I was asked to share my recipe for my nougatine with another foodie at yet again another great food experience with my friend Wenying. We went to The Lockhart on Wednesday night to eat New Orleans food (the only place in London) and for the launching of 2 books about life in professional kitchens:
-Sous Chef: Twenty four hours in the kitchen by Michael Gibney
-Chop Chop by Simon Wroe
These two kitchen pros and also food writers told us about their book while we were served delicious food. Everything we ate you can find on their menu, but we had a tasting menu type of serving with a little bit of everything. They served us a huge amount of grits which was good but a bit too filling for this kind of meal. I would definitely recommend their “on demand” baked cornbread, hot and buttery and simply perfect. We were served a slice of muffuletta which was a first for me. I loved it and can imagine eating a whole sandwich easily. The beautiful layers of cheese, and various salamis, with some tapenade type paste, it was moist and delicious! The fried chicken is a classic and must be eaten, so tender and perfectly cooked. And we all loved the rice pudding for dessert!
What made it perfect was the company. Of course Wenying is my food buddy and we always have a good time together, but we were seated at a communal table and shared our meal with Trishia, who lucky her won a ticket for this event. We ended up talking about silicone trays and sheets to cook on, or to knead bread or roll your pastries. And I had to mention my nougatine recipe!
My grandma got me these 2 heat proof silicone sheets to make nougatine, which is basically a very thin layer of caramel. Tricia didn’t think she could do it as she had previous bad experience with caramel, so here is the recipe for you Tricia, I hope you will read this post.
Ingredients and equipment
- 50g granulated sugar
- 1 tsp of sesame seeds (or flaked almonds, or both!)
- 2 pliable silicone sheets
- 1 rolling pin
- 1 heavy base frying pan
Heat a good frying pan, preferably with a thick bottom, until very hot. While it’s heating, prepare your sugar, seeds, silicone sheets and rolling pin so it is all ready to use. When your pan is hot, sprinkle the sugar in an even layer and add on top the sesame seeds. See picture on the left.
When some areas start melting and you can see the bottom of the pan instead of the sugar, you are nearly there, but hang on a little longer! You want to start mixing with a spoon when most of the sugar has melted. See picture on the right.
Combine the non-melted with the caramelised sugar to have a homogenous caramel, when you reach the stage pictured on the left, pour the caramel onto the silicone sheet. Immediately place another silicone sheet on top and roll as hard as you can with the rolling pin to spread the caramel and achieve a very thin sheet of nougatine.
Let it cool down and peel off the top sheet to uncover this amber coloured nougatine. Cut big chunks and serve it with coffee, or make a dust to top ice-cream. I’m thinking about covering a cake with it….look out for future posts!
Noémie's kitchen 
Yay! 🙂 I don’t have silicone sheets, but I can’t wait to try this! 🙂 xx
Thank you Noemie – I really enjoyed meeting you both and am very happy that you included me in your evening. And I will try the nougatine so thank you for posting – it looks amazing. I hope our paths cross again. Trisha 🙂
Great you found the blog! Sorry I didn’t spell your name right, it is all corrected now. Good luck for the nougatine and let me know how it goes- Noemie
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