things I have learned to cook

My mother is a master consummate cook. She is famous in our little community and every person I've brought to dinner has liked me a little more for it. Her food reduces full grown Chinese men to tears (fact: Chinese men don't cry) and will end every argument over anything.

So, predictably, I cannot cook.

Compounded by the fact that 1405 and I both work late, when we do end up cooking it is an extraordinary event. Here is a selection of our budding attempts, would love to hear about your magic foolproof meals!

Vegetarian lasagne with bechamel sauce.

Japanese chicken curry with carrots and potato.

Ratatouille.

Garlic and tomato fried mussels.

Caprese salad.

Roasted beetroot and green bean salad with cheese.

mess hall breakfast

We got married! We're back from our honeymoon! And doing all kinds of married stuff. For example, in a brave effort to normalise our waistlines (we're not fat, just cuddly) we have decided, in true married fashion, to take yoga classes together. Not just any normal yoga class though - goddamn 6.15am yoga classes in the city which require us to get up at the hour of 5 and 15 and roll in to do the following postures:

BADASS HEADSTAND!
Image taken from http://theia-fitgoddess.blogspot.com.au/2011/10/i-did-headstand-in-yoga-last-night.html

BOSS SHOULDER STAND!!

Yes, it is as hard as it looks. Especially for someone like me who was FAT AS as a kid (scroll down to the bottom of this post for illustration) so during the formative years I never learned how to do handstands on the oval. In the words of the thespian Martin Lawrence in Bad Boys 2, "Shit just got real." Maybe if we get really good we'll post photos of ourselves doing it!

So we've started to have breakfast regularly in the city. Smiley face.

We found Mess Hall on Bourke Street with cool morning music and decent food. The chai is very good. The sparse (and tense) morning corporate breakfast crowd kills our yoga buzz a little, but if you have suggestions as to where to avoid suit-wearers on a weekday in the city, we're happy to receive your non-existent recommendations.

The sweet options are yummy and surprisingly filling.

Blueberry and ricotta pancakes with maple syrup. Don't be deceived by the pretty berry topping, this is a man's dish. Would feed my whole family, really.

Homemade granola with poached rhubarb and yoghurt

The eggs are gooood. But as 1405's "I have never eaten so much egg in my life until I met you" suggests, I like eggs, most ways.

Poached asparagus with scrambled eggs and shaved parmigiano

One morning they didn't poach eggs. From the waitress' tone it sounded like the chef went on a poaching strike so we got scrambled eggs in a hollandaise dish - it was nice but I was eyeing everyone else's poached eggs as we were leaving. Maybe the chef caved in to the tense suits.

Hollandaise eggs with ham, spinach, hollandaise and dukkah on a sweet bun. Usually with poached eggs.

We have told too many people that we're doing a yoga thing this year to stop going now. I imagine when we're done (although one can never be done with yoga...) with these city classes Mess Hall memories will be forever linked to the sheer sweaty terror of being upside down, in a good way.

The Mess Hall
51 Bourke Street
Melbourne
9654 6800

hanoi hannah

"Sex, drugs and rice paper rolls" announces the awning above the hippest Vietnamese restaurant in this neck of the woods.

The lights are dim and pink, the music is right now and the food is fusion but tasty.

I met a friend J here for dinner on a weeknight when our working lives point blank looked like scenes from the director's cut of Horrible Bosses. After a lively exchange of ways to make the problem "permanently go away" J and I drank from big white fleshy coconuts and ordered away with reckless abandon.

Due to the fact that J is very cool and I didn't want to embarrass her with my intrusive food photo-taking, the photos below are terrible. But I filched a good one from Food with Frank.

Chilli prawn with papaya salad. Photo from Food with Frank - http://www.foodwithfrank.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/IMG_1599.jpg

Papaya was thinly shredded and the sour/spicy sauce had soaked all the way through the crunchy slivers. The prawn were a little limp but boiled prawns (as these were) are kind of hard to glamourise.

Soft shell crab with wasabi mayonnaise and lime, basking in all  its pink neon glory. Even from this angle the crab looks damn sexy.

J and I have a devotion to soft shell crab. It combines love of seafood with complete laziness - Hey! Just eat the whole damn thing - and this one was definitely the best order of the night. The crab was like the size of my palm! Complete with scrummy lime and an exotic take on mayo (wasabi).

Mixed mushroom pho and Vermicelli with lemongrass beef

I have never ever had a vegetarian pho before, so seeing "mixed mushroom" on the menu was delightful to my 70% vegetarian sensibilities. However, quickly after the pho arrived I realised why. The reason I love pho is 70% attributable to MSG and high-blood-pressure inducing levels of sodium and there was neither in this very very healthy but unfortunately bland bowl. The soup was bountiful with mushrooms though and mushrooms are always welcome.

Vermicelli with lemongrass beef or bun (pronounced "boon") was yum. Fish sauce, well cooked beef, ricey vermicelli noodles, what is there to complain about? Heaps of condiments to add spicy to your life and the prices here aren't too bad either.

Hanoi Hannah
180 High Street
Prahran
9939 5181

we're getting married...

.... in 59 days!

1405 proposed in December last year for reasons I still can't fathom, nonetheless we are incredibly nervous and happy in a giddy way about the whole thing.

Source of image: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-1350903/My-Big-Fat-Gypsy-Wedding-makes-Katie-Price-look-classy.html
We want nothing less.

This is the reason that many of the posts you'll see from us for the next few months are going to be a bit dated, they're from our huge archive (so very huge) of previous accidental feasts. Right now we are saving like good Chinese kids so we can pay for our wedding with duh cash. What good are four and a half university degrees for, if not paying for your own damn wedding?

the black toro

2012 has been the year of being engaged and a little obsessed with being engaged.

Also the year of Mexican food! Which has reached Kingway by way of owner chef Garen Maskal, just now. Already ubiquitous in the CBD and becoming common, anything other than Chinese food is still a novelty in Glen Waverley.

I read that the Mr Maskal heralds from Ezard and while I have not yet been there (upcoming birthday, Mr 1405?) I know a bunch of foodie friends who luff it.

With such grand backing and confidence, I took my family here for a 60-days-until-wedding dinner.

Roasted barramundi, marinaded tomatoes, olives and watercress.

Sher wagyu fillet with chimmichurri, parsley and shallot.

This was a special tamale with corn, zucchini, tomato and very green pesto.

Everything was yum and well done, I saw many happy Chinese families here. Everything on Kingsway is do or die and it will be interesting to see how this restaurant fares in the years to come.


The Black Toro
79 Kingsway
Glen Waverley
9561 9696

Eat me!

It's been a long time since posting anything. But that's life. I've been busy working in an office job where the happiest moments in life are looking forward to the next meal (coffee break, lunch, afternoon tea, then going to dinner time).

The picture inserted is the outcome of of how long I had been waiting to eat my afternoon snack. I decided to lightly draw 'eat me' on my pear and when it finally appeared I knew it was time. The small things in life that give you a kick and keep you looking forward to the next moment.

It's probably not the best way to remind yourself to take a break from work or whatever you do by inflicting cuts into your fruit, but then again it could be quite artistic & poetic, no? Sort of the last scars of the fruit's life for your enjoyment and consciousness.

In any case, I thought it amusing to think my food could communicate with me and all the possibilities this situation posed. Would that make us eat more healthily or be more conscious of what we eat?

cafe rosamond

I must confess I'm not really a sugar person, my choice of death by overindulgence is probably going to be heart attack (fried potatoes, anyone?) Anyway, 1405 is a (manly manly) sweet tooth and it was his teeth that led us to Cafe Rosamond on a chilly pre-winter night.

A pop-up dessert evening by Pierre Roelof (the Yoda of pastry chefs where we are), this little operation is open only on Thursday nights and does not take bookings. Light heartbreak music, local art and whimsical pot plants make this tiny hybrid cafe / dessert legend feels right at home at the hipper part of Smith Street. It is tucked into the back of another obscure alt/pop store, in true Melbourne fashion.

We opted to share a three-course dessert degustation between the two of us with a dessert tube and it was plenty plenty to showcase the exquisite skill and attention to detail of these delicious works of art.

Open ended test tubes: surprisingly substantial.

This is as close as we are getting this year to Heston Blumenthal's "drink me" straws from his Alice in Wonderland themed feast. The bottom of the test tube needed to be soaked in a beaker of hot water for a few second to loosen the contents and then slammed down - delicately. The layers were cream, chocolate and ginger. Together they made a flavour that reminded 1405 of cakes in Germany - hearty, sweet and a touch of spice.

Aniseed meringue with sherbert and a tart fruit base

This was my favourite one of the night, lighly lightly meringue with crisp flavours and a sticky fruit-based saucey thing was a delight to eat.

Bottom to top: gingerbread, ginger granita, citrus liquer, creamy foam and puffed millet.

This very adult and very modern parfait was also very gingery. I liked the puffed millet and the crunchy refreshing granita. I'm not a fan of ice but the flavours were nice, almost savoury.

The piece de resistance! Hazelnut, orange, lime.

The final dish was, to my non-sweet palate, exceedingly good. Hidden under the crumble and freeze dried citrus cubes were tiny scrolls of sponge with a chocolate sauce filling, resting contentedly on a bed of hazelnut chocolate sauce. The crunchy hazelnuts and subtle lime sugar were a welcome contrast to the gooey chocolatey-ness.

Patting our stomachs after three and a half courses of dessert, we realised that we weren't feeling that too-much-of-a-good-thing from a sugar overload. None of the desserts were overly sweet, rather they used fresh, real flavours that just worked - which is really the essence of any good dish, sweet or savoury.

Cafe Rosamond
Rear of 191 Smith Street
Collingwood
9419 2270