james test

Michael and I ventured out to Port Melbourne for the first time on Friday night with the purpose of eating at Bowl of Soul. I spotted this cafe on More To Love Vegan quite some time ago, and I was rather psyched about the possibility of a veggie BLT. As a lover of burgers I was overwhelmed with the choice here - they were based on tofu, lentils, beans, and faux meats from beef through to prawns! Other toppings and sauces are well chosen to suit the burger themes, from Mexican to satay. There's also some soup and a couple of other things on the menu, but mostly it's about the burgers. The vegan and vegan-adaptable items are clearly marked and cover almost everything on the menu. There are a few gluten-free options too, particularly in the mouthwatering cake display. Buttons rued the lack of chips to go with her burger and to our surprise, they are now available after 6pm! Unfortunately I didn't notice until after I'd ordered, and Michael chose a side-sized Soul ...

It's hard to believe that it's taken us more than a year of blogging before we finally got around to stuffing some mushrooms. They're such a vego staple, it's difficult to explain how we've neglected them for so long. Luckily, Cindy had tucked away this recipe for when the mood finally took us. I'm not sure how she's still keeping up with Ready, Steady, Cook, but her efforts were rewarded with a delicious dinner thanks to Dominique Rizzo from Mondo Organics (and my sterling efforts in the kitchen of course). This recipe has the added bonus of being vegan - it's predominantly mushrooms and herbs, with a heap of almond meal to give it all some body and texture. The herb and lemon gremolata gave a nice citrusy kick to the meaty mealy mushrooms, and the whole meal was topped off with some salty baked spud-bits that Cindy sorted out. I won't reproduce the directions, but feel free to muck about with the quantities - the recipe at the end of the lin...

It's the perfect time of year for icecream, and I've been keeping an eye on berry prices, biding my time. This weekend I found just what I was after - punnets of almost overripe strawberries for only a couple of dollars. It hasn't always been this way. The kind of strawberry icecream available from the supermarket when I was a kid was enough to scare me off the concept almost for life. I bet mine wasn't the only household where it was always the last flavour left in a tub of Neapolitan, right? And then there was the strawberry flavoured Quik ... ergh... what were those food scientists thinking?! My epiphany came shortly after buying my icecream maker seven years ago. The manual had a few recipes at the back, including the ubiquitous vanilla, chocolate and strawberry. I tried the chocolate first of course, with good results, but was soon looking for something new. The artificial strawberry flavouring that I knew was so different from the lovely taste of fresh one...

Maybe this isn't the most exciting food photo you've seen around the blogosphere today, but it's a picture of one of my favourite snacks in recent weeks. It's a bowl of saucepan-popped corn, seasoned simply with sugar and salt. Doesn't thrill you? That's fine, but it's become a darn addictive combination for this afternoon snacker. I'll get about a dozen bowls out of one $3.50 packet of organic corn so it's light on the pocket. I've tried to keep the sugar and oil levels down, so it's probably a lot lighter in calories than any instant-microwave-bag version too. If you're willing to stretch from 'instant' to 'takes 3 minutes' then I encourage you to give it a go. Sweet'n'salty popcorn ~1 tablespoon sunflower oil 1/3 cup popcorn 1 teaspoon raw sugar a shake of fine sea salt Pour just enough oil into a medium-large saucepan to thinly cover the base. Spread the popcorn in a single layer over the bottom of the sa...

Friends of ours recently moved to North Fitzroy and discovered Julio (slightly later than The Breakfast Blogger , whose always ahead of the game). We joined them for breakfast on a quiet Saturday morning and settled in. It's a smallish place in the front of an old corner store, with seating for maybe 30 people and a fairly casual vibe. The menu is small but impressive, with the focus firmly on their homemade doughnuts. Delicious, delicious doughnuts. We ordered one each, with Cindy and I both going for the custard variety (they also do jam ones). They came out warm and tasty - crispy on the outside but gooey and sweet on the inside. The homemade custard was a fantastic mess oozing out from the middle. They were also huge - much larger than I expected for $3, which was something of a concern given we'd already ordered some breakfast 'mains'. Cindy asked for avocado on toast and got a couple of thick slices of toast, some fresh avocado and a sprinkling of seasonin...

My first set of chocolate clusters were transformed into a sweet spread and the leftover ingredients from my ginger-cashew clusters received the same treatment. This time I blended the cashews, glace ginger and chocolate with Tofutti Better Than Cream Cheese to smooth it out. The 'pesto' was a success equal to my first attempt and I found some even better biscuits to team it with! These are Arnott's Lattice biscuits , pastry squares that are like sweet glazed SAO s. I haven't had them in years, though I do remember some incredible passionfruit vanilla slices made with them when I was growing up.

The weekend was shaping up to be a decadent one (if you think Friday night was big, wait 'til you see what we ate on Sunday!), and we desperately needed some fresh salad in the middle of it. The lineup of mixed greens, carrot and cucumber sticks and red capsicum were flavoured with pickled ginger and a dressing like this one . The more filling feature, though, was a tray of oven-baked tofu 'fish' fingers developed by Jennifer of Vegan Lunch Box fame. She really works to perfect her inventions before releasing them to the salivating public, but it's always worth the wait. The fingers are golden and crunchy even though they're baked with just a spray of oil, and the spice mix is a revelation - I've never used garlic powder before but I can see it becoming a spice rack staple! If garlic-seasoned crumbs aren't enough to get your mouth watering, keep in mind that these also include corn and almond meal, paprika and pepper. I made a few minor changes to the...

Update, 31/12/2014: San Churro has moved a couple of doors down the street to 275 Brunswick St, and has been replaced at this address by B'Stilla Cantina . We followed up our dinner at Coyote Cafe with dessert at San Churro - another place that we've long been meaning to eat at. It's pretty crowded on a Friday night, but we managed to snag an outdoor table and Jo shouldered her way in to order for us. The hot chocolate I had was a little disappointing - I just found it way too thick. And too hot - by the time it was cool enough to drink, a horrible skin had formed on top. The churros were pretty good though - maybe not as fresh as would be ideal, but still a fairly successful late night dessert option. Particularly with the fine dark chocolate dipping sauce on offer. So it was, like our dinner before it, a little hit and miss. I think in future if I'm after a late-night dessert in the inner-north, I'll stick with Koko Black . Address: 277b Brunswick Street, F...

Updated 31/12/2014: The Coyote Cafe has been closed for some time, presumably swept away by the Mexican food tsunami that swamped Melbourne in 2008/09. Cindy and I met up with Mike and Jo-Lyn for dinner at the Coyote Cafe in North Fitzroy. We've had a takeaway menu from this place sitting on our fridge for about six months and have been meaning to try it out almost the entire time. It's a Mexican place, with a menu which is quite friendly to vegetarians. And to drinkers. We started off with some icy cold margaritas ($10 each) and kicked back to browse through our options. We quickly convinced Mike and Jo to join us in a vegetarian shared plate to start things rolling. It sounded fantastic: marinated olives, zucchini chips, jalapeno jelly, chillied mushrooms, sweet potato and goats' cheese sincronizada and pinto bean sopas ($19.50). Unfortunately, when it (eventually) came out, we'd scored a different tasting plate: one with chorizo on it. Still, the bits that Cin...

This dish is long overdue. It's been more than a year since I first visited the Moroccan Soup Bar and had my first taste of "that chickpea thing". It's got chickpeas and yoghurt, something crunchy and something nutty, and it captivates all who taste it. What's the secret? Lemon juice? Tahini? They're probably both in there, but surely there must be something else that lifts this bowl of legumes to such heights? I revisited the restaurant for Beth's birthday , scrawling down a guessed ingredient list as I ate and then overhearing the recipe explained by another birthday guest further down the table. In spite of this nudge, my notebook filled up with other dates and restaurant menus and I actually forgot about the chickpea thing. The real kick-in-the-pants came from Anna's post of fatteh on Morsels & Musings . Her personal amalgamation of different recipes looked pretty close to what I was after, so I made a few more adjustments to fit wit...

photo taken by Ed from Tomato Food preparation for Monday night's dinner was a more nerve-wracking process than usual. Usually it's just me in the kitchen, with Neighbours on for company, putting together something to greet Michael with after his netball game and then to pack into lunchboxes for Tuesday. Contrary to what the above picture might suggest, neither was I cooking for Satan on this particular Monday. Rather, I was contributing food to a Bloggers' Banquet , a chance to meet other food bloggers in Melbourne face to face, palate to palate. The venue was the Vegout Community Garden in St Kilda, which features a wood-fired pizza oven. Naturally, the weekend was spent carefully planning and preparing my offerings. I needed to choose food that could be created in advance, transported easily via tram, preferably finger-friendly to share among the crowd, and served either at room temperature or hot out of the pizza oven. Sweets were easy - with ingredients I alrea...

Last month we made some tasty and virtuous baked spinach kofta balls for Vegetarian Awareness Month. As I browsed through the other entries on Coffee & Vanilla , I spied another more indulgent kofta recipe. These cheesy kofta looked much more like the ones I've grown to love from Indian restaurants everywhere and I was keen to give them a try. The recipe takes quite some time to prepare, so it was the stuff of a lazy Saturday afternoon and evening. Although there's frying involved and a lot of time to be spent, I think these are fabulous. Unlike many of the vege patties and fritters I've tried making in the past, these really hold together. That's the magic of cornflour! I'll have to keep it in mind for future adventures in frying. The koftas are tender on the inside with a golden crust, and the mild sweet flavour of garam masala. The sauce is spicier and smells just like my favourite takeaway, although the taste is more complex. Our efforts yielded en...

Saturday dawned clear and warm, so Cindy and I decided to head out for breakfast. After stumbling into Filou's Patisserie a couple of weeks ago , I was keen to return and sample some of their pastry-based delights. The nearby park as a sunny, warm eating venue was an added bonus. My eyes widened in the shop: there are dozens of pastry-based choices and I had to try at least one savoury and one sweet option. The savoury choice was the spinach slice - a lightly toasted pastry wrapped around a spinach and cheese mixture. The mixture was great - heavy on the spinach, with just a smattering of feta-y cheese smooshed through. I polished it off in no time. For breakfast-dessert, I went for one of the berry danishes (something of a Filou specialty it seems). The pastry was perfect - soft and flaky, with a smear of custard and slightly sour berries. Despite my savoury headstart, I could have eaten two. Cindy skipped straight to sweets: a wodge of sugary pastry wrapped around a selec...

Michael arrived home from his conference late on Wednesday night. There was no need to keep dinner warm for him but I wanted to prepare a little welcome-home treat. Previously, he loved the quick-and-easy crunchy chewy chocolate clusters I cobbled together and so I set about creating a new flavour combination: dark chocolate with cashews, glace ginger, shredded coconut, a small slosh of Cointreau and a pinch of salt. (Thanks to Mary/Beppo for the Cointreau idea !) These were at least as addictive as the cherry-pistachio version. I probably added a little too much salt, and this ramped up my compulsion to eat cluster after cluster after cluster. Michael shared this compulsion, though I'm not sure that had anything to do with the salt quotient. If you'd like to put yourself at risk of a chocolate frenzy, just follow the rough quantities I used previously and try your own crunchy-chewy combination.

While ferreting around the cupboard I found something that had been there for a long time - some dry Italian biscuits previously used for orange tiramisu and dipping into dessert pesto . The packet was well-sealed so they were still perfectly fine for softening in a slosh of Coitreau and layering into some more fruity tiramisu. I popped mascarpone on my shopping list, but actually picked up something else when I hit the supermarket... This is a vegan-friendly soy-based cream cheese substitute , and it was on special so I figured I'd give it a shot. It's thick, smooth spreadable consistency is dead on, and the taste is pretty close. There's something in the flavour that isn't quite the same as the real thing, but mixed with a little sugar it is perfect wherever you'd use cream cheese in a dessert. Recipes on the Tofutti website indicate that it can be used in baked and refrigerated cheesecakes. But I just wanted to layer it up with some other goodies and eat i...

I had another bunch of asparagus left over from the ravioli and cannelloni and a hankering for something a bit special, just for me. Pastry. Cream sauce. Neil 's solution is a chicken pie with morels and asaparagus , and with leeks in season, it's not difficult to beef up the mushroom quotient and make a vegetarian version. This recipe makes enough for a family meal or in my case, enough to repackage the leftover filling in fresh pastry and share with Michael two days later. Leek, mushroom and asparagus pie ~15g dried porcini mushrooms (more if you can afford them) 40g butter 1 leek, sliced 1 clove garlic, minced 200g portobello mushrooms, sliced into meaty chunks 1 heaped tablespoon flour 2/3 cup "chicken" stock 100mL cream 10 stalks asparagus, sliced into 1 inch lengths 1 tablespoon parsley, finely chopped salt and pepper 1 sheet frozen puff pastry a little milk, for brushing the pastry Rehydrate the dried mushrooms in hot water. Melt half the butter in a fryp...

OK, so I am going to stop mentioning our Saturday morning trip to the markets soon, but not until I've shown you these. These are tempeh chips! Your usual dense, nutty meat substitute, sliced finely and baked to crispness. They were rather expensive compared to other varieties of chips ($3 for a bag that must've weighed less than 100g) but worth a try. They have a great savoury, garlicky flavour. I decided to make the best use of their crunch by topping a stir-fry vege meal with them. Layer one is a mix of stir-fried zucchini, capsicum, sweet potato and snow peas; layer two is my leftover tofu in Kurma's maple syrup marinade . The chips were just perfect here!

Michael is again absent for a few days at a conference, and what's a girl to do? Go shopping for new jeans and bake with bananas, of course! These are lovely low-guilt muffins from Dayna, the Vegan Visitor . They are not 100% guilt-free, with oil and brown sugar in the mix and caramelised walnuts perched on top, but the bananas, wholemeal flour and rolled oats are the justification I need to make these my afternoon snack throughout the week. I even managed to plan ahead and buy the walnuts fresh in their shells from the markets on Saturday. What I particularly like about this vegan recipe is that there aren't any of those weird ingredients like 'egg replacer' - three mashed bananas do the binding job very well on their own! They even popped out of the tray easily and neatly after a 5-minute rest. The result is a fairly solid and not-too-sweet muffin with extra chew-and-crunch amusement on top. Unfortunately my walnut pieces had a tendency to fall off at this st...

Another Saturday morning market meant I couldn't resist the lure of cheap organic asparagus, and Fiber (of 28 Cooks ) had just the task for it: filling ravioli . The filling is bulked up with protein-rich tofu, has its flavour filled out with grated cheese, and gets that spring sass from, you guessed it, lemon zest. Only I subbed out the lemon zest for finely chopped preserved lemons. I was planning to use Heidi's tomato sauce recipe over these ravioli but the markets provided an alternative: 4P Organics pasta sauce. My enormous $10 jar of the roasted vege variety was sweet, thick and chunky. Fiber's recipe makes use of wonton wrappers to make reasonably large ravioli, and I wasn't a big fan of them. I found it incredibly difficult to push all the air out as I sealed them, creating chaotic shapes when I boiled the critters. Then there's that sloppy, kinda slimy texture they have. Not my thing, but Michael loved them. I was happier with my second strategy o...

I've been meaning to try the Galleon Cafe for breakfast ever since Mary recommended it to us in a comment and on her own blog . A further search revealed that Jamie the Breakfast Blog ger gives its old-school cred a nod. All good signs, but I decided to delay my visit by a further week so that the excursion would coincide with the Vegout Farmers' Market . I suppose I could say, "It was worth the wait". It would be more fair to wail, "Oh my god, the wasted time - I've lived a year in Melbourne without seeing the Galleon breakfast menu!" This is my kinda place. It's grungy with second hand furniture and art on the walls, but it's not overly pretentious. Active young families, wankers with their turned-up industrie shirt collars and Paris-wannabe girlfriends, and oldsters with trendy glasses and newspapers were dotted amongst the hungover hipsters I expected to populate the room. And with all these people enjoying their breakfasts at various...

Despite enjoying an absurdly large cooked breakfast on Saturday , for some reason I got it into my head that it'd be a good idea to cook breakfast for ourselves on Sunday. I'm not sure why I didn't just go back to cereal as usual, but that's hardly the point of this post. The point of this post is this: Cindy had bookmarked Vanessa's vegan breakfast recipe and had been waiting for a chance to sample it - my enthusiasm for cooking breakfast was the perfect opportunity. I started the day with a pre-breakfast wander around the Merri Creek Trail and swung by Filou's Patisserie on the way home to grab some bread to accompany our scrambled tofu. We've lived here for over a year now and somehow never bothered to poke our heads into this little bakery sitting on Lygon Street across from the cemetery. It's probably been for the best - it's certainly reduced the amount of delicious pastries we'd otherwise have eaten. Anyway, they provided me with a...

This Saturday morning saw us venturing to a new suburb, Moonee Ponds, to knock a breakfast spot off Michael's wishlist. I think he first spotted a review of the Boathouse on the Breakfast Blog , and was no doubt excited by the prospect of pesto hollandaise over poached eggs. Actually the menu looks to have changed substantially since Jamie's visit and although most items begin with the standard fruit, muesli, toast or eggs, the full descriptions tend to include an interesting little twist. The muesli and granola have carefully chosen fruit and nut accompaniments, cheese on toast in prepared with corn bread and gruyere, and there's even a breakfast pizza! It's a shame that the breakfast menu runs so short, at 11 items, and includes only one meat-free fry-up for Michael. That fry-up sounded pretty good nonetheless: a white zucchini, bell pepper and Bulgarian fetta omelette with spinach ($16.80). The photo below doesn't quite do justice to the enormity of it - i...