james test

October 24, 2015 On our first hit-and-miss visit to Little River, I noted that I'd be interested in coming back for lunch. We finally followed through on Saturday. The sun shone through the windows but it was cool inside, and Little River was hosting a steady stream of customers. Michael wanted what those other customers were having before he'd even heard its description. It revealed itself to be a daily special of vegan tofu quesadillas ($15) stuffed with tofu and beetroot hummus (plus what we reckon was Biocheese) and a side of corn salsa and guacamole. Michael loved this fresh and hefty plateful, but wished for a bottle of hot sauce to spice it up. I requested the vegan option on their corn fritter wrap ($9). A solid toaster-pressing held this together well, and I enjoyed the juicy filling of charred corn, capsicum, spinach and avocado. I couldn't really detect the chutney and wished for just a touch of acidity - perhaps a lime wedge on the side? The lightly dressed roc...

October 22, 2015 I'm really enjoying my new cookbook and, after a load of chips at trivia on Tuesday, I decided that Wednesday was a good night to get my salad on again. This broccoli-based salad had a few advantages: it looked simple to make, it had a good mix of veggies and protein, and it seemed like it would be goddamn delicious.  It lived up to all three promises, although the preparation was a bit more involved than I initially imagined. It would work a lot better if you cooked the broccoli on a bbq as the recipe suggests, as cranking our non-stick frying pan up to charring heat levels left me a bit on edge. And that made it hard to remember to check up on the toasting almond flakes. Luckily, I just about got things right - the broccoli could probably have charred for a bit longer to get more of the smokiness that the recipe promises. Regardless, the combination of crispy almond flakes, fried capers and big hits of lemon and chilli, plus loads of mint and parsley really ad...

October 18, 2015 The Glass Den is a roomy Coburg cafe set within the D-division gatehouse of the now-decommissioned Pentridge Prison. In the past month they've really ramped up their vegan menu options, so we skulked in for a late breakfast on Sunday morning. Though it's a meat-and-all menu, it's clear they know their stuff. There are dairy and three non-dairy mylk options on the first page (plus a vegan coffee frappe hidden further back!), and vegetarian/vegan/gluten-free symbols scattered everywhere. They're almost to be expected, perhaps, on the chia pudding and smashed avo dishes, but coconut mousse, coconut bacon and mushroom substitutions mean that plates like the big breakfast and the calamari salad are also on the veg*n table. You've actually gotta hunt for the eggs and bacon (they are there). It all made for some tough  decision-making. Michael needed a flu fighter juice (carrot, ginger and orange; $7) to combat his sniffles. With that done he demanded a se...

October 17, 2015 Michael and I unintentionally went over-the-top on peanuts in our contributions to Hayley 's birthday picnic , doubling down on roasted peanuts and peanut butter in both dishes. While Michael's dressed a kale and quinoa salad, mine formed the base flavour for a sweet little pie. My first contact with this pie was as a recipe tester for Leigh Drew's Wrapped in Pastry . The peanut butter caramel filling was always destined to win me over, but it was the fresh blueberry topping that proved to be the clincher. Instead of the depth and richness of a more predictable chocolate/peanut butter pairing, blueberries really lighten up the caramel and lend a hint of tartness. It makes for a really nice springtime dessert. The shortcrust pastry was not my best effort. I think I added too little liquid, rendering it crumbly and difficult to roll (yet so very easy to swear at). By contrast, the peanut butter caramel was simple and completed in perhaps 5 minutes. I enjoyed ...

October 17, 2015 I recently had a bit of a work shake-up, meaning I left a research group in Sydney that I'd been working with (mostly remotely) for the last three years. We had a lovely farewell dinner earlier in the week, and I was thrilled with the parting gift they gave me - the Arthur Street Kitchen cookbook Community . I was even more thrilled to realise that I could bust this book out straight away, to contribute to Hayley's birthday potluck picnic. The book's probably 70% vegetarian and 30% vegan and, to make sure everyone picnicking could indulge, I focussed on the vegan options. The Thai kohlrabi, cabbage and apple slaw was tempting, as was the smashed chickpeas with broccoli and dukkah, but in the end I went with one of the dishes featured on the cover: ginger-peanut kale with tofu and quinoa. There are a few separate bits to the recipe, but nothing is very complicated, and you can knock the whole thing off in about an hour without any trouble. The kale seems l...

October 12, 2015 After a couple of years' reluctant absence, I was thrilled to attend the 2015 lab culinary competition at my workplace. This beloved tradition celebrates comfort baking, daring new recipes and clever presentation. Only a select few are prize winners (of plastic dinosaurs, lemon-juicing gadgets, grape-flavoured marshmallows and other miscellany), but everyone is guaranteed a very good lunch. In keeping with the event's conviviality I include photos of all entries in my slideshow, and some do contain meat. Along the way you'll probably spot my two entries, a potato samosa salad (winner of the You Can Win Friends With Salad prize) and mini alfajores (winner of the Little Morsel award). I owe it all to Terry Hope Romero! ____________ You can also read about past culinary competitions from 2006 , 2008 , 2009 , 2010 , 2011 and 2012 .

October 11, 2015 There have been rumblings for a while about a new Brunswick venture for the people behind the Moroccan Soup Bar , surely a member of Melbourne's vego hall-of-fame. We stumbled across the new venture on Saturday, and promptly returned for lunch the next day. They've taken over the old Miramar Nut Shop, which was a stalwart of the Brunswick food scene for decades . Rather than wiping the slate clean, the new owners have maintained a connection with the site's history - the nut shop side of the business has been retained, alongside an array of Middle Eastern groceries and spices, while they've added in a lunch and coffee bar to show off the skills honed over nearly twenty years at the Fitzroy restaurant . The ordering process is hilariously simple - you specify how hungry you are (we said 7.5 on a scale of 1 to 10), any dietary restrictions you have (e.g. if you're vegan or gluten-free) and whether or not you want things spicy. And then you just sit d...

October 7, 2015 Every now and then, we're reminded of the Beaufort and I think fondly of their vegan ribs . We don't live as close by as we used to, but last week they were located squarely on the cycling path between the Melbourne Museum SmartBar event and home, right when we needed dinner. The ribs as we knew them are no longer available, but Ike's Rack Shack (situated inside the pub) remains admirably vegan-friendly.... that is, if the vegan in question is willing to eat alongside the giant slabs of meat ordered by most of their co-diners.  The striking flesh-free alternative is the Vegan BBQ Tray ($25) and it's plenty to share. Clockwise from top-right, it includes a toasted roll and coleslaw, 14 hour hickory smoked daikon (which I mistook for eggplant), a spicy Texicana style smoked barley sausage in BBQ sauce, smoked pulled squash, ranch sauce and southern fried portobello mushrooms. The roll and 'slaw were Bunnings grade and we didn't care for the mushy-...

October 14, 2015 We had a quiet Sunday lined up and, rather than heading out for another cafe breakfast, I decided to reinvigorate our home-breakfast game ( which used to be quite strong ). I let Cindy take charge of the menu planning, and then set to work delivering on her choices. The plan wound up being to make little eggy muffin treats - inspired by the oven-baked mini-omelettes in Isa Chandra Moskowitz's Isa Does It . These turn out to be very similar to the classic version from Vegan Brunch but made much less stressful by the use of a muffin pan and the oven rather than a frying pan and flipping skills. Cindy knew she'd seen a recipe for little breakfast sausage patties to really kick these eggy muffins up a notch. She dug it up from Vegan Sandwiches Save The Day and I got cracking. A bit of planning would have made this a lot easier - the tempeh is supposed to marinate for a couple of hours, which is not something you want to read at 9am on Sunday when you're...

October 3, 2015 Healthy Planet opened its doors last summer on the intersection best known for holding Piedemonte's supermarket in Fitzroy North. It's not been receiving much mention in our corner of the veg-eating grapevine so we had few expectations when we walked in on grand final morning. We found a spacious and casual eatery with a big snack cabinet and chalkboard juice list. The clipboard menus begin with a multi-colour coding system marking vegan, gluten-free, fructose-free and nut-free foods across the all-vegetarian menu. From there, there are coffees, juices, smoothies, a dozen breakfast plates, about half as many lunch plates, and a guide to the regular, vegan and raw sweets on display. We started out with some nicely chilled juices, served in 2015's typical twee style. Michael's Summer Vitality ($7.50) was a refreshing combination of apple, celery, spinach, mint, lemon and coconut water. I sorely needed the Instant Energy ($8.95), and frothy and almost jammy...

October 1-2, 2015 When a date for our most recent Ottolenghi feast was announced, I swiftly staked a claim on dessert. Promising icecream served my cause well. There was still the matter of which icecream. In addition to the rich halva sundae from Plenty More (bzzzzt - already done) there are several online options, from a dense rocky road experience to a tropical coconut scoop served with roasted pineapple in the new NOPI book . Ultimately, I leaned on those gorgeous strawberries doing the rounds right now. They're the major component of NOPI's strawberry and rose mess , blended up into a sorbet and also diced up fresh. Then there's a cacophony of sweet, sour, perfumed, creamy and crunchy supplied by mascarpone and crème fraîche, pomegranate seeds and syrups, meringues and dried rose petals. The flavours and textures in my version were flawed but forgiving. The cream and the syrup were very runny, and didn't taste much of the rosewater or sumac they made use of. ...

September 2, 2015 September saw the fifth meeting of our Ottolenghi potluck gang after a few months off, with a vaguely spring-themed dinner to take advantage of Victoria's newest public holiday. (The wonders of our previous meals can be seen in various degrees of blurriness here , here , here and here .) As always it was an incredible spread, featuring stuffed onions, muhammara, stuffed peppers, rosemary savoury bread pudding, carrot & mungbean salad, green salad plus the spring salad featured in this post and an incredible dessert that Cindy will post about in a day or two. I was inspired by Melbourne's burst of warm weather to go for a very spring-themed dish, a simple salad making use of asparagus and broad beans that are both at their peak right now. I altered a couple of things, frying the shallot gently rather than using it raw and bafflingly failing to buy nigella seeds. It was reasonably straightforward by Ottolenghi standards and added some freshness and variety...

September 27, 2015 Since we moved from Carlton to Brunswick a couple of years ago, there seems to have been a bit of a foodie renaissance around the Lygon/Elgin corner - there's Heart Attack & Vine (which we've at least managed to visit ), Milk the Cow , Pidapipo , Nora , the fancying up of Percy's into The Roving Marrow   and today's topic, The Vertue of the Coffee Drink (those who favour simpler pleasures will be relieved to know that the trusty Intersection Cafe is holding its own among all these upmarket upstarts). A couple of things to get out of the way. Firstly, the unwieldy (and frankly pretty terrible) name at least has a nice back-story, taken from an ad for London's first coffeehouse way back in 1652. Secondly, the location is as hilariously Melbourne as it could be - an old stable, down an unpromising alleyway lined with dumpsters beside a petrol station. It takes some finding. Once you find the door, the atmosphere changes quickly from grimy and w...