Congratulations to our raffle winners

Thanks to everyone who entered our raffle in aid of Action Against Hunger. We raised a record amount for NomNomNom this year of over £1,000 including Gift Aid.

Here's the list of lucky winners:

Diane Kerry wins the great Robust Collection food mixer from Philips

Robin Clark has burritos for the next quarter with 3 months supply of Chilango Meals

Kai Chan Vong lucked out with a £150 food & bar tab at Giant Robot or Redhook

Charlotte Minvielle is the lucky lady who wins a Cookery School voucher for 2 at £90 each for a lesson of their choice

Kylie ap Garth gets some fine dining with dinner & drinks for two at Rocket Restaurant - Canary Wharf branch (up to £60)

Melanie Seasons wins the coveted starter Knife Block Set from Wusthof Knives

Steve Hutchings and Elizabeth Charles both win a copy of Blog Aid - Recipes for Haiti and a £20 voucher to make your own Blurb book

Julia Macmillan wins dinner for two at Benito’s Hat Mexican Kitchen (up to £30)

L J Rich has a hamper from Geeta's including a Karai Warmer set & chutneys

Jackie Lee wins a bottle of Elements 8 Barrel Infused Spiced Rum

Robert Gepp, Sophie Hudson and Lorraine Claridge each win dinner for two at Noodle Street (up to £30)

Jia Min gets a year's subscription to delicious. magazine

B Mistry wins a bottle of Gin Mare gin

Linley Lord can enjoy a 6 bottle case of wine from Naked Wines

Gerald Berman wins the £50 gift hamper from Vanilla Bazaar

Shirley Soon Shiong can feast on a Sheepdrove Organic Meat Hamper

Flora Dupont wins a £30 voucher for Tracklements - speciality chutneys, mustards & preserves

Gerald Weinbrenn wins a gift box of a dozen Gower Cottage Brownies

Jane Lawson takes away a weekend travel luggage set from Viking Direct

Richard Hannan can enjoy a 790g Kilner Jar of Classic Olives from Olives Et Al

Izabel Blue wins a three bottle selection of organic Italian Wines from Vintage Roots

Emilia Simonelli wins a side of smoked salmon from Southbank Fresh Fish Ltd

Sandra Doyle now has a Microplane box grater from ICTC for her kitchen

We'd like to thank all of the sponsors above for being so generous with the prizes and helping us raise money for Action Against Hunger!

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Congrats to our Viewers' Choice Winners

It was a hard fought battle and we were delighted to see over 2,200 votes! In the end it was going to be a contest between two teams who both had over 25% of the votes each. In third place was Tarragons of Virtue - Melanie & Billy. Second place were the runners up in the Nom Nom Nom cook-off - Katman & Robin - Kate & Robin.

So, without further ado the winners are - Team Greedy - Tamzin & Victoria who pulled in over 800 votes!

Photo by Chris Osburn

Congratulations to Victoria and Tamzin who take away a fantastic hoard - a Magimix, a set of five star knives from Henckels, 2 bottles of Gin Mare gin, £50 charity donation from Justgiving AND a masterclass for five people from Chilango.

Tamzin said "We're both really thrilled! What fantastic prizes as well. Especially excited about the masterclass - love Mexican food and have never really experimented with it.

Thanks for everyone's hard work organising the competition. We'll definitely be up for trying to win the judges vote next year :-)"

Victoria seconded this and said "Thank you so much for making such a joyous event happen and for all the hard work. We're completely thrilled to have won the viewers' vote and can't wait to tuck into our gin and knock up a Mexican feast with the knives and Magimix!"

Don't forget that you can still win some lovely foodie prizes yourself in the charity raffle for Action Against Hunger, which is still open until the end of August. Prizes include £150 food & bar tab at Giant Robot or Redhook (which both received glowing reviews in Metro recently), Cookery School lessons worth £180, a starter knife block set from Wusthof worth £379 plus lots, lots more.

Good luck in the raffle and once again congratulations to Team Greedy!

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Vote for your favourite team - Viewers' Choice

So the cook-off winners were announced, but now it's time for YOU to have your say. All the finalists pairs have written blog posts about their experience and are in with the chance of winning some fantastic prizes, including a Magimix, a set of five star knives from Henckels, 2 bottles of Gin Mare gin, £50 charity donation from Justgiving AND a masterclass for five people from Chilango.

All you need to do is vote for your favourite team below. Their blog posts are in the links below or you can read them all here.




Voting closes on 11th August 2010 at 23.59pm and you can vote once a day if you like.

If you'd like to win some fantastic food & drink prizes yourself, bag yourself a ticket in our charity raffle!

Good luck to all the finalists!

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Nom Nom Nom De Plume

Last week I took part in one of the most fun and interesting blogger events I've ever been invited to. Nom Nom Nom, or "The Bloggers' Masterchef', is a cook-off organised in aid of Action Against Hunger by the ever-enthusiastic and energetic Annie Mole (of Going Underground fame), held at the fantastic Cookery School on Little Portland Street in central London.

I felt a bit daunted before the event kicked off. I'm not a food blogger - I write about tech and politics and take the piss out of the Daily Mail; I'm someone who very much enjoys their cooking, but to be in the kitchen with "proper" food bloggers? I was intimidated. Luckily, my cooking partner (and flatmate) Tom (aka @flashboy) has done one of these before, and my nerves were (just about) calmed when he said it wasn't as competitive as I feared.

Like all good geeks, I made sure I read up and practiced beforehand, eventually settling on three dishes that were summery. Tagliata, seared Italian beef with rocket & tarragon to start; sea bass baked on vine tomatoes with spinach, pine nuts and raisins for the main, and an English summer berry trifle as our dessert (and also our compulsory cold dish). We can't claim originality - the starter & main came from Tom Norrington-Davies' Eagle Cookbook, the trifle from Nigel Slater's Appetite.

The blessing with nearly all of what we cooked is that we could get UK-based ingredients in season - the beef English, the sea bass from Anglesey, the fruit & vegetables from local farmers' market - it was only the small things like the olive oil and raisins that would have to come from further afield. Furthermore, all the dishes were relatively easy to make and not too daunting, especially in a high-pressure environment.

The tagliata went like a dream - a really nice cut of Hereford sirloin, seared on grillpan and then thinly sliced. Tarragon is an odd choice of herb to go with beef, but there was something about the aniseediness which works well with the rocket. The recipe we had also called for new potatoes - in retrospect though they were probably a distraction from the dish and didn't add much.

The fish was perhaps the simplest of the three dishes to cook, just season well, slash the flesh open to help it cook a bit quicker, and lay down on a bed of juicy sweet tomatoes & sliced garlic. I might have overdone it with sloshing the white wine on, which ended up making the toms being a bit soggy, but it still tasted fantastic. You might worry sea bass is a bit delicate to be overburdened by tomatoes, but it actually works out fine.

Tom took charge of the dessert - alas in order to conform with the no cooking rule we had to use ready-made custard. A chance encounter in the newsagents led us to find some sherbert flying saucers, so he adorned each of the sundae glasses of trifle with them, which ended up as a really nice quirky little touch.

The upside of all of our dishes was that they didn't require that much preparation. The downside is that they didn't take much time to cook either, so after a lull in the middle after all the prep, the final few minutes were a real stress. We didn't have a big enough pan for the spinach, so we had to do it in batches, without ruining by burning the pine nuts (something I was very careful not to do). By the time it came to plating up I was in a rush, so it wasn't as neat as it could have been.

We were' expecting to win, yet... well it turned out we were right, 'cos we didn't. But I was happy with what we cooked - especially when it was clear there were some genuinely talented cooks in the competition. Nevertheless we did get some lovely plaudits about our sea bass, and the trifle, including from the winners, which I'm going to to take as a top-grade compliment. Best of all, it was a real pleasure working in a proper kitchen, and with proper staff - the Cookery School's staff were absolute angels from start to finish, tirelessly helping us with our every whim, and not minding when pressure meant there was no time for "please" and "thank you".

It was also really good getting to know other bloggers, and indeed getting to know my own flatmate better - Tom tends to downplay his own culinary skills but at the cookup, but after that I now know he is a perfectly good kitchen lackey assistant chef in his own right as well.

Many thanks go to the Cookery School (whose kitchen really is excellent), and the many people who made it happen, including Rosalind, Annie and Chris Osburn (who took all the pictures above, and I'm very grateful for him doing so, as I had no time to take proper pics). The event's not quite over yet - the sponsors have donated prizes to a charity raffle in aid of Action Against Hunger - go buy a ticket now to help make a difference.

Vote for Nom Nom Nom De Plume here

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Like Mother, Like Son

In our family, like many families, food is a huge part of our culture and cooking is something passed from generation to generation. Of course, it's not always a smooth transition. Grandma still tells mum off in the kitchen, shouting "No, you're doing it wrong, leave it, I'll show you!" So entering a cooking competition for us is something that requires a certain amount of bravery. Will it go to plan, or will it all end up in a big fight?

A nightmarishly early start for a Sunday was made all better when we were greeted with the smiling faces of Annie Mole and the Cookery School staff. While we were still bleary eyed and grumbling "Coffee!", they were already busy in the kitchen, serving up tasty little pastries.

Soon after, we picked up our shopping bags and headed towards the farmers market, almost all of us forgoing the paper maps Annie had printed us for us and preferring iPhones. Oh, internet people... While I was on lamb shank duty at The Ginger Pig, mum was on the hunt for our vegetables. I wouldn't be surprised if half of London heard her "How much for aubergines?!" scream from the farmers market.


That's a fake smile. She's still upset over the aubergines.

Equipped with our lamb shanks and vegetables, we dutifully joined the Waitrose opening queue along with other NomNomNommers. A rather surreal moment queuing up for a supermarket to open. Double checking we had everything, we headed back to the Cookery School. Along the way, we stopped at the Turkish restaurant Ozer for a last minute pomegranate sauce addition, as we were not too happy with the one we had bought previously. They were kind enough to give us a bottle of the stuff they use. Thanks Ozer!

Back at the Cookery School, we donned our aprons and had two and a half hours of cooking time. To us though, that all seemed to go like a blur.

*cue photo montage*


You chop, I'll peel.


This is serious business.


Grate grate grate. Oh wait, that's a different team.


It's all in the final touches.


"Plated up!"


"Yay! We made it!"

Yep, we had just about done it on time and miraculously, not a /single/ fight.

What followed next was truly a sight to behold. We set up a buffet with all the food everyone had cooked.


NomNomNom indeed.

And everyone seemed to like our food, which was excellent!


Braised lamb shanks? What braised lamb shanks?

We tried to choose a menu that felt seasonal, played to our expertise of Mediterranean cuisine, would be simple to make at home and where the ingredients can come from sustainable sources where possible.

Which sort of brings us onto this. It's very likely that sadly, you weren't there to taste the food. So, we tried to come up with the next best thing. Below are the recipes for the three dishes we served at NomNomNom. Give them a go and see if you like them. They're simple, easy to cook and hopefully, very very tasty!

Without further ado...

Starter: Kisir (Spicy Tabouleh)
Serves 4



1 cup fine cracked wheat
1 finely chopped onion
1 heaped tablespoon tomato paste
1 large tomato, grated or finely chopped
1/2 bunch of spring onions, finely chopped
fresh parsley and mint, finely chopped and sprinkled on top, to taste
2 tablespoons of pomegranate sauce
(If you can't find pomegranate sauce, replace with juice of half lemon mixed with 1 teaspoon of honey /or/ 1 teaspoon of brown sugar)
3 tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil
a handful of walnuts, chopped

Pour the cracked wheat into a bowl. Pour 1/2 cup of hot water on top. Add a grated tomato into the bowl. Add the pomegranate sauce, or the lemon mixture. Add a pinch of salt. Mix and leave to rest for 15 minutes.

In the meantime, prepare and chop all the other ingredients as described.

After 15 minutes, give the wheat a stir. Taste the mixture, the wheat should have softened and shouldn't have any hard bits. Add the tomato paste and mix again.

Add the chopped ingredients, all together, to the wheat. Add the olive oil. Mix softly. You have Kisir!

If desired, add more salt, pomegranate sauce and lemon to your taste. Serve with lettuce.

If you have any problems, call my mum. She'll be happy to tell you: "No. You're doing it wrong, leave it, I'll show you."


Main: Braised Lamb Shanks with Plums & "Sultan's Delight"
Serves 4



Lamb Shanks
4 lamb shanks
1 tablespoon tomato paste
1 onion, chopped finely
1 tablespoon sunflower oil
8 plums, fresh, dried, or a mix

Sultan's Delight
2 large aubergines
1 tablespoon flour
1/2 cup whole milk
50g butter
100g mild/medium cheddar, grated

(You can cook this in a pressure cooker, you can cook it in a normal pan over the hob or you can have it in the oven for around 2 hours.)

Heat a pan with sunflower oil. When the oil is hot, sear the lamb shanks. When browned, add the chopped onions. Stir constantly. As the onions turn yellow, add the tomato paste and keep stirring. After a minute or so, add the plums. We used a combination of dried and fresh plums to achieve a fuller, slightly sweet/sour flavour. If in a pressure cooker, add 1/2 cup of water. If in a normal pan or oven, add 1 cup of water, and cook over a low heat.

At NomNomNom, we cooked in a pressure cooker for about 15 minutes and finished that off in the oven at 200C for about another 15 minutes.

Sultan's Delight:

Heat a griddle pan or oven as grill as you can. Make 3 to 4 incisions in the aubergines with a knife. Cook aubergines while turning them intermittently, until all sides are cooked. You can tell this by sticking a fork into it. The fork should go in with no effort, as if it's becoming mash. Do not worry if the outside becomes burnt, this actually improves the flavour.

Once cooked, take the aubergines off the heat and place them in a plastic bag. This helps them separate from their peel. Once cool to touch, peel the aubergines. Using a fork, mash the vegetable to a smooth-ish consistency. Put aside the mash for now.

Melt the butter in a pan. Once melted, add the flour and stir constantly. Keep stirring and cooking until the flour becomes 'cooked', you should be able to tell this by a colour change (from white to yellow - not brown) and a change in smell. Once cooked, add the milk and stir constantly. The consistency should change to creamy. Add the aubergines and stir. Finally, add the cheese and let it melt in the mixture by stirring. It's ready.

You can layer this dish by making a base with Sultan's Delight and placing a lamb shank, along with a few plums on top. Finish off with spooning some of the sauce from the meat on top. Om nom nom.

If you have any problems, call my son. He'll be happy to tell you: "No. You're doing it wrong, let me show you."

Dessert: Roasted Pears with Clotted Cream
Serves 4



4 pears, any kind but preferably firm ones
8 tablespoons sugar
juice of 1/2 lemon
4 tablespoon brandy
16 sour cherries, fresh if you can find them or dry
1 tub clotted cream
1 roasting bag

Peel the pears with a peeler but leave the stalks intact. Using a knife, or a corer, core the pears so that the pips and pulp inside are gone. Try to leave as much of the fruit as you can. Rub the pears with the lemon juice so they don't brown.

Mix the sugar, brandy, the cherries and 1/2 cup of water. Place the mixture into a roasting bag, followed by the pears. Seal the bag and give it a gentle turn so that the pears soak some of the mixture. Put on a tray, pierce a few holes on the top of the bag and place into a preheated oven of 180C. Cook for 20-25 minutes.

Once cooked, bring out of the oven and let cool inside the bag. When ready to serve, take out each pear and place onto a plate, spooning the syrup on top and accompany it with the cherries. Serve with clotted cream.

If you have any problems, call us. We'll be happy to tell you: "No. You're doing it wrong, let me show you." Well, we did say 'Like Mother, Like Son'…


That's about it. We both had a great time at NomNomNom and once again would like to thank Annie and the awesome staff of the Cookery School. Without these guys, NomNomNom wouldn't happen.

So, what can you do now?

Well, for one, you can enter the charity raffle to help Action Against Hunger. There are crazy good prices and it's all for a good cause. Wa-hey!

And if you get another second after that, you could, well...

VOTE FOR US!

Most of the photos by the awesome TikiChris.

Vote for Like Mother, Like Son Here

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Vote Recipe for Disaster in Nom Nom Nom 2010!

And so it was, on the seventh day, in the year of two thousand and ten, the food gods made nom nom nom.

Two intrepid food lovers, Kai and Jon, who spend more time than is probably healthy sharing photos of food on the internet, came together in search of the ultimate glory - a culinary moment to make grown men weep, to bring joy to the darkest soul, to spread happiness where there was only sadness.

In short, they came to cook a three course meal of breathtaking beauty and sophistication (not to mention hubris).

Starter: fennel and orange salad with micro herb dressing

Main: poached cod on a tomato, potato and chorizo stew

Dessert: iles flottantes (that’s floating islands to you and me)

To illustrate the story, we turn to Kai, our humble narrator...

On Sunday afternoons as a kid I would sit cross legged in front of the television ready to listen to Lloyd Grossman introduce Masterchef on television. Fifteen years on, I was sat eagerly in a coffee shop waiting for my partner in crime Jonathan 'Jonno' Waddingham, to take on for a second time other top chefs from the social media scene in a similar challenge.

Armed only with our charm, wit and knowledge of 'Nom Nom Nom', we would spend the day shopping for our ingredients and then cooking a yummy three course meal for four. In summary, we weren’t armed with much.

Fortunately, we were cooking in Portland Place's excellent Cookery School supported by chefs who would then supervise and guide us through our day in the kitchen.

The excitement was palpable:

Arriving in the market our first purchases were the seasonal fennel, tomatoes (varying from small, cheery, and large to dried oak smoked tomatoes), free range organic eggs, line caught cod, and red onions.

The next purchases came from La Fromagerie, where we picked up both cooking chorizo and cooked chorizo, some oranges and plenty of smelly cheese (not cook with, just for us to nom on whilst cooking).

Finally… we picked up in Waitrose some micro herbs (in the form of watercress), milk, some sweet peppers, parsley and potatoes.

Things were looking awesome...

And then the cooking began.

The hardest part of our menu was the dessert, so we started on that first. We were making our floating islands in the style of Raymond Blanc’s mother's recipe – no pressure.

Once Jonno had whisked some egg whites with sugar and lemon juice, we were ready to poach said islands in some gently simmering vanilla-infused organic milk (which would later form the custard).

And if there aren’t any videos of the rest of our meal, it’s because the custard took so long to thicken (after adding 10 egg yolks and sugar to the vanilla milk)...

After such an effort on the dessert, we found time hard to come by at the end, and it was a tiny bit rushed as the clock ran down...

But we made it. And here were our final three dishes:

Starter: fennel and orange salad with micro herb dressing

Prominent internet humourist, Cat Ceiling, wrote of this:

This dish is Nomnipotent. I have been nomnipresent at every Nom Nom nom event, and whilst this menu appeared to be nominous, never have I, as a nomnivore, nommed something so nominally nom-some. Nom.

Main: poached cod on a tomato, potato and chorizo stew

Famous chef Delilah Smith commented, as she waited for the cod to be served (it wasn’t quite ready on time):

“Where are you? Let’s be ‘avin you”

Dessert: ile flottante

Food critic AA Battery, wrote of this:

The undeniable pièce de résistance of their menu was more akin to a heavenly cloud floating on a sea of dreams than a caramel covered poached meringue on a bed of vanilla crème anglaise.

The Blonde commented on the extraordinary consistency of the custard, a velvety, unctuous delight so beautifully textured that it made me look up awesome in my thesaurus. Maman Blanc would be proud, if only it had been Raymond who had created such a tour de cheffing force.

And so there you have it ladies and gentlemen. Team recipe for disaster were not so disastrous after all, and won the world cup spirit of the day prize on the day of Nom, but now they need your votes. And here are some not particularly convincing reasons why...

Please nom nom nominate them...

Vote for Recipe for Disaster here

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Team Greedy (or Slapdash and Detail at the Nom Nom Nom Awards)

Sunday morning on the 11th July saw us cheerfully sweating in a hot kitchen, preparing a three course, seasonal meal for the Nom Nom Noms.

We rocked up at The Cookery School at 9.30am and were greeted with reassuringly strong coffee, warm cheese scones and caraway seed muffins. Om nom nom.

After drawing lots for where we
would be cooking, we were unleashed for shopping at the posh and pricey local farmer’s market. Unhelpfully, the local Waitrose didn’t open until 11am so by about 10.45am a sizable queue of people
with telltale Cookery School bags had built up. We weren’t the only ones though – seems the local residents were also eager to swag their Waitrose fodder early. Seriously – there was a queue. Outside Waitrose.
As soon as the doors were open we performed a speedy supermarket sweep of last minute essentials not available at the market before hot-footing it back to the cookery school for a quick health and safety chat and the kick off of the cook off!

We had two and a half hours to cook three courses for four people. “Oodles of time!” we thought. Oh dear. One of the rules was that one of the three courses had to be raw, with no cooking involved. We ummmed and ahhhed about what this actually meant. Could we get away with dressed crab? It would have been cooked, though not by us... Could we get away with making a jelly? There's some gentle heating involved... We even pondered cerviche, but, living,
as Vic does, with a man who is seriously allergic to fish, we decided this could be a little
hazardous to practise. In the end, we opted for a simple, tasty gazpacho that packs a refreshing garlicy punch. Even with that, we were worried that using bread (it's been baked after all) would be against the raw rules. It turned out, the rules were much more flexible than we feared and it was clear the uncooked course was necessary due to a limit of hob and oven space and pre-cooked ingredients were happily accepted.

For the main, we opted for duck breasts with gooseberry sauce, Pommes Anna and seasonal veg. Talking to our fellow competitors, most people had a course that didn’t go quite to plan and this was definitely ours. We got utterly muddled by the kitchen clock that was set to the
wrong time and so forgot to get our spuds in the oven as quickly as was needed. There we were, lazily brushing the layers with butter, having a natter thinking we were well ahead of schedule and all the while crucial cooking time was slipping by. The Pommes Anna were only just cooked through and didn't quite have time to go deliciously brown on top. Duck breasts are usually a total breeze to cook. Pound together some salt and toasted Sechuan peppercorns in the pestle and mortar and coat the scored skins with the fragrant pepper. Mmmm look, toasting peppercorns:

Then place the duck breasts, skin-side down, in a pan over a low heat to render off most of the fat. Once the rendered fat has been poured off, you whack up the heat to crisp up the skin for a few minutes, before turning it over for a further few minutes to cook through. Once the duck breasts have rested on a warm plate, they should be pink and juicy with a crispy, fragrantly spiced skin. Unfortunately this demands fairly delicate temperature control and neither of us have used an electric hob since Home Economics lessons at school.

We are both firm believers in cooking over flames, and spent a significant portion of our time staring helplessly at the electric hobs, clueless as to their mysteries. Ideally, Vic needed two hobs for the duck - one preheated to high heat and the other on a gentle heat for the rendering of the fat, but with the hobs full of the other contenders' tasty dishes bubbling away, she had to cope with just the one. After 5 minutes in the pan, the duck just didn't seem to be doing anything! Certain choice swear words passed our lips and this moment. After 10 minutes the pan was still barely tepid and the clock was ticking. Vic swapped hobs, deciding to forgo the rendering of the fat and just go for the crispy skin, so bunged it on a hob that had already been turned up to the max for someone else's dish, but still there was no sizzling to be seen. The hob had been turned off instead of up. Eek! Disaster! Through some strange alchemy (which Tamzin

is still in awe of) Vic managed to get the duck cooked in time.

For pud, it just had to be CAKE! We decided on a white chocolate and pistachio cake filled with raspberry mascarpone cream - light and fruity enough for a hot Summer's day, but still indulgent and decadent. The fragrant pistachios cut through the nursery sweetness of the white chocolate to balance out the flavours and make the whole thing feel a bit more grown-up and sophisticated. The raspberry mascarpone cream is rich and creamy, cut through with fresh, sweet and tangy seasonal berries.

The baking of the cake was straightforward enough - and we should hope so too, as Victoria makes wedding cakes for a living. It tasted delicious, though the presentation was a bit slap-dash and last minute.

As a result of our less than perfect time management skills, Tamzin had to build the cake (having never done it before) while Victoria hollered instructions from the other side of the kitchen while simultaneously incanting spells to get the electric hobs hot enough for the duck. In her eagerness, Tamzin added a few too many layers resulting in a vertiginous if decadent looking offering. With about a second to spare, we cut a slice and chucked it on a plate and then scattered around some raspberries in an attempt to posh up the presentation. This was definitely a case of it tasted better than it looked. We just hoped the judges agreed!

In the end, we managed to plate up our three courses with half a sweaty second to spare, but neither of us could pretend it was the best meal we'd ever served. Our duck was surprisingly tasty and tender, our potatoes were very slightly underdone, but still had a nice, buttery, well-seasoned flavour. Our greens – having suffered the same hob-based problems as the duck - were cooked, buttered and plonked on the plate at the eleventh hour. Our gooseberry sauce reduced well, was sweet with a refreshing tart kick and was suitably gooseberry-y. All in all, it could have been worse, but it should have been better. And if we could get in the Back to the Future DeLorean, we would certainly ensure we had left some time for prettifying our plating-up style.

We didn't win, but we had a ball and can’t wait for the chance to compete again next year if we’re able. We got to keep our cookery school aprons and went home with goodie bags, stuffed full of treats. The other teams were lovely and there was a genuine sense of support and camaraderie. After the cook off we got the chance to fill our bellies with plates piled high with the delicious food cooked

by all the excellent contenders. We had our glasses frequently topped up by the lovely staff at The Cookery School, so staggered home very merry little cooks indeed.

We both loved being a part of The Nom Nom Noms and were warmly looked after by the wonderful staff at The Cookery School.

Particular thanks must go to Ros and Claudine for making the day such a total pleasure and a triumph to boot. Also a big thanks to the brilliant Annie for having so much passion, not to mention uber-organisational skills, to make the event such a success and for such a worthy cause: Action Against Hunger.

Action Against Hunger works in over 40 countries to carry out innovative, lifesaving programmes in nutrition, food security, water and sanitation, health and advocacy. Every year, their 6,000 aid workers help over 4 million people worldwide. Please support their amazing work by entering the Nom Nom Nom raffle. For just £10 you could be in the running to win amazing foodie prices and simultaneously give to a thoroughly deserving cause.


Vote for Team Greedy here

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