SIZZLE! SIZZLE! LOVE ATTACK!!

One of the great olden days bogue memories is when you would order the number 42 beef and black bean (now replaced by XO sauce), sizzler from your local chew’n’spew Chinese establishment.

Nothing. No, NOTHING is more impressive than brown food coming to your table sizzling and smokin’ like a peppy Paul Licuria dance routine. Nothing.

It’s pizazz.

It’s pizizzle.

But wouldn’t it be mighty fine to sizzle at home?

Well folks, I got me a set of these babies- each individually wrapped in their original cardboard boxe. When me mum bought them she was infected with pure and fabulous genius.

Though she hates them now and wants to get rid of them. Something to do with space in the pantry to put more cake decorating accouterments.

It’s not going to happen. Hell. No. These Gourmet Sizzlers are mine oh mine for life and I fricken well love them.

And here’s my favorite Sunday night watching bloody good period drama on the ABC Gourmet Sizzler dish.


Stephanie Alexander’s Spanish Ham and Eggs
Serves 1

It’s in Stephanie's big book if you got it. You gotta have her big book by the way. Don’t have it and you’re a dumby.

2 chunks of ham (especially tops if taken off the Christmas supply)
2 eggs broken and emptied into a coffee cup
1/4 cup of vinegar
2 tablespoons sugar
1 sprig of parsley chopped up a bit
Olive oil
1 cup of love
1/2 a cup of tenderness

Cook both bits of ham in a big splash of olive oil until both sides until they’re brownish. Transfer the ham to a plate. Sprinkle the sugar in the oil until it bubbles like a mad bastard and starts to caramelise. Pour on top the vinegar and wait half a minute until all hell breaks loose. Drop the ham back into the Gourmet Sizzler, get excited and then carefully drop the egg on top and around the ham. Cook until the egg consistency impresses the hell out of you. Get it off the heat and serve with the parsley, love and tenderness evenly sprinkled on top of the fine production.

YUM! YUM! SIZZLE! LOVE ATTACK!!

Om Nom's First Special Guest Star!

Mate and invitee at our recent Melbourne Cup BBQ, Matt Strempel is funny bastard photoshop genius.

He was frustrated readers didn't get a good look at my gaypron on the day.

So he did this.

Click it for a bigger version.

Anyone else wants to do some stuff like recipes or restaurant reviews on Om Nom Nom Nom Nom, bail me up at a party or send me a message via the facebook and email box over there to the right hand side of this page.

Let's Work Together: The Melbourne Cup BBQ

Sous chef to the stars, Katia Zanutta, is the only human on this earth I can tolerate in the kitchen when I cook. Anybody else should get the fuck outta my way. If you so much as pierce the meniscus of my paella while it's cooking, I'll at least, stab you repeatedly in the throat.

We work well together. There's yelling and swearing and accusing and shit and we love it. Okay, the time we made Teague Ezard's prawn paper rolls, things got a little testy but we did eventually get the job done. Spectacularly.

Every six weeks or so, we put on a big themed meal for 8-10 lucky invitees.

The most recent: A Day At The Races: The Melbourne Cup BBQ.


This is not how we do it.

On Cup Eve I suggested to Katia we add to the menu, the AMAZING fairy bread with Nutella I learned a couple weeks ago from another lovely young chef, who I reckon I could almost tolerate in my kitchen.

Katia's SMS reply?

"I am mortified by that suggestion."

So here's the line-up we agreed on.


Moro's White Gazpacho. Yeah, chilled Spanish blanched almond soup with lotsa garlic, sherry vinegar, ice and grapes, yes grapes in soup ferfucksake!


Home made falafel (Katia excelled with this, with cries of "best falafel ever" coming from the stands), with tahini (which I thought was great but unfortunately Katia copped a grilling from the one fine Muslim fella at the table who claimed it was "nothing like what my mum makes.")

Bruschetta

Salads: Beetroot, goats cheese and leaves; black bean and corn; and asparagus, avocado and crazy leaves.


Pork and fennel sausages and Greek sausages (Kokkoretsi i think).


Spanish marinated overnight (smoked paprika, lemon, fresh thyme, dried Spanish oregano, garlic, olive oil, salt and red wine vinegar), lamb cutlets.

Also marinated in all the salad dressings and some brown sugar, some bbq calamari, followed by a fruit platter.


There was also this delightful tiramisu made by guest, Pere who being Spanish shouldn't be permitted to nail a tiramisu like this.


Here's the marvelously bourgoise eating scene, reminiscent of Stephanie Alexander's Shared Table TV series when we om nom nom nom nom the food while discussing Proust's earlier work, whether opera goers will ever dig Massenet's stuff again and homosexual drinking establishments that permit and encourage sex on the premises.

Two of our guests, who I had executed by firing squad, crossed the kitchen border "just having a taste" and one guest had the temerity to suggest I might have been overcooking the cutlets. He was cut to pieces and fed to Milo the cat.

So apart from a few quibbles with me making a mess while grinding the almonds for the gazpacho, and the little blow up over the nutella fairy bread which could have got quite nasty, Katia and I again teamed nicely in the kitchen.

Note: The people in this photo are actually friends of ours and not actors hired to make it look like we have mates. Hello Jamie Oliver!