james test

December 3, 2016 Our mate Gill  recently tipped us off about Melbourne Wok, an uninspiringly named restaurant in the strip of Indian and Korean places on Bourke Street. In spite of its bold promise to provide 'Everything Asian', Melbourne Wok seems like a Malaysian-Indian place, offering banana leaf curries for lunch and a wider range of noodles etc at dinner time. We stopped by for a quick lunch on a Saturday, joining a decent crowd of other people keen for the banana leaf experience. At lunchtime your basic choice is vego ($10.90) or non-vego ($12.90) - you get rice, four curries, a raita and a pappadum all served up on a banana leaf. The traditional approach is to eat it all with your fingers - we watched some experts work their way through the meal dexterously, but decided that we'd wind up smearing pumpkin all over ourselves so we opted for cutlery. Cindy kicked things off with a fancy drink - a sirap (rose cordial, $3.40) - a strong and sweet accompaniment to the cur...

December 8, 2016 For my birthday dinner out this year I picked a Pierre Roelofs Dessert Evening. We've been following Roelofs' sweet degustations around town a while, from their long tenure at  Cafe Rosamond , across the river to  Fancy Nance  and then just down the street last summer at  Green Park Dining . This year he's been serving four-course dessert degustations on Thursday nights at Milkwood in Brunswick East. This arrangement is coming to a close this month, and so we were treated to a 'best of' dessert retrospective on our visit. These evenings always commence with a dessert tube, and ours was a strip of creme brûlée! We were instructed to steep the amber sugar cap in a beaker of hot water for 4 seconds - this was just enough to loosen it from the tube while preserving its dense caramelly contrast to the rich vanilla custard. Our second dessert was a medley of flavours and textures - beetroot, mandarin and chocolate took the forms of crumbs, jellies, mering...

December 4, 2016 We had a big hunk of pumpkin leftover from our veggie box and Cindy decided that a big batch of pumpkin flatbreads was the way to go. To accompany it we turned to Mridula Baljekar's Indian Vegetarian Cookbook for ideas, settling on this potato and chickpea curry with sun-dried mango. There's not too much work involved - you pre-boil the spuds, but otherwise everything just goes in one big pot. We had some sun-dried mango powder (amchoor) on hand from ages ago. I'd really recommend tracking it down for this dish, it really adds something interesting. Otherwise this is a pretty straight-up curry - it probably needs another dish on the side to round out the full meal (we chose a side of spiced coconut spinach ). It's good though - a great addition to our weeknight roster (although with the pumpkin bread as well, this was definitely a weekend job). Potato & chickpea curry (slightly adapted from Mridula Baljekar's The Low-Frat Indian Vegetarian Coo...

November 26-27, 2016 I know it means a lot to many women my age, but I have never taken more than a passing interest in Gilmore Girls . Dean vs Jess vs Logan? Choose self-esteem, Rory . Nevertheless, the new season was a big deal for some of my friends, and it was fun to share their fandom for a night. We went all out on themed viewing snacks - coffee, popcorn, marshmallows, cookie dough and home-delivered pizza. Although the Gilmore girls aren't ones to bake, I preferred making my poptarts over the real thing.  Street Vegan served me well in the poptart stakes once before , and if anything it did even better this second time around. I chose a strawberry-rhubarb filling instead of chocolate, and doubled down with pink icing. My version has more rhubarb and less strawberries than the cookbook version, which does no harm. I had some moments of concern when I poured in the cornflour thickener and the filling seized up into a dense jelly. Thankfully it relaxed into a more appetising j...

November 26, 2016 We had the pleasure of joining in on our American friend's Thanksgiving tradition again this year. Our contributions to the table were an unconscious echo of the green bean salad and pie we prepared previously. First, I chose  Isa Chandra Moskowitz's new veganisation of the traditional green bean casserole. To this uninitiated Aussie, it's far preferable to the traditional concoction of canned green beans and cream of mushroom soup. Moskowitz has us make our own tasty gravy of blended cashews, vege stock and nooch. It thickens to bind sauteed green beans, mushrooms and onions. For me, the only misfortune is that the mushrooms infuse the casserole with a dull grey-brown colour that's not exactly appetising. With my host's approval, I sprinkled the top with Malaysian fried shallots - their golden hue helped spruce things up. For dessert, Michael and I teamed up to make our favourite apple pie . For the one vegan guest in the gang, I tried my hand ...

November 26, 2016 We've been keen to check out Lankan Tucker since it opened in Brunswick West earlier this year. The location - tucked way down the western end of Albion Street near Lolo & Wren  - isn't super convenient, but the combination of breakfast and roti bread was enough to convince us to make the bike ride. It's a cute little place, with a mix of indoor and outdoor seating and lots of light streaming in. The idea of a place serving up brunchy dishes with a Sri Lankan twist is perfectly targeted at me - I'm generally keen on curry for breakfast and double so if I can somehow combine it with eggs. It's a bit surprising that so few places are doing this - the only other place I can think of is the vegan about town - endorsed Pavlov's Duck. The menu is long, with a mix of conventional brunch dishes (granola, omelettes, avo smash, etc) and more interesting Sri Lankan-inspired dishes (lots of roti plus interesting snacks like vadai and lunch food like ...

Cheap Eats 2006, a decade on November 22, 2016 Hotel Lincoln (now called The Lincoln) has had several changes in management in the decade we've known it. This has meant a few makeovers in look and menu, although I think the atmosphere has been pretty consistent. The front bar has the typical Melbourne pub feel, while the dining room out back is much fancier. There have never been more than a couple of vegetarian options available, although we've enjoyed the ones we've had. When we visited as part of a large group recently, we were happy to order their set menu (The Half Lincoln, $45 per person) and let them show us how broad their vegetarian options really were. The appetisers were light and fun - individual crackers piled with pink pickles, and kelp-salted edamame that kept our hands busy as we chatted. One of the meal's high points was the shared entree of roasted cauliflower with a medley of buckwheat, pomegranate seeds, currants and mint. The puffed-up crunch of the...