james test

As is often the case, Saturday yielded some food wanderings: first a trip round the Queen Vic Markets on my own and then a browse through Casa Iberica with Michael, lunch at Ici , and a quick pick-up of a few remaining essentials at Safeway. Even with all this new food to enjoy, a fairly large and full tray of tandoori veges and rice was taking up space in our fridge and on my conscience. So I blended the old with the new in an omlette/frittata-type improvisation, combining the rice and veges with market-fresh eggs and serving them with some organic rosemary olive oil toast. Some fresh greens really would have brightened this very yellow meal (in texture and nutritional value as well as colour) but unfortunately my planning didn't stretch that far. As always, dessert was far more about novelty and self-indulgence than about obligation. I picked up a cheap kilo-and-a-bit of apples at the markets and vaguely plotted some little apple crumbles - there's typically oats, butter...

Update, August 1 2013: More news from Fitzroyalty ! Looks like Ici is reopening very soon.  Update, July 5 2013: As reported by Fitzroyalty , Cafe Ici has closed down. Saturday found us in Fitzroy for a visit to Casa Iberica and thoughts quickly turned to some sort of lunch while we were out and about. Our first attempt was Babka, but the queue was almost out the door, so we decided to escape the crowds of Brunswick Street to the quieter backstreets and Ici. Unfortunately, Ici's reputation ensures that even tucked away on Napier Street, there's seldom a spare table to be had. Despite being told we were next in line for a table, we ended up waiting for twenty minutes or so to be seated. I'm not entirely sure if this was just down to people lingering over their coffees or if the staff forgot about us a few times, but with the cold wind picking up we took matters into our own hands and pounced when we saw a vacancy near the door. The last time we'd visited Ici I'd ...

The last installment in SBS's Hooray for Bollywood movie series was the fabulous Kuch Naa Kaho . It's a fine example of a modern Bollywood romance and includes one of my favourite musical numbers, where a traditional engagement party in a lavish setting is transformed into a battle-of-the-sexes dance-off: how frustrating that subtitles for the lyrics disappear half-way through! To accompany the movie, we prepared tandoori veges and lemon rice. Since sampling the delicious tandoori cauliflower at Tandoori Times , I've been re-inspired by the marinade that is so often only seen on chicken. Michael noticed a pouch of tandoori spices at Spice Bazaar last weekend and immediately I had to own it, I had to try my own hand at tandoori veges! After looking at one or two recipes on the internet, it was Michael who adlibbed his own marinade and it turned out very well. The resulting veges didn't closely resemble their TT inspiration, but a lack of oil and fake colouring can ...

The only downside to swanning about town on Wednesday night is that lack of leftovers for Thursday lunch. Still, it's the excuse I need to run down another Gertrude Street lunch review. Today's lucky venue was Radio, a cosy bar almost directly across from work. I've not been there for an evening out, but the Kirin on tap and the old soul, reggae or funk tunes that are always spinning on the record player make me think it would be a nice place for some post-work drinks. During the day they do a bit of food and some very nice Brazilian coffee. The food menu is pretty limited: cereal, muesli or toasties for breakfast and a selection of about 5 baguettes for lunch. The $6 baguettes all come with rocket, tomato, avocado, swiss cheese, a divine homemade mayonaise and your choice of 'meat'. The only vegetarian option is grilled eggplant, but it works pretty well with the rest of the fillings, so I was fairly content. The baguettes are fresh and crunchy and all the...

Michael and I finished our dinner at Umi Nomiya quite early, and I wasn't feeling completely full. And yeah, OK, I had my eye on a dessert venue on Gertrude St too! It didn't take too much persuasion to get Michael to Breizoz, the local creperie. Compared to the coolly airconditioned and reasonably minimalist vibe of Ume, Breizoz was warmer and had a homely clutter, scattered with fragments of its culinary inspiration of Brittany. Breizoz offers a long list of savoury and sweet crepes. The savouries tend to include a maximum of three ingredients, and if you're going to be bypassing the ham and the lamb sausage you'll generally be choosing between different combinations of cheese, egg and mushroom (you can see the full menu here ). The blackboard special of cheese and leek sounded pretty good too! But enough of that, let's get to the sweet ones! There are plenty of fruity, alcoholic and otherwise naughty options. I initially chose the rhubarb one with pistach...

Michael had been keen to visit a Japanese restaurant near his Gertrude St workplace for a month or two. I've already mentioned once or twice my vegetarian reservations about the average Japanese restaurant menu, and so I didn't respond with much enthusiasm... until I tasted Umi Nomiya's shiitake mushroom balls at the Flour Festival last weekend. They were an incredibly tasty change from the tempura veges I always rely on when everyone else is gobbling down sashimi. Michael revealed that this was the restaurant on his wishlist and I was now much more amenable to a visit - so amenable that I made a wet umbrella-less walk to meet Michael there less than a week later, as the early dinner stop on a night out. Ume is really more bar than restaurant - high stools along the bar, which offers a dozen kinds of sake, probably provide a third of the seating. It's small, dimly lit and sparsely but elegantly furnished in an urban-Oriental style. At 6 o'clock on a Wednesd...

I think winter 2007 will be the season of soup for Michael and I. In years past I've been the foot-dragger when it comes to soup - there have been a small number of dinners where I've become bored by the homogenous texture long before I actually get full, resulting in late-night snacking. Now I'm discovering the joys of textured soups and the simple pleasure of just the right piece of fresh bread on the side of the smoother varieties. It's the latter kind that's going to take over our weeknights, I think - minimal chopping, half an hour of bubbling on the stove, a quick whizz in the food processor and a relatively easy and nutritious meal is born. This is one such example, which Michael picked up from this website during Monday in a bid to use up a sad-looking leftover sweet potato in the fridge. It's just as well I'm warming to soups because there's a wisdom tooth removal on my horizon! Sweet potato soup a generous shake of vegetable oil 1 leek, ...

After a fairly unsatisfying scrum through the crowds of chocolate and coffee connoisseurs at Fed Square, Cindy and I decided to hunt down lunch somewhere away from the crowds. We strolled up through Degraves Lane into Centre Place and stumbled onto Jungle Juice Bar, a tiny hole in the wall offering up a wide selection of bagel-based meals, juices and sweets. We perched on the primary-school sized plastic chairs around a little table in the alley way and watched the hipsters stroll by as we perused the menus (which are bound up in covers of old Golden Books ). There are very few vego options on their list, but they're happy to prepare things with meat components excluded. I opted for the Royale (minus the bacon) - poached eggs with rocket, tomato, mozzarella and homemade mayo in an open-faced bagel sandwich, while Cindy went for the vegetarian bagel, with rocket, tomato, cheese, tomato and a splash of tobasco. We'd both ordered fresh juices (mine just OJ and Cindy's or...

My most anticipated day of the Food Festival was Wicked Sunday , which promised rich sweets of all kinds as well as some coffee and cheese. We arrived in the early afternoon and River Terrace was filled with like-minded eaters. The first stand I saw, Babycakes , was already sold out of four of the six cupcake flavours listed on their menu. Even so, I was determined to walk a round of the stalls before committing to any purchases. Michael was less strict, quickly picking up a $1 latte. Over the next 20 minutes, I learned that Wicked Sunday was more than "filled with like-minded eaters" - it was swarming with wicked rivals! The process of glimpsing the wares of each stall, let alone hustling in for a taste-test, was just too competitive for me. The Chocolate Precinct, located in the Atrium, was even rougher. Here sampling bowls were cleared to crumbs in mere seconds! I asserted myself well enough to buy small samples from two stalls and then exited the crush. The first ...

After the gluttony of Saturday, Michael and I were looking for something fresh and light for dinner. We picked up some veges, noodles and tofu on the way home from the Flour Festival and I got the tofu marinating. As a change from the usual soy sauce-based marinade that I throw together, I tried a packet mix (I bought it at Oxfam the other week along with the endangered species chocolate !): it's Outback Spirit Lemon Myrtle Chilli Dry Marinade ($4.95). The instructions make it clear that it's intended for white meats and seafood, but it proved to work equally well on diced firm tofu. The moisture on the tofu is just enough for the powder to adhere to, and it doesn't pull away once it's all in the non-stick frypan, either. It tastes great: the lemon myrtle reminds me very much of lemongrass, a natural pair for chilli. Combined with some fresh crunchy veges, this was just the meal we needed after a lunchtime of stall food. The downside is that the first ingredient...

Fear of food-overload had kept me from joining Cindy's Saturday morning jaunt to Allergy Block . With the Melbourne Food and Wine Festival in full swing, Cindy had booked in the Flour Festival and Wicked Sunday to follow on from our Friday evening cocktails, and the weekend was rapidly shaping up as a bit of a feeding frenzy. The International Flour Festival at Fed Square promised to be one of the few events of the Food Festival that catered easily for both vegetarians and those with more Cheap Eats than Good Food Guide budgets, so I was saving myself to feast on flour. The main action was down by the Yarra, with food stalls crammed along both sides of the footpath and swarms of people exploring the culinary options. In keeping with the flour theme, there were a good number of bakeries represented, along with pizza stalls, Indian, African, Mexican and Japanese places all serving up at least some bread-based options and a few completely non-flour related stalls selling things l...

Allergy Block is a great shop around the corner from where I live, filled with products for people with all kinds of food allergies and intolerances, as well as vegetarian items, natural cleansers and organic groceries. They've scored more than one mention in the pages of this blog, and every time I visit I like to browse all the shelves because there's a good chance that something unexpected will catch my eye and follow me home. On Saturday they held a special open day, with a store-wide 10% discount (and a handful of much bigger discounts too!) and stands from a number of their suppliers promoting their products and offering free samples. As you would have picked up from the picture above, I made the most of the reduced prices! Pictured, clockwise from the left are: a litre of organic milk, a packet of the sage & marjoram vege sausages that I recently discovered , some roasted organic cashews, organic vegetarian Worcestershire sauce, a jar of chilli capsicum salsa...

Between cocktails at Double Happiness and dinner at the Little Malaysia Restaurant , we were having quite the eastern-themed night with Tracy and Lee. As I drained my beer and the waiters neglected our table, I wondered vaguely if there was somewhere else we could show Tracy and Lee before heading home. Chillipadi came to mind almost immediately: I made no secret of ogling their dessert cabinet on our previous visit and I was pretty sure Tracy would like seeing (and sampling!) it too. Best of all, it was right on the way to the newcomers' tram stop. The cabinet was at least as well-stocked as my last visit - green tea tiramisu, choc-caramel tiramisu, oreo cheesecake, what appeared to be chocolate-chilli cupcakes, and a lone tall piece of some kind of chocolatey cake were all on offer and passed over. Instead Lee relished a triple-layered chocolate mousse served in a large martini glass ($8 and not pictured, unfortunately). He was kind enough to offer the rest of us a taste ea...

January 2016: Doing a bit of blog tidying up and it looks like this place closed down in mid-2015. Cindy had read about the two-for-one cocktails on offer at Double Happiness during the Melbourne Food and Wine Festival , so along with recent immigrants from Brisbane, Lee and Tracy, we squeezed our way into the tiny space for a drink. The cocktail on offer was based on ginger-infused vodka, with mint, apple-juice and lime. They were very refreshing in the heat of a humid Friday evening. Unfortunately, by the time we left the bar and started looking for dinner, the humidity had turned to rain and, with one umbrella between the four of us, we looked no further than our laneway location. The Cheap Eats Guide recommended Horoki, but with the rain halving their table space, they had nowhere for us to sit. Luckily, the Malaysian place across the street had space for us and we scurried in before we were completely drenched. The menu was substantial, with a range of curries and other dis...

Kulfi is Indian-style ice-cream. I first encountered kulfi when I spent a semester at Cornell University in upstate New York in 2004. I had an Indian-American housemate and she invited me to a fundraiser for Asha , where the local chapter prepared a three-course vegetarian Indian meal. The kulfi had been frozen in little cups - it was sweet and milky with occasional crunches of slivered almonds and an intriguing taste that I couldn't identify. I now know that taste was ground cardamom, and the spice has become intrinsically linked with Indian sweets in my mind. Since then I've noticed that many Indian restaurants have kulfi on their dessert menu, but I tend to make it at home instead: not only did the Cornell Asha Chapter put on an inspiring dinner, but they gave their guests recipes for all the dishes served. Rather than stirring almonds into the mixture, I served kulfi scoops surrounded by toasted slivered almonds. It was quite the treat to enjoy with Main Hoon Na ! Kul...

Remember that pie event I took part in last month? The product is an epic post of 65 pie recipes from all over the globe - I spent a highly enjoyable lunch break discovering new blogs and bookmarking the most appealing of the pastry-based recipes. As SBS's Hooray for Bollywood series of movies came around again this week, Michael set the VCR and I retrieved a bookmarked recipe for spicy potato and pea pasties , the pie contribution from Mitchenall of iCookFood.com . But rather than making my own dough and deep-frying, I just re-created the filling and used it to make larger, baked pastry triangles of frozen puff pastry. They were great! The filling is slightly sweet with cinnamon and currants, tangy with lemon juice and mildly spiced. Mango chutney was a perfect moist condiment, and Michael chopped up a refreshing bean and radish salad on the side. Jumbo samosas 1 large potato, peeled and diced 1 cup peas 2 tablespoons currants 2 tablespoons fresh coriander, chopped 1 t...

Funny that Kitchen Hand just posted about assembly-line cooking . After a weekend of eating out, and eating out in a very unwholesome way, dinner on Monday night was little more than throwing together some nutritious ingredients without too much fuss or creativity. (Though to be fair, one might consider KH's combination of couscous, sardines and sweet chilli sauce to be highly creative!) Thankfully this assembly-line dish doesn't skimp too much on flavour. Pumpkin and chickpea salad Roast two red capsicums until the skin is black. While they're roasting, remove the skin of a quarter-pumpkin and dice the flesh into cubes. Once the capsicum skins are blackened, take 'em out of the oven to cool. Use their tray for the diced pumpkin, drizzling with just a little olive oil. Bake the pumpkin in a moderate oven for about 20 minutes, giving it one or two stirs along the way. As the pumpkin bakes, rinse two cans-worth of chickpeas. Once the capsicum is cooled, peel off th...

While Melbourne's Food and Wine Festival began in a haze of car exhaust , Michael and I skipped over to Sydney for the weekend. Our excuse was to celebrate the engagement of our friend Brent to the lovely Jamee, but we also found time to see a couple of the city's other sights and restaurants. Our first memorable eating experience was at Chilli Chimney . There's nothing to distinguish it from countless other Indian restaurants and takeaways in the inner-city suburbs except for our fabulously friendly waiter. More than simply reciting the evening's specials, he took great delight in explaining that he'd never seen such east Indian dishes on any menu and described their contents in meticulous detail. Michael and I were correspondingly delighted that the specials were vegetarian and consequently ordered them. On the left are deep-fried "chops", patties of moist grated carrot and beetroot, along with a host of spices that I can't remember. On the ri...

On Thursday night we got together with Mike and Jo-Lyn for dessert at Koko Black . Michael picked one of the ice-cream martinis ($7.50): latte ice-cream with chocolate sauce, chocolate shavings and tuille. This is the decadent kind of dessert I've come to expect from Koko Black, and Michael did an admirable job of stringing it out over a good half-hour. A boisterous conversation with Mike and Jo-Lyn is one of few things that can distract us from our food! While Michael's martini was more sundae than spirits, I went for the real deal with a Raspberry Dark cocktail ($15): Creme De Cacao, Vodka, Chocolate liqueur, raspberry puree and Belgian chocolate ganache. We received the same great personality-stamped service as on our last visit , with the cheerful waitress who took our order informing me that it was her pick of the menu. Unfortunately I didn't share her opinion: the slightly bitter chocolate and sweet raspberry flavours were there but it turns out that I prefer the...

We're only having the odd cool autumn day in Melbourne but the calendar has given me permission to launch into warm, comforting pies for dinner. Less than a week after our sausage rolls I was into the puff pastry again, for a recipe that I'd bookmarked from 101 cookbooks . The filling is a creamy but cheese-free concoction featuring diced sweet potato and corn kernels. But don't be fooled by its meek and mild appearance - the delicious smokey aroma comes from the addition of some fiery adobo sauce! The only change I made from Heidi's recipe was to substitute plain flour for the cornstarch: it's what I had on hand and it thickens the sauce just as well. Our adobo sauce supply was running low and I probably didn't add the full tablespoon - even so, my initial test-tasting of the filling had my throat aflame! I was worried that I wouldn't be able to do more than nibble this meal but by the time the pies emerged from the oven, I found that the sauce was m...

Last weekend I had the pleasure of spending a gift voucher at Oxfam , and with a few spare dollars after my first choice (a pretty necklace made in Kenya!) I lingered over the chocolate and coffee. For the sake of variety and trying something new, I picked out four bars of Endangered Species Chocolate . This brand promotes ethical buying on multiple fronts: the cocoa is grown sustainably, its farmers are paid fully and fairly, and 10% of the brand's net profits are donated to help support "species, habitat and humanity". Each flavour of the 40g bars features a different endangered species with a write-up of its life history, behaviour and the nature of threat against it - and they cost $3.95 a piece! Over the course of a week, I sampled dark chocolate with cherry (featuring the koala), dark chocolate with tangerine (zebra), milk chocolate with peanut butter (giraffe) and milk chocolate with mocha (snow leopard). These are all combinations that I'm into, far more t...