An Orgasmic Experience!

For a change of scenery AF took us to the Villagio mall. City Centre mall was our go to place. By the time we got there we were so famished and ready to consume a whole horse! Our hungry step led us to a French restaurant called le Notre which felt more like a posh cafe complete with pastries and dessert at the entrance inviting you in..

As the waiter was leading us to our table I begged for some bread and tomato juice with all the spices (I wanted a come but they had only Pepsi, yuck!). When we got to our table the waiter stood there asking jamb questions! I am like dude please go and get me some bread and drink before I die. He laughed and handed us some thick menu before heading to fetch some bread.

I hate long menus. They confuse me especially when I am hungry. Luckily this one had pictures to make things easier. I ordered pasta - linguine with clams and prawns to be exact. AF ordered mushroom soup and quail. We had to beg the waiter like a million times before our meal arrived.

AF suddenly screamed after taking a spoon of his soup. I was so shocked and worried. In between mouthfuls he was oh-ing and ah-ing, trying to describe how lovely the soup was. He actually used the word "orgasmic" to describe it. How corny! I was like "is that why you want them to throw us out?"  He then shoved a spoonful into my mouth and it was indeed delicious. I abandoned my starter and helped him finish his. He wasn't too pleased about that. Lol!

Not to be outdone by some professional chef (right!) I decided to make my version for AF. As soon as he saw it he laughed. He figured that the way reacted to le Notre's soup got me a bit jealous. He wolfed the soup down and said it was even better! I beamed from ear to ear and proceeded to eat mine and almost spat it out! He lied! It was so salty my taste buds were rioting! Ah my rep!

As I didn't want the only memory of my mushroom soup AF to be a salty one, I prepared another batch the very next day but this time paying attention to the amount of salted added. AF gave it 2 thumbs up.

Mushroom Soup

Ingredients:

Mushrooms (chopped)

1 medium onion (chopped)
50g of butter

3 tablespoon of cream

Black pepper

Thyme

1.5 cups of chicken stock (or 1.5 cups of water and 1 stock cube)

Salt to taste

Method:

heat the butter on medium heat in a sauce pan and fry the onions and mushrooms until the onions are translucent. add the thyme and stock. simmer for another 10 minutes. Blend the mixture in a blender to combine all the ingredients thoroughly. return the mixture to the sauce pan, add the cream and black pepper. simmer for 5 minutes. Check for salt.

The Last Year at a Glance

Since I last posted, my blog became severely infected with spam, virus and bugs. I spent a long time trying to fix it and eventually gave up. I never gave up cooking though.

Since I last posted, I won third place in the Knorr Taste Quest. I was surprisingly called back after I had left for the grand finale. I was really shocked and excited but also very nervous. I needed to bring my A game and put all fears behind me. We were given gigantic worms to cook among other things. I just channeled my fears of creepy crawlies into cooking something scrumptious and in the end it paid off.

Since I last posted, I got engaged, got married to my AF and had a beautiful baby girl, Z.

Since I last posted, I moved cities, first to Aberdeen from Lagos and now live in Doha, Qatar. So it’s been a lot of moving, packing and unpacking for me. Tiring but very exciting.

With my blog up and running, my feet firmly in one place I hope to continue to post recipes for you all.

Thanks for never giving up on me.

Knorr Taste Quest - Episodes 6-10 Recap

Episode 6 - The Cooking Class

I really appreciated this episode. I have a feeling it was Dr Roberts that insisted we took this class. I imagined Dr Roberts having nightmares about the way we hold our knives and butchered our meat. LOL! It was a great learning day. Chef Fregs was a good trainer! He taught us the right way to chop (Chinyere almost passed out!), how to sear meat and make delicious lovely sauce in no time. We also leant how to plate our food, it goes to show that with food eighty percent of it is in the eyes!  And most importantly we learnt to stop, breath, think and plan what we are going to cook!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E2Dlpi35zuA

Episode 7 – The Group Challenge

This was the bestest episode ever! I thoroughly enjoyed this day. I have to say so far this has been my most enjoyable episode. I had a lot of fun. For this challenge we were placed in groups to compete against each other. As the bottom two the previous week, Dami and Aaron were asked to pick people they would like in their team and as the winner of last week’s challenge (grins) I was given the opportunity to pick the team I would like to join. I chose Dami’s team because Aaron’s team had Ify, Patricia, Chidi whom are all very strong characters and didn’t want to drown in that. It was a gamble though!

We were given an hour to come up with three a course meal with mussels, mushrooms, Poisson, aubergine, radish, spring onions, artichoke, walnuts and all three courses have to have Knorr in it (even the dessert? *confused look*)

For starters we made chopped spiced up mussels on a boat of parsley soup. We steamed with the mussels first, chopped them flesh and fried it with mushrooms, peppers garlic and ginger. We placed the fried back into the shell and placed them on a sea of parsley soup thickened with corn flour.

For the Main course we seasoned the Poisson and pan fried it and served it with aubergine sauce and potatoes and beetroot. Dami seasoned this baby chicken to ecstasy. It was soo yum!

For the dessert we made crème Brulle with radish and walnuts. And I can’t believe we used Knorr in our dessert. It tasted amazing!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rK556nwfYG0

Episode 8 – Chocolate Fetish

Dr Roberts started saying “today you have the most simple and basic ingredients….” Here he goes again. We were given chocolate, fettuccini pasta, sweet peppers, melon seed (egusi) and lamb chops.  Yes they are basic ingredients but using them in one dish. As in how is that a basic combination?!!!!

Learning from last week, I spiced my lamb chops and seared them. I infused chili in melted chocolate and mixed in blended toasted egusi. To finish, I coated the lamb chops with chocolate egusi mixture and left it in the oven to keep warm. I served it with creamy fettuccini cooked with red peppers and garlic.

I didn’t win this week’s tasks but the comments from the judges were mind blowing. I should have cooked my fettuccini pasta just a bit longer. I love the way Chef Fregz face lit up when he tasted it. LOL!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bj8Z74UPZp8

Episode 9 – Pineapple Chicken

For this episode, we were given, rice, beef, yam, pineapple, chicken wings, sweet chili peppers, pumpkin. For the starters, I boiled pumpkin and yam and carrots and blended and sieved it. I served it with deep fried grated yam to give it a crunch.

I made fried rice and served it with grilled beef and chicken with caramelized pineapple chicken.  I boiled the chicken in pineapple juice and to caramelize the chicken, I deep fried it. Overall Tara the guest judge said this was a complete meal.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SpTtEshO8q0

Episode 10 - Burnt Notice

For this episode, the secret ingredient was lemon grass. The other ingredients were asparagus, scallops, garden eggs, rice, Brussels sprouts, coconut and goat meat. We had to do a two course meal featuring lemon grass.

This week was one of my worse weeks. Everything was going alright until I burnt my plantain. HOW? WHY? Instead of getting a clean pan, I fried the plantains in the same pan I had friend the scallops in. Disaster!

For my starters, I made pan fried scallop coated with soy sauce infused with lemon grass served with steamed asparagus. For the main dish, with the ingredients we were given I made a goat curry and served it with coconut rice.  

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mvGziUyH5Jo