james test

September 25-26, 2015 I didn't eat many desserts, as such, on our holiday in Vietnam earlier this year. I did drink lots of sweet and colourful beverages, though, and I picked up a slim recipe book of Tropical Desserts at the airport with our last remaining dong. This jelly recipe is adapted from that book - the original includes veg-friendly agar-agar as the setting agent, but uses dairy cream for the white layer. Coconut cream was an easy substitute that readily took on a pandan infusion. I've had good and bad experiences with agar-agar, and this was definitely a good one. The jelly set hard and fast, creating neat mango and coconut layers that sliced smoothly and were firm enough to serve as finger food. Served alongside Vietnamese-style coffees on soy condensed milk, they were the perfect end to an epic lunch. My holiday companions teamed up to concoct a cơm chay -style buffet of rice, mock meats, pickles, rolls, savoury doughnuts, and other assorted sprinklings. (Props...

September 18-20, 2015 We ducked off to Lorne for a spring long-weekend, managing to luck out with a ridiculously lovely few days of sunshine. We spent most of the time wandering the beach and the lookout tracks, reading books and eating our way through some of the treats that the town has to offer.  We stumbled across Mexican Republic (which strangely has no website - here's the Zomato page ) on our walk up to our accommodation and headed back for an early dinner. It's a cute little place with a handful of booths and a couple of outside tables. The menu is reasonably veg-friendly, although you'd need to ask for some alterations to get anything vegan. We kicked things off with a mojito ($15) and a citrus margarita ($12), which were boozy and refreshing. Cindy ordered one of the smokey bean tacos (with goats cheese, black beans, corn and smokey salsa, $8) alongside some charred street corn (butter, cheese, chipotle mayo and lime, $6). She was particularly impressed by the we...

September 14, 2015 We met up with a couple of friends at Talk of the Town for a south-side dinner on a Monday night. Despite the name, I'd never heard of this place before, but our dining companions assured us it was worth a visit. It's a pretty basic-looking Lebanese place - there's a big cabinet loaded up with food, about ten tables and a no-frills kind of atmosphere. Still, you don't eat atmosphere, and the menu had a lot to get excited about: falafel, veggie kibbeh, vine leaves, stuffed capsicum, cabbage rolls and tons and tons of salads to choose from. Nearly all of the veggie dishes are vegan, and the staff are happy to talk you through your options. Options are kind of the problem - there were far too many dishes to choose from, so we sent Craig up to figure out an order for the table. He came through with the goods, ordering up a falafel and dips entree ($8.50), a stuffed capsicum ($9), a couple of veggie kibbeh ($6 each) and a selection of five salads ($5 each,...

September 13, 2015 Every time I've opened up Isa Does It (and it's often), I've gazed longingly at the strawberries and cream bread pudding. When I noticed two weeks ago that strawberries were cheap and abundant, I started thinking often of the pudding even when I wasn't flicking through cookbooks. I pretty much planned our home-cooked lunch with Carol around making it for dessert. You might notice, for example, that the main meal was pretty low on carbohydrates, to save room for this bready finale. It goes like this: cube up sturdy day-old bread. Whisk together a custard of almond milk, coconut milk, sugar and cornflour (I may have added some dark rum). Soak the bread in the custard and toss it in a pan with lots of strawberries and a sprinkling of flaked almonds (doesn't it all look eerily white?). Bake the pudding until the almonds and bread are golden and the custard has set. Drizzle over some glaze if you like (more sugar! more rum!), and scoop it into bowls...

September 13, 2015 We haven't been to Hellenic Republic for several years, but we still regularly recall the excellence of their saganaki with peppered figs . Saganaki is pretty great any time, and pairing its salty creaminess with sweet dried fruit and a kick of peppery heat was a revelation. Haalo had a recipe published on Cook Almost Anything within months and we're only just now trying it for ourselves six years later. There's a bit more going on here than just pepper and figs - Haalo has us simmering the dried figs in honey and balsamic vinegar, bay, vanilla and cloves. I adapted on the fly (honey => maple syrup, cinnamon stick => ground cinnamon) and tended it all for a solid hour on the stove. If anything I was too light on the pepper. The saganaki was a little less simple than I anticipated too. The dusting of flour was fine, but unlike its cousin haloumi, these saganaki triangles bubbled and melted and glooped all over the pan! They're clearly at their b...

September 11, 2015 We've been meaning to visit Wonderbao for years - we're resolutely pro-bun , and the enthusiastic reviews that pop up regularly on vego blogs (see below) have kept it on our radar. My job has recently shifted from Gertrude Street to the city and, although I miss my old favourites , one of the upsides has been the opportunity to scope out some city lunches. Wonderbao is hidden away down an arcade off A'Beckett street and it's easy to miss it if you're not paying attention ( Sarah Cooks has a helpful map on her blog post ). The menu is pretty minimal, especially for vegos - there's a tofu gua bao ($4.90) and a mushroom bao ($2.70), plus a couple of sweet bao options ($2.50 each). I didn't have a good sense of how much I should order, so I was relieved to see that they've got a conveniently arranged veggie pack - for $9.50 you get the tofu gua bao and mushroom bao for lunch and the taro bao for dessert. The tofu is the clear stand-out -...

September 9, 2015 Michael's job has shifted locations from Fitzroy to the north-western CBD. As a result, Middle Fish has become middle ground between our workplaces. Originally focused on breakfast and lunch, this Thai cafe now trades for dinner, too, and the menu has expanded substantially since our last visit (erm, that was probably me sneaking in for banana roti with a textbook for cover). Most helpful is a double spread headed "Not Meat". Here Middle Fish spell out that their vegetarian dishes may contain eggs, fish sauce or shrimp paste - it's not quite my definition of lacto-ovo, but there are six dishes clearly marked vegan among them. There are also pages of Thai desserts and street sweets I'd not encountered before, extending their past roti offerings to sago, sticky rice and root vegetables steeped in coconut milks and syrups, some with icecream. But we were here for dinner. Once we'd placed our order, we were presented with a plate of prawn cracker...

September 6, 2015 September 6 is the anniversary of our first date (now some fifteen years ago) and also our registry office wedding (ten years ago). This year it fell on Fathers' Day, so it was a day of celebratory lunches for many. We had ours at Matteo's, a decades-old fancy Fitzroy restaurant that we'd not visited before. We were constrained to their Fathers' Day set menu (3 courses for $95), but happily found cute little eggplant symbols marking vegetarian options across every course. We played swapsies on the two veg entrees. I started on the zucchini flowers, which were stuffed with fetta and tempura battered, and set against a rainbow of heirloom beetroots. Under the whole and shaved beetroots was a beetroot puree with a surprising horseradish kick. The other entree featured cubes of eggplant fried in a thick crunchy batter and glazed with Sichuan pepper and black vinegar. It was set on a basil silken tofu sauce and covered in a cacophonous collection of fresh h...

September 5, 2015 This little half-recipe caught my eye while I was reading the blog Challenge Accepted! earlier this year. It's a pumpkin spring onion pancake with just three ingredients. Substituting sauteed leek for the spring onion, we rolled ours out flatter, fried them in a little less oil and used them as flatbread to eat with spiced chickpeas and coconut spinach . Mashed pumpkin is a beautifully soft and sweet binder for this kind of bread, which can otherwise be a little bit tough (... when I make it, anyway). The bread was a soothing flavour and grounding texture alongside these tangy curries. Pumpkin flatbread (from the blog Challenge Accepted! ) Preheat an oven to 180°C. Line a baking tray with paper. Remove the skin from some pumpkin and slice it into large wedges. Roast the wedges until they're very tender, 40-50 minutes. (If you're using a leek , use this time to slice it into rounds and saute it in a frypan until soft.) When they are cool enough to handle...

September 5, 2015 We were tipped off by a couple of different friends about the recent opening of Tahina, a vego Israeli place that's recently popped up on High Street in Northcote. We were on a weekend mission to Preston to get some La Panella pies , and Tahina was the perfect pit-stop along the way. It's a cosy little place with counter seating for maybe 16 people, suggesting that they're hoping for a big takeaway trade. The menu is split between savoury Middle Eastern delights and an array of smoothies. Food-wise there's two kinds of falafel, three kinds of shakshuka plus a bunch of salads and pita pockets. It's all veg and super vegan-friendly - even the shakshuka can be veganised, with eggplant swapped in for the eggs.  Cindy couldn't resist sampling something off the smoothie menu - the Monte Carlo was a vegan mix of strawberries, cashews, oats, maple syrup, vanilla, cinnamon, almond milk and ice ($10). This was almost a meal in itself! She thoroughly enjo...

September 2, 2015 It's only a couple of months since I posted about the B-East's vegan Mondays , but I wanted to alert you to their new regular menu. The vegan-friendly mock-chicken Morrissey ($13) is still there and the fries ($7 + $1 for fancy sauce) remain excellent. The big news for non-vegan vegetarians is TATER TOT NACHOS ($12). They come with bacon as a default, but that's easily done away with. There's still a lot to love here - potato gems layered with salsa roja and roasted sweetcorn, jalapenos, melted cheese and sour cream. It's a sometimes food that I'll relish every time I order it. ____________ You can also read about one , two of our previous B-East visits. ____________ The B-East 80 Lygon St, Brunswick East 9036 1456 menu http://theb-east.com/ Accessibility: There's a wide entry with a ramp. Tables are a mix of standard and high, chairs a mix of stools and backed with a baby's high chair or two on hand. Furniture is pretty densely pac...

August 30, 2015 I was smitten by this recipe the day that Greek Vegetarian Lisa posted it , but it's taken almost two years for me to try my hand at it. I gave it a go on a Sunday afternoon home alone, but not before I set some seitan simmering and cued up Netflix to replay the second season of United States of Tara . The centre of the slice is a custard thrice-thickened with cornflour, semolina and eggs. I also made sure to add my fanciest vanilla. The custard is wrapped simply in a few layers of filo pastry, dabbed with butter. (Make sure to watch the video embedded in Lisa's post for some expert elastic bougatsa wrapping!) Since we weren't able to eat it all in a day I stored most of the custard and pastry separately in the fridge, assembling and baking just one pastry every few days when we were ready for it. I'm not usually one for daintily dusting sweets on serving, but I think the sugar and cinnamon really liven up this dessert. We also accompanied ours with sl...

August 30, 2015 I've hit my seitan stride this year and it's high time I blogged my preferred recipe. It comes from Steen and Noyes' Vegan Sandwiches Save The Day , with only the most minor adaptations from me. Originally called 'moo-free seitan', it's clearly aimed at replacing red sandwich meats and has tomato paste, tamari and smoked paprika worked into the dough. Besides these reddening agents, there's also garlic, onion, nooch and liquid smoke to reinforce that savoury flavour. I also like that this recipe makes use of my oft-neglected slow cooker. It's little trouble to rustle up the requisite ingredients, submerge a couple of dough loaves in broth, and allow them to slowly simmer over the course of 8 hours. Once done, that's one loaf for the fridge, one for the freezer, and a couple litres of stock as a bonus.  I've found that the seitan slices brown and crisp up nicely in a frypan while remaining juicy (and even pink!) in the centre. They...

August 29, 2015 Cindy and I needed a decent pit-stop amidst a busy Sunday at the Melbourne Writers Festival , and were excited to discover that Bowery to Williamsburg has expanded their hours to include weekends. We've been reading the hype since they opened a few years ago (check out the ~80 blog posts below), but haven't had a chance to sample the NYC-inspired menu before. It's a small cafe tucked down a flight of stairs on Oliver Lane, with a big communal table, a handful of tiny solo/duo tables and some big outdoor spots. We sheltered indoors from the cold as soon as they could squeeze us in. The brunch menu is pretty meaty - vegos can choose from a shakshuka, a haloumi and eggs dish, waffles, a sandwich or sweets. I was looking forward to checking out some sort of exciting sandwich option, but I've been a bit spoiled by the likes of Smith & Deli and True North - there's no vego rueben on offer here. Instead, I went for the falafel wrap ($15), adding a sid...