tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-345864832024-03-08T12:07:15.564+11:00Eating Through LifeAdventures in eating from a 23 yr old with eyes bigger than her stomach.de.foxushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03165384538361245290noreply@blogger.comBlogger12125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34586483.post-55017328422420829012007-06-12T21:20:00.000+10:002007-06-12T22:05:01.622+10:00the last week of eatsI am lazy, and for this I apologise. The main reason for lack of posts has been reluctance to sign up to google blogger, but after the last week or so of great eating, I knew I couldn't put it off for any longer.<br /><br />so:<br /><br />I <span style="font-style: italic;">finally</span> went and tried The Press Club. I've been dying to do it ever since they opened, and even though a group of friends went a while ago, they went the day before my payday, and there was just no way I could do it. So I dragged my two besties out and pampered them with fine dining.<br /><br />My thoughts: Saginaki martinis have got to be about the best things in the known universe.<br />Fetta cheese as dessert only works if you eat it in the same mouthful as the watermelon.<br />Just some of the best food I've eaten in general. I should have done this closer to actually eating there, I'm sorry.<br /><br />Also <span style="font-style: italic;">finally</span> tried Rumi. Considering I've always seen Lebanese food as yummy, not particularly fancy, more about the home-style feed, it was a bit of a revelation. Liz and I are heading back for breakfast soon, and I'm not sure what to expect but i'm looking forward to it. The burgul crusted calamari was amazing.<br /><br />New fave pizza joint: Spelt on Bridge Road. I was there for lunch on the day it opened, on the strength of the menu that's been sitting in their window for a while. Duck pizza? Hell yes! Pizza, pasta, risotto etc, all made with healthy (and tasty) spelt flour (not the risottos, duh), and with great and unusual combinations. I will be back. I reccomend you try it.<br /><br />I also made a great lasagne that I will post the recipe for once I get better at quantities.de.foxushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03165384538361245290noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34586483.post-1167710065667901902007-01-02T14:52:00.000+11:002007-01-02T14:54:25.680+11:00Things I have made over the last few days<strong>1. Mayonnaise from scratch.</strong><br /><br />One egg yolk, a hell of a lot of olive oil, some dijon mustard and some lemon juice. I managed to get it to the right consistancy without it splitting, but it ended up tasting a little bit like crap. Possibly need to invest in better quality oil. On the upside - Amazing upper arm workout.<br /><br /><strong>2. Roast Potatoes with Prosciuto.</strong><br /><br />Not going to post the recipe, as it's out of the Jamie book, and I don't want to be involved in any copyright court cases, thanks. But they were delicious, both times I cooked them, for dinner for myself, and for new years eve dinner for myself and Ms Cate.<br /><br />The recipe in the book calls for an apple corer and for the prosciutto etc to be stuffed into the hole that's made, but I don't have an apple corer. First time I made them I cut them in half and tried to stuff the stuffing between 2 potato halves. Making said potatoes balance enough was a problem, so for the second time, I wrapped each half potato in the prosciutto and baked them that way, and it worked much better.<br /><br /><strong>3. Crumbed Baked Prawns</strong>.<br /><br />Again, Jamie taught me how to make them so I can't teach you. But they were damn yummy.<br /><br /><strong>4. Tartare sauce.</strong><br /><br />To go with said prawns. A few spoonfuls of good quality mayo (so not the stuff I homemade, I went and got some proper whole egg mayo from the supermarket for this one), the juice of one lemon, a small handful of chopped capers, a couple of pickled gherkins (also chopped), chopped fresh dill (optional).<br /><br />Mix it all up and refrigerate until you need to use it.<br /><br /><strong>5. Mini fry-up.</strong><br /><br />New years morning (or afternoon, depends on how your new years eve wnet, really) is not the same without something fried. Usually this is ham and egg rolls on the BBQ with leftover baby from Christmas. I didn't have ham on the bone for BBQing, so made myself a mini fry-up of an egg, mushrooms, and a tomato. It hit the spot nicely.de.foxushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03165384538361245290noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34586483.post-1167180032079627082006-12-27T11:28:00.000+11:002006-12-27T11:40:32.116+11:00one-bowl easy veggie soupNot the thing to be cooking in the middle of summer, I know, but the easiest way I know of filling me with veggies when I'm sick. In the middle of summer, after not having anything harsher than the sniffles all winter, I came down with the nastiest case of tonsilitis I've seen for a while.<br /><br />So - The recipe. I just used whatever was in fridge or cupboards at my Mum's, and didn't measure anything, so please bear with me. Haphazardness means most of it's easily substituteable though.<br /><br /><br />Chicken Stock<br />Butter<br />Half an Onion<br />One Potato<br />One Carrot<br />Corn (tinned or frozen will be easier, but there was fresh in the fridge!)<br />Mushrooms<br />Small Pastas (Mum actually had special soup ones, but even spagetti broken up small enough will work)<br />Parsley, chopped<br /><br /><br />Put the finely chopped onion and butter in a large microwavable bowl, and cook on gight for 2 minutes. Add the chopped potato and carrot, chicken stock and corn (sperated from the cob, in kernals), microwave on high for 10 minutes, stirring occasionally. Add the mushrooms, cook for 5 minutes. Add the pasta and parsley, cook for 5 minutes.<br /><br />Tada! Done! Easy and not very messy or timeconsuming. Yummy again later when re-heated. My mum found a thermos for me to bring it home in. Bless!de.foxushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03165384538361245290noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34586483.post-1167034574870306752006-12-25T18:56:00.000+11:002006-12-25T19:16:43.206+11:00Christmas cheer...Well, I hope everyone has had a food and beverage filled Christmas this year. What pressies did you get?<br /><br />Two of my pressies are going to come in <b>very</b> handy for this here blog...<br /><br />Firstly - The new Jamie Oliver book. <br /><br /><a href=http://www.freeimagehosting.net/><img src=http://img2.freeimagehosting.net/uploads/3de9efee78.jpg border=0 alt="Free Image Hosting"></a><br /><br />It's bloody huge, and filled not just with recipes, but with tips and tricks about how you should be shopping for food, what flavours go well together, ways to tailor the meals to your own liking, etc etc. <br /><br />Secondly - Digital camera.<br /><br />Yay! Now the blog will turn more into a recipe, photostyle blog (for things like this, I recommend heading over to my friend Liz's page, threekilosofricotta.blogspot.com) rather than the restaurant reviews it seems to have been so far. <br /><br />Ok - now to the meat of the post. What did I eat for Chrismas lunch?<br /><br />To start - two different kinds of prawns, and oysters, served natural. My sister tried her first non-kilpatrick oyster and nearly vommed, but that's fine with me, cos there were more for me. I stuffed myself, as I love seafood and don't eat it very often at home (this may well soon change, the seafood section of Jamie has got me a little bit excited).<br /><br />The Main Event - cold ham off the bone, known as Mum's baby. My family are a little bit retarded. Baked turkey breast, known as buffy. See, retarded. Roast pork left over from our roast dinner last night, not known as anything. The crackling was tasty, but not up to the usual crunch standard of Mum's pork. We believe this is to do with buying shrinkwrapped meat from the supermarket rather than from the butcher. Never again.<br /><br />And we had salads up the wazoo. A delicious roast potato and basil salad, served cold with a balsamic dressing. A green salad that barely got touched with all else that was on offer. The asian noodle salad from the recipe off the back of the Chang's noodle packets. And a cranberry couscous salad that nearly didn't happen.<br /><br />Mum followed the instructions to the letter, boil chicken stock, add couscous, turn off heat, leave sealed in saucepan for 5 minutes. For a salad, you want your couscous to be nice and dry, with the grains separating easily. The couscous Mum found in her saucepan looked like polenta before it's baked. Not the greatest texture for a salad... <br /><br />so, the defoxus hassle-free way of cooking couscous is thus:<br /><br />Put stock or water in a microwave safe bowl, and heat on high for two minutes.<br /><br />Add to couscous, a little at a time, you can always add more stock, you can't take it out.<br /><br />Stir with fork until all couscous has swelled up and is tender to the bite. Don't cover it, don't let it stand without stirring it, if it's going to separate, you need constant motion.<br /><br />Hope your bellies get to normal size again soon!de.foxushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03165384538361245290noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34586483.post-1165243960454635672006-12-05T01:30:00.000+11:002006-12-05T01:52:40.500+11:00Peko Peko - Smith St CollingwoodI love Peko Peko. Like, <span style="font-weight: bold;">love</span> it.<br /><br />I had never been big on Japanese food, and it wasn't just about the raw fish thing. I can do raw fish. I don't always like it, but I can do it (smoked salmon however, is always liked). It was more about not knowing what was what, and potentially also due to my introduction to the cuisine being Japanese exchange students cooking for my family, and teenage girls are never going to be the greatest starting point.<br /><br />Lets please leave crude jokes aside at this point.<br /><br />Anyway, my major introduction to Japanese restaurant food came about when a group of friends (yes, several of the same friends that witnessed food sookery and/or at at ezard with me) went and did the banquet in their adorable lounge room upstairs. I looked to my dining companions for guidance, but once they told me to eat the tatami mat, and I heard them speaking about trying to pass off wasabi as avacado, I stopped listening and just ate what was in front of me. And I've kept coming back.<br /><br /><br />For:<br /><br />- Sweet potato gyoza. Pan fried and almost crispy on the outside, velvety smooth on the inside. And tasty little suckers too.<br />- Okonomiyaki. Oh sweet lord these are tasty here. A lot of that comes down to the sauce, which is almost a mix of Japanese mayo with BBQ sauce. Comes cut into bite sized pieces and slathered in said sauce, and sprinkled with nori bits.<br />- inside out teriyaki chicken nori rolls. I'm nearly drooling. I don't even know what to say about these. Just go eat them.<br />- spinich salad with one of the tastiest salad dressings I've ever eaten.<br />- pan fried miso balls. A big ball of rice, coated in miso paste, and pan fried. Bit bland on it's own, but great with other things for flavour, is a little bit different to the usual plain rice.<br /><br />All the meals are set out in the menu as 'small', 'medium' or 'big', and prices are cheap-ish.de.foxushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03165384538361245290noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34586483.post-1160283573765048982006-10-08T12:20:00.000+10:002006-10-08T14:59:33.860+10:00EzardYou don't <span style="font-weight: bold;">need</span> a fancy blog title when you're talking about a meal like I had last night.<br /><br />We went and did the 8 course degustation (with wine matching!) at ezard, at the base of the Adelphi hotel. With nine diners in attendance, we secured the private room, a curtained off area at the front of the restaurant. One giant square table, covered in white linen, a giant, pointless, empty stainless steel bowl adorning it's centre. The room, and the restaurant itself was gorgeous.<br /><br />As we started to get comfortable, we were offered cocktails to start, and bellinis were in the mentioned list. I [heart] bellinis, so I thought this was a good idea. I've always known bellinis to be peach schnapps, pureed peaches, and champagne. What arrived was a martini glass, with a scoop of sorbet, with champane poured over the top, and it was divine. Utterly, utterly divine.<br /><br />First Course: japanese inspired oyster shooter<br /><br />flavoured with mirin and sake, and some other things I don't remember, served on a perfect round of banana leaf (I wonder if the price of banana leaf has gone up as well?), with a tiny nori-wrapped parcel to bite into afterwards. It was served with a delicious champagne that really makes me see the value of buying real champagne rather than the $10 bottles of yellow... The tastes of the oyster shooter were absolutely perfect, had become more than the sum of its parts and really melded together. One of my dining companions remarked that a dishlike this is the mark of a 'master chef', creating something so amazing from seemingly simple ingredients.<br /><br />Second Course: wasabi pannacotta, yellowfin tuna tartare, shiso crisp, lime, sticky soy and tobikko<br /><br />Pannacotta is generally a desert dish, but the wasabi pannacotta, topped with translucent green tobikko and baby shiso leaves gave it a whole new meaning. The plate was drizzled with sweet, sticky soy sauce, and a small ball of tuna tartare (basically raw tuna, chopped into tiny pieces) sat next to the pannacotta, topped with a deep fried shiso leaf, also on the plate was a single, perfectly peeled lime segment. The attention to detail with the garnishes and little touches on <span style="font-weight: bold;">all</span> the meals was mind boggling, by the way.<br /><br />Sam, our serving wench for the evening, explained that for this course, it was recommended to have a bit of each of the parts of the course within a mouthful, and this advice served me well. The heat of the wasabi was present, but not overpowering, and while I'm not generally a fan of sashimi (I think it may be the texture), the tuna was obviously of the highest quality, and the way the sticky soy melded with it was a great contrast with the sharp, tangy lime.<br /><br />Third Course: steamed shitake mushroom dumpling, roast duck, chinese spiced broth and spring onion<br /><br />Well, I was always going to look forward to this course, duck, and soup, two of my favourite things, together! It didn't disappoint either. A single fine slice of perfectly cooked duck breast, with skin, sitting atop a wonton, in an empty bowl, is placed in front of each diner, and then a small saucepan is brought out from the kitchen and the broth is poured over. I'm running out of positive adjectives for this food, but the wine that was matched with this course was a sherry, that we had been warned may not be to our tastes without the broth, but that it matches very well. This was true, I had a curious sip before the course was served, and was not a huge fan, but a sip of it directly after a sip of broth was much improved, though this was still my least favourite wine of the evening.<br /><br />Fourth Course: steamed crab tortelli, crispy leek and herb salad, soy and honey butter sauce<br /><br />Of everything I ate last night, I would have to say that this course was my favourite. Crab has long been my very favourite seafood, but due to what a pain in the arse it is to eat, it's a rare treat. I actually think that before last night, the last time I ate crab was actually over a year ago.<br /><br />The tortelli was just one large filled pasta shape. The filling was flakes of white, perfect crab flesh, obviously cooked in the shell and then stripped. It was lightly flavoured, but most of the flavour of the dish came from the honey butter sauce, and the leek, which was almost caramelised. This is the closest I have ever been to food orgasm. I was speaking aloud while I was eating it. we had made it halfway, and two and a half hours had passed in a pleasant blur of flavour. I refuse to post crude 'flavour train' gags.<br /><br />Fifth Course (now we're really starting to sound decadent): anchovy crusted swordfish with beetroot, blood orange, rhubarb and persian fetta salad, spring herb salsa<br /><br />This dish just comes out looking <span style="font-weight: bold;">pretty</span>. The bright colours of the rhubarb and beetroot, the contrast to the milky flesh of the swordfish and the brilliant while of the fetta, plus bright greenery. It was almost a shame to eat it. Almost.<br /><br />There is such a huge difference between 'supermarket cheese' and 'deli cheese', and dishes like this are what highlight the difference. The creamy, crumbly, melt in your mouth-ness of the fetta in this dish just could not be replicated at home with something that is purchased in shrinkwrap. The tiny cubes of beetroot were just little bundles of fresh flavour, I normally don't like rhubarb, but this was delightful, I don't usually like anchovies, but the dried, fried crispy salty little thing that was passing as an ancovy was delicious. I may have to experiment with drying them out myself to see if it works.<br /><br />All that and I'm still yet to mention the swordfish! I've never eaten swordfish before, so no real comparisons, suffice to say it was great, perfectly cooked and yummy.<br /><br />Sixth Course: rice crusted kurobuta pork cheek with yellow bean dressing, spiced apples and green mango<br /><br />Dan, early on in the meal, picked this as his potential favourite of his night, he had dined at ezard before and had the pork hock (if I'm wrong, I'm sure he'll come correct me in the comments) and fell in love, I believe. I think anyone would have been justified to call this their fave of the evening, if the crab wasn't so spectacular, I may have considered it myself.<br /><br />Dry rice grains had been pounded and ground down to a size slightly smaller than sesame seeds, and most of the pork cheek had a fine coating of these that gave the tender meat a bit of a crunch. The cheek cut was a bit fatty, but it really worked to make the meat tender, moist and tasty. The apples and mango were a great tangy contrast, and the wine they served was the first red of the night (I think? the wine, as is the nature of wine, has become a little blurry), and as with the earlier champagne revelation, I can perhaps see the benefit of expensive reds. I know I'll just keep drinking goon though.<br /><br />Seventh Course: roast duck, shaosang wine, roasted chilli and spring onion dressing, hand rolled sesame noodles<br /><br />or<br /><br />slow cooked wagyu beef brisket, roasted asparagus, crispy taro dumpling, rock sugar sauce<br /><br />Sigh. This <span style="font-weight: bold;">should</span> have been my favourite course, my obsession with duck being what it is, but I just didn't like the flavours it was presented with. The duck was perfectly cooked and melt-in-your-mouth tender, possibly cut from the same breast as the earlier duck course, but who cares. The sauce was just too gingery. Ginger has never been one of my favourite flavours, so this is disappointing. I understand that this is just me, though, I'm sure it's actually great, it's one of the signature dishes. The bite I stole from Dan's beef was delicious, so I now regret not switching. They served a big, yummy, aussie red with both the dishes, which was delightful.<br /><br />Eigth and Final Course: Dessert Tasting Plate<br /><br />I really didn't think I would have room for this, but decided to give it a red hot go anyway. The plate is a selection of miniature sized versions of every dessert on the menu, and while I can't remember each and every one, I will endevour to relay the highlights:<br /><br />The vietnamese mint sorbet was delicously un-sweet, and the perfect palatte cleanser. The hazlenut cheesecake with passionfruit sorbet made me melt into a puddle. The honeycrunch icecream with sugar swirls was fabulously decadent, as was the bittersweet chocolate tart.<br /><br />All in all, I am very glad I forked out the cash for this. It's never going to be an every week occurance, but for a big splashout like we wanted to do, this is perfect. I was extreemly happy with the private room, as well. we're a rowdy bunch at times, and I would have felt I was ruining someone else's special moment (could you imagine taking your lover to ezard in order to propose, only to be confronted with a group of rowdy 20 and 30 somethings screeching 'where's my fucken corsage?'?).<br /><br />The duck thing was disappointing, but I cleaned my plate on every other course, so it's not <span style="font-weight: bold;">that</span> big a disappointment. Good quality wine instead of my regular pig-swill means no hangover today.<br /><br />I'm still trying to decide which is my favourite between ezard degustation and three, one, two degustation, though they are very disparate styles, so I guess I don't need to. Three, one, two was cheaper, and didn't charge us $150 for mineral water. Can you beleive that we managed to blow $2,500 between the nine of us last night? I think next time we should go with the coke and hookers.de.foxushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03165384538361245290noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34586483.post-1160034244188114512006-10-05T17:39:00.000+10:002006-10-05T17:44:04.196+10:00Apologies and excitementI have been very busy over the past week or so, and my at-home-internet has been temporarily disabled due to an over-enthusiastic kitten and his liking for chewing on cords. He's also the reason I've been busy, as he has been off getting operated on, and needing looking after.<br /><br />I <strong>have</strong> been eating, and cooking, some lovely things that I fully intend to write up once this business dies down, so please bear with me.<br /><br />In other news, I am dining at <a href="http://www.ezard.com.au">http://www.ezard.com.au</a> on Saturday night, and the excitement is almost tangible.<br /><br />We have booked out their private room, we have 9 of us eating and drinking our way through the degustation with wine matching, and we have rooms at the adelphi for afters.de.foxushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03165384538361245290noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34586483.post-1159430618040704752006-09-28T18:02:00.000+10:002006-09-28T18:03:38.053+10:00Gluttony is a Sinwhere: Gluttony, Smith St Fitzroy<br />what: Grilled baby octupus salad, side order of potato salad, skinny cappucino, freshly sqeezed apple juice, lots of water<br />when: yesterday afternoon<br /><br />The first time I went to Gluttony, I was warned 'don't get the breakfasts. They're alright, but they're nothing special. You <b>must</b> order off the board.'<br /><br />I ignored this directive and ordered poached eggs with hollandaise, and as warned, they were nice (I love poached eggs and hollandaise, I'd a lot of the time rather have just the eggs than the ham, spinach or smoked salmon you get with eggs benedict and florentine), but they were nothing <b>special</b>. And the meals of my dining companions were.<br /><br />Rachel had a warm gnocci salad, and Liz had the terrine plate, and both looked and tasted amazing. And both were <i>massive</i>. There's not a lot you can do to make eggs on toast look big, so my meal looked teeny in comparison.<br /><br />So, this time, I was determined to have that kind of experience with my Gluttony dining, and ordered appropriately. Massively. Three drinks and two meals. It made sense at the time, I promise.<br /><br />Baby octopus salad. Firstly, mmmmm, seafood. Secondly, mmmm, fetta cheese and sundried tomatoes and olives. Thirdly, mmmm, chargrilled eggplant and sweet potato. This dish usually also comes with chargrilled capsicum, but the taste of capsicum makes me wanna vom, so I ordered it without.<br /><br />The fetta cheese was crumbled into the dressing, so the entire salad was drenched in the yummy salty cheesy taste. The sweet potato and eggplant were chargrilled to perfection and had caramelised crunchy outsides. The small octopi were fantastic, and my only beef with the entire salad was that some of the larger octopi were really quite undercooked. In fact I left the largest one on my plate because I just couldn't stomach it.<br />Potato salad was chosen from a display of salads, because it looked so tasty. It was actually a bit of a disappointment, at least as a companion to the octopus, as the dressing was fairly bland, and just couldn't stand up to the fetta cheese dressing on the other salad.<br /><br />In the potato salad's favour, however: Hardboiled eggs cooked <b>exactly</b> right. The whites were solid but not rubbery, and the yolk was set but arrested before it got to that awful dry, chalky texture. I am sure that this would have been a lovely salad to have with steak or maybe with some chicken, but it just couldn't compete with the octopus.de.foxushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03165384538361245290noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34586483.post-1158800740578110262006-09-21T11:01:00.000+10:002006-09-21T11:05:40.586+10:00Food SookeryHaving dinner last night with a 'Food Sook' was quite an experience. Not just a food sook, but a food ignoramus.<br /><br />He ordered chicken and rice. Something came out that he thought was chicken and rice, he ate about half of it, when we realised we were missing a salt and pepper calamari. We looked at his meal. We ask him if his meal could possibly be it. He looks down, chews the food in his mouth thoughtfully... 'uuum, maybe'.<br /><br />He hands the meal over.<br /><br />It's salt and pepper fish.<br /><br />Which mean's another of our dining group is eating something that's not his, but at least he's eating the same species as he ordered.<br /><br />So then we realise that we're missing a chicken and rice, and a salt and pepper calamari.<br /><br />Our food sook's meal comes out, and he then refuses to eat it because <strong>all of the bits of food are touching the other bits of food</strong>. I mean, really. Am I the only one who is just bamboozled by this idea?<br /><br />We didn't make him pay for dinner. If you can't tell the difference between fish, calamari, and chicken, the world needs to take pity on you.de.foxushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03165384538361245290noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34586483.post-1158627659085959472006-09-19T10:25:00.000+10:002006-09-19T11:00:59.126+10:00Roast Duck Leg - London Tavern, Richmond<span style="font-weight: bold;">I ate: </span>Roast duck leg with sweet potato cake, green beans and mandarin sauce<br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">I drank: </span>carlton draught, in pots, from jugs.<br /><br />As people who eat with me often would know, duck is probably my favourite meat. Tastier, I guess a bit gamier than chicken, but still poultry. It's delicous. I don't think I've ever disliked a duck meal I've eaten, so really, me reviewing this meal would be like me trying to objectively review the Dresden Dolls concert I saw last night after dinner. Just not gonna happen. I'm going to rave.<br /><br />I wasn't sure what to expect from the 'sweet potato cake', bloody Melbournites referring to a slice of battered deep fried potato as a 'cake', but it turns out to be more related to the traditional cake than to the fish-and-chip-shop-staple. A dense wedge of mashed sweet potato, with herbs and spices throughout, and a deliciously caramelised bottom (I think it may actually have been overcooked, but it worked in it's favour).<br /><br />The duck was perhaps a little bit dry, but made up for that by having beautiful crispy skin that almost got to pork-crackling texture. *drool*. The mandarin sauce was not as sweet as I expected, which is a good thing, mandarin can end to the over-sweet when used in anything other than desserts, and there was plenty of it, enough to compliment both the duck and the cake. When I was done with eating, Ray and Tim both had to try the sauce, and I think both almost had an urge to have a second dinner!<br /><br />Side notes: sanitary pads (in particular, Libre Hearts) do burn when placed in a burning fire, but will do so in several layers, and smell quite toxic. An entire box of matches will catch on fire, and then make cool noises when all the match-heads ignite at once. The chips I stole off Tim's plate were cold but very very tasty, and I was nearly tempted to get a side order to go with my duck.de.foxushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03165384538361245290noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34586483.post-1158534958730386462006-09-18T08:34:00.000+10:002006-09-18T09:15:58.743+10:00Tapas - RedTounge, Brunswick Street<span style="font-weight: bold;">I ate: </span>Mixed tapas plate<br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">I drank: </span>one skinny cappucino, two glasses of house red (and plenty more later at the corner. my liver aches.)<br /><br />After wandering Brunswick Street from Alexandra Ave to Gertrude Street, at that terribly inconvenient time of day when lunchtime cafes are closing and dinner restaurants are yet to fling wide their doors, I stumbled across this little cafe.<br /><br />Outdoor seating was fab, until the rain started pouring down and tables needed to be rearranged, but the heavy-duty umbrellas pretected <span style="font-weight: bold;">me</span> from getting wet (*looks smug*). The service was quick and attentive, especially to the poor buggers who were caught in the rain and needed their tables moved speedily.<br /><br />The tapas menu has 7 options, and can all be ordered seperately, or mixed plates containing your choice of 3 or 5 of the tidbits can be brought out to your table, and the portions are quite hefty.<br /><br />I chose:<br /><br />Marinated bocconcini and olive salad<br />Parmeasan and herb crumbed mushrooms<br />Lamb kofta served with Tzatziki<br />Mild chilli fried calamari with lime and coriander mayo<br />Crumbed deep fried sardines with a napoli sauce<br /><br />It comes out presented in one massive three-part-connected bowl and a couple of smaller side plates, and the combination of the flavours over the five dishes was really quite special. The calamari by itsef was perhaps a bit bland and average, but the flavour of the mayo it came with complimented not only the calamari, but the sardines, the bocconcini and the mushrooms as well. The bocconcini marinade was perhaps a little too mild for my tastes, I generally feel that the best was to marinate bocconcini is with vinegar, loads of it, preferably balsamic, as it helps cut through the fatty creamy taste of the cheese. This is a personal gripe though, and the olives and tomato combination in the rest of the salad was a winner.<br /><br />The sardines were amazing, and I haven't ever eaten sardines before. They were always something Mum used to eat on toast when she couldn't be arsed cooking, and they looked and smelt horrible (much like her other staple can't-be-fucked meal - baked beans. I still can't eat those horrid looking fuckers). They were salty, and tasty, and with the crumbed-ed-ness and the napoli sauce, almost looked like miniature chicken parmas. Sardines are now added to my list of approved foods.<br /><br />The mushrooms looked dry on the ouside, but were very succulent and tasty when I bit through the outer crumbly layer. The koftas (I love that word. Kofta. Say it aloud!), while there were only two of them, were quite large, and very yummy, I can't quite place the spices that were used to flavour them. The tzatziki looked like it came out of a Chris's Dips tub, but as I love tzatziki (another fabulous word), that's not really a complaint.<br /><br />All in all a great meal, though would have been better without the rain, for more people watching, or with a mag. Eating alone can get a bit boring.<br /><span style="font-weight: bold;"><span style="font-weight: bold;"><span style="font-weight: bold;"><br /><br /></span></span></span>de.foxushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03165384538361245290noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34586483.post-1158531987173174982006-09-18T08:15:00.000+10:002006-09-18T08:26:27.193+10:00Welcome, Inroduction, yadda yadda...OK, so I finally succumbed to this here blogging lark, and as I have one of the most boring lives in existance, I figured I'd talk about FOOD.<br /><br />Good food, bad food, food I cook myself, food I buy at cafes, markets, restaurants, and so on and so forth. I love eating. Eating for sustinance, eating for enjoyment, occaisionally even eating for comfort or boredom.<br /><br />I will endeavor to share my culinary adventures with you in any way I can - be it recipes, restaurant reviews, photos, or a simple 'DO NOT EAT AT ____'.<br /><br />I am making myself hungry.de.foxushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03165384538361245290noreply@blogger.com6