It's no secret that I'm a bit of a George Colambaris fan, though his current stint on Masterchef Australia hasn't had my heart growing any fonder. ("Cook like you're saving the world!"? Really?) Nevertheless, I was pleased when a fellow vegan potlucker sometimes known as Clag admitted his own affection for the man, similarly forged in the afternoon hours of Ready Steady Cook, and investigated the potential for a classy potluckers' meet-up at the Press Club.
Once we were seated at our table, out came the bread! Tender and tasty, I tried to restrain myself as I anticipated the courses to come. It was difficult, though - this was really good bread.
The waitress called these saganaki martinis. Watermelon skewers straddle shot glasses filled with a 'Greek salad' of tomato consomme and finely chopped cucumber. The second skewery mouthful was of rockmelon and peppered fig (just like the peppered fig served at Hellenic Republic). Though the flavours were certainly pleasant, I think it was the novelty of the arrangement that impressed us and had us excitedly wondering what might come next.
The second official course was probably the highlight, with happy disagreements ricocheting around the table as to which component was the best. Sarah was most impressed by the smoked beetroot with pomegranate vinaigrette, Lisa loved the delicate daikon that wrapped itself around a second 'modern Greek salad', while Clag, Michael and I were gobsmacked by the ladyfinger with moussaka, a feather-light filo pastry with a silky centre of savoury zucchini. I tried to genteelly slice it up, but it really needed to be picked up and relished as a finger food.
Course #3 sent some ripples around the table. A few avowed tomato-haters weren't happy to see their nemesis so prominently on display, but at least gave it a try. These tender tomatoes contained a sweet stuffing of couscous, dried fruit and nuts, and sat amid a bean puree. Sadly this was the most protein we were to see all night.
The stuffed tomatoes arrived with two 'sides' - the first was this eggplant, disintegrating deliciously into olive oil and warm spices, served at room temperature. Reminding me of my favourite Indian-style eggplant curries, I would have preferred to eat this warm but I ate it very happily all the same.
A cabbage salad with a bright and citrusy dressing rounded out the course.
The fourth course featured large and juicy mushrooms, stuffed with rice and herbs.
On the side, a bowl of lemon kipfler potatoes. I wasn't especially impressed by these, though I know a couple of my vegan potlucker peers will disagree.
Also appearing in round 4 was the third and final Greek salad. Toby loved the way they prepared the cucumber, removing the seeds and chopping the flesh into chunky curls.
Finally came dessert - a quince crumble topped with a delicate dollop of soy sorbet. (House-made soy sorbet, just for us!) The crumble was hearty and homely, and many of us failed to finish it. The problem was the soy sorbet - it tasted spectacular, cut through the crumble perfectly, but was too small to spread across the entire dish. Not having been offered coffee or other drinks at this stage, we toyed with our sweet but dry crumbles and dreamed of second and third helpings of the sorbet.
June's calendar recipe promised to be a winter warmer - sauerkraut chowder. Utterly different to the soups that Michael and I typically make, it features potatoes, onion and, of course, sauerkraut. It gets its creaminess from evaporated milk and cream cheese and the flavour is pepped up with a little horseradish (I used more of the horseradish cream that we bought for a previous calendar recipe). It's definitely a filling and rich brew. It'll be a while before I'm brave enough to plonk an entire block of cream cheese into soup again, but I'd like to transfer the evaporated milk idea to other recipes.
More biscuits to share round a seminar in the lab - these are eggless, butterless white chocolate macadamia cookies that Hungry Hamster posted quite some time ago. I suspect I initially bookmarked the recipe for its vegan potential but I ended up stirring dairy-riddled white chocolate chips into the dough.
Kristy has been blogging and telling anyone who will listen about the vegan pandan 'chicken' she discovered at a local supermarket a few months ago. So, when I noticed them at my own nearby supermarket I was compelled to pick up a packet, even though my freezer was already bursting with mock meats.
I'm glad I did. These Veaty Bites take very little time to bake from their frozen state, and they taste delicious. Having never sampled the real deal, I've no idea whether they're a convincing imitation. But these mock meat parcels are incredibly fragrant, with a sharp lemongrassy earthiness and heating burst of chilli. They'd make a fun little finger food at a party, though I used them to top a salad. It was a whatever's-in-the-fridge mix of baby spinach leaves, grated zucchini and corn kernels, dressed with chives, ginger oil, vegetarian oyster sauce and apple cider vinegar.
This is also a good time for another giveaway, right? Up for grabs are a couple of winter-friendly items that we've recently been enjoying ourselves - a copy of Soup For All Seasons, written by Las Vegan's Lia Vandersant and Liam Davies, and a canister of Monsieur Truffe Hot Dark Chocolate Mix.
This Sunday night dinner looks more like a big vegan breakfast! Here's what we ate...
On Sunday I visited some family friends that, by my calculation, I haven't seen in 13 years. And of course I couldn't contemplate going empty-handed, so I baked these biscuits. They had a few things going for them. They'd been posted on Orangette a few months ago, a blog that had already supplied us with one winning dinner that week. I was (gasp!) a little weary of chocolate. And then, instead of chocolate, these were studded with pecans, which I already had sitting happily in the pantry.
Having not seen him in person for several years, Michael and I were quite surprised to discover that Michael's dad would be visiting Melbourne twice in one month. We cooked for him the first time and decided to try a new restaurant with him on his second visit. I suggested Red Spice Road on the basis of Adski's recent rave review, though I was aware that experiences have been mixed. While Claire enjoyed the lunch special, Dan liked the banquet and JamesBluntKnife loved the service, Melbies/Foodies were less impressed and Ed's initial review had him 'respectfully' uninvited to their launch party.
I didn't exactly enter Red Spice Road in the best frame of mind - I was two days into a headache that could not be tamed and alcohol was out of the question. But there, on the second page of the drinks menu, Michael drew my attention to a range of fabulous-sounding mocktails. Big points to Red Spice Road! Even bigger points when my Chi chi ($8) arrived - this concoction of roasted pineapple, hazelnut, pineapple juice, vanilla and lemon tasted terrific, sweet and tangy with a marshmallowy foam.
Only a small proportion of the menu is veg-friendly but it's well marked. Michael picked out the tofu stir fried with spinach, sesame, eggplant, green onion and sweet soy ($26). I liked the silky textures but was pretty underwhelmed by the mild, salty flavour.
For our other main, we shared the green papaya, cashew, coriander, cucumber, chilli and lime salad ($22). It had a more noticable chilli kick, but not the right balance of sweet, sour and salty to counteract it. 'Twas no match for the vibrant green papaya salad we ate at Gingerboy.
Red Spice Road redeemed itself once more at dessert time. Ron politely declined anything more than a coffee and Michael said he'd "just have a bite of whatever you have", but ultimately I had plenty of assistance in polishing off the lychee jam doughnuts, chilli syrup and coconut sorbet ($14) - a perky combination of flavours and comforting, winter's night textures.
In the face of mixed blog reviews, all we can offer you regarding Red Spice Road is... a mixed blog review. While I was delighted by my mocktail and dessert, the vegetarian mains left us cold. Though it's not without its own flaws, I'd be more inclined to revisit Gingerboy, another Asia-inspired city restaurant with $30 mains, than return here; Ed compares it instead to Longrain, which we haven't visited. Either way there's a sense that at this price, we can expect a little better.
Last week Brian from Fitzroyalty made a bold claim - that Juanita's offers the best breakfast in Fitzroy. To be honest, I wasn't even aware that Juanita's offers breakfast! I only knew it as the place selling Latin-style sweets 'til all hours, which I'd been vaguely intending to sample for some time. Could its morning meals outdo such heavyweights as Babka, Ici, Julio and Min Lokal?
It certainly offers some stiff competition. Michael loved the Huevos Rancheros ($12.50) - two sunny-side-up fried eggs with gooey yolks, avocado, kidney beans, corn tortillas and a 'rancho style' sauce that Michael couldn't stop talking about.
Meanwhile, I tucked into the Reina Andaluz ($6.50) - a lemon and cinnamon creamed rice pudding served with orange and passionfruit. The rice was drier and firmer than I've known in other rice puddings (this one excepted), but it had a lovely vanilla flavour and was offset nicely by the tangy, juicy fruit. I would have liked to have even a little more fruit, but I happily polished off this bowlfull and was satisfied for hours afterwards.
The breakfast menu isn't long but it offers something different to most of the local cafes and is very reasonably priced. All seven items are either vegetarian or veg-adaptable; even the empanadas listed on the blackboard include two vegetarian fillings. The preponderance of eggs will constrain vegans, though I've heard a rumour that the churros are safe! And the churros are just the beginning of the tempting sweets on offer at Juanita's. A closer look at the display cabinet had me resolving more firmly than ever that I'd be back for dessert.
As part of my thirtieth birthday present, Cindy cleverly got me a stick-blender. Exciting isn't it? Maybe not immediately, but if you'd spent many hours exhausting your repertoire of creative curse-words trying to transfer hot soup between a huge saucepan and a small food processor, you'd appreciate the thoughtfulness. I'd dashed out of the country post-birthday without a chance to take it for a test-run, so for my first full day back in Melbourne I was all set to crank out some soup.
These were pretty impressive - soft yolked eggs and a swirl of well-combined flavours. I missed butter for my toast, but there's really no need for it when you're dunking it in an eggy mess. I think I've developed something of a crush on labne - it's use in Min Lokal's baked eggs first sucked me in, and these finished the job. For the record, I reckon Min Lokal's are still slightly better, but there's no shame coming second to my favourite breakfast in Melbourne.
Cindy bafflingly maintains her anti-coffee agenda, instead ordering a banana smoothie ($7). It was enjoyable, but not $7 enjoyable. Unless they're using diamond-studded bananas, I suspect we could make our own version of this for about $2.50. That'll teach her to boycott coffee.
For her breakfast, Cindy went the healthy route: strawberry & watermelon salad with rosewater, mint, pomegranate & yoghurt ($11). In a similar vein to my breakfast, this was excellent but suffered from comparison. Cindy couldn't help comparing this dish with the watermelon salad at Hellenic Republic, which she thought was marginally more enjoyable.
I think the real reason that Cindy had been keen to visit Cumulus Inc was the possibility of breakfast dessert. They have a cabinet chock-full of scrumptious looking sweet treats, but we couldn't go past the baked-to-order breakfast madeleines filled with lemon curd ($2.50), which have been raved about elsewhere. They're well worth the 15 minute wait.
Last winter I tried my hand at porridge. This winter I've graduated to porridge using steel-cut oats. If you're not acquainted with steel-cut oats then read these posts by VeganYumYum and FatFree Vegan Kitchen - this is where I first discovered them. Then I discovered 'em in the flesh (or grain, rather) at Habib Wholefoods on Flinders St over summer.
I've got my eye on the leftover dried figs and walnuts in the cupboard, too.
I enjoyed Maggie's semolina gnocchi so much that a mere week after my first attempt, I baked a second double-sized batch. This time I cooked up my own sauce, inspired by a sun-dried tomato gnocchi sauce at Cafe Italia, containing:
This year's Good Food & Wine Show has earned its share of publicity, most of it owing to a potty-mouthed, misogynist import. For accounts of the rest of the fest, the blogosphere's got it covered - Nutmeg, Ellie, Shellie and AOF have all posted their perspectives. I was lucky enough to score a ticket from Neil of At My Table, which included entry to a Cheesematters Masterclass.
I still haven't worked out exactly who or what Cheesematters are. I gather that they are an organisation devoted to promoting cheese, sponsored by several Australian cheese/dairy companies. Their brief in the masterclass is clearer - a 45-minute tour of cheese, matched wine and other nibbly bits. In addition to several dairy brands, this was sponsored by wine companies, a glace fruit business, a kitchenware company and even a clothing company (who dressed our hosts). This abundance of partners and promotion no doubt explains why we were provided with such a lavish spread for $30 per ticket.
It was all utterly delicious. Though the blue cheeses weren't liked by all, my own uneasy relationship with them was on good terms this day. However my slow eating was challenged by the short session, and my low threshold for alcohol was challenged further by the 10am start! Gulping down the bottled water, I managed to maintain my equilibrium, gratefully accept a showbag (including a DVD, glossy book and the inevitable promo brochures), and return to the main show floor.
Another recipe knocked off my to-bake list and shared around during a lab seminar - these are Nikki's healthy cookies, as published on Heidi's 101 Cookbooks. I was rather keen to try them now that I have my own jar of coconut oil - Heidi's been featuring nourishing baked goods with increasing frequency and the few I've tried have all been gobbled up with gusto. These were no exception, with the batch vanishing within the hour. I must admit that they weren't my favourite of the lot; the no-added-sweetener formula really showed when I used 70%-cocoa chocolate. They were very heavy on the oats, too... perhaps the real underlying problem was a shortage of mashed banana. Don't let my fussing put you off, though - these received their share of compliments after the more academic themes of the day had been discussed.