May 17, 2010: Retreat Hotel

Our fortnightly 'pub club' outing with colleagues and friends has decreased in frequency since its ringleader was diagnosed as coeliac. Pub grub is more glutenous than you might expect, and even more disappointing for Andy is that most beers are now off the menu. But there was a little surge of enthusiasm when Michael identified Abbotsford's Retreat Hotel as having a gluten-free-friendly menu.

The hotel is set just off the eastern end of Johnston St, which makes for a less than pleasant ride (cross your fingers for a green light across Hoddle St!), but the warm and warmly lit interior is a lovely spot to recover. The menu's a smidge pricey - entrees are $10-$15, mains $21-27 with $15 parmi specials on Mondays - and there are a few vego options scattered about.

Michael ordered the 'roast beetroot risotto with goats cheese and walnuts' ($21).  He found it a bit bland, with only the mouthfuls containing the goats cheese providing much excitement.

I went for the vego parmi option ($15 on Monday nights) and received a mountain of food. The skinny chips were great; the eggplant parmigiana had a pleasant flavour but was incredibly thick and stodgy; the coleslaw was a nice idea that just didn't come through.  (Hey, coleslaw makers - you don't need to drown it in mayo!  In fact, some of the best 'slaws don't even include mayo!)

We gave the Retreat a chance to prove itself with dessert.  Michael was happy with the 'chocolate pudding with rich chocolate sauce and ice cream' ($9.50) that he shared with Jo.

Mike and I were keener for the 'sticky date pudding with toffee sauce and cream' ($9.50). The sauce hit the right note but unfortunately the pudding wasn't what I was after, more an airy cake without much depth of flavour. 

While the Retreat Hotel deserves credit for its cosy environment and gluten-free options, it's not exactly a vegetarian's delight.  The meat-free dishes they serve rely heavily on cheese (vegans, stay away!) and are a bit hit-and-miss.  It'll take another wave - perhaps a tsunami - of pub club enthusiasm to tempt me back.

Address: 226 Nicholson St, Abbotsford
Ph: 9417 2693
Fully licensed
Price: veg mains $15-21, desserts ~$9.50
Website: www.theretreathotel.com

May 12, 2010: Gertrude Street Grub - Proud Mary

When we finally got around to reviewing Auction Rooms last December, I made note of our typical missing of the zeitgeist and suggested it would be another 12 months before we got around to visiting Proud Mary, the darling of the moment. Well, clearly we're improving slightly - it only took until May for me to duck down from work one day to check out Melbourne's latest trendy "third wave" coffee place.

Even at 2 o'clock the lunch crowd filled all the tables, and it took 10 minutes or so for space to clear for our group of 4. Still, this gave me time to peruse the menu, which includes a range of all-day breakfast options, some lunchy mains and daily specials and sandwiches. But before we got to ordering food, it was time to sample the coffee that has earned Proud Mary rave reviews from all the coffee-blogs in Melbourne. As much as I enjoy coffee, I'm a bit of a philistine, so didn't order anything from any of the fancy machines - just a simple flat white in a cute blue cup. The verdict? In my considered opinion: it's pretty great.

Food-wise, the veg options ranged from quince salad to pumpkin tart with a tasty looking haloumi sandwich somewhere in between. I couldn't make it past the brekkie menu and ordered up the corn fritters (sweet corn and manchego fritters, with avocado and tomato and basil salsa, $15.5). A highlight of the visit: these come with crispy bacon by default and when I asked if they could leave it out, the waitress suggested straight away that they add mushrooms instead. This is pretty simple stuff, but you'd be amazed how often places either take the bacon out and still charge the same amount, or even worse refuse to make any alterations at all. So I was immediately impressed.

Things got even better when I tasted the fritters - these were moist and tasty (a far cry from the weird discs Cindy had a Cafe Vue) and the avocado, rocket and salsa added some nice fresh flavours. At $15.50, they're probably not the best value for money in the world, but they were a high quality meal and thoroughly enjoyable. There's a lot more on the Proud Mary menu to investigate, with some particularly impressive sounding breakfast sweets that would be right up Cindy's alley, so there's no doubt we'll be back there soon.

We're officially the last bloggers in Melbourne to try Proud Mary. Read other reviews at: Ronnies Spots, Addictive and Consuming, Bijou Kaleidoscope, Richard Elliot, Gourmet to Glam, Breakies worth getting up for, Tomato, Sarah Cooks, Cookbook, Cruxie Faye, That Jess Ho, Fitzroyalty, Eating Melbourne and Mel Hot or Not (plus all the coffee reviews linked to above!).

Address: 172 Oxford St, Collingwood
Ph: 9417 5930
Price: $6 - $16.50

May 9, 2010: Nasi Lemak

Cindy really loved her breakfast on our last morning in Melaka and was excited when AOF left a comment linking to her own nasi lemak recipe. It didn't take us long after we got back for us to have a crack at it. We took a few shortcuts - buying a jar sambal rather than making our own and substituting some bok choy we had in the fridge for the more appropriate kangkung.

Even having reduced the complexity a little, this was pretty involved - you've got a saucepan with rice, a pan for the peanuts, a pan for the tempeh, a pan for the greens and something to boil the eggs in. It'd be smart to do a few things (like the eggs and the nuts) ahead of time rather than messing up the entire kitchen, but we were too disorganised to do things the easy way. Still, it's worth the effort - this gave us three days or so of amazing food. The coconut rice provides a rich sweetness, which goes well with the kecap-manis flavoured tempeh and the freshness of the cucumber. There's a lot of textural variety with crispy tempeh, crunchy nuts and the soft eggs, and everything is brought together by the salty and hot sambal. (As an aside: if anyone knows a good vegetarian sambal available in Melbourne, let us know - ours was a little too sweet.)

Next time we might try to get things a bit more authentic, with homemade sambal and the right greens. Regardless, expect to see Nasi Lemak on our where's the best? list the next time we update it.


Nasi Lemak (via Confessions of a Food Nazi)

6 eggs
400ml coconut milk
1 1/2 cups brown rice
2 cups water

200g peanut kernels
2 large bok choy, rinsed and chopped into large chunks
1 tablespoon peanut oil
450 tempeh, cut into small strips
kecap manis
4 cups greens (e.g. bok choy)
soy sauce
vegie sambal, to taste
1/2 a cucumber, sliced

Hardboil and peel your eggs, and set them aside.

Add the coconut milk, rice and water to a saucepan and bring to the boil, lower heat and cover, simmering until the rice is soft (half an hour or so).

While the rice is cooking, toast the peanut kernels in a dry pan, being careful not to burn them.

Remove the nuts, add the peanut oil to the pan and add the tempeh, frying until it gets crisp. Add in a few teaspoons of kecap manis (to taste) and toss it through, coating the tempeh strips.

Set the tempeh aside and put the greens in the frying pan (with more oil if necessary) and stir-fry with a few splashes of soy sauce (Cindy steered clear of adding sambal to the greens at this point in case it all got too hot for her).

Assemble the dish by placing a big dollop of coconut rice in the middle of your plate, and surrounding it with all the other elements. Layer on a few tablespoons of sambal (to taste) and smush things together a bit for a sweet, salty and spicy delight.

May 9, 2010: Choc-coconut banana muffins

Something something use up bananas blah blah workday snacks rhubarb rhubarb healthier than cake.  If you've been reading this blog for any length of time, you know the drill.  No prizes for surmising that I made banana muffins.  These take inspiration from the Lower-Fat Banana Bread recipe in Veganomicon and the coconut-embellished banana bread I made last spring.  The notable alterations are wholemeal flour for filling fibre, dark chocolate chips for fun, and a grated past-its-best apple in place of applesauce.

These were pretty good!  Make no mistake, they're not the fluffy fist-sized muffins widely sold in cafes.  They're smaller and dense and chewy and not at all cake-like.  They're also sweet and moist and something to get my teeth into when 3:30 rolls around.  Win.

Choc-coconut banana muffins

1 medium apple
2 teaspoons apple cider vinegar
1/3 cup water
3 small ripe bananas
1/4 cup vegetable oil
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup dessicated coconut
1 cup wholemeal flour
1/2 cup plain flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup dark choc chips

Preheat the oven to 180°C.

Peel and grate the apple. Place the grated apple in a small saucepan with the vinegar and water. Bring it to the boil, then simmer until the apple is very soft, about 10 minutes. Pour the apples over the bananas and mash them together thoroughly with a fork. I ended up with a little over a cup of puree.

Whisk in the oil, sugar and coconut. Sift over the wholemeal flour, plain flour, baking soda, nutmeg and salt, stirring until just combined. Fold in the choc chips.

Lightly grease a muffin pan and spoon the mixture in. The batter should be stiff but not dry, and make about 10 muffins. Bake until they pass the skewer test, up to 20 minutes.

May 1, 2010: Kentucky-style seitan ribz

We have an American colleague spending a year at my workplace. He and his family have been making the most of their time in this part of the world, holidaying extensively throughout Australia and New Zealand as well as making numerous weekend trips around Victoria. They've also shared a little of their culture with us Antipodeans, putting on a fabulous Thanksgiving spread last November. And, when the northern springtime rolled around, they upheld their 20-year tradition of hosting a Kentucky Derby party.

Mindful that there'd be many guests and not many vegetarians, I volunteered to bring along something thematically appropriate to share.  There are a few vege-based Kentucky Derby side dishes around but the meat is clearly the bigger attraction and I was rapidly attracted to the idea of mimicking barbecued ribs.  It was then I remembered Lindyloo's smashing success with SusanV's recipe for seitan ribz.  I mentioned my plan to Kristy and Toby over dinner at Yong, and they recommended I glaze them with Vegan Dad's Memphis BBQ sauce recipe.

This was excellent advice.  The sauce is a less-than-nutritious mix of ketchup, spices, lots of sugar and, if you're going with the Kentucky theme, bourbon.  Slathered all over those chewy gluteny ribz it's sweet and a little spicy and, my hosts assured me, a pretty good match for the real deal.  Actually I knew it not to be the real Kentucky deal, because I used a mini-bar-sized bottle of whiskey in place of the not-so-mini-bar-sized bottle of bourbon available at my local bottle shop.  I couldn't imagine how I'd get through the rest of such a quantity, though I learned a thing or two about mint juleps later on.  My second transgression was to use the grill setting on my oven in place of a barbecue - a low-fuss and highly successful alternative.

The seitan, made via the gluten flour short-cut, is very easy to prepare.  Though its own flavour didn't really carry through, it was certainly a worthy vessel for the sauce.  Many party-goers hadn't encountered this faux-meat before and it elicited many guffaws, while the sauce kept people going back for a second bite.  Michael heroically went back for more bites still as the party wore on, ensuring that I could take an empty dish home with me.

Kentucky-style seitan ribz
(based on recipes at FatFree Vegan Kitchen and Vegan Dad)

sauce
1/4 cup vegan margarine
1 onion, finely chopped
3 cloves garlic, minced
1/4 cup apple cider vinegar
1/4 cup bourbon or whiskey
1 cup ketchup
1/3 cup maple syrup
1/3 cup brown sugar
1 tablespoons vegetarian Worcestershire sauce
1 tablespoon mustard
a few dashes of hot sauce

ribz dough
1 1/2 cups gluten flour
3 teaspoons smoked paprika
3 tablespoons nutritional yeast
3 teaspoons onion powder
1 1/2 teaspoons garlic powder
1 generous cup water
3 tablespoons tahini
1 1/2 teaspoons liquid smoke
1 1/2 tablespoons soy sauce

First, make the sauce in a medium-sized saucepan.  Melt the margarine, then gently saute the onion and garlic in it until they're reduced and brown (this took me 20-30 minutes).  Add the remaining sauce ingredients, bring them briefly to the boil, then turn down the heat and simmer the sauce for 20 minutes.  Set the sauce aside while you prepare the ribz.

Preheat the oven to 180°C and lightly grease a baking tray.  In a large bowl, mix together the gluten flour, paprika, yeast flakes, onion powder and garlic powder.  In a separate smaller bowl, whisk together the remaining dough ingredients.  It might be difficult to keep the water and tahini from separating but be as thorough as you can, to prevent tahini globs in the dough.  Mix the liquid ingredients into the dry ingredients and knead them together lightly in the bowl for a couple of minutes.

Place the dough in the baking tray and flatten it out with your hands so that it covers the base evenly.  Slice the dough into long, thin rib shapes.  (I used a pizza wheel to make one long cut through the middle, then about a dozen shorter cross-cuts to create 2cm-wide 'ribs'.)  Bake the seitan for 25 minutes.

While the seitan is baking, push the sauce through a sieve to remove the onion chunks.  When the ribz are ready, remove them from the oven and trace over the rib cuts again.  Slather half of the sauce over the top of the ribs.

If you're using a barbecue, cook the ribs sauce-side-down on the grill and slather the remaining sauce on the top side.  Turn it once to cook the other side and serve.

If you're using your oven's grill, place it under the heat sauce-side up until the surface is bubbling and browned (be very careful not to burn it!).  Gently flip the ribs over in the dish, slathering the remaining sauce on the other side and grilling it until it's also bubbling and brown.