james test

Tempeh-skeptic Fiber recently went wild for Buffalo tempeh "wings" and we were keen to give them a go. However, getting some wing sauce going here in Australia proved to be a bit of a challenge. It's composed of only three ingredients - Louisana-style hot sauce, ketchup and butter - so it seemed important to get all the components right. However, I've never seen such hot sauce on sale and a bit of internet research indicated that it wouldn't be realistic to try to make it myself. Instead I decided to make our favourite Chinese style barbeque sauce - it looked like having the necessary consistency and zing, if not the right ingredients or origin. Tempeh is a funny one. It has a substantial, almost meaty, density to it but it's a bit dry. I had high hopes here but even the sauce didn't provide sufficient moisture for me. We were rather taken by the crumbing though, and Michael suggested that we could try it with tofu - after all, it works great for...

It seems we've finally settled on a local Indian takeaway place, with our second visit in three takeaway trips to De Orchid on Rathdowne Street. The intermediate stop (at Spicy Junction ) had been a bit of a letdown, so it was wonderful to go back to De Orchid and find three more delicious takeaway vego curries for our delectation. We decided to try totally different menu items to last time, going for: a serve of samosas ($3), daal maharani ($8), pumpkin masala ($8.90), navaratan korma ($8.90) and a roti bread ($2). The samosas were a fairly standard smooth vegie mush, with a generous scattering of coriander seeds throughout and a lemon-minted raita. Very tasty. The daal was thick with chunky lentils, had a mild flavour and some easily dodgable chunks of fresh tomato. It was probably a little on the stodgy side, but that's what you want from a daal really. The two vegie dishes were the stars: the korma had the finely chopped vegies that too easily remind me of frozen mixed ...

It's been about six months since we last visited Queensland and I felt a little tug to return, so we set aside 5 days at the end of March to visit as many of our family and friends as we could. We began on the Sunshine Coast on Monday and were comforted with the home cooking of Michael's mum Robyn: tea and fruit cake shared with Nan and two uncles, then miniature pies filled with pumpkin, pine nuts and feta for dinner. Thursday was my mum's birthday, to be celebrated at my childhood home of Redcliffe. Dining in the outer suburbs has come a long way since Sizzler ! There's now a lovely Italian restaurant on the foreshore, where I gobbled up gnocchi in sage butter. Then, wonder of wonders, a new Indian takeaway and grocery just metres away! Frozen flaky breads, shiny serving dishes, discounted DVDs, and a few ground spices I haven't even been able to locate in inner Melbourne. I hope Redcliffe's ready for them. On Friday afternoon we moved on to Brisbane and...

This month's recipe from our World in Your Kitchen calendar comes from exotic Morocco and also entails some distant deja vu. Back in October 2006 , we sampled harira for the first time and fell for its complex flavours and nourishing beans. We've not been particularly inspired to create new and nutritious dinners for a few weeks, so our bodies needed this as much as our taste buds did. The calendar's recipe is quite similar to our previous rendition, but I'll include it anyway. If you've an appetite for more spicy soups, take a look at the most recent round-up of the No Croutons Required blog event , where every entry is a bowl full of punchy vegetarian goodness. Harira (bean soup) 400g can chickpeas, drained 400g can haricot or other beans, drained 800g can crushed tomatoes 1 onion, chopped a pinch of saffron threads soaked in a little warm water 1/2 teaspoon turmeric 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon 1 teaspoon ground coriander 2 tablespoons fresh coriander, chopped 2 tab...

After our late lunch at Tom Phat , Mike, Jo, Cindy and I made use of a borrowed car to head out for some sort of road trip. By the time we got our acts together and picked up Tracy it was already getting on for four in the afternoon, meaning that our initial plans of driving to the Dandenongs and going on a 7km lyre bird walk were looking a tad optimistic. Instead, we decided to head towards Healesville and go for a quick stroll around one of the nearby nature reserves before finding something delicious for dinner. Our previous trip to Giant Steps/Innocent Bystander had been fairly successful, so we decided on a follow-up visit. Both Cindy and I ordered pizzas this time around - pumpkin, marinated goat feta, pomegranate and roasted garlic for me ($22) and green zucchini, capers, fennel & lemon for Cindy ($17). These were some fine pizzas - perfectly cooked thin bases, thoughtful combinations of toppings and an appropriate level of cheesiness. Mine (see the picture above) was ...

On Saturday Michael and I had a few errands to run on Sydney Rd and to make the trip a little less arduous, we planned to eat lunch afterwards at Tom Phat. Once on the road we also spontaneously invited Mike and Jo-Lyn to join us. While we waited for them to arrive, we stashed our bags under the low coffee table at the front of the restaurant, sprawled on the cushions and soaked up the atmosphere. This is the kind of styled, trendy place that you'll either love or hate. The murals, textures, furniture and plants have all been chosen carefully and I surprised myself by failing to reject it as 'too pretentious' and settling quickly into the 'love' camp. Maybe it was the capably relaxed and nonjudgmental attitude of our waitress that eased me in. Or just that I'm a sucker for unusual pot-plants. Michael ordered a coffee and I took a look at the menu. This is modern Asian fusion kinda stuff - breakfast eggs come with spring onions and roti, and a lunch of lamb ...

28/01/14: We've spotted news that The Empress closed last month . Cindy and I spent Friday evening hanging out with Tim Rogers , Glenn Richards and scores of other Melbourne hipsters at Mike Noga's show at the Empress Hotel in North Fitzroy. Before we settled in with some vaguely folk-ish alterna-rock, we ordered up dinner from the pub's impressively extensive menu. I went for the Empress vegie burger, with fried onion, mixed salad, beetroot and cheese, a serve of fries and some 'house sauce' ($15). It was a pretty decent burger patty, made up some sort of generic vegie mush, with some well-cooked chips and a flavoursome sauce. On the downside - the salad was a bit sad (canned beetroot is never that attractive), and the whole thing was worth substantially less than $15. Still, it was filling and tasty and soaked up the beer. Cindy wasn't as hungry as me, so she went for an entree-sized serve of tempura vegetables ($9). It was much better value for money -...

Cindy and I decided to get the Easter weekend underway in style. Lazy, non-cooking, style. So after she'd done some birthday present shopping around Fitzroy and I'd ducked into the city to go to the library, we met up at the corner of Brunswick and Johnston streets in need of a dinner plan. I was keen to try somewhere new - throwing out Blue Chillies , Red Rice and De Los Santos as ideas - but Cindy had set her heart on a repeat visit to Los Amates. We've tried to return a few times in the last six months, only to find it booked out or closed, so the opportunity to turn up as they were opening and snag a table was too good to pass up. As it turned out, they didn't seem particularly busy at all - by the time we left at 8 or so, half the tables were still vacant - maybe things have died off a little. Cindy and I settled into the long weekend with cocktails: fresh strawberry margaritas, all pink and icy ($10.50). We'd previously sampled the vego tasting plate ...

I first wrote about making my own muesli at home more than a year ago . It came as no surprise to me that I would lose interest in it, and in particular the time required once every week or two to hover around the oven for an hour at a stretch while it cooked. But I came back to it a couple of months ago and have hit on a winning formula, which I'm going to note down here for future reference. After all, I am going to get sick of all that oven-hovering again one day and forget the process while I'm at it. If you're interested in trying this recipe, be warned that it's not sweet granola by any stretch. It's golden and crunchy when I get the oven times right, but I've shied away from using any oil or strong sweeteners for my daily breakfast. I find that some canned fruit does that job nicely - all I'm after here is that filling nutty crunch. If you like dried fruit don't bake it at all, just stir it into the cooled toasted muesli mix. The muesli pict...

Folks who've wandered around an Asian supermarket here in Australia should be no strangers to Pocky . These chocolate-coated pretzel sticks are crunchy, just a little salty, and contain not quite enough smooth dark-ish chocolate to sate me, causing me to eat more and more and MORE. Just as well they're divided into two sachets within the box, or I'd finish the lot in a sitting. Note that Pocky is most likely NOT fully vegetarian - translations of the ingredient list indicate that they contain shortening. We ate, we enjoyed but we won't seek them out again.

The first of the Tokyo treats given to us by Matt were these little chocolates. They're not actually from Japan at all - Matt picked these up on a recent holiday in Korea. I was pretty skeptical about a savoury cabbage-based delicacy going anywhere near chocolate but I was willing to give this small sample a go just for fun. These were surprisingly good! The smooth paste in the centre gave no hint of cabbage and was just as creamy as the milky, melty chocolate. But whoa, did these have a spicy kick! Far stronger than any other chilli-chocolate dessert I've eaten (though admittedly I never managed to try the chilli-chocolate cupcakes at Inkari ). I rather liked this explosive little package, and was even a little disappointed that I couldn't detect a shot of vinegar.

Melbourne's inner-north must have the highest density of good to excellent breakfast places in the world. We've already had tremendous breakfasts at more than a dozen places in Fitzroy , Carlton , North Fitzroy , Carlton North , Brunswick East and Brunswick and there's a long list of places still awaiting our attention . Last Saturday we finally made our way to A Minor Place tucked away in Brunswick between Lygon Street and Sydney Road. And then we decided, like Homer Simpson before us, we're doing it twice. There's really not much else on Albion Street, so A Minor Place seems to draw in all the gentrifying folk in the neighbourhood for a morning coffee or a bite to eat, meaning that, by the time 9:30 rolls around, things are getting pretty full. We snaffled one of the outdoor milk-crate tables on our first trip and squeezed a group of six around one of the slightly more comfortable inside tables on the Sunday. There's a particularly strong deman...

To celebrate Mike's birthday, Jo-Lyn was keen to take him to MoVida. This struck me as a bit of a gamble - Mike has limited patience for 'scenes', crowds, and high-end dining. On the other hand, MoVida's meaty tapas have an excellent reputation and he does like his smallgoods. This presented some potential challenges for Michael and I, but a squiz at MoVida's online menu confirmed that we vegos wouldn't go hungry. If nothing else, I assured Jo-Lyn, we could just order four plates of the famous churros and hot chocolate! Jo-Lyn didn't actually make a booking. Instead Mike popped in at 7:30pm and put his name down for a table near the bar and was given less than an hour to wait. We passed it pleasantly at Hell's Kitchen , then squashed into MoVida's entry for a further 15 minutes or so before our table was ready. This was plenty of time to get a feel for the space - low lights, lots of noise, and only a few staff quickly and capably tending tab...

I was rather keen to get going with my KitchenAid, and had plenty of gift-giving reasons to put it to use: A small edible thank-you to L for giving me the mixer was a no-brainer; I'd be attending a belated birthday dinner for Marty midweek; We owed Tracy and Lee thanks for lending us camping gear for Golden Plains ; and Mike's birthday was also coming up! With this much going on, I decided to make a double batch of chewy chocolate-raspberry cookie sammiches from Veganomicon via Lindyloo of Yeah, That "Vegan" Shit . I was determined to maintain their vegan-ness, but did make a few alterations to the recipe: I used sunflower oil instead of canola because I was all out; I skipped the almond extract since I hated it last time I used it ; I replaced the shortening in the icing with more margarine, since I couldn't find it (nor copha) at the shops; I replaced the soy milk with rice milk. My results were mixed. I don't think the oil type made any difference to th...

At the eastern end of Bourke St sit three Indian restaurants in a row: Red Pepper, Jaipur Curry Bar, and Green Pepper. Mellie recently recommended them to us , so Michael and I met up there for an early dinner in 36-degree weather before our second night at the theatre. Green Pepper was closed so we were faced with a choice between Jaipur and Red Pepper. We picked the latter because I knew it was one of the Peppers that offered Mellie's favourite naans. It was the wrong Pepper but never mind - the naans here were great! Red Pepper is in fact a sister restaurant to Green Pepper, which might explain why we encountered excellent naans and rudimentary service eerily similar to what Mellie described. The atmosphere is no more sophisticated than a cafeteria - line up to order from the couple of menus or the chalkboard of specials, then take a number and a seat at a vacant table. If you're lucky the table will be wiped and there'll be a few napkins in a holder, but don't...

The Melbourne Food and Wine Festival is over for another year, and now its organisers are looking for feedback with an online survey form here . I was actually quite underwhelmed by this year's offerings and in answering their questions I've aimed to make my criticism constructive and to counter it with praise where I think it's due. If you've had great experiences, attended disappointing events or even elected not to participate at all, the Festival organisers are interested in your opinion. Keep it pointed and polite and you've got every chance of influencing next year's program!

We're a bit slow off the mark. Rumi burst onto the scene in late 2006 and has received glowing reviews from The Age and just about every food blogger in Melbourne . It's right on Lygon Street, a mere 5 minute bike or tram ride north of our house and it's in the East Brunswick strip that we frequent fairly often . So why have we taken so long to get there? Disorganisation. Rumi became so popular so quickly that, by the time we'd heard about it, you had to book weeks in advance to get a table. And we just don't function well on that kind of timeframe - we can't even shop more than a day in advance. Anyway, a couple of old friends of mine were in town on Wednesday and, with my usual foresight, I rang Rumi on Tuesday evening to try to book a table for the next night. They offered us a place, provided we could be out by 7:30. I made the promise without consulting anyone else and crossed my fingers that we could all turn up by 6 or so and have sufficie...

The soy bombs are back. This time we ate them with salad and satay sauce. Since the tofu balls are quite rich, I elected to toss the salad lightly with the sauce and leave the balls dry. We took this sauce recipe from the weekend Australian magazine quite a few years ago (the date has since disappeared from the cutting). In our first year as vegetarians we frequently teamed it with stir-fried veges, diced faux-chicken from the Asian supermarket, and rice. I think it later fell out of favour after one particularly watery and bland rendition. But as long as you keep the water levels in check (veges often contribute moisture if they cook in the sauce), it's actually quite tasty. Perhaps a few trials are in order to adjust the flavour balance to your personal taste, but all the important ingredients should be there. Satay Sauce 2 tablespoons vege oil half an onion, finely chopped 2 cloves garlic, minced 1 teaspoon fresh ginger, grated 1-2 red chillies, finely chopped 1 tablespoo...

Once a week, on Tuesdays, I share my office space with L. We're involved in different projects and spend most of our time quietly getting them done, but we've also established some common ground. She's always knitting cute socks and is apparently a very good photographer (I don't doubt it, though I've not yet seen any of her work). L has enthusiastically discussed the pictures I've hung on my side of the room and has a huge appreciation for fine food - at last year's Christmas party, we spent 20 exquisite minutes devouring roughly half a wilted (but still excellent) Bûche de Noël . This week L gave me something very special. This is the KitchenAid mixer that she has owned for 30 years. When she first had it she had been married about two years and was living in Boulder, Colorado. It was the launching point for a lot of baking. "Oh, the butter I've creamed, the cream and the egg whites I've whipped with this!", she marvelled. In the fol...

Cindy and I spent all Monday afternoon napping to recover from Golden Plains , meaning that dinner time came around and we had an empty fridge. We were both lacking the energy for any major food excursion, so it was lucky that Johanna had recently gushed about the Vina Bar on Lygon St. Cindy and I have almost entirely given up on the Carlton stretch of Lygon, with only the occasional visit to Trotters in a strip of dozens of tacky-looking Italian places. It was good of Johanna to remind us that there are still treasures to be found amongst all the dross and the speedy, cheap Vina Bar lived up to her enthusiastic recommendation. We parked ourselves in the small and slightly crowded indoor area, escaping both the heat and the cigarette smoke outside. The menu provided a fairly decent number of vegetarian options, and I was tempted by the idea of curry, but in the end I had to follow Johanna's lead and order the vermicelli noodles with spring rolls ($10). I told myself that it w...

For the next ten weeks, this blog is being profiled on I eat I drink I work . This is a new Australian website intended mainly for the hospitality industry to advertise job vacancies. However it also has a frequently updated front page of food stories: blog posts, videos, profiles etc from people who like food. That's why we're on it! (What did you think was happening - that we were packing in our day jobs for the glamour and excitement of hospitality recruitment? Huh.) As well as a little introductory profile , blurbs of everything we write here will appear on the site. A few other Melbourne-based food blogs already have visible presences at I eat I drink I work , and that's hardly surprising. The site's commissioning editor is dashing macaron hero and blogger Duncan Markham. It'll be interesting to see how what effect (if any) this venture will have on the volatile relationships between food bloggers, the industry and the "dead tree media".

One night in November last year, I took a tram to St Kilda with a Coles green-bag under my arm and butterflies in my stomach. Within two hours I had put faces and gestures to over a dozen of Melbourne's food bloggers, and eaten almost as many delicious dishes. Though many of us entered with some trepidation, the first Bloggers' Banquet was an enormous success. The feeling of community endured , first with a flurry of posts and comments . A few people met up for subsequent edible outings , and a couple of group blogs (and Flickr and Facebook groups!) have sprung up. Then Ed recently offered tickets to Out of the Frying Pan , an opportunity to represent food blogging to the Food Establishment. Several took it up and what resulted was intensely frustrating, occasionally illuminating, and most definitely controversial . It's inspired me (and other bloggers) to contemplate the merits and pitfalls of blogging. It seems to me that this is the perfec...

Summer is on its way out, but there was still time for a late bout of sun, music and grubby tent-living at Golden Plains music festival. With a total fire ban in force, we simply packed muesli bars, rice crackers and a LOT of water for sustenance. The stalls provided the rest... For our first meal, I made a beeline for the Hare Krishna tent, ordering a feast plate ($9) and extra koftas ($4). These folks are so consistent in their offerings! Here's the late-night, overexposed vegie burger ($8) Michael topped up on later. On Sunday morning most people's first priority was coffee. We were up relatively early, so Michael only had to wait 20 minutes (!) for his. Then it was another 20 minute wait for vegie brekky wraps ($8 each) and juice. These roti wraps were piping hot and filled with egg, pesto, caramelised onions, tomato and cheese. Best morning-after breakfast. EVER. For a late lunch I scouted out wood-fired pizzas ($8 each). They were hot, doughy and delicious in the...