Nigella's 'Slut red raspberries in chardonnay jelly'. Veganised.

Slut red raspberries in chardonnay jelly. Just the name of the dessert was enough for me to want to make it. I've also never made a Nigella Lawson recipe before. And it seemed a good way to use up the cheap bottles of $4 wine I seem to get given every year at around this time.

Nigella's original recipe can be found here. The recipe in the link is Nigella's take on a recipe she was sent. This is a vegetarian version of Nigella's version. Given the agar makes the jelly a little cloudier than Nigella describes in her recipe, the raspberries don't take on the same 'stained glass lucent red', but it does still make a pretty, but I suppose slightly less slutty looking dessert. So here is the recipe:

Slightly promiscuous red raspberries in chardonnay agar jelly.

1 x 750 ml bottle of chardonnay. Other white wine would probably work too. Red wine would just be weird...
5 grams of agar powder.
150 grams of caster sugar (sorry Nigella, 250 grams just sounds too sweet to me...)
1 vanilla pod, split open length ways
2 punnets of raspberries.

(Note - if you want to reduce the alcohol content of your jelly, boil the wine and let it cool again before adding the agar)

• Decant the wine into a large bowl and soak the raspberries in the wine for 30 minutes.
• Strain the wine into a saucepan and add the agar powder and vanilla pod. Stir the powder in and leave to soak for 15 minutes.
• Heat the wine slowly, stirring constantly to ensure the agar mixes in and no lumpy bits form.
• Add the sugar and dissolve into the warm wine. Divide the raspberries between 6 serving bowls. Make sure your serving bowls will be ok with heat.
• Strain the wine mix to remove any vanilla pod chunks, and pour over the top of the serving bowls while it is still warm.
• Chill in the fridge to set. My jelly set in under an hour

This is an awesome adult version of jelly, and was really good served with some coconut ice cream we had left in the freezer.

Needs more raspberries :(

This photo doesn't really do the jelly justice, it had a wonderful golden colour and the raspberries were a beautiful glowing red.

The jelly had just enough agar to set. This was actually my third attempt at making this, before I got the amount of agar right. The first couple of attempts had too much agar and were just way too solid, as you can see in the example below.

Waaaaaay too much agar!!!!

The above example was what happened when I followed the agar to liquid guide on the back of the agar pack. I found it was just too much and had to cut back. Lucky for me I had several bottles of cheap wine to play with so it wasn't a total waste and I did get it right eventually. I also made a version of the jelly for our designated driver guests and under 18s, substituting apple juice for the wine.

The jelly tasted wonderful. It would be even better with a better bottle of wine. I probably should have boiled the alcohol out of the jelly in my initial test versions... after lots of taste tests of failed jelly I'm feeling a little woozy...

East Brunswick Club

I can't believe it has taken me this long to get around to going to East Brunswick Club! Ok, so it is on the wrong side of the city for me and finding excuses to be in the area is a challenge, but I still should have found time to get there long ago.


I was taken by surprise by the size of the portions here! Massive! If we had known how big the serves were we would not have ordered a side of chilli fries with vegan cheese as well as mains. The chilli fries were great! I was expecting them to come out as fries with spicy salt coating topped with beans, they came out with this amazing spicy nacho style bean topping. And with loads of chilli! They were way more food than we needed, but seriously worth it.

For mains we decided to go the vegan parmas.

Kev ordered the Nacho style parma, which was a bit of a surprise to me. He eats very little meat, and has always had a loathing for eating chicken. To the point that he can't stand to eat mock chicken dishes. So I wasn't expecting him to order something that is made to look like chicken. I also wasn't expecting him to love it!

I ordered the traditional vegan parma. I swear the menu said this was meant to come with vegan ham, but I may have read the menu wrong. The parma was great, all fried and crispy with a tasty tomato topping. Though I had gotten the idea of it having some form of vegan bacon on top so was initially a little disappointed, I got over this pretty quickly.

 

There were some really tempting dessert options on the menu - peanut butter chzcake and hedgehog, both vegan - but after parma and chilli fries there was just no way I could tackle any more food. This just means I have to make time to head back out to EBC again, this time to try the philly cheese steak and a dessert.

There are heaps of other bloggers who have posted on East Brunswick Club. Check out a few of them here, here, here and here.

Kri Kri Mezethopoleion - Veg friendly Greek restaurant, CBD

Saturday night I took my mother and mother in law to see Hairspray. For pre theatre dinner, I wanted to find a restaurant as close to the theatre as possible so they would not have to walk far. My trusty smart phone app gave us a list of all the nearby veg friendly restaurants in the Spring/Little Bourke street area and we settled on Kri Kri Mezethopoleion, a greek restaurant on Little Bourke.

The menu looks like it is geared towards diners ordering dishes to share. To that end, they have 2 banquet menus available. The menu sports a large selection of vegetarian items and both banquets have a good number of vegetarian dishes for any vegetarians dining out with omni friends.Since we only had a short time to eat diner before the show started we ordered items straight from the menu. Given the sizes of the portions we received, we probably couldn't have managed a banquet anyway.

My fiance joined us for dinner, and he and I ordered 3 items from the vegetarian menu, that we were also assured were diary and egg free! While there were only 2 of us, we figured we would order 3 dishes since non vegetarians always enjoy trying the veg dishes as well.

We ordered the Tiganita me Skorthalia (Kolokithia) - Fried battered zucchini slices with garlic potato. The zucchini was beautiful, perfectly cooked. I've never had battered zucchini before. While it was a little oily from being fried, this is how I now think it should always be served! 

We also ordered the Patates Sto Fourno - herbed lemon potatoes. Again, these were beautiful. While they look oily in the picture, they were not. They just had a delicious lemony herby glaze.

Finally we ordered theYigantes - Giant white beans in tomato and onion. This had to be my favourite dish. It looks, as my mother said, like your basic baked beans, but the flavour was something else. I don't know what herbs they put in the sauce, but I will be hunting the internet for recipes for greek beans to try and find one that makes something similar to this dish.



Yum!


Kev wanted to order the eggplant dish, but opted not to because it had cheese in, and because I just cannot stand the vile purple rubbery blob that is eggplant. 

Mum loved the chicken skewers she ordered. It must have been seriously garlicky because from my side of the table it smelled like someone had just opened a jar of crushed garlic under my nose. Since too much garlic is still never enough for my mum though the dish was perfect and she was still raving about the food the next day. 

My mother in law ordered a salad off the specials, which I believe was a octopus salad. She also said the food was amazing, however the serve was bigger than you would expect from a salad so she was unable to finish it which she felt rather guilty about. She is always very careful not to waste food.

Since the food came out fairly quickly, we had time for dessert. Kev ordered the yoghurt with seasonal fruit, expecting it would be the least sugary dessert option. He did not realise it was going to be served drizzled with honey. A lot of honey. He just ate around this. When asked how it was he replied 'like yoghurt'. I'm guessing that means it was good???

Mum ordered the baclava. She had never had baclava before and had no idea what to expect. I think she may have built it up to be something more than sweetened nuts and pastry, because she was disappointed. She said it was nice, but not something she would eat again. I am allergic to walnuts so I stayed far far away from this dish... It looked pretty though.

My mother in law tried the Loukoumathes, which were listed on the menu as honey puffs with cinnamon and crushed nuts. I was scared off by the menu listing nuts, so initially wasn't going to try these, and the rest of the dessert menu was dairy, so resigned myself to no dessert. When the Loukoumathes came out to the table however, there was no trace of nuts to be seen, and the waiter said there actually were no nuts in the dish and they were not prepared near the baclava. Since the serving size was huge, my mother in law and I shared this one. They were basically just donut puff balls covered in honey and cinnamon. Nothing really special.

Kri Kri is somewhere I would recommend if you are looking for a vegetarian friendly greek restaurant, the mains were great and got rave reviews all round the table. The service was friendly (the waiter even very politely responded to my mum querying why there was posted written in french on the wall of a greek restaurant), and prompt and waiters were constantly coming to the table to top up or replace the water jug on the table. I would probably skip dessert however next time I go there. While the desserts each seemed fine, being all either dairy or super sweet options, none of them were really my thing.

Balderdash - Port Melbourne

We happened to be in Port Melbourne on the weekend so decided to do a drive by to see what had become of our once beloved weekend breakfast haunt, Bowl of Soul. We were rather depressed when they closed, and nothing has really been able to fill the hole their closing has left over our side of the city.

We found that not only had the space BoS left behind been filled by a hip looking little coffee and cake style cafe called My Sister Says, but a new and equally inviting little cafe named Balderdash had sprung up only a couple of weeks ago where Silk Pirate used to be.

While we initially had intended to go to My Sister Says, we were more impressed by the offerings on the breakfast menu across the road at Balderdash. The coffee write up on the board sounded too good to pass up. Visiting My Sister Says to sit and reminisce in the empty shell that once was Bowl of Soul shall have to wait.



Love the little horse!

They have a couple of out door tables available, along with a variety of indoor seating options - a large communal style table, several 2 and 4 person tables, and a window bench. We seated ourselves at a small 2 seater table and were promptly visited by friendly wait staff to deliver menus and take our coffee order.

The coffees did not disappoint. I enjoyed my soy latte so much I ordered a second, and the long black earned a thumbs up from Kev which is rare. He is rather particular about his coffee and was quite impressed by the coffee he received.

The cafe has only been open perhaps 3-4 weeks and the menu is quite new. From this review they did not have a menu 2 weeks ago, and were serving only coffee and pastries. They have since introduced a full menu, and there were several vegetarian options available. They were also more than happy to make substitutions.

I ordered the corn and caramelised onion fritters which are usually served with a poached egg. When I asked if the egg could be substituted for mushrooms they were more than happy to oblige. The fitters were also served topped with relish. The fritters were fantastic and the relish worked really well with them. The mushrooms were also done well, good flavour and not served soggy like so many cafes do.  My only complaint was having to share half of one of the fritters with Kev since I had promised when I ordered that he could try some...

Kev ordered the pesto scrambled eggs with feta, plus a side of mushrooms and avocado. Pesto scrambled eggs is one of his favourite menu options from Seddon Deadly Sins so he was curious to compare. He liked that the toast was served unbuttered and separate to the eggs. Serving scramble on top of the bread just gives soggy toast. He really enjoyed the eggs here which he said had really good flavour and generous amounts of feta but still prefers the version that Deadly Sins do as they have a larger serving of eggs, and the pesto is more evenly distributed through the scramble.

All in all, Balderdash serve quality coffee with great food and friendly service in a relaxing and inviting atmosphere. They will be a very welcome addition to Bay street, which has been in need of some more interesting cafes. We will definitely be back here again when we get the chance.

Chan House - Healthy Vegetarian Option. CBD

I've been working in the city for about 18 months now. I now have a huge temptation to go shopping on my lunch breaks to buy crap I don't need... It's dangerous having so many book shops near my office. The best thing about working in the city is the access it gives me to catch up with friends for lunch.

So today I caught up with my bestest bud (whom we shall call Moshi J)  for lunch and went to Chan House. (Friend them on facebook to get updates on menu specials). It's a bit of a walk from my office but totally worth it.

Chan house is in a little food court off little Collins street, located between Queen and William streets. The service is very friendly and fast. There is shared food court style seating available for eat in.

They work from a revolving menu list, where they will have a few dishes that are always available (steamed or fried rice, noodles and mixed vegetables), then 3 daily special items from their menu. They also have dim sims, spring rolls, vegie or BBQ pork buns and prawn crackers. They offer 2 sizes of plate/takeaway, both with steamed rice and 2 dishes. The small is $5.80, large is $6.80. Fried rice or noodles is $1 extra.

I have been there for lunch a number of times before but have always gotten take away. Today Moshi and I decided to sit down and enjoy our lunch properly.

The specials today were szechuan tofu, a curry and ribs with a vinegar soy sauce. I ordered the szechuan tofu and ribs with fried rice. As you can see the serving size for the large is very generous. The tofu was beautiful, the sauce was very tasty. The ribs were great too though I didn't have much sauce. Vinegar and I have a strange relationship - I like the taste in foods (I used to love salt and vinegar chips) but I always end up taking a breath of air in as I eat anything with vinegar on and end up in a coughing fit. This sauce didn't do that though, there was just enough vinegar for the flavour.

I also ordered a BBQ pork bun which was delicious. If it were not for the fact I know all that bun bread would make me super sleepy, I could eat a full meal of just these!

Moshi ordered the fried rice with mixed vegetables and the ribs, and was kind enough to let me take a photo before he nommed his lunch. He also ordered a spring roll but I did not get a picture of that.

I'm really glad Chan House opened up in the city because we need more vegetarian options in the city. Check out some other great blog posts for Chan House here and here.

Dukkah crusted tofu with corn fritters and tomato salad

Tonights meal could probably really have been 2 separate dinners, however I had the ingredients and more importantly I had free time tonight to actually cook something a bit more creative for dinner. Haven't had that for a while!

A few days ago I had cut up a block of and marinaded it. When it became apparent I wasn't going to have time to use it right away I chucked it into the freezer for another day. Freezing it turned out well since it had a better texture when I used it tonight. After walking past Seddon Deadly Sins cafe and seeing their special that day was poached eggs rolled in dukkah, I thought this would be an awesome thing to do with tofu.

The corn fritters I made using a recipe from the book Vegan Yum Yum. I've been meaning to use this recipe for a while because corn is awesome. There are a lot of recipes in this book that I want to try actually.

Dukkah crusted Tofu
1 block of firm tofu (I used a 375gram block)
Marinade (I went really basic using braggs, 1/2 a cup veg stock, some garlic and some pepper)
Cornflour
Oil
Dukkah (I used a whole pack of premade pistacio dukkah)

Press the tofu between 2 plates for 20-30 minutes to get some of the water out.
Cut the tofu into desired size slices.
Place tofu into the marinade. It is better to leave it overnight if you can, but if you don't have time marinade it for at least 30 minutes. If you plan far enough ahead you can freeze the tofu for a more chewy texture.
Pour some cornflour into a bowl. Pour some oil into a second bowl, and put the dukkah in the third bowl.
Take the prepared tofu slices and dunk into the first bowl, making sure they are coated in cornflour.
Next take the flour coated tofu and spread some of the oil onto the tofu with a pastry brush making sure to thinly coat the tofu all over. The flour and oil coating should help the dukkah to stick and stay stuck through cooking.
Now dunk the tofu into the dukkah to give a nice crust.
Fry the tofu on both sides till the dukkah slightly browns. Mine just needed a couple of minutes each side.

Dukkah crusted tofu ready for frying

Corn Fritters
1/2 cup of flour (I used wholemeal)
1/2 cup of polenta
Pinch of salt (the recipe called for 3/4 tspn but I'm not all that big on salt)
1/2 tspn of baking powder (I added a little extra because I was using wholemeal flour)
1/2 tspn old bay seasoning (I didn't have this and don't know what it is so just put in mixed herbs)
1/4 tspn cumin
1/4 tspn paprika (I used 1/2 tspn since I have no idea where my cumin went...)
1/2 cup of soy milk
1/4 cup of water
2 cups of fresh corn kernels

Blend the dry ingredients together.
Add the soy milk and water and combine to a thickish batter.
Fold through the corn.
Heat some oil in a fry pan and place large spoonfuls of batter into the pan, flattening these to fritters with the back of the spoon. You will probably need to do this in a couple of batches to use all the batter.
Cook a few minutes till golden brown on one side, then flip to brown on the other side.

Mmmmm... Fritter batter.

I served the tofu and fritters with a very basic salad made simply of diced tomato, avocado and basil. It all worked together to become a very awesome dinner that made my tofu hating fiance say 'Hey, this tofu is actually really good!'. The corn fritters got great reviews too :)

Great food that didn't get the photo quality it deserved :(

Where's good in Melbourne??? Little help please :)

With a week and a half to go before our family arrive from Sweden, I am trying to put together what I think is a list of must see places around Melbourne, both food and non food related. Problem I am having at the moment is I keep getting stuck on making Melbourne food lists... There has to be more to Melbourne than good food.

So my question to anyone who happens to stumble across this post in the next couple of weeks is this - If you were a visitor to Melbourne, where would you wish someone would take you? If you have any must see places around the city or suburbs, or any can't be missed Melbourne dining experiences, please leave a comment below, keeping in mind 3 of our 6 visiting guests are under 18, so no bar and pub crawls...