james test

March 15-16, 2015 You might remember that I experienced my Gelato Messina epiphany over a scoop of Mr Potatohead icecream , a daring and expertly rendered combination of peanut butter gelato, white chocolate and potato chips. Given my imminent departure from Sydney and the icecream's imminent departure from the specials board, I set my mind to making some more.... and making it more vegan, so as to share it around. My last batch of peanut butter icecream set like a rock, so I needed a new formula. Serious Eats, on their annual month-long vegan kick, came through within days, discussing vegan ice-cream making in general and a salted peanut butter flavour in particular. Like me, they choose coconut milk and cream as a dairy substitute. Unlike me of the past, they use light corn syrup as one of their sweeteners - I wondered if this would have a similar effect to the liquid glucose that Eliza Metcalfe recommended to me last year. And what of the chips - how to prevent them getting s...

March 14, 2015 True to our 12-hour tour update , we stopped by Melbourne's Gelato Messina while collecting new street art photos in Fitzroy and Collingwood. This outlet is notably larger than its Sydney siblings and at least as popular. The standard menu crosses state boundaries too, running to 35 flavours, 11 of them vegan and 32 of them nominally gluten-free (GM won't guarantee that any of their products are completely allergen-free).  I trialled one of the specials (pictured front), a peanut butter gelato smashed with pretzel brownies ($4) - it was a little light on the salty crunch but well endowed with dense cakey chunks. Meanwhile Michael sampled the coconut & lychee and poached figs in Marsala standards (pictured back, $6) - all the fruit flavours were bold, fresh and startlingly true to their sources. You'd be hard pressed to find a smoother, more satisfying scoop around Melbourne. We're several years late to the church of Messina, but now have the fervor o...

March 9, 2015 I was so taken by the chops from Bryant Terry's recipe that I immediately started scheming about a crisper, less gravy-drenched way to enjoy them. I hit on apple sauce, which triggered vague associations with suburban USAmerican home cooking. While pork and apple have long gone together , a bit of googling suggests that pork chops and apple sauce are a Brady Brunch -era trend; actually I'm more familiar with them from The Simpsons . I took inspiration from a couple of online recipes, most notably this one on Epicurious , and made use of some apple puree in the pantry. The process is almost embarrassingly simple, and with this particularly good batch of seitan, the results were impressive. The chops were lightly seasoned and golden crusted, but held their moisture and tasted tender. On the side, Michael prepared blanched broccoli and Bryant Terry's slightly more effortful and always delectable mashed potatoes . Neither of us feel major nostalgia for meat-and-t...

March 9, 2015 If there's one thing more enticing than tray upon tray of golden pastry, then surely it is this sign proudly pronouncing that those pastries are vegan-friendly. Veganopoulous alerted us to Al Nada Sweets almost two years ago, and we've seen them sold at Radical Grocery and Prahran Convenience. But it was our recent 12-hour tour update that finally compelled us to catch the tram north past Moreland Rd and visit the source. While we intended to pick out just a couple of pastries at $1.50 each, we found it impossible to refuse the kindly owner's suggestion that we get their mixed box of 10 for $12. Each was a different permutation on pastry (flat'n'flaky or wiry), ground nuts and sweet, sweet syrup. The high sugar content preserved them well for the few days it took us to consume our collection. There's an extensive list of Al Nada stockists on The Good Hearted but I reckon it's worth getting the pick of the crop for yourself in Coburg. _______...

Our 2000th post has been the prompt for a bit of navel-gazing here at where's the beef?. We've updated our design and our where's the best? list , given our 12 hour tour a make-over and added a linked suburb index to our restaurant list . We've also done some poking around in our stats and come up with a few observations. Cindy continues to shoulder the heaviest load, writing about 60% of our posts (not to mention diligently editing the rubbish I produce and doing all the tidying up of our photos). We've now posted reviews of 745 different restaurants, including at least 110 places that have subsequently closed down, giving us a closure rate of 15%. Which seems high to me, but I guess we've been doing this for more than eight years, so there's bound to have been some turnover.  Our most popular post is still (and will always be) the vegan sausage roll recipe (it's had more than five times the number of visits of its nearest rival). Despite b...

March 8, 2015 The March meeting of Cookbook Club was a Sunday brunch, with the express purpose of eating the Super French Toast in Ottolenghi's Plenty More . I thought it was the right occasion to push a secondary fig agenda. Of course Ottolenghi could assist, with a recipe for 'roasted figs with pomegranate molasses and orange zest' tucked into the Sweetened section of Plenty More . Michael helpfully picked up the ingredients on Saturday, and that had me in good shape to cobble it all together on Sunday morning in less than an hour. A little whisking and chopping, 30 minutes' maceration passed with simmering and more whisking, 10 minutes under the grill and we had a handsome side dish all packed up and ready to be cycled over to our hosts. I was a little skeptical that a brief grilling would produce the soft, glistening figs pictured in the cookbook, but mine were a very respectable mimic. The Super French Toast demonstrates that Ottolenghi is as devoted to fats as he...

Today we have another in-the-background blog update for you. We've refined our 12-hour bucket list of things to do in the inner northern suburbs of Melbourne, with lots of new photos and a few new venues. To join the expedition, click here!