Evie's Disco Diner

October 1, 2019

A couple of our vegan friends have recommended Evie's Disco Diner to us in the year or two that it's been open. It's as garishly lit as the name would suggest, with pink-cushioned booths around its edge and tall, flimsy stools in a space that you might assume is a dance-floor, but is definitely a covered-over skate pool from the burrito business that was here a couple of years earlier. We made a point of visiting on a Tuesday, when they host a free drag-themed trivia night.

The reason our mates are so keen on Evie's is that there are vegan options on every dish on its junky American menu, from hot wings and loaded fries through to hot dogs, burgers and chocolate mousse. (Gluten-free options are more like fried appetisers than full meals but also seem to include the apple pie!) A quick run-down of the terribly lit food photographed above: 

• The spiced tots ($5, top right) were heavy with smoked paprika, just like the fries down the street at Trippy Taco,
• Michael's Tex Mex burrito ($18, bottom right) was pleasant but a bit homogeneous, and
• my chicken and waffles ($18, left) had a similar 'pretty good but gets samey' vibe, although I tip my hat to their garnishing sprinkle of icing sugar - my tablemates were appalled but I thought it worked. 

By chance, I managed to capture my dessert in better light. At trivia half-time, I ordered a Reeces Pieces shake ($10). The bartender apologised that they were out of chocolate syrup, then on a whim offered to improvise a version with Oreos - and it was great! The shake was thick, plenty chocolatey, and I loved the wide, reusable glass straws they're going with. 

We felt a little out of step with Evie's Disco Diner - while the bar staff and trivia team made us feel welcome, the lighting and furniture were for younger eyes and bodies than ours. Their vegan junk food is fun, and we'd be up for ordering another round.

____________

Evie's Disco Diner has garnered a positive review from Suzie Scribbles and a mixed review from The Penguin Eats. 

____________

Evie's Disco Diner
230-232 Gertrude St, Fitzroy
9419 4192
menu
https://www.evies.net.au/

Accessibility: The entry is flat and wide. Seats are a mixture of narrow booths and high tables and stools, not particularly comfortable, although there's lot's of clear space through the bar (see top photo). The coloured flashing lights and loud music could feel overwhelming. We ordered and paid at a high counter. We didn't visit the toilets.

Brazilian slaw

September 27, 2019

We were tasked with bringing a salad to dinner at a friend's place and we turned to the Smith & Daughters Cookbook for ideas. We've enjoyed this Brazilian slaw at the restaurant in the past (it even makes our 12 hours in Melbourne post), so we decided to have a crack at making it.

It comes together pretty easily, especially if you take the lazy option of using pre-made chips for your garnish. There's a lot of chopping and prep involved, but you can easily knock it all together in half an hour or so I reckon. The pay-off is excellent - a zesty, fresh salad with lots of interesting textures and the added bonus of chips on top. It's a guaranteed crowd-pleaser.

Brazilian slaw
(slightly adapted from Shannon Martinez & Mo Wyse's Smith & Daughters Cookbook)

2 tablespoons of olive oil
kernels from two cobs of corn
100g oyster mushrooms, roughly chopped
1 tablespoon tamari
2 small granny smith apples, cored and cut into matchsticks
1 large carrot, peeled and cut into matchsticks
100g pimento olives, cut into rounds
1/2 purple cabbage, thinly shredded
small bunch of parsley
small bunch coriander

dressing
100g silken tofu
1 clove garlic, crushed
1 teaspoon salt
1/4 cup soy milk
2 teaspoons apple cider vinegar
2 teaspoons Dijon mustard
1/2 cup vegetable oil
1/2 cup olive oil
zest and juice of one lime

garnish

tortilla chips (the recipe has you making your own, but we just gabbed these)

Start by making the dressing - pop all the ingredients except the oils in a blender and whiz them together. Gradually pour in the oils while the blender is on low until you've got a nice thick aioli-style dressing.

Heat a tablespoon of the olive oil in a small frying pan and fry the corn kernels until they're lightly charred. Take the corn out, add the other tablespoon of oil and fry the mushrooms with the tamari until golden. Set aside to cool.

Combine the rest of the salad ingredients in a big bowl, along with the corn and mushrooms and a good shake of salt and pepper to season. 

Stir everything together with about a cup of the dressing (you'll have leftovers) and serve, topped with the tortilla chips.

A simpler 'cheesesteak' sandwich

September 21, 2019

All those banh mi in Hoi An stoked my enthusiasm for fancy sandwiches. They reminded me that I had unfinished business with this cheesesteak sandwich; a really great idea that was just too much work. So almost a year to the day after our first cheesesteak attempt, I tried again. 

The core of this sandwich is a 'meaty' mix of mushrooms and yuba/dried bean curd. I chose slight variations on the ingredients, going for common Swiss brown and portabello mushrooms instead of the rarer, chewier king oysters, and hunting out a dried bean curd that was formed as thin, bite-sized pieces. I condensed the mushroom-yuba flavouring way down to store-bought stock flavouring, vegan oyster and Worcestershire sauces, liquid smoke and a few pantry spices.

The second key element in a Philly cheesesteak is a cheese! The original recipe included a vegan sauce that needs extensive pre-cooking and a deep blend. This time I turned to our beloved Smith & Daughters hot cheddar and pickled jalapeno dip. It's still a bit of effort, but it stirs up in a single saucepan and tastes spectacular. It was the perfect partner to our mushroomy 'steak', melting just a little around the edges and adding some pickley piquancy.

The cheesesteak fillings are saucy, but not as horrendously messy as I feared, gently soaking into a soft long bun without too many drips. I even struck on a method for preserving the magic when taking leftovers to work; microwaving a paper-wrapped roll for 60 seconds to heat it all through without toughening up the bun too badly.

A simpler yuba mushroom cheesesteak sandwich
(a recipe inspired by a Serious Eats one we made previously)

1 teaspoon beef-style stock powder
75g yuba pieces
4 spring onions (would use 1 brown onion in future), chopped
200g Swiss brown mushrooms, sliced into large pieces
250g portabello mushrooms, sliced into large pieces
1/2 red capsicum, sliced into large pieces
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
1/4 cup vegan oyster sauce
1 tablespoon vegan Worcestershire sauce
1 teaspoon liquid smoke
1 teaspoon smoked paprika
1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
2 teaspoons Dijon mustard
black pepper, to taste
6 long rolls
half the regular quantity of hot cheddar & pickled jalapeno dip
pickled jalapenos, to taste

Place the stock powder in a medium bowl and pour over 1 cup of boiling water. Drop in the yuba pieces, stirring them around so that they're all softened by the water.

Heat the oil in a large frypan or pot. Add the onion and saute until soft. Add the mushrooms and capsicum, sauteing until the capsicum is softened. I found that this mixture dried out quickly, and poured over 1/2 cup water. Add the yuba and stir through, ensuring that the pieces are softened all the way through.

Add the condiments in succession, stirring them through the mixture: oyster sauce, Worcestershire sauce, liquid smoke, paprika, garlic powder, mustard, and pepper. Continue to cook the mixture, stirring, until most of the liquid evaporates.

Cut the rolls lengthways, leaving a small seam where the roll folds open and shut. Spoon in the yuba-mushroom filling, spoon over a generous portion of cheddar dip, and add pickled jalapenos to suit your spice level. Close and eat.

Vegan enchiladas with coriander-cashew cream

September 16, 2019

When one of our friends has a baby, we have a tradition of delivering them a tray of tempeh lasagne. The newest little baby, though, has a gluten-free parent! Thus, we've prepared enchiladas as a wheat-free alternative.

I found this recipe on Oh She Glows during a brief browse online. It's a long recipe, but not at all unreasonable. I really liked the smooth and warmly spiced tomato sauce, based primarily on tomato paste and vege stock. The filling is a mixture of sweet potato, capsicum, sun-dried tomatoes, spinach and black beans, moistened with a little of that sauce. Instead of cheese, the enchiladas are topped with a light, green cashew cream that's whipped up entirely in a blender.

I made two little changes. First, I recalled that American chilli powder doesn't pack the punch of typical Aussie stuff and dialled it way down. Second, it's really not my style to neatly pipe the cream at the end. My big dollops are much less photogenic, but I'm AOK with that.

These enchiladas are great fresh out of the oven, packed for lunch at room temperature, with a side dish or straight up on their own. Hopefully they'll serve these new parents well.

Vegan enchiladas with coriander-cashew cream
(very slightly adapted from a recipe on Oh She Glows)

coriander-cashew cream
3/4 cup raw cashews
1/2 cup coriander leaves
1 teaspoon garlic powder
1/2 cup water
juice of 1 lime
2 tablespoons avocado
1/2 teaspoon salt

sauce
2 tablespoons olive oil
2 tablespoons gluten-free flour
1 teaspoon chilli powder
1 teaspoon garlic powder
1 teaspoon cumin
1/2 teaspoon onion powder
1/4 teaspoon cayenne powder
1 scant cup tomato paste
1 1/2 cups vegetable stock
1/2 teaspoon salt

filling
260g sweet potato, peeled and chopped
1 tablespoon plus 1 teaspoon olive oil
1 red onion, diced
3 cloves garlic, minced
1 cup jarred roasted red capsicum, drained and chopped
1/2 cup sun-dried tomatoes, drained and chopped
2 cups baby spinach, roughly chopped
400g can black beans, drained
juice of 1 lime
1 teaspoon ground cumin
1/2 teaspoon salt

~12 small corn tortillas
optional garnishes: more fresh coriander leaves, avocado, chilli flakes, etc

Soak the cashews in water overnight. Drain the cashews and place them in a blender or spice grinder. Add the remaining cream ingredients and blend until smooth.

Next, get the sauce going. Set a medium saucepan over medium heat and pour in the oil. When it's heated, stir in the flour to form a paste. Add the dried spices (chill through to cayenne) and combine well, cooking for a couple of minutes until they smell great. Stir in the tomato paste, and then the stock, until smooth. Simmer for about 5 minutes, and add the salt. Turn off the heat.

Time for the filling. Fill a medium saucepan with water and drop in the sweet potato pieces. Bring it all to the boil and simmer for about 10 minutes, under tender but still holding their shape. Drain the sweet potatoes and set them aside.

Set a large frypan over medium heat and pour in the oil. Saute the onion and garlic for 3-5 minutes, until softened.

Preheat an oven to 180°C.

To the frypan, add the sweet potato, capsicum, sun-dried tomatoes, spinach and black beans. Cook, stirring, for 3-5 minutes until the spinach is just wilted. Stir through 1/3 cup enchilada sauce, the lime juice, cumin and salt. Turn off the heat.

Get out a large, high-walled baking dish. Spread 3/4 cup sauce across the base of the dish. Scoop some filling into a tortilla, roll it up and place it in the dish. Repeat with the remaining tortillas and nestle them up together in the dish. Pour the remaining sauce over the tortillas. Baked the enchiladas for around 20 minutes, until they're heated through.

To serve, dollop the cashew cream over the enchiladas and sprinkle over any garnishes.

Sana's vegan dumplings

September 14, 2019

It's been months since I last took on a real cooking project! This one does double duty, coming from my lab cookbook: it's Sana's vegan dumplings! I remember this prize-winning recipe fondly from the annual culinary competition in 2017.

Sana's recipe stretched to two pages, not just because dumplings take a bit of effort, but because she helpfully included resources and photos along the way. We took a few notes with us to KFL to seek out the right ingredients. We were pretty sure we recognised the shitakes on sight, but we couldn't find the bricks of wood ear fungus that Sana described, so we went with a more generic dried black fungus instead. It was easy to find good tofu, fresh veges and dumpling wrappers there.

Sana uses a little AGV BBQ sauce in her filling. We love the stuff, although we haven't had it in a few years, and our mate Steph helped us track it down to Vincent's Marketplace.

Once we'd assembled our ingredients, making the filling was simple methodical work I could easily complete with a couple of podcasts for company. I pleated my wrappers using the method we learned from The Humble Dumpling earlier this year; they weren't perfect but I was pretty pleased with my work. The quantities multiplied out well - the 40 wrappers I bought covered us happily for two consecutive dinners, and used up about half the filling. The remaining filling is now tucked in the freezer, waiting for our next dumpling night.

I experienced bigger challenges in the cooking phase. We've had success with potsticker preparation before, but I just couldn't get it right this time. Two batches stuck stubbornly to our cast-iron pan on Saturday night; on Sunday I simply boiled them instead (top photo) with more success.

Even stubborn, messy dumplings are tasty dumplings, and these have such a great, varied filling. We dipped them into a soy-vinegar-chilli sauce, and rounded out our meal with choy sum in vegetarian oyster sauce and garlic. 

Sana's vegan dumplings

(a recipe shared by Sana in the Lab Farewell Cookbook)

a handful of dried shitake mushrooms (about 50g)

1 'brick' wood ear fungus (we use ~15-20g dried black fungus)

1 cup celery, finely chopped

1 cup vermicelli, rehydrated according to packet directions and chopped roughly into 1-2cm lengths

1 cup fried tofu, finely chopped

1 tablespoon minced ginger

1 tablespoon minced garlic

4 stalks spring onion, finely chopped (white and green parts)

2 tablespoons AGV vegetarian BBQ sauce

dash of soy sauce

dumpling wrappers (this quantity of filling makes about 80)

Place the two kinds of dried mushroom into bowl and pour boiling water over them; make sure they're completely submerged with extra water and bowl space for expansion. Let them soften overnight if you can; we gave them a couple of hours, and part-way through I chopped the shitakes into long slices so that the dry centres were exposed to water. Chop them finely; you're aiming for about a cup of each.

Get out a very large bowl and drop in the chopped mushrooms. Add all of the other ingredients, except for the wrappers (!). Add salt to taste; I went pretty light because of the BBQ and soy sauces but Sana recommends slightly over-seasoning because the wrappers will weaken the overall flavour.

Place a heaped teaspoon of filling in the centre of each dumpling wrapper, and wrap them into your preferred shape. There are plenty of tutorials online! I used the method I learned at The Humble Dumpling. Repeat with as many wrappers as you want.

If you want to simply boil the dumplings, get a very large pot of water up to a rolling boil and drop the dumplings in, in batches. Make sure the batch size allows them all to float to the surface, a stir them regularly to make sure they don't stick to each other. When they're ready, the dumplings will puff up slightly. Pull them out with a slotted spoon.

To make pot-stickers, heat a thin layer of vegetable oil in a frypan over medium-high heat and have a lid that covers the pan at the ready. When the oil is hot, arrange a layer of well-spaced dumplings in the oil. Allow them to fry for about 2 minutes, until they're golden brown on the bottom. Give them a little shake to ensure they don't get stuck. Pour in just enough water to cover the whole base of the frypan and swiftly cover them with the lid; allow them around 4 minutes to steam and add a little more water along the way if you think it's needed. Remove the lid and cook for a further 2 minutes; allow the water to evaporate and give 'em a little shake again to avoid sticking.

Serve the dumplings with a dipping sauce such as soy, black vinegar and chilli in your preferred proportions.