I consider myself an optimist. I approach everything with the belief that it will work out well and that fun and hilarity will ensue.
Except for New Year’s Eve.
That’s where I turn into a Christmas Grinch, or more accurately, a New Year’s Grinch. This is a day on which my relentless optimism turns into a hibernating bear and growls and grizzles. Bah humbug I say to New Year’s Eve. You see I feel the pressure to have a good New Year’s Eve and sadly whilst I’ve had some good ones, I’ve never really had a truly mindblowingly spectacular one.
Part of the problem is the great expectations.
I could huddle together with like minded friends as we have in the past-we used to have a spectacular view of four sets of fireworks from our apartment but the magic seemed to elude us every single New Year’s Eve confounded by high expectations or the crazy times that we should be having-why weren’t we wearing crazy glasses and drinking glasses of champagne in the streets when all we wanted to do was eat and sleep? It seemed that while we could always be guaranteed of a wonderful Christmas, NYE joy seemed a little out of our reach.
Perhaps the dullest New Years Eve was the one that had the most pressure associated with it – the year 2000. I had left it to Mr NQN to organise something. This was early on in our relationship and I didn’t realise that if left to organise something, he simply will not organise a thing. We ended up watching a single firework display at Manly Beach and Mr NQN was forever relieved of his organising duties (which he was immensely pleased about).
Click here to read the full story
| December 30th, 2010 by Not Quite Nigella
I received the funniest comment from a reader the other day. It made me laugh and then worry. It read:
“Hi Lorraine, off-topic – saw you and Mr. NQN at the shops today. I was much too shy to say hello, but I did spy a jar of glucose syrup in your trolley. Can’t wait to see what you’ll be making with it! Cheers, K”.
The first thing I thought of was “Oh dear, what was I wearing? I hope I was dressed appropriately” and then “I hope there was nothing embarrassing in my shopping trolley!” Thankfully if I did reader Kat was too polite to say anything about my casual attire or possibly odd trolley occupant and simply mentioned the glucose syrup.
She might have also seen in my trolley a most unusually cut loaf of bread. Minutes before I had gone to a bakery to ask for bread sliced lengthways. They looked at me slightly skeptically and asked me if I was sure and then confirmed what I wanted done. Now there is a reason why people don’t get bread sliced lengthways and put into bags. It falls apart within the bag and so I wrestled with this loaf of bread that kept threatening to come unhinged before ceremoniously placing it in the upper trolley compartment. It was probably good that she hadn’t seen me then.
Click here to read the full story
| November 2nd, 2010 by Not Quite Nigella
When I was young, I thought that the most sophisticated things were French. I loved those wobbly supermarket creme caramels where you would break off the tabs and the whole caramel would come shimmying and wobbling down the sides. I always thought that it was a marvellous feat that it was able to do that-it seemed almost magical or as if science were involved.
I was in my thirties before I tried a gougere at of all places Alain Ducasse at the Dorcester Hotel. I didn’t like a terribly sheltered existence at all, quite the opposite at least food-wise, but when I sat down to a bowl of gougeres I became hooked. I was all too familiar with choux buns as a sweet item but as a savoury item they were a wonderful revelation. I scoffed gougere after gougere, forgetting the fact that I was about to embark on the degustation meal to end all degustations.
Click here to read the full story
| October 19th, 2010 by Not Quite Nigella
We were talking about Golden Books the other day. I got to reminiscing about my favourite ones and I recall my very favourite ever Golden Book was one called Elephant on Wheels. It was about an elephant who loved to roller skate. I loved it because I was forever being told not to do something by my parents. I have always hated being told what to do and so did this elephant Petunia. So she hid her roller skates in clever little places like in the garden as a bunch of flowers, the shower curtain rail and anywhere else that she could find. I admired how ingenious she was.
Rebelliousness aside – and that’s a bigger story, I loved her cunning. It’s a similar cunning and adoration for pastry that has me seeking out even more ways to eat pastry. I’m sure you’re all familiar with the apple tarte tatin. I’m a little too familiar with it if you know what I mean. Give me an pastry dessert and I turn into a dessert seeking missile. But tarte tatin can also be done as a savoury dish.
I found this recipe in the new Serge Dansereau cookbook “French Kitchen” where he cooks food that is made for home cooking ($59.95 by Harper Collins and look out for a giveaway soon 
). Isn’t it funny how quickly time passes. When we went to his Bathers Pavilion SIFF event last year he was talking about writing the book and now a year later here it is. Everyone discussed how much people wanted to do home cooking ever since Masterchef hit our shores (and now the kid version is here-how scarily good are these kids?).
Click here to read the full story
| October 7th, 2010 by Not Quite Nigella
If you take a look into my parent’s garage you’ll see one thing apart from their car. It is about a year’s supply of soy milk, a collection of jars and about three month’s supply of juice. I don’t believe that they think we’re in danger of an immediate nuclear threat (nor does barricading yourself in a garage help in this circumstance). The truth is that they saw these items on sale and since they regularly buy them, they filled a shopping trolley full of them.
I’m afraid this strange hoarding behaviour sometimes rubs off on me. I don’t hoard a lot of things-there is simply no space to do so here, but when I see a good deal I get very excited. When I was on my Auburn food tour I saw this 2kg container of natural yogurt for $3.99 which still had 3.5 weeks until expiry so I popped one in the trolley. Mr NQN ate about a kilo of it with some delicious maple caramel syrup ribboned throughout it and I decided to make the other kilo into labne, a delicious yogurt cheese inspired by the fabulous Celia’s adventures making labne.
Click here to read the full story
| September 23rd, 2010 by Not Quite Nigella
What is NQN up to now? 
NQN on Facebook
RSS
