or demons so my mother didn’t want to display them but instead hid them downstairs in a locked cupboard (demons apparently are put off by keys ).
I am superstitious up to a point. I had my Chinese horoscope read last year and it wasn’t a good one. In fact the woman told me that I would be given very difficult challenges in 2011 and it was not going to be an advantageous year for me. I was so upset that I immediately switched into denial mode. I told her that no way was it not going to be a good year and that I would exercise mind over prediction and make it a good year and no-one could stop me. And with a huff and click of heels I was off and muttering to myself what a load of rubbish it was. I’m sure she was rolling her eyes at my back thinking that control freaks should not have their horoscopes read…
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| January 23rd, 2012 by Not Quite Nigella
We were watching Hugh Hefner on television one night and I turned to Mr NQN.
“Would you like two or three girlfriends or wives?”
He looked at me, slightly horrified I might add.
“No thanks, you’re a lot of trouble as it is” he said.
I on the other hand could do with a few husbands I think. I could have a husband for doing handy work around the house (something that Mr NQN only undertakes with threat of bodily harm) as well as one to eat cakes (as Mr NQN is not a cake lover). Not that Mr NQN isn’t the most delightful spouse to have but sometimes you need double or triple of what you have.
And when it comes to deep frying, doubling or tripling is like sprinkling something in fairy dust, twice – think twice fried chips. Doubling the frying process is just what makes Korean Fried Chicken such a delicious dish. The chicken is fried twice to give it that uber crunchiness even though it is then drenched in a delectable spicy sauce. And with friend Gina and Hot Dog finishing work on their house and pool we thought what better time to test out the recipe than with a weekend day at their house with other friends Teena, Philippe and Annabel. I drooled when I saw the recipe on Ellie’s blog Kitchen Wench many moons ago and had always intended to make them but alas a fear of deep frying delayed that.
Hot Dog attends to the deep fryer
Gina and Hot Dog are chicken wing lovers from way back-in fact the last time she bought wings she bought 12 kilos of them! They have two deep fat fryers and he chops and separates them while she seasons them and he then jostles the handle like a pro. Most of our group loves a bit of spice so we upped the spice on the outer while leaving little Annabel with just the plain breaded pieces (which incidentally taste just like lightly spiced Kentucky Fried Chicken).
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| January 19th, 2012 by Not Quite Nigella
I felt like a slight fraud writing about ice cream. You see I make plenty of it but I have never been able to eat a whole scoop of the stuff. In fact like the child that plays with the box rather than the toy (that was me, I love boxes) I prefer to eat the waffle cone dipped in chocolate than the ice cream itself. It was like when I missed the point of a toy and would prefer making noise and banging on the boxes. Nevertheless Mr NQN, who was the child that never got toys, prefers the toy itself-the ice cream. He can eat vast quantities of it, his mother telling us that the first time he ever ate ice cream, he had a serious makeout session with it and consumed 16 ice creams.
I first heard about the idea for this cornflake milk ice cream which is served at Momofuku Milk Bar and created by dessert chef Christina Tosi. When I used to eat cereal for breakfast as a child I loathed the actual cereal which got soggy so quickly but loved the sugary, flavoured milk. It was as though Christina was sitting next to me at the plastic floral yellow tablecloth covered table and scrunched her face up at the same time as we when we had to eat the cereal part. Even today I eat cereal but only dry and often with a spoonful of peanut butter.
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| January 17th, 2012 by Not Quite Nigella
I’m pretty sure Steve Jobs was sitting behind me one summer’s day at the beach. I should explain. Many years ago I sat on the beach with Mr NQN and said to him “I want a phone that can play music, take photos and access the internet.”
Mr NQN is a glass half empty kind of guy and he said “That won’t ever happen.”
OK I was half joking about Steve Jobs sitting behind me, I’m sure the idea occurred to loads of people over the years and I was but one of the many. But a part of me has always wished that I had invented something. Well something useful at least…
One invention that became very popular over the years was microwave popcorn-it was huge when I was a teenager and we used to eat bags of the stuff at sleepovers. I guess it came about as people got sick of burning their popcorn kernels in a pot and people wanted a quick, neat way of air popping their popcorn in that new fangled contraption called a microwave-yes I remember life before one but only just. So microwave popcorn was invented and that meant that you could make popcorn in minutes without having to wash a pot.
What they didn’t tell you is that all you need to make microwave popcorn yourself is a paper bag and some popping corn (well and a microwave but you knew that, right? ). For 31cents instead of $2 for 100g of popping corn, you can make batch after batch your very own air popped microwave popcorn at home or at work! You can also top it with proper butter or oil rather than that mysterious stuff they call butter. You can give it a sprinkling of salt for a crunchy, low fat late night snack or top it with a flavoured sugar for an afternoon’s sugar rush at work. And I’m going to show you how!
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| January 13th, 2012 by Not Quite Nigella
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