Wild Life Bakery

December 7, 2023

   

Michael is the primary connoisseur of bakeries in this house, typically picking up a loaf of sourdough after a morning run and sometimes a pastry treat as well. Wild Life Bakery has been one of his favourites over the past few years, and he went the extra step of delivering me a one-of-a-kind pastry while I was hidden away with COVID in the first week of December.

That was the week that Wild Life Bakery made a special suite of goods in collaboration with Melbourne Bushfood. I was treated to the vanilla slice: a thin, flaky, browned rye pastry spread with sweet and sour lilly pilly jam and filled with a thick, rich lemon myrtle custard. It was sublime, even at a time when my appetite was limited (though thankfully my taste buds were intact!). I ate it slowly for breakfast, with a huge cup of tea.

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Wild Life Bakery

90 Albert St, Brunswick East

8060 0547

https://shop.wildlifebakery.com/

Accessibility: Wild Life Bakery has a wide, flat entry and a low counter. Regular-height tables and backed chairs are medium-spaced but don't look very sturdy. Michael ordered and paid at a medium-height counter.

Banh Mi Nights

December 1, 2023

   

Michael noticed Banh Mi Nights when he was cycling down Sydney Rd looking for Good Days Hot Bread (it's across the street) and added it to his to-eat list. I grabbed us some takeaway lunch after an appointment nearby and, with only a couple of seats available, that's clearly what they're designed for. 

Banh Mi Nights has two veg*n options: mock duck and marinated tofu ($10 each), plus a small selection of sweet and drinks. While Good Days HB makes more-is-more banh mi (more variations, more garnishes and condiments, more cost), Banh Mi Nights sticks to the classics: white buns moderately filled with pickled carrot, cucumber, coriander, chunky red chilli on request and a flavoursome protein. It's the ideal light lunch. 

The staff checked whether I was strictly vegan before starting my order, so they're ready to get your dietary requirements right. Sadly I didn't have the set-up to transport Vietnamese iced coffees home, so we'll have to schedule a future visit with time for a close-by park picnic.

   

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Banh Mi Nights

647 Sydney Rd, Brunswick

menu

instagram page

Accessibility: There is a small lip on the door and a flat, spacious interior with just one table up against the wall. I ordered and paid at a low counter (pictured).

Latin baked tofu

November 27, 2023

   

I was all set to make us a dinner based around tofu chicharrones one Monday night, but had forgotten the crucial 'freeze and defrost the tofu' stage. This failure had an upside though, in prompting me to get out Viva Vegan and try something different from a book that we really love but seldom explore these days. I settled on this really simple Latin baked tofu, remembering how much we liked the other baked tofu recipes in the book.

This one is probably the simplest of the lot - a very simple marinade and 45 minutes or so of baking and you get a serve of chewy, tangy tofu, ready for whatever you have planned. We combined it with a serve of the silverbeet with raisins and capers recipe that we've made a bunch of times and popped everything in some tortillas. Perfect Monday night meal.

Latin baked tofu

(slightly adapted from Terry Hope Romero's Viva Vegan)

500g of firm tofu, sliced into ~1cm thick rectangles

2 tablespoons olive oil

1 tablespoon tamari

marinade

1/2 cup white wine

2 tablespoons red wine vinegar

2 tablespoons olive oil

2 tablespoons tomato paste

1 tablespoon tamari

4 cloves garlic, minced

1 teaspoon ground cumin

1 teaspoon dried oregano

Preheat the oven to 200°C. 

Combine the olive oil and tamari in a baking tray (approx 30cm x 20cm, but whatever fits your tofu comfortably). Lay the tofu slices in the baking dish and press into the oil mixture, before flipping them over and repeating - you want them nicely coated. 

Bake the tofu for 20 minutes. 

Meanwhile, thoroughly combine all the marinade ingredients in a bowl. Flip the tofu rectangles and pour the marinade over the top, popping everything back in the over for another 25-30 minutes of baking. The marinade should thicken up or evaporate and the tofu should be firm and chewy. 

Serve, scooping out any leftover marinade for extra deliciousness.

Pasta shells with sweetcorn & green chilli

November 19, 2023

   

On a recent flick through One Pot, Pan, Planet this pasta recipe appealed to me for its warm-weather flavours: corn, basil, green chilli and ricotta. It uses one pot and one pan and, for the sake of the planet, I rounded up several ingredient quantities to suit how they're packaged locally.

There's a lot of washing and chopping involved, but not too much complication. My corn really didn't char as it was intended to, and I think I'll shift from our small-sized cast iron pan to our new-ish wok if I make this again. The basil leaves were gorgeous when dinner was served, but very bitter when I added them to leftovers, so I'll try picking them just one meal at a time.

With very little sauce involved and a dab of cool ricotta, this is a pasta dish that's almost as nice at room temperature as it is fresh and hot, so any leftovers can skip the microwave entirely.

Pasta shells with sweetcorn & green chilli

(slightly adapted from Anna Jones' One Pot, Pan, Planet) 

1 bunch silverbeet/chard, stalks and leaves separated and roughly chopped

2 green chillies, finely chopped

kernels from 3-4 corn cobs, or equivalent frozen kernels

500g packet small pasta shells

olive oil

salt and pepper

250g ricotta

zest and juice of 1 lemon

1 bunch basil, leaves picked

Bring a large pot of water to the boil. Chop the chard and chillies while you wait, and take the corn off the cob. (If you're using frozen corn, cover it with boiling water, then drain when thawed through.) When the water is ready, cook the pasta according to its directions.

While the pasta is cooking, set a frypan over medium heat and lightly cover the base with olive oil. Add the corn kernels and some salt and pepper, cooking until the kernels are tender and starting to brown (take them further than I did!).

Add the silverbeet stalks, cooking for a few minutes, then the silverbeet leaves and the chillies. Continue cooking and stirring regularly until the leaves have wilted.

When the pasta is ready, drain it but retain some of its water in a mug. In either the frypan or the pasta pot, stir the pasta and the corn-silverbeet mixture together. Stir in half the ricotta, and whatever amount of pasta water is needed to spread that ricotta across the pasta (very little, for me). Turn off the heat if you haven't already, and stir in the lemon zest and juice.

Spoon the pasta into bowls, garnishing with the basil leaves and remaining ricotta.

Eat Pierogi Make Love

November 18, 2023

   

One short week later, more pierogi! We noticed Eat Pierogi Make Love setting up shop on Lygon St as we were walking the neighbourhood and walked back for dinner very soon after. It's run by the Pierogi Pierogi team: I remember them best for their lockdown deliveries of frozen dumplings, but twitter also shows evidence that we've been following them around town for a decade.

Where Borsch, Vodka & Tears is dimly lit and cosy, EPML is bright and breezy with open windows onto the street and a courtyard out back. The food is colourful and veg-friendly (and the menu is well-marked for dietary requirements). Among the potato options, we chose and delighted in the gzik ($16, top right of photo): smashed potatoes fried to a crisp, topped generously with twarożek cheese then garnished with dill and pickled onions. We carved up the rainbow kalafior ($14, bottom right of photo), a baked head of cauliflower flavoured with the vegan house sauce and a Polish salsa. 

A plate of pierogi felt mandatory, so we ordered the kapusta pierogi ($22, centre left in the photo), which were stuffed with mushroom and sauerkraut, served on a thick beetroot-tinted sauce, and sprinkled with dill and teeny roasted carrot pieces. The ziemniak pierogi are likely to be a vegan favourite, stuffed with jalapeno, potato & vegan cheese, deep fried and garnished with vegan sour cream and dill. Meanwhile, I've got my eye on the cheesecake with red currant.

My one quibble is that in their commitment to vodka and beer, EPML neglected to list their non-alcoholic drinking options on the menu. This is particularly strange given that they make their own kompot from stewed and brewed Polish fruit.

As you can see in the photo below, Eat Pierogi Make Love has been enthusiastically attended in its opening weeks, and with food this fun and such a summer-friendly setting, I think we're all likely to return for more.

   

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Eat Pierogi Make Love

161 Lygon St, Brunswick East

0431 905 559

food for vodka; small plates, mains, pierogi & toppings; sides & desserts

instagram page

Accessibility: I think there is a flat entry with a shallow ramp (but will check next time I walk by!). Furniture inside is densely packed, a mixture of fixed booths and a high bar with backless stools; we didn't visit the outdoor courtyard or the toilets. We ordered and paid at the bar and received food to our table.

Borsch, Vodka & Tears IV

November 11, 2023 

   

We had a burst of fun visits to Polish restaurant Borsch, Vodka and Tears back in 2006-2007, our first year living in Melbourne, and it hasn't appeared on the blog since! This month we returned for dinner with my mum and her sister Carol, since it was an easy walk to the Astor. (We were there to see the 40th anniversary remaster of Stop Making Sense.)

A little, but not a lot, has changed at BV&T and why would it when they've carved out such a charming niche? The setting is cosy and a little folksy - I love their colourful, mismatched crockery. The menu runs to a dozen pages of alcohol, mostly vodka, with four pages of food tucked at the back (dietary requirements well marked). I figured out how we could best taste small portions of many things and everyone relished the sprawling spread.

The vegetarian Springtime Zakuski ($36) was our foundation: this platter served small samples of many roasted, marinated and pickled vegetables, croquettes and vegan meatballs, teeny blinis, plus a basket of breads, bagel and beetroot butter on the side. From there we added in a plate of Placki Potato Blintzes ($16, with sour cream and sauerkraut) and a dish of porcini & sauerkraut pierogi ($27.50). It was a feast of flavours, and we didn't really mind that we were out of time and stomach room for choc tops at the cinema.

   

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You can read about our one, two, three visits to BVT back in 2006-2007. Between then and now, it's generated positive reviews on blogs PIGGING OUT AROUND THE WORLD, Ichigo Shortcake, The Dodgy End, Sweet & Sour Fork, Eat Play Love Travel, and DANG IT WE LOVE FOOD.

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Borsch, Vodka & Tears

173 Chapel St, Windsor

9530 2694

menu: one, two

https://www.borschvodkaandtears.com/

Accessibility: There is one step up on entry and a narrow corridor through the restaurant. Tables are low, chairs have backs, and they're densely packed throughout the restaurant. It tends to be dimly lit and noisy. We didn't visit the toilets.