james test

Winter had pretty much put a stop to our adventures to the countless markets that Melbourne hosts, but with the first hints of spring warming our bodies (and spirits), we decided to resume our explorations. We didn't really stray too far from home - off to Abbotsford for the monthly Slow Food Market, held in the Abbotsford Convent right next door to the Collingwood Children's Farm . The market is spread out across the grounds of the convent (most of which is a school I think), with a few fruit and vegie stalls, some butchers, cheese-makers and a lot of other bits and pieces like dips and jams. I'd saved room for a second breakfast, so the first stop was The Convent Bakery - offering a range of bread and pastry products and a few sandwiches and panino. I decided to dive into one of the raspberry danishes, which was sweet, tangy and chewy in all the right places, while Cindy ducked outside to grab one of the fancy-pants cupcakes from one of the stalls. The cupcake was a r

D.O.C. is the new pizza and mozzarella bar on the Carlton block, just a couple steps beyond the touristy Lygon St restaurants and within a cannoli's throw of Brunetti . Michael first pointed it out to me a few weeks ago as we stepped out of Video Dogs , but I wasn't actually that excited about paying it a visit until Claire, the Melbourne Gastronome , showed us exactly what it had to offer. Then, of course, I was all emails and dates and meetings for Friday night. I met Kerrie and Daniel there right after work and we settled in with a bottle of red and a plate from the mozzarella list. The only vegetarian plate was the cheapest of the bunch, Australian Fior Di Latte with Pomodori Con Pesto (vine ripened tomato with pesto, $13.50). For the mozzarella buff, there's the pricier option of buffalo mozzarella air-freighted from Italy for an extra $4. I was most content with the basic version, by the time the wine was poured and we'd broken out the grissini sticks we had Micha

The Horn in Collingwood is a stange hybrid of African cafe and jazz bar. It's cosy, with a couple of linked rooms and is atmospherically decorated with a combination of African and jazz-related paraphernalia. Cindy discovered it via 1001 Dinners, 1001 Nights and decided it was worth a visit. I wandered in around 7 to meet Cindy and a group of friends for dinner and the friendly and relaxed staff set me up at the back corner table with one of the organic Ethiopian beers that they offer. I could have quite happily sat there and relaxed all evening, but eventually everybody else arrived and we could get down to the business of eating. The menu contains a fairly extensive range of Ethiopian snacks and meals, with a reasonable number of vego options. It was hard to go past the vegie and dahl combination, which Cindy and I shared, - a chance to try five of the dishes on offer without eating until bursting point. Our waitress explained the traditional Ethiopian style of eating wher

Much as I'm excited to see spring arrive, there are a couple of wintery things that I've been meaning to do prior to gorging myself on asparagus. The main one was to cook with rhubarb. I've enjoyed the tang of rhubarb in a number of compotes and crumbles while eating out, and every time I've seen those crimson stalks at Safeway I've promised myself I'll get some nicer ones from a market. Actually, we barely ventured to any markets this winter and so rhubarb almost passed me by. In a last desperate bid to catch up, I surrendered to Safeway's convenience on the way home from work and made a weeknight pudding. But first I had to inspect my new vegetable. Its smell reminded me very much of celery and I was surprised to see that the core of the stalk isn't pink at all, just green and even more celery-looking. It was difficult to equate this creature with the soft pink strips previously seen on my French toast at Gingerlee . I took an experimental taste

Here's a darn tasty weeknight meal - an Asian-inspired "chicken" salad. Mixed greens, capsicum, carrot, cucumber and bean sprouts are topped with some oven-baked gluten pieces. Extra flavour came from an ad-libbed dressing of kejap manis, tamarind paste, soy sauce, rice wine, palm sugar and 5-spice powder.

Cindy has been itching to go to the Press Club ever since she fell in love with Georgie Calombaris on Ready Steady Cook while we were living in Brisbane. I think it was his willingness to put together interesting (and sometimes vegetarian!) meals while exchanging witty repartee with Peter Everett, but it may just have been his boyish good looks. Whichever, Cindy's been talking up The Press Club for a while and, after bailing out of our first booking to let Cindy's wisdom teeth heal, we were finally making the trip. We chose Sunday lunch, figuring that the new chef of the year 's restaurant would be packed out at nights. It meant we were there for the Sunday masa lunch - a more traditionally focussed meal than the adventurous dishes Calombaris is developing a reputation for. There are no other options for Sunday lunch, you just sit back and they bring out the food. Once we'd clarified that we were vego, they had a quick conference and reeled off a seemingly endles

On this Saturday we were blessed with sunny skies and an empty schedule, so we decided to venture southside to visit a Melbourne icon: Andrews Hamburgers. This place is the real deal, a 50-year-old family business that hasn't changed its spots (or wood panelling) over its lifetime. And why change when you've hit on the winning formula? The burger-with-the-lot is widely touted as the best in town. Now that's all well and good, but such an establishment is unlikely to offer much to a vegetarian, right? Actually, Andrews Hamburgers do have a vegetarian burger and it's not a completely token latecomer: owner Greg Pappas told the Age that the patty - made of potato, pumpkin, sweet potato, coriander, parsley and feta - is from a recipe that his mother made at home. This is veering into the territory of Grill'd Urban Burger Republic , perhaps, but the rest of this construction is old skool Aussie takeaway: a well-toasted white bun, tomato and iceberg lettuce, g

On Tuesday evening Michael, Jack and Emma were booked in for some soccer at the MCG. That didn't appeal to me in the least, but I was happy to join them for a fast and furious dumpling dinner straight after work. We predictably kicked our order off with 20 steamed mushroom and vegetable dumplings ($6.50) and they were as fabulously munchable as last time. Birchy's rave on the red bean fried cake ($4.90) had me hunting through the menu and insisting Michael share one with me: this is a crispy fried shell filled with sweet red bean paste. A delicate balance is required between waiting for the filling to cool to an edible temperature and not letting the shell lose its crunch, but the rewards are great. Can anyone tell me whether this is a meant to be a dessert? It's definitely a sweet one, yet it's tucked in the menu amongst the spring rolls and other savoury delights. Thanks to my own curiosity and a little encouragement from Gin , we also ordered a plate of the veg

Jackson, Emma and I spent our Tuesday wandering around the Queen Vic Markets and the Pixar exhibition at ACMI (I enjoyed it almost as much the second time as the first). In between, we grabbed lunch at The Quarter on Degraves Street in the city. It's hard going finding a spare lunch table at 1p.m. on a working day, and we ended up just choosing The Quarter because we could see some free seats. The menu's pretty standard Italian - some lunch foccacias, a bunch of pastas and a few meaty mains. Emma and I both opted for the soup of the day: A spicy Middle-Eastern vegie soup, with spinach leaves and a dollop of yoghurt and mint floating on top. The spiciness of the soup came almost entirely from pepper, but it was a hell of a lot of pepper. Emma gave up halfway through, but I struggled through it, using the yoghurty sauce and about six glasses of water to dampen the flames. I think somebody's hand slipped during the seasoning process. Ah well, it was a nice idea and qui

What would a night with interstate guests be without a trip to Brunetti? Fun, perhaps, but with fewer pairs of widened eyes. After sharing a tapas-style dinner with Beth and Ryan, we reunited with Jack and Emma for a 6-person dessert fest. Michael reacquainted himself with the pear and cheese crumble from his second visit (and the photos I took of it this time were really awful). That gilded cocoa-based creation you see above is my Chocolate Oblivion ($4.50, from memory): a heated and molten chocolate cake. Here is a crisp brownie-like film yielding to a cakey layer, then giving way to viscous cake batter without a hint of baking powder to sour it. Oblivion, indeed - blissful in this modest serving size, but sure to put you into a chocolatey coma were it any larger. (Check out our other Brunetti trips: one , two , three , four , five , six and seven .)

We were overwhelmed with Brisbane visitors over the weekend. After hanging out with Jack and Emma for a few days at the Prom, we returned to Melbourne on Monday evening to meet up with Beth and Ryan, who were setting off on a Great Ocean Road drive on Tuesday. We all sat around at home for a while chatting, but once I started kicking red wine glasses over, we decided it was best to head out and get some dinner. Jack and Em wanted some Italian treats and wandered off along Lygon Street, while the rest of us headed to Markov Place. Tucked down its laneway, Markov Place was looking moodily lit and very hip - there was some concern that our lack of style would see us barred from entry. Luckily, the staff seemed not to notice our unhipness and ushered us straight to our table. We started off with cocktails - the boys diving into 'Tuscan Mules', a combination of Tuaca (a vanilla and citrus flavoured spirit), ginger beer and lime, while the girls both had Cariel vanilla vodka wi

Rather than force our vegetarian lifestyle on Jack and Em for the whole weekend, we researched a few places in the general vicinity of Yanakie that would provide a tasty dinner. Unfortunately the Waratah Park Country House was closed, but luckily Orange Roughy were doing Sunday dinners even in the off-season. Although, if we hadn't called them to book, I'm not sure that they would have bothered opening - we were the only people in the place all night. Lesson: September Sunday nights in the Prom area are quiet. Very quiet. Even so, the lady running the show for the evening didn't seem too bothered. She cheerfully welcomed us, ran through the specials and chatted happily to us while we settled in. The special deal for the evening was a starter and main combo for $19.50. There were a couple of vegetarian mains and a range of meat and fish options for our non-veg companions. Entree-wise there was soup, garlic bread, bruschetta and some non-veg spring rolls. I opted fo

We've been enjoying quite a few recipes from Yeah, That "Vegan" Shit , but I've had a nasty habit of tainting my renditions with dairy products. So I was pretty excited when at Organic Wholefoods , I found just the ingredients to make this mock tuna salad in all its vegan glory. Lindyloo raved about it, and I'll heartily join her chorus: "this is a damn good recipe". (Huh, usually her raves are much sexier than that ... I was sure I'd be singing something about rubbing this all over Julian Casablancas ' unclothed body.) I fixed this recipe up at home and then packed it on our Wilson's Prom weekend for our hike-day lunch. This stuff is so good that even though we had a box of cookies in our pack, it was the promise of a mock tuna sandwich at the top that propelled me up Mt Oberon. In fact, this stuff is so good that even our non-veg companions said, "Hey, this stuff is actually pretty good". Hmmm, I wish I'd finish

The accommodation that Michael found for our stay near Wilson's Promontory was great: a cabin with room for four at a cheap off-peak rate, with lots of avian company and views of cows and fields and hills. But the key descriptors I noticed before we arrived were "full kitchen" and "barbeque". I don't have much experience with barbeques, but it seemed an appropriate thing to do on holiday of driving and hiking and natural surrounds, and I knew what I wanted to barbeque most of all. Haloumi. Fortunately the barbeque area was as clean and well-equipped as we could have hoped for, with a cheery mural painted on the shelter. Cheery for a vego like me, anyway: I dunno how the average eater feels about a scene of big-eyed cows while they tuck into their steaks. (On reflection, perhaps I should say a little prayer for her calf as I tuck into my cheese steak.) Unfortunately the chilly weather and Queensland-sourced company necessitated eating indoors rather t

This weekend brought two holidaying couples from Brisbane and two road trips! First up, Michael and I took a day or so leave from work so that we could travel to Wilson's Promontory with Jack and Emma. Long before I got excited about long walks and birdwatching, I enthusiastically set about preparing the weekend menu. Featuring high on my list of things to make was this recipe, originally dubbed the Team Cookie by a teammate of basketballin' Brilynn from Jumbo Empanadas . I can only imagine how great these taste after the exertion of a game of basketball, and they're just the thing after a hike through the Prom. They're also a pretty sweet break in the monotony of a long drive! The recipe itself bears a remarkable resemblance to my long-standing favourite choc-chip cookie recipe , both in the ingredient list and the quantities: the major differences are that chopped almonds are replaced by crunchy peanut butter, and the rolled oats remain whole (instead of being g

My love of fish and chips was the greatest challenge to overcome in my shift to vegetarianism three years ago. My devotion to chips still abides, of course, and that battered-fish-shaped hole in my life is filled relatively well with other things: tartare sauce, tempura veges , crumbed tofu with lemon, and occasionally an actual dish of faux fish . So when Elegant Gourmand recently raved about fish'n'chipper Hooked , mentioning killer fries and tempura veges, I was, well... hooked. So I lined up a quick and casual dinner there prior to an opening night screening of Ratatouille . Hooked is every bit the trendy takeaway: the stencil drawings, prices and menu options are consistent with its Chapel St address, but you'll receive counter service, paper wrapping and ineffectual plastic cutlery even if you're eating in. The full extent of the vegetarian options are already outlined in EG's post : light tempura veges with a soy dip ($8.50), a hooked salad ($8.50; feat