A Fan's Notes IV

Edit 02/01/2021: A Fan's Notes is now closed, but its owner runs Ballard's.

January 22, 2018

A Fan's Notes is still doing its fancy Friday night degustations, but for the rest of the week it's firmly a vegan-friendly dive bar. There are parmas, burgers, cheap tacos and so forth, plus reasonably priced booze, pub trivia and the occasional gig. It's a perfect little local. We noticed their Monday night specials - $5 vegan burgers - and couldn't resist heading along to check it out.

Of course, so did almost everyone else in the greater Melbourne area. When we got there about 7, the staff were visibly shell-shocked from the early rush and couldn't even tell us whether there'd be food available if we stuck around. The kitchen was closed temporarily and they suggested we check back in half an hour to see where things stood. We kicked back with drinks as things died down and were lucky that there turned out to be a few burgers left once the first wave of orders had been dealt with. Cindy requested the fish burger (a nori, tofu and lemon patty), while I went for the chilli burger (quinoa and beetroot patty with chipotle coleslaw, tomato and avocado).

At $5 a pop I had pretty low expectations, but these were both fantastic, way ahead of the more common mushroom or potato-based veggie patties and loaded with great condiments. The $5 price also brings out masses of people - too many for the kitchen to realistically handle. We've just seen that in future the Monday special is going to be a $15 drink/chips/burger combo, which still seems like an outrageously good deal - can't wait to check it out.

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Nobody's blogged this place since we visited in December. You can also see our previous posts here and here.

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A Fan's Notes
787 Nicholson St, Carlton North
9943 8373
burger menu
facebook page

Accessibility: There's a flat entry way to a slightly crowded interior. We ordered and paid at the high bar. There's a single, unisex toilet cubicle, which is up a step off an uneven path. 

Caramelised white chocolate icecream

January 20-21, 2018

This icecream recipe isn't quite my usual style. Nope, it's not from Ottolenghi's latest book. It's not a home-grown vegan trick. It doesn't really require an icecream maker. And it's flavoured with white chocolate, the least chocolatey of all chocolates. Yet Michael, who skips past every white Lindt ball in the box, declared it the best icecream I've made in years!

So what is this icecream? It's from the blog Delicious Everyday. It's mostly just made from double cream and sweetened condensed milk, which feels a bit like cheating, but is so sweet and thick and creamy that it really doesn't need to be churned. And it's flavoured with caramelised white chocolate.

Caramelising white chocolate was pretty funny this first time around - unwrapping it, popping it whole onto a baking tray, and roasting it in a low oven for over an hour, until it browned. The chocolate only kinda melts, and it's surprisingly difficult to work a spatula through it and make sure the chocolate roasts evenly. I was cautious, turning my oven to only 100°C, and as a consequence I spent an hour and a half on this job instead of the directed hour at 120°C. I'll know better next time.

The result is rich, rich, rich, with a touch of toasty caramel depth. I served small sensible scoops, with a fruit salad of mango and pineapple dressed in lime juice, when I had my international guest and his wife over for dinner. (The rest of the meal was much more predictable, with Michael and I tripling down on Ottolenghi recipes - a crushed lentil platter, coriander and yoghurt-dressed pumpkin, and a Spring salad.) 

Caramelised white chocolate icecream
(a recipe from Delicious Everyday)

150g white chocolate (make sure it's based on cocoa butter, not another vegetable oil)
395g can sweetened condensed milk
600mL double cream

Preheat an oven to 120°C.

Place the chocolate in a small baking tray and roast it for 60-90 minutes, stirring at 10 minutes intervals with a baking spatula, until the chocolate has developed a deep caramel colour. The texture is hopefully smooth, but unexpectedly thick! Here are some indicative photos from the source blog.

Transfer half of the caramelised chocolate to a medium bowl. Gradually whisk in the condensed milk until smooth, then whisk in the cream until everything's well mixed.

At this point the original recipe suggests pouring half of the cream mixture into your freezer container, marbling through the extra chocolate, and repeating with with remaining ingredients before freezing. I chose to refrigerate the cream mixture overnight, store the remaining chocolate at room temperature, and churn the cream mixture before assembling and freezing. I found the chocolate too thick to marble, and next time I think I'll refrigerate it and chop it into chips that I can stir through the icecream.

Freeze the icecream for at least 4 hours before serving. I found that it was easiest to scoop after 15 minutes at room temperature.

Seitan gyros & lemon potatoes

January 13, 2018

Cindy's been going over all her old recipe bookmarks and reorganising them, which means she's been reminded of a few winning-looking dishes that we've never got around to making. These seitan gyros were one of them, from a 2011 post over at Veganise This! It seemed like a good Saturday kitchen project for me, so I got to work, adding in a batch of Greek lemon potatoes for company.

This was the first time I've baked seitan (I usually use Cindy's sure-fire slow-cooker version) and it worked out really well. The seitan had real flavour - the lemon zest in particular shone through, and the texture was great. This may be my new favourite version, and it was really easy. We sliced it up and fried it and then served them in pita bread with a yoghurt and garlic sauce, salad and some little pickles. Superb.

The potatoes were just as successful. They were tender, rich and lemony and reminded me of the old favourites we used to get at Lefkas 15 years ago. This was such a good Saturday night meal - it'll definitely move into our regular rotation.

Seitan gyros
(based on a recipe from Veganise This!)

1 1/4 cups gluten flour
1/4 cup soy flour
4 tablespoons nutritional yeast flakes
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon black pepper
1 teaspoon onion powder
1 teaspoon garlic powder
1/2 teaspoon dried rosemary
2 teaspoons dried oregano
zest from one lemon
1 1/4 cups water
1 tablespoon soy sauce
1 tablespoon sesame oil
1 teaspoon liquid smoke
2 tablespoons tomato sauce

Pre-heat the oven to 180°C.

Mix the soy flour, gluten flour, nooch, salt, pepper, onion powder, garlic powder, lemon zest and dried herbs in a large bowl.

In a separate bowl, combine the water, soy sauce, sesame oil, liquid smoke and tomato sauce and stir them together well. 

Pour the wet mixture into the dry ingredients and smoosh everything together thoroughly - you should get a really sloppy dough. Knead for a couple of minutes and then leave it to rest for 10 minutes or so.

Knead it again for about a minute and then divide the dough into two small loaves. Wrap them loosely in foil and bake them for an hour. 

Leave the loaves to cool and then slice them into little strips for your gyros.

Roasted lemon potatoes
(based on a recipe from Epicurious, who were excerpting it from this book)

1 kg of potatoes
1/2 cup olive oil
4 cloves garlic, minced
2 teaspoons dried oregano
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon ground pepper
1/2 cup of veggie stock (we used Massel mock chicken)
juice of a lemon

Preheat the oven to 200°C.

Peel the potatoes and cut them into 4 cm cubes. Lay them out in a baking dish with the olive oil. Add the garlic, dried oregano, salt and pepper and stir everything together. 

Bake for 15 minutes. Add the stock, toss and bake for another 10 minutes. Throw in the lemon juice and bake for another 15 minutes until the spuds are nice and tender. 

Season with more salt and pepper if necessary and serve.

Rhubarb-iced yo-yos

January 11, 2018

For the past two weeks, I've been hosting an international guest at work. In a bid to break the ice with my coworkers, I brought in these biscuits to draw a crowd to my guest's first lunch in the office. 

Initially I was planning to bake a cake and set on trying something from my newest cookbook, Sweet. But, as I flicked through the pages, biscuits or little cakes seemed more sensible. They'd be less fussy to transport, and folks could help themselves whenever they were ready rather than waiting for me to ceremoniously portion out something larger. Oh, and I had rhubarb in the fridge! The rhubarb-iced yo-yos were an excellent fit.

I made one-and-a-half times the original quantity and turned out 20 generous biscuit sandwiches. I let my shortbreads get just a teensy bit brown around the edges, which I think is traditionally a bit of a no-no, but really worked out fine. The icing is the major novelty here, as it's prepared in a food processor and contains baked rhubarb! I was very, very worried about the fibres remaining stringy in the icing - they were visible, and I picked some of them out, but actually they seemed very soft and inoffensive in the couple of biscuits I ate. If I made this recipe again, I'd blend the rhubarb in my spice grinder attachment to give it more contact with the blade, then perhaps beat it together with the other icing ingredients in a bowl.

I stored the biscuits (airtight on the bench) and icing (airtight in the fridge) overnight before assembling the yo-yos, with the aim of keeping them fresh, uncrushed and non-soggy. This worked well; they needed gentle handling but none of them crumbled under my fingers and all of them looked handsome at the lunch table. Their buttery crumble was just right between the teeth, and I enjoyed the pink tanginess of the icing. I can't be sure whether the biscuits or the special guest was more enticing but there was a huge, friendly turn-out, an auspicious start to a lovely visit.

Rhubarb-iced yo-yos
(slightly adapted from Yotam Ottolenghi & Helen Goh's Sweet)

biscuits
260g plain flour
100g custard powder
100g icing sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt
250g butter, at room temperature
1/2 teaspoon vanilla

icing
100g rhubarb
100g butter, at room temperature
200g icing sugar
juice of half a lemon

Preheat an oven to 180°C. Line a baking tray with paper.

Chop the rhubarb into 3cm lengths and set them out on the baking tray. Bake them for 30 minutes, until softened. Allow them to cool to room temperature.

Time to switch to the biscuits! Turn the oven down to 170°C, and line two baking trays with fresh paper.

In a large bowl, sift together the flour, custard powder, icing sugar and salt. Chop the butter into cubes and drop it into the flour mixture. Carefully beat the butter into the dry ingredients, adding the vanilla as you go, until the mixture forms a dough.

Use two teaspoons to grab scant tablespoons of the dough, rolling them into balls and placing them on the baking trays. Use a fork to gently press down on the balls - mine formed biscuits about 3cm in diameter and 1 cm thick before they went into the oven. Bake the biscuits for around 25 minutes, catching them just as they start going golden around the edges. Allow them to cool for 5 minutes on the tray before transferring them to a rack to cool right down to room temperature. If you're not assembling and serving them right away, store the biscuits in an airtight container.

Back to the icing! Place the rhubarb in a small food processor bowl and blend until as smooth as possible. Blend in the butter, then the icing sugar and lemon juice. Keep blending for a few minutes until the icing is as smooth and whipped as possible. If you're not assembling and serving the yo-yos right away, transfer the icing to an airtight container and store it in the refrigerator.

When it's time to assemble the yo-yos, carefully choose matching pairs of biscuits by size and shape. Use two teaspoons to scoop half-tablespoons of icing, placing them on one of the biscuits and gently sandwiching the second biscuit on top. Serve the biscuits right away, or store them in an airtight container for a couple of days (I refrigerated mine because I thought the icing looked delicate).

The Moor's Head

Update 23/03/2020: This spot is now occupied by Taquito.

January 8, 2018

Recently the restaurant/bar we long knew as Markov Place changed hands - it's now a welcome second Moor's Head! We've enjoyed this business' 'inauthentic pizzas' in Thornbury, and they've transferred the menu faithfully to a venue tucked ever-so-conveniently behind Cinema Nova.

We kept it small and simple on our Monday night there, sharing the roquette salad (with dots of shanklish & Iranian raisins, $9.50) and the Oum Kalthoum ($19), a pizza of tomato, ashawan/aged mozzarella, haloumi and specks of black chilli.

There's plenty of scope for a more extravagant meal, of course - cold and hot mezze, pides spilling with caramelised eggplant, tahini yoghurt, and multiple cheeses, sweets and set menus. I'm sure we'll work up to them in future visits.

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You can also read about one, two of our visits to the Thornbury original.

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The Moor's Head
rear of 350 Drummond St, Carlton
9977 5893
food, drinks
http://www.themoorshead.com/

Accessibility: You can enter via Eva bar on Drummond St (straight corridor, uneven shared toilet space, down a half-flight of stairs) or possibly via the cobbled Markov Place (wide entry). Both low and high tables are available. We ordered at the table and paid at a high bar. We didn't visit the toilets this time, but we think they're individual cubicles (gendered in times past but possibly now unisex).