james test

The first tray of choc-chip cookies were dreadfully overcooked, black on the bottom and hard on the teeth. (And no, a couple of weeks lurking in a lunchbox didn't really help, either.) So I scraped off the black with a sharp knife and threw the remainder in the food processor with some extra butter. Voila - fruitless crumble. Enter two apples and two pears. Once baked, I garnished our crumble with some leftover cream . The entire incident is a heinous violation of my fruit crumble manifesto but heck, it was a Saturday night in and I was using up leftovers. It was a mighty tasty violation, with all those blended up choc-chips.

Edit 25/04/2017: Enlightened Cuisine is now rebranded as Vegie Kitchen . We've been looking forward to seeing the Guggenheim Collection at the NGV and jumped at the chance to attend the preview screening on Friday night. As far as dinner goes, the surrounds seem to be dominated by overpriced bar food and the Crown . Rather than succumbing to the neon lights we discovered the more zen Enlightenment Cuisine Chinese Vegetarian Restaurant, tucked away a little further along Queensbridge St. Much like the White Lotus , this is a very mock meat experience (chicken, duck, beef, lamb and a variety of seafoods) although there are also tofu-based and vege-only dishes in the menu as well. Meals are free of garlic, onions and leek and the restaurant strives to be vegan-friendly. The meals are a dollar or two more here than at the restaurant's North Melbourne ally, but for those dollars you'll receive a more meditative atmosphere: tables are large, of lacquered dark wood, and we...

Some midweek laziness had Michael and I working a little late and then meeting in the rain for dinner. Our venue was Abla's Lebanese Restaurant, an institution that has been around longer than the Age's Cheap Eats Guide . Although we worked 'late', we were early for dinner and there was room for two "as long as you're finished by 7:45". When we gave the waitress our sincere promise, we were generously offered a table fit for four - plenty of room to spread out. I liked our waitress' attitude, a little brusque but also friendly and efficient. I also liked the space - it had a dated but luxurious look and warm air. Unfortunately that glow made for a set of really bad photos - sorry about that, Michael and I really need to improve on our lowlight camera skills. Abla's menu has a vegetarian section, with dishes that are small to medium-sized and share-friendly: our plan of an entree and then three plates between two was just right. The starter a...

As autumn and then winter have swept through Melbourne, I've noticed that wild mushrooms are available at lots of good fruit and veg shops. I've always been intrigued by their gnarled shapes and earthy colours and, after talking about it for about six weeks, I finally got around to actually buying some. Just a pine (on the left) and a king brown (on the right) from one of the organic shops at the Queen Vic Markets to get me started. To make sure I properly appreciated their flavours, I just fried them with a dob of butter and served them up on lightly toasted Turkish bread. The texture of the king brown was a little soft for my tastes, but both were quite tasty - probably not as exotic or exciting as I'd hoped, but satisfyingly earthy nonetheless. If anyone has any good tips about wild mushrooms - tasty varieties, places to get them (buy them I should say - I'm not quite keen enough to spend the weekends foraging) and recipes to use them in, it'd be much appreci...

When Emma and Simon visited for dinner on Saturday night, Michael did most of the dinner work , while I typically pondered on dessert. I was pretty keen on this chocolate and pear tart from Jules' stonesoup , but wasn't psyched about pre-roasting pears (although I must admit they do look incredibly good!). A brief wander around the internet turned up another pear and chocolate tart (this time from Clotilde of Chocolate & Zucchini ) and I enthusiastically wrote up a shopping list after a glance at the procedure. That 'glance' meant that I didn't actually notice that this tart is served from the fridge, not the oven! Not quite what I had in mind on a winter evening, but still comforting enough when paired with a cup of tea. I had a few nervewracking moments at each step: it was difficult to press the crust evenly into my dish, and then work out when it was ready to come out of the oven. (It took 5 minutes less than Clotilde's, and was a teensy bit burnt...

With Emma and Simon coming over to enjoy our hospitality, I decided to make use of my European inspiration and crank out a Hungarian inspired meal. Having had at least three shots at the potato pancake and mushroom paprikash at Vegetarium , I figured I was experienced enough to have a crack at my own version. Luckily, Cindy had already tracked down a mushroom paprikash recipe , and the weekend papers had a nice-looking potato pancake with pickled beetroot recipe that sounded like the perfect accompaniment. Unfortunately, I think I threw the recipe away by mistake, so the following will be the product of my fading memory. The paprikash was a lot spicier using hot, Hungarian paprika (an interesting spice - not one that leaves a burning on your lips, but one that gets you in the back of the throat), and I think I preferred it without the seitan. The pancakes were a divine accompaniment (as I suspected following my Budapest experiences) and the beets (which I was sceptical about) were ...

Inkari was one of the first restaurants Cindy and I investigated when we moved to Melbourne. It's an oasis of Latin America inspired food in a desert of mediocre Italian joints and we've made a return visit since for a cheap and delicious lunch . We admired the breakfast menu on both trips, but our only attempt to actually go there was foiled by our weekend sluggishness (the breakfast menu cuts off at some ungodly hour like 11:30). Luckily we made it out of bed before 9am last Saturday and stumbled along for our second Mexican-themed breakfast in 9 days . For once, Cindy opted for a cooked breakfast - the Buenos Dias Inkari: pan-fried eggs, Ilapingachos (potato pockets), refried black beans, corn, tomato, grilled banana, avocado, sour cream and soft corn tortillas. Typically, Cindy was most excited by the potato pockets - honestly she'd have chips for breakfast, lunch and dinner if I allowed it - but less excited by the eggs and tortilla. The banana and the black-bean...

The key ingredients to use up here were some dry sponge fingers (from dessert pesto days) and cream cheese (from a second batch of cream cheese brownies - Michael wanted to impress the ladies at work). Add to the mix a duty-free bottle of Cointreau and you have orange tiramisu! In haphazard blobs, these glasses contain: sponge fingers, sprinkled with a smidge of cointreau and left to soften, then gently chopped into chunks; cream cheese, whipped briefly by hand with a bit of brown sugar and orange juice until dissolved; fresh orange segments. These were messy-looking but fun, sweet and tangy little desserts!

On Wednesday night, Michael made a lot of soup . Enough to feed us both for dinner, lunch, and a fair bit more besides. On Thursday, for the sake of my fickle palate, I converted the rest of the soup to taco filling by adding 1 cup of TVP rehydrated in 1 cup of hot water. Teamed with taco shells, salad and grated cheese, it was a whole other meal to enjoy.... and a whole other pot of leftovers to munch on during the weekend!

With winter in full swing, I've become a firm advocate of soup for dinner. Particularly warm, spicy soup like this: creamy roasted chipotle soup , courtesy of Yeah, That "Vegan" Shit . Since first discovering chipotles and adobo sauce some time ago, I've been tempted by its smoky heat, but cautious of its feisty spice power. With a generous slopping of sour cream included to keep things from overheating, I was pretty confident that this recipe was going to be a winner. And so it turned out: thick with beans and corn and rich with the spice that the adobo sauce and chipotle provided, it also doubled as a tasty taco sauce (soon to be featured in one of Cindy's leftover makeovers). I altered the recipe a little from the Lindyloo's, so I'll reproduce it here. Creamy Roasted Chipotle Soup 1 tbsp olive oil 1 onion (chopped finely) 4 cloves garlic (minced) 1 large can crushed tomatoes 2 tomatoes (chopped) 2 cobs of corn, stripped from the cob and blackened un...

January 2016: Doing a bit of blog tidying up and it looks like this place has been closed for ages.  I spent a few days this week at a conference based in the city, so for the first time in years I was subjected to a schedule, peak hour public transport and a semi-professional dress code. There was an upside, too, of course: a change of scenery, a couple of interesting presentations and some fine lunchtime catering. In addition there was a conference dinner on Monday night at Forty One, on the 41st floor of the Rialto building. This afforded us some great views across the CBD and some time to converse with colleagues on a broader range of topics than the conference themes. We were offered a choice of three items each for three courses, and the entree and main lists included one vegetarian dish each. With the entree and main choices virtually selected for me, I was happy to spend a little more time lingering over my favourite course, dessert! My entree (pictured above) was "pu...

Many months had passed since we last made our way to Windsor for the Polish goodness of Borsch, Vodka and Tears . So, on some flimsy pretext or another, Cindy arranged a night out with Mike and Jo-Lyn to introduce them to the longest vodka menu in Melbourne. I settled for a Polish beer of some sort, but Cindy got into the spirit of things and ordered up a Pleasant Street Tea (turkish apple tea, pomegranate syrup and wild honey bee vodka, served piping hot; $8.50): As well as a ridiculous number of vodka options, BV&T has a surprising (for a Polish place) number of vego options and Cindy and I did our best to avoid duplication with our last visit. We started out with some Polish borsch (which is apparently more watery than the Russian version) with a handful of porcini mushroom uszka (pan-fried Polish dumplings) floating (sunk to the bottom actually) in it ($13). We followed up with kopytka ($13), pan-fried gnocchi served with a wild mushroom ragout and finished with truffle oil,...

Sunday brought me a mild red wine hangover, the residue from my cousin's engagement party on Saturday night. I was highly vulnerable to Michael's proposal of a cafe-cooked breakfast and suggested one of Truffle's recent recommendations, El Mirage . Though I didn't recall it at the time, the title of her post must have had an effect on me. El Mirage has the typical terrace house width of so many Melbourne cafes but it offers a surprisingly large and open space indoors (which we needed on this wintery morning), with a clean retro-modern look that stands out amongst the trendy, cluttered and grungy cafes we so often find ourselves at. We were very pleased that a table for two was available right away, though as the clock drifted on towards noon, we witnessed a few other people regretfully turned away. The savoury options are egg dominated and the suggested combinations have a lot of meat going on. Michael inquired as to whether he could order the Gringo breakfast witho...

Lucy from Nourish Me has a knack for pretty photos and simple, elegant recipes involving fresh produce. The latest one that I bookmarked was for kaffir lime leaf gyoza , and I tried my hand at them on Saturday evening. With a base of tofu and mushrooms, these are freshly flavoured with red chilli, ginger, spring onions and the eponymous kaffir lime leaves. Unfortunately, my gyoza were inferior to Lucy's on three main fronts: Most obviously, they aren't as attractive. (Next time I'll have to take a dumpling assembly lesson from Ellie .) I couldn't find any fresh kaffir lime leaves on my shopping trip (I was too lazy to get to the markets on time). Instead I found some preserved and shredded ones in a jar at Safeway. Because all of the filling ingredients were going in the food processor, I got lazy on the chopping and grating. This resulted in occasional but large flares of chilli and a woody texture from the lime leaves. If you're tempted to try these dumpl...

Cindy welcomed me home on Friday evening with a delicious wok full of fried rice and, after my first non-hotel breakfast in weeks, I was ready to get out there and buy some food again. I couldn't possibly eat three meals in a row at home. You've got to ease back in to these things. So, with some vague excuses about shopping, we headed into the city to try out Mr Tulk, the state library's on-site cafe. I'd read good things about Mr Tulk, so I was quite surprised to see only a selection of pre-made pides and the like and a couple of specials on a blackboard. It turns out that there's a whole menu as well, but by the time we figured that out we'd already made our selections. And fine selections they were too: crostini with hommus and a red pepper, walnut and tarragon dip along with a pide filled with pumpkin, ricotta and caramelised onion. The dips came with a splash of olive oil on top and a couple of tangy peppers for garnish. The red pepper dip was partic...

While Michael was gadding about over the last few weeks he was generous enough to choose a number of gifts for me and the kitchen along the way: three packages of Hungarian paprika (each one a different combination of sweetness and heat), which came with the cute wooden spoon; a decorative little pepper grinder, also from Budapest; a cheap and cheerful set of matryoshka dolls ; a sample of Xocolat chocolates from Vienna; a box of Neuhaus chocolates (with his spare change at an airport). He clearly knows me and my interests well. So well that he even gambled on a beaded necklace in my absence and passed with flying colours: sparkly, autumn-hued, glass-bead colours. I'm a lucky girl!

As Cindy mentioned in a couple of her recent posts, I've been swanning around Central Europe for the last couple of weeks - initially at a conference in Budapest and then a few days in Vienna and Amsterdam. And this is my reward, a blog post summarising the experience. I'll broaden out a little bit from the usual theme and include some trip highlights as well as the best food moments. Budapest The majority of the trip was spent in Budapest - the venue of the conference and a few spare days I'd booked in to recover from jetlag and generally see the sights. The conference venue (and hotel in which I was staying) was the Hotel Gellért , an impressive looking place which is especially well known for its indoor pool and thermal baths. Alas, there are no pictures from inside the baths - I'm not sure random Hungarians would enjoy being photographed with just their swimmers on, and I certainly wasn't going to have anyone take pictures of my stunning torso. Budapest is a...