White beans & cabbage

January 22, 2012

During those lovely days in Hobart, we had a commitment to attend to back home. Our previous vege delivery included an enormous cabbage - seriously, it was probably 2-3 litres capacity - and it was sitting in our crisper waiting to be eaten. We had ample time on Sunday afternoon to deal with it.

I was kinda bored with coleslaw, and spring rolls aren't the best work lunch leftovers. I wondered whether my newest cookbook included anything fun to do with cabbage, checked out the index, followed through to page 86 and realised I'd been over-thinking it. This lovely looking cabbage dish graces the cover of Super Natural Every Day!

It's the kind of dish Heidi does often and well - a bunch of fresh produce tossed together in a frypan, served up and sprinkled with a little something. In this case the produce is mainly cabbage, white beans and potatoes. I was a little wary of getting the potatoes completely cooked through purely by sautéing them for 8 minutes and was careful to cut them really small (cubes with no more than a 1cm side). This worked just fine. It's really important to wait out the frying as directed and build a golden crust on the potatoes and beans, 'cause this is where most of the fine flavour comes from. Of course a sprinkling of parmesan helps the flavour along too. As a vegan alternative, I'd suggest some extra salt, a bit of nooch or some of this stuff.

The recipe below is a double quantity on Heidi's version, since we had a lot of cabbage to get through. While her book predicts that this should serve eight, the two of us got a dinner and a lunch out of it each. We've got an appetite for cabbage that I never imagined.

White beans & cabbage
(adapted slightly from a recipe in Heidi Swanson's
Super Natural Every Day)

1/3 cup olive oil
230g potatoes, scrubbed but left unpeeled and sliced into tiny cubes
salt, to taste
2 x 400g cannellini beans
450g cabbage, finely shredded
a small handful of chives, roughly chopped
parmesan cheese, finely grated (optional)

Pour the oil into a very large frying pan over medium-high heat. Add the potatoes and a generous pinch of salt, tossing them to coat in the oil. Cover the frypan with a lid and give the potatoes 5-8 minutes to cook through, tossing them once or twice more along the way so that they don't burn but do develop a nice golden crust.

Add the beans to the pan and leave it uncovered, but go for the same cooking approach for a few minutes - leave the beans still to develop a golden edge, then toss it all around for a new crust on another side. Stir in the cabbage and chives, stirring and cooking until the cabbage just starts to soften. Serve it all up with a sprinkling of parmesan or some extra salt.

Pilgrim Coffee

January 19 & 22, 2012

I did a bit of coffee planning before we got to Hobart, discovering that we were going to be staying close by to two good options: Dr Coffee and Pilgrim. Dr Coffee served me a couple of excellent soy flat whites over the course of the week, but Pilgrim turned out to be the real star. Our penchant of holiday oversleeping meant that we were in need of speedy brekkies on two mornings, and Pilgrim's selection of pre-made goodies and top-notch coffee hit the mark perfectly.

On the Thursday morning we had just enough time to grab takeaway coffees and quick breakfasts to chomp down on our way to the MONA ferry. My half-sandwich of haloumi, caramelised onion and a free-range egg ($4) was outstanding - the sweet onion really standing out. It's a messy meal though - I wouldn't recommend eating and walking.

Cindy grabbed the bircher muesli with roast nectarine ($6.50), which was more transportable but maybe not quite as delicious. It was fine, but Cindy was hoping for more than just the sliver of nectarine on top.

We were back there before our flights on Sunday morning with a bit more time (props to Pilgrim for being one of a few Hobart cafes trading early on a Sunday), so we sat down this time. Like Garagistes, it's a very Melbourne-inspired fit-out: all post-industrial stylings and hip vibes.

I had another haloumi roll, but this time got greedy and combined it with a $5 bean burrito.

Once this comes out of the sandwich press it's less burrito and more a toastie. There's a good spread of hearty beans, a few slices of lightly melted cheese and a mild tomato-y salsa holding it all together. A fiver well spent.

Cindy had the roast pumpkin, haloumi and lemon zest foccacia ($9).

I snuck a quick bite of this and it was lovely, the lemon zest cutting through the sweet pumpkin and salty cheese. Good stuff.

I had a bunch of coffees from Pilgrim over the week - all were excellent. The staff were super friendly and it was a lovely, quiet space to hang out in while we waited for our flight back to Melbourne, where a place like this would be overrun with people at all hours. Hopefully the locals take a shine to this place and it thrives, 'cause we loved it.

That's the end of our Hobart posts. I can't emphasise enough what a great time we had - from the wonders of MONA and the excitement of FOMO, to the amazing tall eucalypt forests (featuring waterfalls and wild platypus!) and all of the glorious food we ate, everything about our five days in and around Hobart was spectacular. Same time next year?

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It seems that only Bri Eats has reviewed Pilgrim so far - other bloggers should swing by!

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Pilgrim Coffee

48 Argyle Street, Hobart
(03) 6234 0558
Brekkie treats: $4 - $9
https://www.facebook.com/#!/pages/Pilgrim-Coffee/151027994966336?sk=info

Accessibility: Pretty good - there's a flat entryway and the interior is relatively spacious. Ordering and payment happens at the counter, which varies in height. Strangely there are no toilets at all - the nearest are 'round the corner in the supermarket complex.

Garagistes

April, 2015: Garagistes has closed down. 

January 21, 2012

There have been a bunch of articles published lately about the trendy new Hobart. All of them have mentioned two things: MONA and Garagistes. Having tried and loved the first, we arranged with Liz and Carla to meet up pre-P. J. Harvey to sample the second. Garagistes has imported both its refitted warehouse vibe and its no-bookings policy from the trendier parts of the Melbourne dining scene. We turned up around 6 and had about an hour's wait for a table (for a group of 6), but the Saturday evening of MOFO is probably among their busiest nights, so it may not always take quite so long. Given the buzz, the fit-out is surprisingly spacious - it's mostly big communal tables but you don't feel jammed in or overpowered by noise, which gives it a big tick straight away.

The menu, which proudly proclaims their focus on local ingredients, is not amazingly veg-friendly at first glance. There's 3 sharing dishes and a little starter to choose from - the wait-staff were pretty helpful though, happily making suggestions and offering to change dishes around for us (Carla will have some comments on their vegan-friendliness, from where I was sitting they did an okay but not amazing job).

We started with the obligatory bread with deliciously smoky butter. So much wonderful butter.

The first of the real dishes was our courgette kromeskis with caper-leaf mayonnaise and fennel salt ($3.5 a pop).

Look how cute they are! They were also super hot - Cindy chomped into hers and managed to burn the roof of her mouth. Once they'd cooled a bit they were wonderful - crispy on the outside, filled with gooey zucchini mush. Yum.

Next up was the wood-grilled reine de france lettuce hearts with soaked currents and puffed spelt ($14).

I liked the idea of this dish - the grilled edges giving a nice charred flavour to the lettuce, while the puffed spelt and currents provide a bit of sweetness and textural variety. To be honest though, it got a bit much for me by the end - one or two lettuce hearts as a side dish would have been wonderful.

The most visually appealing dish of the day was the carrots - a salad of heirloom carrots, marcona almond and saffron cream with wild olives ($16).

It was also probably my favourite dish - the carrots had been very lightly cooked, meaning that all of their beautiful natural flavours shone through, the creamy sauce provided a bit of fatty depth to the dish and the olives were little bursts of salty goodness.

Our second last savoury dish was the grilled young leek with French beans, nettle sauce, duck egg yolk and toasted quinoa ($18).

This was a nice mix of greenery with a tender leek hidden under it all. The crispy little quinoa pieces were intriguing, and the duck egg yolk was spot on. Not bad at all.

Finally for the evening we had a little twist on one of their dishes, with fennel, lemon and pine-nuts replacing the original sea urchin roe alongside confit kipfler potatoes, pea tendrils and flowers and black egg yolk ($19).

This was another very pretty dish, but it wasn't particularly memorable taste-wise - although that may be related to the number of delicious Moo-Brews I'd made my way through by this stage. The spuds were lightly cooked, and the lemon and fennel gave the dish a nice flavour - the pea tendrils and flowers didn't bring a lot to the table beyond their good looks though. I wonder if this all works a bit better with the original roe included.

Cindy and I were both really keen to sample some of Garagistes desserts, but by the time we'd finished our savouries we were already running late for P.J. Despite the queues that built up around the front of the restaurant during the night, the whole experience at Garagistes was pretty leisurely. You certainly don't get the feeling they're trying to rush you though to get somebody else in. The service on the whole was excellent - happy to split bills and tweak dishes for us and generally being helpful without being intrusive. The food was generally pretty great - lots of fresh veggies served up in imaginative ways. Not all of it was amazing, but it's definitely worth a visit for vegos looking for something a bit fancy (I'd choose it over The Source for example). It's a pity we didn't get to the desserts - a good reason for us to return next time we're in town.

Oh, P. J. Harvey was wonderful, but the venue made seeing her pretty challenging and the crowd decided to chat their way through the whole set, which was kind of a downer.

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Garagistes has been a food blog hit - great reviews from Welcome to Andyville, Hobart Food for Thought (after an initial mixed experience), Saucy Onion, redheadedtravels, bri eats, ...it pleases us, Once a Waitress, The Drill Hall Emporium, Food Trail, That Jess Ho, Concrete Honey, Nellevision, Reminiscence of a Food Tragic, Diary of a Hobart Housewife, Convicted Taste, The view from my porch and Kitchen Confessional. Only Black Garlic has been a bit more equivocal.

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Garagistes
103 Murray Street, Hobart
(03) 6231 0558
Veg snacks $3.50, dishes $14-$19
http://www.garagistes.com.au/

Accessibility: Pretty good - there's a flat entryway and the interior is relatively spacious. Bathrooms are accessible and ordering and payment all happens at the table. Note, however, that most of the tables are a bit higher than usual (see chair heights in top picture).

Sweet Envy

January 21, 2012

On Em's recommendation, we hiked up to North Hobart for afternoon tea at Sweet Envy. This prim white shopfront boasts all manner of sugary treats - from the ubiquitous cupcakes and macarons to candy, ice-cream, fancy desserts and made-to-order weddings-birthdays-anything cakes.

After a few panicky minutes overwhelmed with choice, I dismissed the frosting-heavy cupcakes and requested the Nutter Butter ($3.50), two peanut cookies sandwiched with peanut butter buttercream. The peril of the crunchy cookie is that it's impenetrable to the dessert fork and all the icing squishes out the middle - I was forced to deconstruct this, and discovered in the process that the buttercream didn't taste of peanut butter at all. The roasted peanuts, at least, added some depth to a very sweet snack.

Michael's raspberry jam doughnut ($3.50) was pleasant, but had inevitably been sitting on display for at least a few hours. Doughnuts really are best eaten within minutes of cooking, aren't they?

Based on the many other reviews of Sweet Envy out there (see below), we may have been a bit unlucky in our selections. It's not surprising that when dozens of different sweets are on offer, some will be better than others. The icecream here, in particular, has a very good reputation and would surely show up the terrible Cold Rock cups we sampled a couple of days earlier.

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Other blog posts about Sweet Envy are all positive, though some individual items have caused disappointment. Check out Provender Prattle, Rita's Bite, bri eats, Sunday's Child, Walnuts & Quince, The Drill Hall Emporium, Sitting on top of our world, Feathers and Cupcakes, Molly's Maison, One Crafty Mumma, May Day for Food, nevertoosweet and this thread on Eating Tassie.

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Sweet Envy
341 Elizabeth St, North Hobart
(03) 6234 8805
sweet treats $2-10
http://www.sweetenvy.com/

Accessibility: Sweet Entry has a flat, average-width entrance and is more likely to be crowded with customers than furniture. Ordering and payment takes place at counters of varying heights.

Thai Veggie Hutt

January 21, 2012

Our afternoon got off to a confusing start. We discovered that MONA was launching its own fancy food market, with more live music and cooking demos to boot, but the transporting ferry was booked out 20 minutes before its departure. As an alternative we looked up the Theatre Royal, where Icelandic band Amiina were providing their own instrumental backing to a series of fairytales, animated by Lotte Reiniger in the 1920s.

It was a very pleasant diversion and, even better, allowed us time and stomach space to visit one of Hobart's dedicated vegetarian restaurants.

Thai Veggie Hutt is open Monday to Saturday until 3:30pm, so it's really for lunch only. As we stepped in we immediately got a view of the bain-marie with a few noodle and mock meat dishes plus some yum cha-type snacks (these might be a Saturday specialty). Thankfully I held Michael back from ordering for just a minute or two, because there's also more than a dozen soups, rice and noodle dishes that they'll make to order for a few dollars more. We were both attracted to the mock meat but there are plenty of vege-focused mock-less options and they offer gluten-free meals as well. Almost everything is vegan.

We started out by sharing a box of the steamed buns visible in the bain-marie ($6.50) - they were a bit crunchy on top from sitting around, but plenty hot and still tasty. Each one had a different filling, two of them were sweet and predictably it was the bbq flavoured one we loved best.

My crispy vegetarian duck with rice ($12) looked beautiful and tasted even better. The sauce was simple and salty and I was thrilled with the variety of morsels in it: super-crispy chunks of 'duck', fresh snow peas, tender tofu, earthy mushrooms and some bonus mock chicken.

Michael's vegetarian duck curry ($12) arrived a little later and if anything, it was better still! More of those tremendous crispy duck pieces sat atop a huge bowl of fresh vegetables in a spicy kaffiir lime and coconut gravy. I think even Michael was using his rice to neutralise its heat.

It's rare to encounter a restaurant that gets both mock meat and fresh vegetables just right - we reckon Thai Veggie Hutt pulled it off.

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Thai Veggie Hutt
Shop 7 Bank Arcade, 68-70 Liverpool St, Hobart
(03) 6231 1270
veg lunches $6.50-12.50
http://thaiveggiehutt.com/

Accessibility: Entry seems flat but it's pretty crowded inside. Ordering and payment happens at a low-ish counter; the bain-marie is a little higher. Toilets are some distance away in the larger shopping complex, and reasonably roomy.