Food 2.0 Nom Nom Nom
Sunday I had the pleasure and the honour to be part of a wonderful event, as I was announcing you few days ago!
Nom Nom Nom was a cooking get together of foodies, bloggers, photographers, with a basic common point: we are all geeks! And the prove of that is the many friend request I received (and sent) from FaceBook and Flickr in a matter of few hours after the event!!!
I was teamed with Julia, a leading English Food Blogger and a wonderful companion for an adventure like the one we were going to embark!
We all started in the morning, going to shop for our menus at the Marylebone Farmer Market and nearby supermarket.
The Marylebone Farmer Market was gorgeous, tiny, but with outstanding organic products: fresh, wild salad, red and yellow cherry tomatoes, wild asparagus, free range eggs…
And in the supermarket we found enormous and very tasty raspberries (that were just perfect for our cake), and organic salmon (delicious!).
After the shopping, the fun began! Cooking!!!
We were divided in the two Cookery School floors (outstanding cookery school: so organized, so well equipped!!!): we were upstairs with other 4 teams, dividing space, pans, ovens, hobs!!!
And as we were among English gentlemen and ladies, none of the nasty stuff that normally goes on in professional kitchens were witnessed! Everybody were super nice and helpful, and genuinely curious about everybody else’s food! We functioned like an enormous team of people cooking, at the same time, 12 different dish, form salted to sweet
I witnessed the making of nettles soup, granola, tabouleh, a traditional English dish I can’t remember the name, but was basically a bowl of minced pork with inside an egg then fried: delicious!!!
We started very relaxed: 2 hours and 30 minutes to cook a 3 courses meal for 4 are a lot of time!
Me and Julia, as we had stuff to be made at the beginning and stuff to be cooked at the last minute, had a lot of gaps to chat, take pictures of people cooking and to make biscuit form some left over pastry we made.
But then, in the last 20 minutes we all looked like mad people running around and trying to make everything ready on time!!! Really “Ready Steady Cook!” style!!!
The olive oil we all used was San Lorenzo 100% Italian Extra-virgin Olive oil and as soon as I witnessed sad little pieces of very young parmesan on somebody’s table, I promptly offered San Lorenzo 36 months old Parmigiano Reggiano. Which, honestly, made all the difference!!!
At the end, while the judges where tasting our food, we all got together on the basement of the school and we had the pleasure to taste all the food we cooked! I hadn’t had the possibility to taste everyone food, but the few I tasted were amazing!!!
I especially liked Nicole&Maz’s Haddock casserole and their rose and raspberry foul was amazing!!!
We had then a raffle, raising money for Action Against Hunger.
Among the prices, San Lorenzo Parmigiano Reggiano, San Lorenzo traditional organic pesto and San Lorenzo Organic Spaghetti!
I hope the people who won those prizes are going to enjoying them!!!
And, dulcis in fundo, our menu:
England meets Italy: a blend of italian and English ingredients.
Fresh English greens with English cherry tomatoes, balsamic dressing and Parmigiano Reggiano and Buffalo’s Mozzarella
Organic English salmon with English wild asparagus on a bed of Sicilian Caponata
Crostata with fresh English raspberries, blackberries and strawberries
In the upcoming days, all the recipes and more insight on the day on Julia’s Blog, A Slice of Cherry Pie, and my personal one, The Kitchen Pantry! And on the Nom Nom Nom blog, of course!
And remember, from the 28th may you can vote the best blogging experience of all this! But you already know for who you are going to vote, right? 
P.S. Our team, England meets Italy, won the tasting competition!!! My deepest congratulation to my team mate Julia and kudos to everybody!!!!
