Cheap Eats 2006, a decade on

January 10, 2016

Cindy and I moved to Melbourne mid-2006 and one of the first things we did was grab ourselves a copy of The Age's Cheap Eats Guide. The rise of Zomato/Urbanspoon has diminished the influence of these books, but when we arrived the Cheap Eats was our guide. This year we're pulling the old book off the shelf to see what's changed in the past decade.

I've gone through each of the 474 listings in the 2006 guide, noting down the type of venue, the region it's in, whether or not we've blogged it and whether it's still open. Shockingly, there wasn't a single Mexican restaurant in the 2006 guide - an almost unbelievable absence given the Mexican explosion that hit Melbourne a few years later.

Of the 474 places listed in the 2006 Cheap Eats, 282 (59.6%) are still open. The survival rate varied substantially by venue type - bakeries were pretty secure while burger joints, seafood purveyors and vegetarian restaurants failed in droves.

There was surprisingly little variation by region. I expected that the gentrification of the inner-north would have swept away the majority of the 2006 entries, but it was the inner South-East (South Melbourne, Middle Park, Albert Park, South Yarra, Prahran and Windsor) that had the most closures.

Now, to the most important statistical question - what impact does getting reviewed on where's the beef? have on a business? Well, of 73 places we blogged, 58 are still open (79.5%), while of the 400 places we didn't blog, 224 are still open (56.0%), so early signs are positive. Even more strikingly, of 8 vego places we blogged, 5 are still open (62.5%), while only 2 of the 9 vego places we didn't blog survived (37.5%).

To properly test our influence though, you need to control for the kinds of places and areas that we tend to blog. So I popped all of these data into Stata and got cracking. In a logistic regression analysis, controlling for type and region of venue, places we blogged were 4.7 times (2.2-9.9) more likely to be open than those we didn't*. Surely all the evidence you need of the remarkable influence that where's the beef? has on the world.

Throughout 2016 we're planning to revisit some of these old listings, returning to favourite eateries and finally checking out some places we've shamefully never gotten around to. We reckon these stayers warrant our blogging attention as much as buzz-hungry new venues.

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* The very fact that a place stayed open increased the likelihood that we eventually got around to blogging it, meaning that the causal relationship here goes in both directions. As a robustness check, we just looked at whether or not being blogged on wtb by the end of 2007 was associated with being open in 2016 - the significant relationship remained, adding weight to the argument that where's the beef? attention is a strong predictor of business survival.

Choc-notella pudding

January 3, 2016

I couldn't stop thinking about Family Favourites. I would have loved to make a frozen chocolate crunch or shared around some mango coconut splice blocks, but they just wouldn't work at a picnic. Then I thought of nutella pudding. I didn't need to make more food at all, really, but I couldn't resist a go at veganising nutella pudding.

This one goes in the style of British self-saucing puddings, with the nutella in the sauce and a typical cake batter plonked on top of it. I tracked down a jar of biona dark chocolate spread, which was a little less sweet than nutella and completely lacking in hazelnuts, but it did the vegan silky chocolate job perfectly. Dairy cream became coconut cream, buttermilk begat vinegar-spiked soy milk, butter was replaced with margarine, and I switched the eggs for apple puree (I'll go for a mashed banana instead, one day).

For all those changes, it was the same pudding in every way that mattered. It's probably intended for mid-winter eating, still steaming with a scoop of cream or icecream on top. But it's day-after no-extras state holds just as much nostalgia for me, and that's pretty much how ate it at the picnic.

Choc-notella pudding
(adapted from this family recipe)

1/2 cup vegan chocolate spread
1/2 cup coconut cream
1/2 cup soy milk
1/2 teaspoon apple cider vinegar
90g margarine
1/4 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup castor sugar
1/2 cup apple puree
3/4 cup plain flour
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 cup cocoa

Lightly grease a baking dish and preheat the oven to 180°C. 

In a large bowl, whisk together the chocolate spread and coconut cream. Spread the mixture over the base of the dish.

Mix together the soy milk and apple cider vinegar and set the aside. The milk will curdle into a buttermilk substitute.

Use the same mixing bowl to beat together the margarine and sugars. Beat in the apple puree. Sift over the flour, baking powder and cocoa, then mix them until just combined. Mix in the curdled soy milk.

Pour the cake mix into the baking dish and gently smooth over the top. Bake for about 35 minutes, or until a skewer comes out clean.

Doffie biscuits

January 3, 2016

Cindy's Family Favourites picnic theme had me scratching my head - our family meals were from a straightforward meat 'n' veg range, and nothing amidst the chops and sausages of my memories jumped out at me for the occasion. Instead, I thought back to school lunchboxes and found myself strangely nostalgic for this relatively simple apricot slice. Mum dug up the recipe for me over Christmas - they're called Doffie Biscuits and they're basically sugar, flour and dried fruit. 

Veganising them only required me substitutes for 2 eggs and a couple of tablespoons of butter - Nuttelex did the trick for the butter, while a combination of Orgran No Egg and apple sauce provided enough moisture and binding power to replace the eggs. The results aren't going to change your life but they're good - heavy on the apricot and nice and chewy. And if you're me they're going to transport you straight back to your awkward teenage years.

Doffie biscuits

(based on a recipe from a cookbook compiled for the School of the Air some time back in the 1980s)

2 cups wholemeal self-raising flour

1.5 cups caster sugar

600g dried apricots, sliced up (the original recipe calls for 1.5kg of dried fruit, but whoever compiled the cookbook suggested that 500g was enough)

4 heaped tablespoons shredded coconut

2 tablespoons melted Nuttelex

2 teaspoons Orgran No-Egg, mixed with 4 tablespoons water

1/2 cup of apple puree

Pre-heat the oven to 180°C.

Mix the flour, sugar, apricots and coconut in a big bowl.

Stir in the Nuttelex, egg replacer and apple puree.

Spread the mix evenly in a large flat tray and bake for 30-40 minutes, until the slice is cooked through. It will seem a bit soft when it's hot, but will firm up as it cools so you can slice it up.

Original recipe

Superchook

January 3, 2016

We capped off our new year weekend with a vegan picnic and a Family Favourites theme. I wanted to learn what foods make my friends feel nostalgic, their back stories, and the funny nicknames they might have. Most of all, I wanted to introduce them to Superchook.

Superchook fits all these criteria. It's something my mum made semi-regularly as I grew up, taking a little extra effort than most dinners, the kind of thing I'd ask for on my birthday. It was a chicken fillet stuffed with chopped bacon, cheese and green herby specks, then crumbed and fried. From the stuffing to the substance to the egg-dipped outer, it's light-years from vegan eating.

Funnily enough, my picnic adaptation was easier to prepare than the original. I bought a packet each of Fry's and Gardein crumbed schnitzels, unsure of which would work better (Fry's were easier to work with, but I liked the Gardein texture better). I gently, gently sliced a pocket longways through each schnitzel and spooned in a mixture of grated Vegusto Melty cheese, diced and fried Cheatin' Rashers, finely chopped parsley and ground pepper. Rather than frying and fretting over them holding together, I popped my Superchooks in the oven for 20 minutes and they were good as gold.

With it being a picnic and all, none were eaten in their native habitat - hot with cheese oozing at the dinner table, served with steamed veges on the side - but they vanished rapidly nonetheless. Even vegan, this chook's still super.

Makloubeh

December 28, 2015

I received the Moroccan Soup Bar cookbook for my birthday! The thick volume collates many recipes from the eponymous restaurant, which we've visited many times during our near-decade in Melbourne. (In 2016 we're likely to become even more frequent visitors to the newly opened sister cafe Moroccan Deli-cacy.)

A visit to the Moroccan Soup Bar has always been much more than a plate of food, with the wild-haired and lion-hearted restaurant founder Hana Assafiri roaming the room, minimal table reservations, no alcohol, and a spoken menu of vegetarian dishes rich in herbs and spices. Likewise, the book is much more than a catalogue of recipes; Assafiri devotes many pages to her philosophy of generosity, actively supporting women within her business and creating a convivial, diverse environment that doesn't shy away from debate. (I was excited to see her featured in Ai Weiwei's Letgo Room of Aussie activists at NGV.)

I devoured Assafiri's words on Boxing Day, and planned a feast of her foods to welcome Michael and his brother Matt back to Melbourne a couple of days later. We started with marinated olives, hummus swirled with olive oil and sprinkled with parsley and paprika, and flatbread. Of course, the famous chickpea bake was mandatory (I made mine using a corn chip cheat I figured out a couple of years ago). Michael helped julienne zucchini and apple for a tangy salad (though we forgot to add the pomegranate seeds I'd patiently collected earlier that afternoon!). I teamed these dishes with makloubeh, a vegan-friendly eggplant and rice dish that I'll share the recipe for below. Finally, after a big break, I served muhallabiya in ramekins - these are dairy-based puddings flavoured with orange and lemon, drizzled with an orange blossom syrup and scattered with pistachios.

But back to the makloubeh (pictured up top). This dish consistently pops up in the Moroccan Soup Bar banquet as a platter of red rice, topped with an eggplant slice and slivered almonds. Herbs, spices, tomato paste and pomegranate syrup go straight in with the rice as it cooks and the eggplant slices are browned separately in a frypan and stored in a low oven, rendering them smoky and close to collapse. There's enough substance and variety to enjoy makloubeh as a meal on its own, and I reckon we'll be doing that on weeknights to come. As it was, we packed leftovers into lunchboxes and wolfed them down at the Boxing Day Test the next day.

Makloubeh
(a recipe from Hana Assafiri's Moroccan Soup Bar)

1 eggplant
1 onion
2 cloves garlic
handful of fresh parsley
handful of fresh coriander
1/4 cup olive oil
1 teaspoon cumin
1 teaspoon chilli powder
1 tablespoon tomato paste
2 1/2 cups water
1 cup rice
1 tablespoon pomegranate syrup
1 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons pepper
100g slivered almonds
oil, for frying

Slice the eggplant into 1cm-thick 'steaks'. Sprinkle salt on both sides of the slices and allow them to drain in a colander.

Peel and finely dice the onion and garlic. Coarsely chop the parsley and coriander.

Place the olive oil in a large saucepan over medium-high heat. Add the onion, garlic, parsley (reserving a little bit for garnish), coriander, cumin and chilli powder; saute until the onion is soft. Stir in the tomato paste. Add the water and bring it to the boil. Rinse the rice and, when the water in the saucepan is boiling, add that rice to the pot. Bring it all back to the boil, then lower the heat to medium and allow the rice to cook for 20 minutes.

While the rice is cooking, set oil in a frypan over high heat and brown the eggplant slices on each side, sprinkling over a little pepper as they fry. Place the eggplant slices in a baking tray and, when they're all done, place them in an oven on low heat. Place the almonds in a small bake-proof tray and toast them in the oven, too.

Once the rice has hit 20 minutes, stir through the pomegranate syrup. Cover the saucepan and simmer the rice for a further 15 minutes.

Make sure you get those almonds out of the oven before they burn! When everything is ready, spoon the rice onto a platter. Layer the eggplant slices over the rice, then sprinkle them with the almonds and reserved parsley. Serve as a main meal or a component of a feast!