Food 2.0 Nom Nom Nom is a fun project bringing food bloggers, TrustedPlaces members, food photographers, food journalists & authors, everyday regular cooks, influential bloggers & senior members of leading UK based internet companies together for a meet up. See it as an interactive version of MasterChef.
Here's the place where you'll meet all of the above and eventually vote for the online side of their "cookery". When you come to vote, please base your votes on the overall online experience & how much it entertained and inspired you. If any of the participants give you any bribes to vote, please let us know, as then Bolli the cat will give them a good kicking err ... licking .... um .... stern talking to.
I quite famously can’t cook. I live off a diet of kebabs, pizza and going around my mum’s place to see how she is just as she happens to be preparing dinner. Occasionally I’ll cook something, this normally resolves itself down to ‘pierce film in several places and microwave on full power for 5 minutes’.
So I was extremely surprised to be asked to join the Food 2.0 Nomnomnom event where I would be expected to cook something in order to be judged by rather clever food critics. I suspect that Mex and Walid were pulling my leg, either that or I’d annoyed them in some way and this was their revenge.
Thankfully I wouldn’t be on my own, I was teamed up with someone who not only knew which end of a knife to hold, but could also pronounce the names of some of the ingredients that we would be using.
Samantha Sigler is one of the reviewers on Trusted Places.com and had apparently been briefed on what I’m like. And still she turned up…
We had already decided on a menu via email,
Mango-Radicchio
Caprese With Basil Vinaigrette
Roast
Chicken Breasts With Garbanzo Beans, Tomatoes, And Paprika
We were
given some time to roam around central London looking for ingredients,
this was
sweaty work as I was carrying half a ton of AV equipment on my back, also Samantha is… energetic. I felt like the cameraman in ‘Treasure
Hunt’ charging around trying to get a decent shot. I failed in this as well.
Apparently
none of the shops were stocking the all important radicchio, needed for our starter. I still have little idea what radicchio
is despite having it explained to me on several occasions like a daft
schoolchild.
Substitutions
made (radicchio becoming some sort of posh celery) we made our way back to the Cookery school where we and
other bloggers would create the source of the
great food poisoning outbreak of 2008 our masterpieces.
The head of
the Cookery school gave us the rules, mostly about washing our hands –
something I am a professional expert on given that I like not having remnants
of drunk person under my fingernails.
We then set
about cooking.
Now, this
bit is a bit of a blur – I know that I washed some vegetable looking
things, then mixed some things in a bowl.
I also remember nervously measuring some things out, which would have
gone quicker if I weren’t so worried about putting the wrong thing in the bowl.
Other teams
would see our efforts and try to distract us, such as one team’s Machiavellian
masterstroke of whipping their cream so much that it turned into buttermilk
causing me to lose several minutes of time sniggering at the expression on the
face of one of the cooking trainers.
I’m sure it
would have gone smoother if I could have even pronounced the names of some of
the ingredients. (Although Sam,
when you read this, I believe that Basil is pronounced ‘ba-sill’,
not ‘bey-zil’…)
Thankfully
Samantha took me in hand and we generated three courses of food. The starter was… interesting in that
while it looked nice it tasted somewhat like a celery stalk with a slug on
it.
The chicken thing (as I came
to call it) was rather nice, although by the time the judges got it all the
heat had gone out of it and it turned into a stodgy mess. The desert, which are apparently called
Ricotta fritters were a complete success.
I have no idea what they were supposed to taste like, but they tasted
like doughnuts, which makes it a success in my eyes.
Unsurprisingly
enough we didn’t win the competition, but it was fun taking part. That’s what my lawyer says I should say
until I manage to sue Walid for ‘emotional distress’.
What is
important is that it was run in concert with Action
For Hunger, a very worthwhile charity.
That and I won something in the charity raffle.
Blogpost written by Reynolds as this is pretty much all he brought to the team.
Note from Mex - just to clarify that the tasting is only one part of the competition and although Tom & Sam did not win the tasting part you can still vote for them as best online experience which carries the lion's share of the points for the competition. Thank you!
Did we give you the best overall online experience?
Our expert judging panel will vote for the team who has provided the best photography and / or video. So judges, do we have your vote?