james test

May 27, 2015 For my birthday this year we decided to try Kappo, a newish Japanese place in the city. It's the fancy cousin of the lovely Hihou and Izakaya Den so we had high hopes for a good night out. The first trick is gaining access - there's a door on the Spring Street side of the building that looks like the entry, but it's closed and there's a sign pointing you up Flinders Lane. The next door you find is somewhat forebodingly shut and after pushing and pulling fruitlessly, I finally figured out that you have to press the bell and have the staff let you in. Awkward. Once we'd made it over that hurdle everything was much more straightforward - we were seated at the bar overlooking the little kitchen and given a quick run down of the way dining at Kappo works. Your 'menu' is basically a list of about 50 ingredients and all you have to do is decide whether you want 5, 7 or 9 courses and whether there are any ingredients you especially want to have includ...

May 25, 2015 This recipe is me trying to heave myself out of another breakfast rut. Our vege boxes come with a lot of apples at this time of year, some of them mealy, and I just knew that there was a breakfast crumble out there for them. I trawled my cookbooks but came up short. Isa , Heidi and Deb had muffins and waffles and eggs 'til Tuesday, but nothing that'd get apples into my workday breakfast. Once I hit google it turned out that Deb Perelman did actually have exactly what I needed, an oaty apple crisp especially designed for breakfast. I threw in a couple of pears with the apples, swapped honey for barley malt syrup and slivered almonds for raw cashews. It's not too distant from my ol' fruit crumble manifesto , though it taught me a couple of important tricks. First, you can melt the butter instead of blending it cold into the crumble. Second, it's worth baking apples well beyond my habitual 20 minutes to bring them to that collapsing, apple pie stage.  T...

May 23-24, 2015 Last weekend we joined in on a big party for a little girl's birthday. Much of the food was expertly catered by the Las Vegan crew, and another guest prepared a cake decorated with fairies and fondant mushrooms. I brought along a tray of hedgehog slice, a fairly common treat from my own childhood. I don't have a family recipe, but I knew Vegan About Town posted one that I could draw from and adapt to suit my pantry. The whole hedgehog deal was really just a plot to use up two packets of LEDA gingernuts , and it served to polish off some walnuts, cashews and dried cherries too. Best of all, it's an oven-free melt'n'mix method easily accomplished in 20 minutes. The slice has a great fudgy texture and a much darker chocolate base than the non-vegan versions I've known before. On reflection, it was probably too rich and bittersweet for the kids. In fact the little tackers barely took an interest in the savoury selection or the birthday cake once th...

May 21, 2015 We had time for a quick dinner in the city before a friend’s gig on Thursday night and took the opportunity to check out Sun Moth Canteen and Bar. I’ve been stalking them on Instagram lately and have been impressed by the steady stream of vegetarian and vegan-friendly dishes that pop up in their feed. It’s a sleek, sparsely decorated space – all clean lines and polished wood, with a few big plants and a projector decorating the front wall with silent movies (surf films the night we were there). The menu is short but still has plenty to choose from: four of the seven mains are veg-friendly (three vegan friendly) and there are a handful of options on the snacks menu as well (we’ll definitely be trying the fried bread with olives, lemon, chilli and garlic next time!). They’re big on fancy beer and good coffee too, but Cindy and I were both on soft drinks, so we’ll have to go back for a second visit to explore the beverage options more thoroughly. First up was the kale salad,...

May 17, 2015 We've had an eye on Zaatar since it opened a couple of years ago, and we've noticed it earning seals of approval from Cate's Cates , Green Gourmet Giraffe and Veganopoulous in that time. We squeezed our first visit in before their 8pm closing last Sunday night, following an afternoon gig at the Post Office Hotel . We'd spent the duration steadfastly resisting the myriad bowls of fries floating around us, focusing on the falafel to come. The set-up is accessible and family-friendly at Zaatar, with clear display cabinets and counter ordering, dozens of quick-wipe tables that can be rearranged by customers, and a grin on the face of every staff member. Dietary indicators weren't marked on the menu, but there's plenty for vegos to choose from. Given that they make their own bread products on site, coeliacs might be more wary. We shared a combination meal of 3 mezza with dip and salad ($8.50), which was excellent value. The last falafel in the display...

May 16, 2015 We had a spare Saturday afternoon and thus decided we finally had the time to commit to one of the overly complicated recipes that Serious Eats put up during their recent vegan month . I'm pretty keen to have a crack at the mapo tofu or the creamy ramen , but they both required fancier ingredients than we could lay our hands on at short notice. Instead, we went for this wintery roasted potato and cauliflower soup, with the added bonus of some mushroom bacon. This is still a time-consuming and complicated recipe - I'd guess that we spent more than two hours putting everything together and we dramatically simplified the original (no stove-top smoking, lots of stick-blending and no soup straining). The mushroom bacon could be made well ahead of time, although you've got a good hour to do the laborious mushroom slicing while the veggies are roasting, and the oven's already on so you can pop them straight in.  I'd say the pay-off was just about worth it - ...

May 16, 2015 On Friday night we were in the city for a gig at the Forum , and keen to try something new for dinner. I pulled up a year-and-a-bit-old bookmarked post from vegawesome! and suggested we give Sichuan House a shot. I had no problem snagging a table for two at 6pm, but they steadily filled up as we ate. I've since discovered that this restaurant is a favourite of many chilli-loving Melbourne bloggers (see link list below). The menu's generally very meaty but we were able to spot several veg options that correspond closely with the Dainty Sichuan menu : cold noodles, potato shreds, garlicky cucumber and the two dishes we ultimately ordered, stir-fried spicy dry tofu and chives ($19.80) and fish fragrant eggplant ($17.80). The dry tofu is firm and smoky, stacked high with lots of wilted greens and a few dried chillis. It was the right counterpart to the slippery battered eggplant, as sweet as it is spicy. A bit of steamed rice on the side ($2 per person) and we were we...