james test

As aspiring vegetarian food bloggers, we really should have made more of an effort to review Lentil As Anything some time in our first 150 posts. You'd think a not-for-profit place with no set prices, that has won Australia Day awards would have attracted our patronage by now. Alas, unless you count our breakfast at Lentil As Africa , we failed. With the encouragement of Emma and Simon and their visiting friend Ben, we finally made it there on the weekend. And, unfortunately, it was a little disappointing. We turned up at around 7 and fortunately snagged a table for five - it's a tiny place, which probably only seats 30 people at a stretch, so we were pretty lucky. The walls are covered with a mixture of artwork and posters for yoga classes, and the general vibe is as hippy friendly as you'd expect. The menu is a fairly impressive list of vegetarian delights - curries, burgers, noodles and other vaguely Asian-inspired options. We started off with a round of mango la...

Apricots are not my favourite stone fruit. When summer rolls around, they're likely to be neglected as I ogle the nectarines, peaches, cherries and plums. But they're currently the ripest of the lot at my local fruit shop, and I've been serving them up for dessert. There they are, in the picture above, the perfect vessels for our last small scoops of cinnamon vanilla ice-cream . Last night I sliced them into crescents, stirred through some flaked almonds , and topped them with dabs of a whipped mixture of mascarpone , brown sugar and rose water . If I can keep these sweet memories until next summer, I might even pick up some apricots while the rest of its genus is still in its prime!

For dinner on Saturday night, Michael and I concocted a hybrid of deep-fried spring rolls and their healthier cousin, the rice paper wrap. They are also inspired by our favourite dumplings, from Kuan-Yin Vegetarian Tea House in Brisbane. Michael referred to the dumplings in his post about Chinese New Year, and they must've been lurking in my subconscious appetite ever since. Here's a rundown/recipe. For the filling, we chopped: 4 shallots a red capsicum a carrot a zucchini a large handful of shitake mushrooms and minced a small knob of ginger and 3 cloves of garlic . I would also have liked to add some re-hydrated TVP as a pork mince substitute, but it has disappeared from Safeway! Some firm tofu would also be a worthy addition. All these ingredients are stir-fried in a tablespoon of peanut oil, and once everything's heated through add about a tablespoon of hoisin sauce and 2 teaspoons sambal oelek . When the veges had softened slightly, transfer them back into a b...

After three fairly rich dinners in a row, I was looking for something nutritious and summery to eat on Friday night. As the feature ingredient (sorry, I'm watching Iron Chef as I write this!) I chose quinoa , since I had bought a packet from Allergy Block a week or two ago without any specific plans for it. Over breakfast Michael found this recipe from the Whole Foods Market website , and we served it wrapped up in wholemeal Mountain Bread , with mixed greens and Lebanese cucumber. The quinoa and pine nuts were a great combination and this was just the kind of fresh meal my body needed. However I found the overall flavour a bit bland: next time I'll add the juice of a lemon at the end - it's perking up the leftovers nicely.

30/06/2013: Over at Fitzroyalty , Brian reports that Tandoori Times has now closed. Thursday evening involved a couple of aborted plans, culminating in a night at home with home-delivered Indian. This time we sampled the wares of Tandoori Times. Their menu (available online) boasts about 20 vegetarian mains as well as the usual appetisers, breads and rice. With a base of basmati rice and garlic naan, we went for (from top to bottom in the pic) sabzi makhani ($8.50), Punjabi daal tadka ($7.90), tandoori gobhi ($9.90) and paneer pumpum ($7.50). The pumpum, battered and fried cheese, was a fairly chewy patty with an acidic tang and chilli punch. The curries were likewise quite hot, pleasant but not memorable; the naan well-flavoured but a bit rubbery. The highlight of the meal was undoubtedly the tandoori cauliflower: tender and super-tangy with a smoky finish. The leftovers of this dish were in high demand for Friday's lunch! Vegetarian tandoori options are something of a rar...

For Wednesday evening we made arrangements to meet Mike and Jo-Lyn at the Moonlight Cinema in the Royal Botanic Gardens. Given my successful super sandwich picnic a couple of weekends ago, I offered to take care of dinner with a double batch. Unsatisfied with just that repetition, my mind ticked over for a support act. Salad, our default side dish at home, wouldn't do: there were already greens in the sandwich and Michael wouldn't tolerate one based on tomatoes. How about some more protein? I recently saw some great recipes for spiced nuts on 28 cooks and decided to try the lemon pepper cashews . So on Tuesday night I popped the sandwich filling in the oven and had a go at those nuts. I was a bit slapdash with the measurements and impatient to let the sugar melt properly. Thus, the flavourings didn't quite stick properly and they were a bit too peppery. Even so the sweet-hot tangy spice, enhanced further by the salt, was a hit! Once plonked down on the grassy fl...

Cindy wanted to spend Tuesday night making a second batch of the super sandwiches for a night picnic at the moonlight cinema, so there was no kitchen space for cooking dinner. Instead, we tried out Markov Place, a place that had been given a couple of write-ups in The Age . It's hidden in behind the cleanskin shop on Drummond Street across from the back entrance to Safeway. We snuck in the other way, via the eponymous alley that runs of Johnston Street. It's a lovely, relaxed place: part bar, part restaurant with high ceilings, atmospheric lighting and a fairly bustling crowd for a Tuesday evening. Being part bar, the drinks menu was quite impressive - a good range of imported beer, some fairly standard cocktails and a wine list (which The Age critic dissed, but which looked fine to my untrained eye). Cindy went for a non-alcoholic of lemom, lime and bitters, while I sampled a Czech beer: Budějovický Budvar, which turns out to translate as Budweiser Budvar, although it is...

I learned a valuable lesson on Monday - don't go looking for Gertrude Street Grub on Mondays, everything's closed. My initial plan was to stop by the Roti Roundhouse , and my second option (Radio) is also a Monday closure. I was tempted to return to TrippyTaco , but it was too soon for a repeat blog performance. So I settled on Arcadia, a trendy-looking cafe on Gertrude Street near the corner with Smith Street. The lunch options seem to be largely pre-made stuff (salads, sandwiches, a few curries and pastas) in the display case, with a few rotating specials. I opted for a sandwich: roasted eggplant, fresh salad, pesto and feta cheese, and settled in to a seat out on the footpath. Given the sandwiches were sitting, ready-made, in the cabinet, I was a little surprised that it took upwards of 20 minutes for it to come out. Admittedly it had been warmed up and put on a plate with some rocket, and things were kind of busy inside, but I think they can probably do better. The ...

The sweltering conditions continued on Sunday, but Michael and I made an effort to check out the last day of the Sustainable Living Festival . When we arrived at noon we made a slow but purposeful bee-line to an organic cookery demonstration . This was hosted by Sun Hyland of Macro Wholefoods . Our sweaty limbs stuck to fold-out chairs and the hot air hovered around and above us, but for the 40 minutes I was pleased to be there, as Sun prepared seared tofu with olive pesto and shared tips and information, about cooking techniques, organics and sustainable foods. (For example, did you know that most of our garlic comes from China, and is bleached as a preservative? Organic garlic has a purplish tinge and is even more pungent.) I'm sure this isn't any new breakthrough in cooking-demo technology but I thought the mirrors, set above the benches at 45 degree angles, were really nifty: this meant that we could view the bench from above and front-on and get the right angle on al...

01/12/2012: Ten Ren has been permanently closed now. Cindy and I brought in the year of the pig with an aimless wander about Chinatown on Saturday night. By the time we managed to leave the house, filled with visions of delicious roadside stalls selling dumplings and spring rolls, it was approaching 9pm and we were starting to get very hungry. Alas, the only stalls we found sold meaty satay sticks or pork jerky. Poor show Melbourne's Chinese community. Giving up on food for a while, we followed the sound of beating drums to a dragon dance and were briefly deafened by the firing off of a string of fireworks. It seemed that every restaurant on Little Bourke Street was chock-full of people and I was starting to get mightily hungry, so I dragged Cindy away from the sound and fury of the festivities and we headed along Bourke Street proper to try to find some dinner. We eventually stumbled onto Ten Ren's Tea Time - a Taiwanese tea house and cafe that had a reasonably sized v...

Those felafel might have been filling, but there was something else we needed before we could complete our bike ride home - cool, fruity gelato! Gelobar supplied it, and an air-conditioned refuge to boot. There were a couple of dozen flavours to choose from, along with a selection of Italian-style cakes and pastries. Unusually, I had eyes only for the chocolate-free fruit ices and didn't take long to order a cup with paddles of Limone and Cointreau; for Michael it was plum and watermelon. They had the perfect smooth, slightly elastic texture that separates gelato from ice-cream. The Cointreau gelato was delightful, more creamy and less tangy than I expected: the Limone cut through with the citrus acidity I was after. The watermelon tasted true to its origin but wasn't as refreshing as Michael expected; the plum thoroughly satisfied. For Italian desserts, Gelobar is the real deal. It's no wonder that there are lines of customers out the door on weekend evenings in th...

On a sweltering Saturday, Michael and I had an errand or two to attend to in Brunswick. Lunch in Coburg was the incentive we needed to get ourselves out of the flat and into the scorching sunlight. In particular we were aiming for the Half Moon Cafe - a couple of months ago someone recommended their felafel to us and we've been slow to take their advice. This is one of several unremarkable-looking kebab shops in an area with a distinctly Middle Eastern flavour. However the menu runs a little further than what I've come to expect from the average haven for late-night hungry drunks: there are five different felafel wraps on offer, a couple of legume-based salads and other sides for the vegetarian customer. In fact, as our felafel fried, we were offered teaspoons to taste their fresh batch of Foul Medames. Don't be put off by the name - this is a creamy Egyptian-style fava bean dish packed with flavour. It was only the interminable heat in and outside the cafe that prev...

Thanks to Cin from A Few of My Favourite Things , Cindy and I were in possession of a $50 voucer for a meal at Chillipadi and, since we had nothing planned, we decided to check it out on Friday evening. It's tucked away around the Elizabeth Street side of Melbourne Central, and seems to be spread across three levels. And it was busy - people spilling out everywhere. Luckily, being a duo, we were quick to find a table, although it was kind of jammed between the door and the cash register. But on the upside, Cindy's friend Yung was dining at the table next door, which was a stroke of good fortune. Thanks to the spendthrift-ery that a voucher instills, I tucked straight into an imported Japanese beer while we perused our options. The menu provides fairly well for vegetarians, with noodle dishes, roti-based options, salads and a few other choices. In keeping with our voucher-inspired enthusiasm, we started out with a bowl of chips, seasoned with shichimi (7 spice chilli). T...

Here's a recipe for cinnamon vanilla ice-cream, which I whipped up a couple days in advance of our Valentine's Day apple pie . It was soft and airy, with a distinct spice and understated sweetness. Even though I love their flavour, I find that the use of ground spices like cinnamon and cloves give food a slightly dusty flavour and texture. (Infusing the milk and cream with whole cinnamon sticks and cloves might prevent this, but I suspect I'd find the flavour too weak.) If you're not eating the ice-cream with apple pie, I reckon some fruit on the side would freshen things right up. Cinnamon vanilla ice-cream In a small bowl, whisk together a cup of milk, a cup of cream, a teaspoon of vanilla paste, a teaspoon of ground cinnamon and a generous pinch of ground cloves. In a slightly larger bowl whisk 2 egg yolks, then incorporate half a cup of castor sugar. Gradually add the spiced cream, still whisking as you go. Pour the lot into an ice-cream maker and freeze accor...

Michael and I don't usually go in for Valentine's Day. Teddy bears with "I Wuv You!" slogans are really not my thing and I prefer to see flowers in their natural habitat rather than decapitated in a vase. But this year I decided to make a gesture of my appreciation for Michael by preparing his favourite dessert. Although he's never actually pronounced apple pie to be his favourite dessert, six and a bit years of observation have indicated that, when it's an option, Michael's preference is for the fruit/pastry combo: danishes of all fruity pursuasions, apple turnovers, apple slices, strudels and pies. Last month I was browsing The Amateur Gourmet 's archives: Adam made a Martha Stewart apple pie, wrote a funny post about it , and impressed (among others) his boyfriend Craig, an alleged pie connoisseur. The heavens opened up, God's light shone down and I saw myself in Adam's exulted position, winning over my man with my home cooking and the ...

It had been over a month since we'd last had Indian - an unthinkable gap given my particular obsession with it - so I spent Tuesday morning scanning our cookbooks for a winning recipe. Cindy's a bit of a korma fan, but the vegetarian option in Mridula Baljekar's book has never really impressed me. Luckily, there's a chicken version in one of our other Indian books that looked like it could be easily converted to a mixed-vegie version. The korma used pistachio nuts rather than the usual cashew option, which gave the picture in the recipe book a rather startling green colour. Mine ended up a more traditional colour, but the flavour was quite impressive. Pre oven-baking the spuds and the eggplant was a wonderful idea - both soaked up the curry flavours particularly well and their softness was a nice contrast to the crisper carrots and beans. If anything, I'd probably cut down on the potato a little next time and add in an additional vegetable. Capsicum maybe. ...

Michael cooked up a mighty fine curry tonight (appearing soon!) and my small contribution was to whip up a mango lassi. I've read that the lassi is traditionally enjoyed at the end of a meal, but I prefer to have one with my Indian meals to combat the spiciness. A lassi fills me up and leaves a sweet aftertaste, so I rarely crave dessert after one anyway. Mango lassi Remove the skin and stone from a mango, and roughly chop the flesh. Blitz the mango in a food processor until smooth. Add about 100g of yoghurt, 100mL of milk, a tablespoon of castor sugar and 1/4 teaspoon of ground cardamom. Blend again until well combined. Pour into two large (or three small) glasses and serve with ice. Variations: When they're out of season, use canned mango. You could also replace some of the milk with the mango juice/syrup (omit the sugar). Use another fruit! Pineapple and berries are both recommended by Mridula Baljekar. Next time I might try replacing the yoghurt and milk with butter...

You know in Blondie comics, how Bumstead is always trying to construct huge triple sandwiches to feast on at midnight? Or do you remember that Simpsons episode where Homer takes home a 10 foot hoagie from a company picnic, hiding it from Marge like a secret lover when the mayonnaise starts to turn? I've never understood that devotion to sandwiches. Maybe for a burger with just the right herb and sauce combination, but only if there were some top-notch chips on the side, right? An unheated, unaccessorised sandwich couldn't really engender that kind of feeling on its own, could it? On Saturday I found one that hit that kind of mark. Michael and I planned a visit to Yarra Bend Park for a walk and some very amateur bird watching. We wanted to be there around dusk and so sorted out a little picnic for dinner. The main feature of this picnic was the French-Style Roasted Vegetable Sandwich from Moosewood's New Classics cookbook. Sweet, tangy and creamy, it was good stuff...