Here Fishy Fishy

Update 12/06/2023: Here Fishy Fishy is now closed.

March 18, 2022

   

Our mate Toby recommended the vegan options at Here Fishy Fishy in Newport earlier this summer after we'd had a swim at Williamstown beach. We were impressed, and delighted to learn that there's an outlet in Brunswick East too. I'm trying to sneak in a few more picnic dinners before daylight savings end, so Michael and I agreed to grab some Here Fishy Fishy takeaway after work on Friday. There's a small park conveniently located just across the street for picnicking.

The vegan options are scattered throughout the menu and are well-labelled (gluten-free options are more of a mystery). The vegan fish ($9) is battered jackfruit and it's served with a generous portion of good chips. The jackfruit is lighter and flakier then your average mock fish (such as the super-rich slabs sold in Northcote) but isn't seasoned with anything more than salt, meaning that it doesn't quite rival the Brother Bon gold standard. Hence, sauce is important, and the vegan one comes in 'normal' (aioli-style) and 'spicy' varieties ($1.50 each).

We skipped past the salads (garden, non-vegan Greek, maybe-vegan rainbow, non-vegan halloumi) and Michael took on the vegan chicken burger ($12.50), which is a Toby fave. We didn't know the patty brand, but it's the standard and welcome crumbed style that's increasingly easy to access in supermarkets, layered with lettuce, tomato, and your choice of vegan sauce. For veg*ns who don't care for mock meat, there's a vegetarian corn cake patty and vegan lentil patty available too.

We forgot to get potato cakes ($1.50), but it was probably for the best - we'd eaten plenty already. How lucky we are to have vegan versions of these nostalgic foods so readily available in our neighbourhood.

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Here Fishy Fishy

79 Holmes St, Brunswick East

9384 0434

menu 1, 2

https://www.herefishyfishy.com.au/

Accessibility: There is a small step on entry, and a large clear area for viewing the menu and ordering. A small number of low tables with backed chairs are placed inside and out on the footpath. We ordered and paid at a low counter, and received our food outside.

Coconut, almond & blueberry cake

March 13, 2022

   

Three years ago, I baked a housewarming cake for our friends Simon and Noni. We had such a nice time delivering and sharing the cake and meeting their new puppy that I suggested the same again when they moved this month. The cycle is a teeny bit further and the puppy is now enormous. I chose a coconut, almond and blueberry cake from Goh & Ottolenghi's Sweet for morning tea.

This cake uses melted butter and doesn't need an electric mixer so it's easy to stir together (and therefore it's no bother to your neighbours if you happen to have slept weirdly and commenced prep at 5:40am). It has the distinct moist crumb of a cake based on almond meal plus extra flavour from desiccated coconut; there's a little plain flour in there too, so it's not actually gluten-free. The butter caramelises the crust, it's all shot through with bright blueberries, and the cake is crowned with toasty almond flakes. 

It is an excellent cake that's feels a bit fancy but is actually very unfussy. I'm sure it could be veganised  and/or de-glutened with your favourite butter, egg and flour replacements. (That said, we've also got a great lemon and blueberry loaf recipe just sitting here being vegan from the get-go.)

   

Coconut, almond & blueberry cake

(very slightly adapted from Helen Goh & Yotam Ottolenghi's Sweet)

spray oil

180g almond meal

60g desiccated coconut

250g caster sugar

70g plain flour

1 teaspoon baking powder

1/4 teaspoon salt

4 eggs

200g butter, melted, at room temperature

1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla

zest of 2 lemons

200g fresh blueberries

2 tablespoons flaked almonds

Preheat an oven to 180°C. Line a springform cake tin with baking paper and lightly spray it with oil.

In a large mixing bowl, stir together the almond meal, coconut, sugar, flour, baking powder and salt.

In a medium mixing bowl, lightly beat together the eggs. Gradually whisk in the melted butter, then the vanilla and lemon zest. Pour this mixture into the large mixing bowl of dry ingredients and mix until almost combined. Fold in 150g of the blueberries until the cake batter is fully combined.

Pour the cake batter into the tin, lightly smoothing over the top. Sprinkle over the remaining blueberries and the flaked almonds. Bake the cake for 50-55 minutes, until a skewer comes out clean.

Give the cake plenty of time to rest before removing it from the tin and serving - the original recipe recommends 30 minutes, and mine was still warm and soft in the middle after a couple of hours resting and being cycled to its destination!

Paradisescape

March 11, 2022

   

We noticed a new veg*n restaurant pop up on Sydney Road late last year on our regular walks to and from the local supermarket. We've not really been eating in at restaurants, and it took us a month or two to think of ordering delivery from this one. Now a month or two beyond that, we were ready to visit for a quiet, early dinner at Paradisescape. 

The casual and cheerful fit-out with exposed bricks, block colours and decorative plastic plants fits a common theme in the local veg*n restaurant scene, calling to mind Mamma Says, The Origin Tales, Brother Bon and Loving Hut West Melbourne. The menu spans familiar but welcome territory, too: steamed bao and battered cauliflower 'wings' to start, burgers and wraps, superfood bowls, stir-fries, gnocchi and a parma. An arepa plate is more unusual, and the mock fish tacos seem to be an emerging veg*n trend - if I hadn't spent the week eating home-made lentil tacos one of these would have my immediate choice. It's all overwhelmingly vegan - an extra-cost egg on the bibimbap and cheaper default-dairy on the coffees seem to be the only exceptions. Gluten-free options are similarly well-marked and cover almost half the menu.

   

Ultimately I chose two entrees in lieu of a main. The steamed Korean bao ($8.50) was a tasty but messsssy bundle of eggplant tempura, kimchi, pickled pink cabbage, chipotle mayo and fresh coriander.

   

The chicken dumpling ($10.50) filling didn't make a strong impression on me, though its dipping sauce was terrific! Salty, sweet, spicy and aromatic with ginger and alliums.

   

Michael revisited the stir fry Peking duck with noodles ($20), which we'd already enjoyed as a delivery. It's a filling plate featuring Hokkien noodles, a variety of thinly-sliced vegetables, mock-duck strips and a sauce that's sweet, sour, and lightly spiced. 

   

In our home-delivered meal, we were also impressed by the cauliflower wings with miso-maple sauce, and a massaman curry of mock chicken and assorted vegetables. In the short term, it'll most likely be through takeaway that we continue to explore Paradisescape's menu. It's nice and kinda funny that our local neighbourhood is now bracketed by them another casual vegan gem, The Origin Tales.

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Paradisescape has received positive coverage on messy veggies.

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Paradisescape

51 Sydney Rd, Brunswick

9492 2888

food, drinks

https://www.paradisescape.com.au/

Accessibility: There is a shallow ramp on entry and a decent-width corridor through the centre of the restaurant, but most tables are densely packed together. There is a mixture of low tables with backed chairs and high tables with backless and backed stools. We ordered at our table and paid at a high counter. We didn't visit the toilets.

Sweet potato & gochujang pasta bake

February 28, 2022

   

Michael and I agreed that we wanted a pasta dinner last week, and I had the energy for trying something new. I initially mistook this Meera Sodha recipe as a vegan mac'n'cheese since it includes ingredients like cashews, nooch and starchy veges, which often pop up in such recipes. But Sodha makes no such claim and I think that's wise. This is a fun, tasty pasta bake that doesn't evoke cheesiness.

Instead it's mostly warmly spiced, starchy comfort. The macaroni's main co-star is sweet potato, which is chopped and simmered to softness with cashews and garlic, before being blended into a smooth sauce with nutritional yeast flakes. A big spoonful of gochujang adds heat, colour, and that distinct funk of fermentation. 

I aimed to neatly use up a whole 500g bag of macaroni so I roughly multiplied ingredients by 1.5 as I worked through the recipe, though I forgot in a couple of cases! (I've fixed that up in the version below.) Surprisingly, the smaller quantity of water didn't cause any problems with the sauce. The original weight of breadcrumbs was all I had on hand anyway, so there was nothing to be done about that. The few breadcrumbs I did have were perhaps my favourite part of the recipe! They came from the dried-out end of a sourdough loaf, crisped up beautifully, and tasted so good in this sprinkling mix with spring onions, garlic and salt.

The one draw-back of this recipe is that it make a lot of dirty dishes - a pasta saucepan, a colander, a sweet potato saucepan, a sieve, a food processor/blender, a frypan, a baking tray. On the other hand, it supplied food for days and days. We always ate it teamed with a simple salad of mixed green leaves, sugar snap peas (which are in season and really good around here at the moment!), and a leftover pomegranate molasses dressing.

Sweet potato & gochujang pasta bake

(slightly adapted from a Meera Sodha recipe in The Guardian)

500g macaroni

sunflower oil

1 large sweet potato

4-5 cloves garlic

150g cashews, roasted and unsalted

1 1/2 tablespoons gochujang

3 tablespoons plain flour

4 tablespoons nutritional yeast flakes

3 spring onions

90g breadcrumbs

Fill a large saucepan with water and bring it to the boil. Add the macaroni and cook it for 2 minutes less than advised on the packet. Drain the pasta, then stir through a little sunflower oil to prevent it from sticking together.

While the pasta is cooking, peel the sweet potato and chop it into 1 cm cubes. Place it in a separate saucepan, adding 3 peeled cloves of garlic and the cashews. Add water to cover, bring it all to the boil, and then simmer the sweet potato mixture for 10 minutes.

Preheat an oven to 200°C. 

Drain the sweet potato mixture and place it in a blender or food processor. Add 3 cups water, the gochujang, flour, nooch and a teaspoon or two of salt. Blend the mixture until it's as smooth as possible. Pour the sauce into the larger of the saucepans and add the pasta back in, stirring to thoroughly combine. Turn the pasta mixture out into a large, high-walled baking tray.

Finely chop the spring onions and mince the remaining garlic. Set a frypan over high heat and add 2-3 tablespoons sunflower oil. Fry the spring onions for a minute, then add the garlic and fry for a further two minutes. Add the breadcrumbs and a generous pinch of salt, and fry until they start to turn golden.

Spoon the breadcrumb mixture across the top of the pasta and bake everything for 20 minutes, until very golden on top. Allow the bake to rest for 5 minutes before serving with a side of greens.

Pandy Bakeshop

17/06/2023: Pandy is now closed.

February 26, 2022

   

Michael was travelling through Northcote on Sunday morning and he stopped in at Pandy Bakeshop to see what treats they had on offer. Pandy is an all-vegan, gluten-free-friendly bakery that's been operating within Baketico for just under a year and this was our first taste of it. There are typically five different individually-portioned kinds of sweet plus a few cakes sold by the slice.

Incredibly, Michael delivered three treats home by bike with no more damage than a single jam smear. This came from what appears to be a signature Pandy dish, the gluten-free fairy bread lamington. This pink cube was neat, light and very sweet - the equal of any gluteny, eggy analogue. The raspberry blondie had the texture of a dense, moist cake and its streak of raspberry jam reminded me happily of the jam tarts and buns I ate in suburban and country bakeries as a kid. The Biscoff and white chocolate cookie was huge, soft and dense like the blondie, with a subtle gingerbread vibe.

I was deeply impressed by the execution of all these goods and I'll be making any excuse to stop by again and try more from Pandy.

   

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Pandy has also be blogged by Cruella DeVegan.

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Pandy Bakeshop

62 High St, Northcote

0478 226 463

https://www.pandybakeshop.com/