The Rachel

July 21, 2013

Move over '90s hairstylings, The Rachel is now a sandwich. It's a sister to the Rueben, with pastrami or turkey replacing the corned beef and coleslaw instead of sauerkraut. It's modified further by Steen and Noyes into a day-saving vegan sandwich with baked marinated seitan and barbecue sauce.

Honestly, this sandwich is a solid day's work. First there's the chicken-style cutlets (which I adapted due to the usual U.S. vital wheat gluten/ Aussie gluten flour disparity), balls of super-gluten dough that are baked in broth for an hour and left to sit for at least two more.

Only then are the cutlets ready for marinating (1 hour) and more baking (30+ minutes). Still, they pop out sizzling with a crust of caraway and fennel seeds, dyed red with paprika and saucy with evaporated pickle juice. Yes, pickle juice. And it works.

This sandwich gets saucier still with Thousand Island dressing on the coleslaw and a recommended quarter cup of barbecue sauce per sandwich. I probably used less than half that and still found myself licking dribbled condiments from between my fingers.

After three weeks elsewhere, I was glad for a big kitchen project and we were both glad for the sandwich fillings in the fridge, ready to go all week.

'Rachel'-marinated seitan
(adapted slightly from a recipe in
Celine Steen & Tamasin Noyes' Vegan Sandwiches Save The Day)

dough
2 cups gluten flour
1/4 cup nutritional yeast flakes
1/2 cup chickpea flour
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 teaspoon onion powder
1/4 teaspoon white pepper
1 tablespoon chicken-flavoured stock powder
1 cup vegetable stock, cold
1 tablespoon rice wine vinegar
1 tablespoon olive oil

broth
3 cups vegetable stock
1 teaspoon onion powder
1/2 teaspoon dried thyme
1/2 teaspoon mustard powder
1/2 teaspoon salt

marinade
1 cup pickle juice
2 1/2 teaspoons caraway seeds, ground
2 1/2 teaspoons smoked paprika
1 teaspoon fennel seeds, ground
1 teaspoon ground coriander
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon black pepper

First you need a seitan dough. In a large bowl, stir together the gluten flour, yeast flakes, chickpea flour, garlic, onion powder, white pepper and stock powder. In a medium bowl, stir together the stock, vinegar and oil. Pour these wet ingredients into the large bowl of dry ingredients, combining them with a fork to form a dough. Add a little extra gluten flour or stock if needed. Knead the dough for about 4 minutes (I did this right in the bowl) and stretch out those gluten strands.

Preheat an oven to 150°C. In a large, high walled baking dish, whisk together the five broth ingredients.

Divide the gluten dough into 10 balls. One at a time, place the dough balls between two sheets of baking paper and roll them out to ~6mm thick. I found my dough to be quite elastic and often had to pull at the cutlets so that they weren't too thick. Plonk each one into the baking dish and don't worry if they're touching or overlapping a bit. Cover the dish with foil and bake the cutlets for 1 hour. Turn off the heat and allow them to rest in the oven for a further hour. Remove the baking dish from the oven, transfer the cutlets to absorbent paper and reserve the stock.

Use the empty baking dish to whisk together the marinade ingredients, adding 1 cup of the reserved stock. Toss in the cutlets and slather them in the (very liquid) marinade. Allow them to marinate in the fridge for at least an hour.

Turn the oven up to 200°C and bake the seitan in its dish, uncovered, for 15 minutes. Turn the cutlets over and bake for a further 15-20 minutes, until the marinade is reduced to a sticky sauce clinging to the cutlets. Slice the cutlets thinly to use as a sandwich filling.

Team the thin seitan slices with coleslaw and barbecue sauce on rye bread to make a Rachel.

Stovetop

July 20, 2013

Stovetop is a new cafe ideally located halfway between our house and the Queen Vic Markets. We had market-related chores lined up for Saturday morning, so we wandered by and tested it out on our way in. Despite a recent mention in Three Thousand (where I learned about it), Stovetop was deserted around 9:30. I’m sure this state of affairs won’t last as it ticks a lot of boxes for a buzzy Melbourne cafe: hip coffee stylings, slightly offbeat breakfast options and a beautifully designed space. There’ll be crowds there by the time this review goes up I’m guessing.

It really is a lovely fit-out – the big windows mean the light streams in and the design is a nice balance between trendy industrial and warm wood and greenery. The particular schtick that Stovetop is offering up is... stovetop coffee. With drip filter coffee already going through about seven waves of sophistication/ludicrousness (see, for example, Assembly Curated Coffee), it was probably inevitable that someone gave it a shot.

For $6 you get a little 2-cup pot. My 5 senses blend was pleasant enough, but I think my palette is too unsophisticated to detect the plum, cherry and/or caramel notes. I’ll just stick to flat whites in future (which Stovetop do an excellent job of FYI).

Cindy fancied up her drink as well, going for a brewed chai latte ($4). It had the appropriate mix of sweetness and cinnamony spice and was all frothy and warming.

The food menu serves vegetarians reasonably well (although vegan options are limited – the most promising dish looks like the porridge of spiced quinoa and sago with almond milk, coconut flakes and toasted almonds, $9). Cindy is basically unable to say no to waffles, and Stovetop’s version (cinnamon waffles with pomegranate molasses, vanilla bean custard, agave and almond dukkah, $13) was never going to change that.

She was pretty impressed by it – the custard made them into a kind of delicious waffle sandwich, and the two syrups added a sticky layer of sweetness to it all. Inside, candied orange slivers added some marmaladey fruitiness.

I stuck to savoury - lured in by the fried goodness of the sweet potato and chia latkes, served with poached eggs, baba ganoush and rocket ($14).

This was a nice, novel way of serving poached eggs – possibly my first ever latkes. They were the star of the dish too, all crispy and oily, but the smoky eggplant was a good counterpoint to the runny eggs as well. It all worked excellently and, at $14, is one of the better value eggy breakfasts around.

Stovetop was a solid breakfast experience - very reasonable prices, a couple of tremendous dishes and reliable service. They're a great addition to Carlton's breakfast options - add in an interesting vegan savoury dish and I'd be recommending them to all and sundry.

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I first spotted Stovetop on Three Thousand, and I'm So Hungree has already got there a couple of times and is clearly a fan.

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Stovetop
100 Leicester St, Carlton
9347 2010
veggie breakfasts, $6-$14
http://www.stovetop.com.au (see if you can look at it without laughing at the (unintentionally?) hilarious photo)

Accessibility: The entry is flat and wide and everything's pretty spacious inside. You order at the table and pay at a lowish counter. We didn't visit the toilets.

Cairns to Cooktown

July 10-16, 2013

We took a short break in July, seeking some sun around Cape Tribulation. We relished the rainforest and relaxed pace a little more than the restaurants - over four days our meals included chips four times, three pizzas and two mass-produced vege burgers. The high point was easily the above wood-fired pizza from the camping ground's Sandbar, topped with artichoke hearts and goat cheese and washed down with ginger beer.

At our accommodation we were spoiled with gorgeous tropical fruits at breakfast. I fell upon the freshly cut pineapple wedges, reacquainted myself with the charms of custard apple and dragon fruit, and tasted curious new morsels we still don't know the names of.

The forests were bursting with other fruits too...

native 'dog' pepper (piper caninum)

native banana (musa banksii)

coconuts!

The vast majority of them weren't suitable for human consumption...

... but they might have been to the taste of this dame.

The sweetest stop was at the Daintree Icecream Company. They grow their own tropical fruits and whip them into a four-flavour roster - we shared a $6 cup of chocolatey black sapote, butterscotch-like yellow sapote, hazelnut-coffee-toned wattleseed and sweet, dependable coconut.

While we were a little reluctant to leave our rainforest retreat, I must admit that it was magnificent to encounter tofu and beans back in the big smoke of Cairns.

Spring

(Update 17/07/2024: Spring has since closed.)

July 10, 2013

We made good use of our short stopover in Brisbane, following up our fancy schmancy dinner with breakfast at Spring, one of the trendier restaurants in the CBD. It's mostly lauded for its lunch and dinner options, but we were keen to see how they did at breakfast. At 9ish on a work day there's a steady stream of office workers grabbing takeaway coffees and a growing number of morning meetings getting underway. Still, there was no issue securing a table. The space itself is lovely - lots of light and a lovely array of flowers and plants scattered throughout - it's very stylish.

The menu is pretty straightforward - nothing too innovative, but a nice selection of sweet and savoury dishes. Vegetarians can choose from any of the sweets or go for something eggy. Vegans don't have many options - they could grab something simple like avocado on toast ($10), but that's about it.

I went for baked eggs, with tomato sauce, basil, bocconcini and toast ($14). In spite of the surprisingly big chunk of tomato floating in this dish, it hit the mark nicely - a rich and slightly sweet sauce slathered over nicely cooked eggs dotted with torn up cheese. The nuts on top were a bonus.

Cindy went for the brioche French toast with stewed rhubarb, apple and cinnamon sugar ($12).

I'll admit to having slight order envy about this - it looked amazing. The cinnamon flavour was a bit lacking, and Cindy would have enjoyed something a bit more syruppy or creamy to break up the bread, but the fruit was enough to cut through the dryness. A pretty satisfactory sweet treat.

Our whole experience at Spring was pretty solid - the service was efficient, the coffee good and both our meals were well executed. The prices were great too - we're getting used to paying $18 or something for breakfast down here these days, so it was impressive to see almost everything on the menu coming in under $15. Spring is a welcome addition to Brisbane's CBD, which has historically been very, very dull when it comes to breakfast options - we'd swing by again if we didn't have time to get out to West End or New Farm.

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There are loads of positive reviews out there about the meaty dinner and lunch options at Spring,  but James and Matt have had a good vegan experience there. The few bloggers who've sampled the breakfast options at Spring have been pretty positive as well - check out DolceBunnie and Gluten-Free Julia.

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Spring
26 Felix St, Brisbane QLD
(07) 3229 0460
veggie breakfasts, $7-$14
http://www.spring.com.au/

Accessibility: The entry is flat and wide and everything's pretty spacious inside. You order at the table and pay at a low register. We didn't visit the toilets.

Urbane

(Update 11/07/2022: Urbane has now closed.)

July 9, 2013

While in Brisbane we splashed out on a special meal, a sort of-kind of belated celebration of Michael's birthday. I was a student when we lived in Brisbane and thus not across the fine dining scene, so we looked to locals Jame and Matt for ideas on a venue; we were particularly drawn to the vegan dinner they had at Urbane earlier this year and the waste-minimising veg-friendly values of executive chef Alejandro Cancino. In spite of his exemplary reputation it seems there's not much demand for the formal restaurant on a Tuesday night; we were one of only two tables filled that evening.

Urbane offer a full vegetarian menu as an option to all diners (though you'd probably want to specify ahead of time for any more restrictive dietary requirements) and we sampled the full 9 course extravaganza. Actually, it extends well beyond 9 courses with several tasters before the official menu commences.

We began with a sipping bowl of sweet and silky corn soup, paired with a bite of frozen sweet corn popcorn.

Next, a pungent gulp of shitake consomme.

Our third appetiser was a meal in miniature: a chia seed chip topped with eggplant and juniper, and a teeny bowl of herbal, pickly vegetable escabeche.

This marine scene supported delicate daikon tubes filled with soy jelly, topped with a heady strip of wasabi. We ventured a small taste of the salty garnishing bone fruit too!

Only then did warm bread and salted butter arrive, a hint that the meal proper was due to begin.

And it began with a wintery yet light queue of Brussels sprouts, roasted and caramelised underneath with a fresh leaf on top, served with a cauliflower cream and nutty-crunchy quinoa crumbs.

Deeply caramelised wedges of eggplant worked well with green apple, though I didn't the hang of bringing them together with the piped avocado and the rye crumbs.

These shitake mushrooms and onion rings sat in the sweetest broth I've ever sipped.

In a course simply titled Winter we encountered another mushroomy broth; this one held finely chopped mushrooms, fluffy parmesan gnocchi and celeriac-stuffed tortellini.

More mushrooms! These were teamed with lentils, a savoury yeast cream that won Michael's favour and sorrel leaves that lent a lemony touch.

The final savoury course was quite the entree to the sweets with its candy-like carrot, served with a rich pearl barley risotto and fresh carrot curls.

One of our favourite dishes was this refreshing vegan dessert of coconut sorbet scattered with basil granita, with a side of fresh blueberries, mulled wine jelly and a hint of makrut lime.

Its richer counterpoint was a custardy cube of French toast with raspberries and cream.

I liked that a herbal tea was worked into the meal's end - this berry-ish brew featured a range of native fruits.

Our last mouthful was a peppermint cream-filled chocolate with a surprise crunch.

Mushroom was a repetitive theme, and the few foams did nothing for me at all, but this was nevertheless an impressive degustation with some gorgeous pre-dinner bites and a lovely dessert set. On such a quiet night we were bound to receive attentive service but it was never overbearing, and we enjoyed learning a little about the restaurant from the front of house. What a delight to discover such veg*n-friendly fine dining in our home town!

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James and Matt enjoyed a special vegan dinner at Urbane earlier this year, and the venue has earned praise on FOODMEUPSCOTTY and DolceBunnie with Cancino at the helm. Previous incarnations are also positively reviewed on OMGGIMMENOW, Gastronomy Gal, BNE: HOT OR NOT and food bling, brisbane.

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Urbane
179-181 Mary St, Brisbane QLD
(07) 3229 2271
9 course veg degustation $135, wine matching $100
http://www.urbanerestaurant.com/

Accessibility: The entry is wide but includes three steps. There's lots of space between tables and full service where you sit. The toilets require a trip downstairs but once you're there they're unisex and roomy.