Do you ever have those days where inspiration fails to strike you? Where you’re sitting waiting for the words to flow from your fingers but you remain blocked and your fingers unmoving? Where you look at the sky for raindrops of inspiration to fall on you searching out the clouds but none appear? Well I was having one of those days when I made this lasagna.
I considered not posting this up because the photos weren’t exactly appealing. I find lasagne hard to photograph at the best of times but a mushroom coloured one with a limited colour palette was particularly challenging. But the proof was in Mr NQN’s reaction to it. He wolfed it down within minutes and asked for more.
Click here to read the full story
| September 9th, 2011 by Not Quite Nigella
“I’m right!” Mr NQN said.
“No, I’m right!” I answered.
“No. I’m the boss of you because I’m taller and bigger than you!” he reasoned.
“So what, everyone’s taller and bigger than me!” I countered.
Don’t tell him Dear Reader, but sometimes Mr NQN is right (I hope he doesn’t read this story teehee 
). But it isn’t because he is taller than bigger than me. He was after all the person that suggested putting up the really super easy recipes that I frequently make for the two of us onto the blog. I always considered them not really blog worthy but your enthusiasm and kind response to them has convinced me that he was right.
This is one of the most delicious and easiest dips you can make. It is also low in fat and you don’t even need a food processor to make it. You can mash it with mortar and pestle of a potato masher, add the other ingredients and voila, you have a dip that is somewhere in between hummus and baba gannoush. Unlike a chickpea hummus you use a single tin of four bean mix to do this which also has the added benefit of being softer and easier to crush if you don’t have a food processor or when you can’t be bothered washing one up. This time I did it in the small bowl of a food processor and it was done within minutes-call this a dip at the ready in case friends drop by or you get peckish and want to eat something healthy but tasty. Perfect for the weekend and done in about five minutes!
Click here to read the full story
| August 5th, 2011 by Not Quite Nigella
It was a week unlike a typical one. I tell people that despite my job, I try not to go out every single night. Yet this week would prove me wrong and because I was about to embark on some travel, I wanted to catch up with friends. And because they were girlfriends and it was a week of torrential downpours, Mr NQN quite wisely opted to stay at home and play on his computer and watch the Tour de France. I left him provisions to eat including a duck and vegetable broth and a gnocchi a la Parisienne as I know that he loves pasta with creamy sauces.
Gnocchi a la Parisienne is a toothsome mix of gnocchi pillows baked in a creamy roux sauce with garlic mushrooms. I topped it with cheese and slices of truffle butter-the fresh truffle that we were given at Chateau Yering. It was a heady, fragrant comforting mix – if you were to describe it like a person it would be kind of like your down to earth but sophisticated friend.
The broth came from a larger container in the fridge and it was solid-jellied to be exact. You see I had made the stock in the pressure cooker and because the gelatine was released from the bones it became quite jellied when cold. When I put some in a bowl that afternoon I expected him to heat it up and drink it like a soup. I left instructions on the cooking time and thought that he would be fine.
Later that night I asked him if he enjoyed his dinner.
“Yeah the bake stuff was really good but that jelly stuff was weird” he said shaking his head.
“What jelly stuff?” I asked him. And then it dawned on me. The poor thing had eaten a bowlful of the cold, solid jellied broth. I burst out laughing and said “That was the soup, you didn’t heat it up?”
Click here to read the full story
| July 28th, 2011 by Not Quite Nigella
So many of us watched the royal wedding a few months ago. Now that Kate and William have proven themselves unscandal-worthy, the media certainly looks to be trying to make Pippa Middleton (she of the much admired bottom) the next big thing. There is so much debate about her and I’m sure she is fielding offers left, right and centre. There is debate about whether she is hot or not-the general consensus is that among the menfolk she is very hot indeed.
I even saw tips on how to get her bottom. Seriously, what will people who achieved J Lo’s bottom now do? And who wants someone else’s bottom really? One thing that I can say for certain is that prior to the wedding P Midd. (a snazzy moniker is surely the next step?) went on a diet. With billions of eyes on her and her sister she had to make sure that she looked as good as possible. Even though I don’t stick to a diet as such I do mentally record what I’ve eaten as if I were a detective surveying a crime scene. And let me be honest, sometimes it is a crime scene…
Click here to read the full story
| July 15th, 2011 by Not Quite Nigella
Girl meets pastry.
Girl eats pastry.
Girl gets on treadmill.
This is the story of my life currently. Yes Dear Readers, I have finally got myself a treadmill (I was gifted a dormant one from my parent’s house). I realised that sitting at home eating pastries was not the best way to stay in the same size bracket and that I had to literally get off my ass if I wanted to stay within the small clothing range. Humph.
The motivation was a fashion spread for Nine to Five magazine. Now understand that calls to feature in fashion spreads have never graced my inbox before. People do not come a knocking on my door asking me to wear clothes for a living. The closest that I came to it was the ad for Cornetto. I was suddenly going to have to put in place all that I (didn’t) learn from watching ANTM. I was unfortunately missing about 1 foot of height among many other essentials.
The day that the email came in from them was unfortunately the day I happened to brush 200grams of butter on 14 sheets of pastry and bake them in the oven. It wasn’t the best day for the invitation to come in although I do think that something was looking out for me in that it came before I had raised the pastry to my mouth to try it. The serpent pastry sat there, in it’s bronzed coiled glory tempting me, hypnotising me.
The devil on one shoulder said
“It’s got a vegetarian filling, it’s practically healthy!”
And the angel on the other shoulder said:
“Hardly, given the amount of butter you’ve used!”
Click here to read the full story
| March 23rd, 2011 by Not Quite Nigella
What is NQN up to now? 
NQN on Facebook
RSS
