james test

This weekend my Dad and his wife Anne have flown down from Brisbane, and on Saturday they came over to check out our flat for the first time and have some lunch. Michael and I have hit upon a winning combination in spanakopita and ratatouille. They're easy to prepare, although it takes a while, and they're guaranteed to generate lots of leftovers that are equally enjoyable reheated or at room temperature, teamed up again or served separately with other things. Michael chopped and stirred for a couple of hours on Friday night, making a half-batch of this ratatouille recipe . I like to keep cooking this until the veges are disintegrating into each other, but I think they're meant to be a bit separate and discernable, really. Makes a pretty good side for meat pies , and would also be well matched with buttered crusty bread or couscous. I got the spanakopita recipe from the only women's magazine I've ever respected in the morning, Bust . It has a great section in w...

In his omnivorous days, meat pies were one of Michael's guilty pleasures. I developed this recipe for him after we went veg and I discovered TVP (textured vegetable protein). TVP comes as dried up flaky bits, and is made mostly of soy flour. When the flakes are soaked in water they fluff up into a pretty convincing substitute for beef mince. They don't taste meaty, exactly, but mince is so often hidden in sauce or other flavours that I reckon it'd do the job almost all the time. I've had a couple of omnivores comment that they wouldn't have picked the difference in this recipe if they hadn't known I was vegetarian. You can get Sanitarium brand TVP from most supermarkets, and some health food shops sell other brands of it too. I was going to submit this recipe to the "We Do Chew Our Food" pie review , but I wanted to post it here because it's one of the dishes of which I'm most proud. I invented it from scratch! Cindy's I-can't-be...

The office was quiet and poorly attended on Monday morning, as a few people put the final touches on their competition entries at home. I spent several hours at my desk, skimming a textbook and clock-watching, until people started flowing in at about 12:20. There must have been twenty or thirty eager stomaches and appreciative palates, creating a very enjoyable hour of catching up with friends, striking up conversations with unfamiliar people, and trying to sample as many dishes as possible. (For me there were more unfamiliar faces than for most, and I was trying to photograph as well as taste all the dishes!) Two of the birthday gal's sons judged the food, creating 13 quirky award categories with the purpose of giving away 13 prizes, each a random item from an Asian supermarket. Here are most, but not all, of the entries: Home-made hummus. With a real lemon tang, just the way I like it. Tofu balls with dipping sauce. Winner of the "Best Imitation of Meat" prize. Ho...

Nigella's recipe for chocolate-cherry cupcakes was just the kind of dessert entry I was after: easily made the day before and prepared in single portions, with a look that combines a fun party treat with dark chocolate elegance. It calls for morello cherry jam in the cake batter, and Nigella likes to buy it at Sainsbury's. With the nearest Sainsbury's almost 17000 killometres away I decided to scout around for an alternative, finding zero perfect but three promising options. The first was a 670g jar of morello cherries in syrup at Safeway, which could also replace the glace cherries that Nige suggests for decoration (I hate glace fruit). Less than $4 and yum to snack on too. The second find was some black cherry jam, also at Safeway. It lacks the sourness of morellos, but has the right texture for the batter. Third is a comparatively expensive jar of sour cherry chutney, bought from a French food stall at the Vic Markets. It certainly had the right cherry taste, but...

My new workplace is turning out to be my kinda scene, with a culinary competition to be held tomorrow in honour of the birthday of one of my colleagues. For a day or so I fantasised about winning friends and influencing people with entries far superior to anything else on the table. Then I reflected on a conversation with the guest of honour in the past, in which she talked about making her own harissa paste. I struck up an innocent conversation about last year's entries, which turned out to include Thai fish cakes, gyoza with water chestnut filling, and souffles with goats' cheese oozing out of them. OK... tough competition. I pared back my plan to simply to keeping up with the Joneses and not looking like a culinary klutz. Well, a little more than that: the email invitation incites me to "Increase your chances of winning!! Unlimited entries!!" I still have enough ambition to submit an entry for each category, Antipasto/Entree and Dessert. (Really, when I thin...

One of reasons this blog continues to be updated so frequently is the limited social lives that Cindy and I have been living in Melbourne so far. Things are gradually improving, but this morning rolled around and we realised we had nothing better to do tonight than cook. So after a quick flick through the Bold Vegetarian book , we picked out tonight's recipe and headed off to the Queen Vic Markets. Both our trips to the markets so far have been in the midst of the crazy Saturday crowds and have made the whole experience a bit trying, but the glimpses we got of the antipasto and cheeses on the deli counters mean that we'll have to find a time to return when we can browse with a bit more leisure. Anyway, onto the recipe. Roasted potatoes, chickpeas, and spinach with spicy cashew sauce Ingredients 1 kilogram small red potatoes, scrubbed and quartered 1/4 cup peanut oil 1 teaspoon salt 1 tablespoon fennel seeds 1 tablespoon ground cumin 1 teaspoon turmeric 1 cinammon stick 1 med...

A squally, rainy Friday evening put paid to our vague plans for a jaunt through the city and we scurried home to spend an evening lounging about the house instead. We had some vague plans for cooking dinner, but the lack of soy bacon at the local Safeway sapped Cindy's enthusiasm for home made burgers, so it was time for more takeaway. I've been hoping for an opportunity to sample one of the three vegetarian pizza places in Melbourne and we're outside the delivery limits of both Plush Pizza and Nostralis , leaving us with only Mr. Natual in North Fitzroy. They boast wholemeal bases, rennet-free cheese and fifteen different vego pizzas and offer two medium pizzas delivered for $20. Score. I chose the broccoli pizza (tomato, cheese, broccoli, mushroom, peppers, onion, olives, feta, parsley, garlic, herbs, sesame seeds) and Cindy wanting something plain, considered the marguerita, before opting for the mushroom. Unfortunately, I got distracted and ordered her the margu...

After a couple of virtuous lunches and dinners dominated by salad , it was time for some fried cheese. I previously praised haloumi in my last days of cabin fever in remote Sweden , where the delis are few but high quality dairy products are abundant. I think haloumi is at its best straight out of the fry pan, where a bit of olive oil has seared the outside golden, hot and a bit oozy with cracked pepper and a big squeeze of lemon juice on top. But there are better ways of making a meal of it than piling your plate with six such slices. You can treat a big slice as a burger patty, for example. We layered Turkish bread with home-roasted capsicum (no oil), grilled zucchini, fresh basil and baby spinach, then the haloumi with lemon and pepper. On the side are potato chunks baked in the oven with olive oil, salt, pepper, and some rosemary left over from the stock-making (thanks to Grill’d for that idea). Make two sandwiches per person and the next day’s lunch is sorted! Ca...

Wandering up and down Lygon Street we’ve noticed appetising looking pasta replicas in the window of Donnini’s Home-Made Pasta. Donnini’s supply more than twenty varieties of fresh pasta, from ricotta and sun-dried tomato agnolotti to basil taglieatelle. They also do a range of sauces, but we decided that we’d invent our own simple sauce to go with the artichoke, pine nut and ricotta ravioli. So we roasted and peeled a couple of capsicums and blended them up with some balsamic vinegar and cracked pepper. Combined with the subtle and slightly salty pasta, some parmesan cheese and a big pile of salad, it was a wonderful meal. Categories Savoury Cooking

Even though we had takeaway for dinner on Sunday night, we didn’t completely slack off on cooking. While Michael was picking up our spicy dinners in Fitzroy, I was spicing up a tofu marinade for Monday night’s dinner. The recipe was our first test of “The Bold Vegetarian Chef” and the recipe did promise bold flavours, as I mixed together caraway seeds, fenugreek, lemon juice, tamarind paste, coriander, garlic, mustard, turmeric, sugar and Tabasco sauce with yoghurt and a bit of olive oil. This concoction got smeared all over some firm tofu cubes and refrigerated overnight. In the morning I rotated the tofu bits to make sure all surfaces were flavoured. The sauce, which we prepared on Monday night, was a raita-like mix of cucumber, coriander, red onion, garlic, salt and pepper with lots more yoghurt. It was a simple but messy job to line up the tofu cubes on skewers, then fry them. I guess the point of the skewers is to make turning the tofu a bit quicker, but Michael found it no ...

The observant reader will notice a preponderance of Indian food within these pages . I’ve always been something of a curry connoisseur, but Cindy’s Indian enthusiasm is a relatively recent development, stemming from a trip to the US that involved sharing a house with an Indian American and spending 10 days staying a few blocks from Manhattan’s Little India. Going veg has no doubt played a part in her conversion as well – you’re rarely short delicious vegetarian options when you choose Indian takeaway. Whatever the cause, it’s meant that one of our first tasks on arriving in Melbourne has been to seek out a convenient and delicious Indian takeaway option. So far, The Fitz Curry Café is leading the race. It’s a vaguely organic-themed Indian place about 15 minutes walk from our flat. The vegetarian menu is a strong point, with thirteen choices (including two types of kofta!), and the prices are reasonable ($8-$10 for a vegie curry). After a mammoth cooking day yesterday and a ...

On Sunday we took a tram to posh Chapel St, Prahran to find some people even yuppier than us and take a peek at the markets . The people were indeed posher and yuppier than us, but lacked variety in their dress and manner. Their primary means of self-expression seems to be the pedigree of pampered pooch that they tether outside the cafes or cradle in their arms. It was at little disappointing but not so surprising that the market stalls were mostly closed at 1:00 on a Sunday afternoon, but the organic grocer and specialty mushroom shop encouraged us to come back again on a Saturday morning when it promises to be more lively. For lunch I was craving some vegetarian-friendly pub food. More accurately, I wanted some chips. As we walked further south along Chapel St the shops decreased in sleekness and median price. The bright and perky Grill’d appeared at just the right time to feed me. It sells beef, lamb, chicken and vege burgers, but most importantly it sells chips. They fit t...

Ex-officemate and now email cooking contact, Carlo, has been getting into French cooking and perfecting a recipe for meat-based glaze. I didn’t feel like I was missing out on much until I saw his cream of mushroom soup, and he helpfully sent me a link to this site so that I could have a go at a vege-based glaze/stock. I figured I’d best do it straight away before spring takes hold, and made a shopping list to take to the Ceres markets . We got started in the early afternoon with lots of chopping. We had more of most of the ingredients that the recipe specified, so we ended up making 1 ½ to 2 times the quantity. This was probably not the greatest idea on our first attempt, during the browning stage in particular. We must have stirred those things around in our biggest pot for at least 45 minutes, with the parsnips browning slightly and the rest just turning to greyish-green mush. The base of the saucepan developed a layer of hardened mush that couldn’t be scraped off easily with ...

Each weekend since we moved down here, Cindy and I have made vague plans to visit one of Melbourne’s dozens of markets. Apart from one overwhelming trip to the Queen Victoria Markets, we’ve repeatedly found other things to do with our Saturday mornings. But after a relatively early Friday night, we were waiting down at the tram stop by about 10ish. Following some tram-related delays, we managed to find our way to the Ceres Organic Market in East Brunswick before all the fruit and veg had been sold. The market is attached to a fairly substantial market garden, and the fruit and veg on offer appeared to be limited to stuff that was grown on-site. This guaranteed fresh, organic produce, but did mean that the selection (at least by the time we arrived) was a little limited. Still, we loaded up on veges for our first attempt at making our own stock (Cindy will post about this ordeal shortly), grabbed a pumpkin loaf from the sourdough baker and then just relaxed and soaked up the hipp...