I cant believe its not chicken, parma

Another dinner party, I had a real hankerin for a parma since Beave tucked into a real one at the Penny Black the other night. Cept this one was special.

The Layers

Schnitzel
I used the Frys one, I usually like the Zoglos one the best, but this was really super good. I baked them in the oven, then put them under the grill to make sure they were super crispy.

Eggplant

Slicing the eggplant thickly, salt both sides and leave for 10 minutes, this removes the bitterness. Rinse the salt off, there should be some black/purplely juice that the salt draws out, this is normal. I think fry them in a bit of oil until cooked.

Spinach

Just steamed some frozen spinach and squeezed the excess water out.

Mushrooms

Sliced some mushrooms and cooked in some olive oil with lots of salt and pepper.

Napoli Sauce

3 cloves of garlic minced/sliced/diced whatever
1 small onion, diced
1 tin of diced tomatoes
2 tbsp tomato paste
2 tsp fresh oregano (I roll up my herbs and snip them into strands with a pair of scissors - so easy)
1 bayleaf
2 tbsp fresh basil
salt, to tast
1 small birds eye chilli, sliced
1/4 red wine if you have some hanging around

Saute the onion and garlic until it becomes translucent. Add the basil, oregano and chilli mix for about a minute. Add the tinned tomatoes, paste, bay leaf and red wine, stir to combine. Simmer for about 5 minutes for the flavours to combine. For a parma or pizza sauce, I then whizz this in the food processor until completely combined (dont forget to take out the bay leaf!).

I then topped with cheezly and grilled until it had melted and gone brown.

I serve with sweet chilli chips (I toss frozen chips in a bit of sweet chilli sauce and then bake - it makes the sticky and crispy and a little bit sweet) and dill sour cream.

Dill Tofu Sour Cream

1 packet of japanese tofu
2 tsp of umeboshi vinegar (I cant find this anywhere so I used 1sp of sushi seasoning and 1 tsp of mirin)
1/3 of a tsp of dry mustard (I've also used any kind of mustard lying around)
1/4 tsp minced garlic
1 tsp dried dill
2 tsp of olive oil

Whizz in food processor (I've also used a stick blender with success or blender). Season to taste.


Dessert was the Dark Chocolate Tart with Ginger Cookie crust, clicky clicky. Served with Soyatoo.

Monday Melbourne Roundup

Jeez louise, can you believe I just plain forgot to do the round up this week? Its silly season, things are getting crazy busy. So much so, I cant actually really remember what I did last week.

Out

My futures so bright I gotta wear shades - OK OK - Sparta Place, Brunswick

My friend Mina has a shop. A shop with a gallery space (available for rent peoples, check it out). I bumbled along with the Beave to the latest opening, "My futures so bright I gotta wear shades" from local artist Hannah Crofts. The blurb goes: "An eccelectic art installation by local artist and musician Hannah Crofts. Drawings, photos weird and wonderful collection of things... You must see this show AND you must come to the party, there will be music and drinks and fun! Opening night, Tuesday 17th of November 6-9 pm running till December 1st. Short and sweet- be there.

I really quite liked the exhibition. I liked Hannahs choice of charmed objects and how she liked to group them. Go and check it out. Also fellow vegans, Minas clothing label "OK OK" is proudly vegan and she has just got a new shipment of Melissa shoes (AWESOME vegan shoe brand), say hi to Mina for me if you go in!

NMIT Photography - End of year show

My friend Bec Rocks finished photography school. The quality of the work was superb and I was left rather impressed at the output from the course. Something I'm going to try and get into in 2011. Nice one Bec, yours were super!

Eats.drinks

Cabinet

This is a great little bar and possibly my bar for the summer. Its small, intimate, has a great food list and an outdoor patio everything I want out of a bar. Hello summer romance.

Penny Black

I had the $6 vego pizza there with no cheese, it was passable, but would prefer Bimbos. However beyond the Brunswick Green, this is the only other real alternative to a quiet drink not filled with dickheads on Sydney Road. So I gotsta suck it up. Just wish they had a few vegan options.

White bean, leek, mushroom and asparagus pie

Hi, I'm Carla, and I'm a pie-a-holic. Probably not the best to cook anything in this heatwave, but I couldnt get this pie out of my mind since getting Isa Chandra Moskowitz's new tome - Vegan Brunch. I'm also trying to cut down my tofu (well soy in general), so a tofu-less pie recipe really appealed. Ok, things that happened:

1st: my pastry 'dough' ended up being pastry 'smear' even after putting it in the freezer for an hour. I think the combination of overworking the dough and the heat melted the margarine too much. I had a hunch it would still work, so I smeared it into the pie base and moulded it into a pie shape and blind baked it. I found the mixture too much for my pie tin (it states a 9inch pie tin but every recipe I've used for those measurements the crust has been too much so I'm guessing my tin is a weird size/too shallow) so I scraped a bit out the bottom to make the dish deep enough for the filling. All I'm sayin' is, don't get disheartened if your pie dough isnt firm, it will probably still work out anyway, and our result? The flakiest, butteriest pastry you've eaten since you stopped eating croissants. (thanks to the work of the readers! apparently the recipe was printed wrong and it should only be a 1/4 of marg not 1 1/4 glaring error! - I have made this recipe correct).

2nd: I didn't have any walnuts but I did have mountains of fresh asparagus (can a get a hollar at spring y'all?!) so I did a straight swap.

3rd: I am no doubt going to get kidney disease from the amount of salt I eat, but I found this recipe too under salted (under seasoned all round) and added a fair bit. Obviously make to the recipe and see if you think it needs more.

Recipe direct from Vegan Brunch


Pastry Crust Pie Base

1 1/2 cups of flour
large pinch of sea salt
1/4 cup of chilled margarine
5 to 6 tbsp of ice cold water

Sift the flour and the salt into a large mixing bowl. Add the margerine in small chunks to the flour. Use a pastry knife (I use my food processor and pulse slowly with the egg whip attachment) to cut it into the flour until it resembles coarse crumbs. Add the water in tablespoons until the pastry begins to hold together. Gather it into a ball (or in my case smear it into a bowl), wrap with plastic wrap and chill in the fridge for 45 minutes.

Mushroom, leek, asparagus and white bean pie

500 grams of mushrooms
2 tbsp olive oil
3 cups of thickly sliced leek
3 garlic cloves, chopped
Heaped tbsp of fresh thyme leaves
Fresh black pepper

1 cup of shelled walnuts
1 can of cooked cannellini beans, rinsed
1 to 2 tbsp of water
3/4 tsp of salt
A few sprigs of thyme for decoration

Preheat the over to 180 degrees. Roughly chop the mushrooms, set aside a few slices for decoration if you want.

In a large, heated skillet, saute the leeks in the olive oil for about 3 minutes on medium heat. Add the mushrooms and saute for about 7 minutes, until the moisture has released and they're nice and soft. Add the garlic, thyme and pepper (I also added 3 thinly sliced asparagus spears at this point) and saute for another minute, remove from heat.

Bake your pie shell for 10 minutes (poke the shell with a fork a few times so it doesn't rise, I found mine rose a lot! so maybe weigh it down with some blind beans inside baking paper) and remove from oven.

Pulse the walnuts in a food processor until fine crumbs form. Add the beans and a tablespoon of water and blend. If the beans aren't blending easily, add another tablespoon of water. Add the salt. Blend until the cornstarch isn't visible.

Add the leek mixture to the food processor (be careful its still hot!). Pulse a few times, you don't want it to be baby food, you still want to be able to see chunks of mushroom and leek.

Spoon the mixture and smooth down into your pie shell. Decorate with sprigs of thyme, pieces of mushrooms or in my case some asparagus spears. Bake in the over for 40 minutes. Let cool before serving (it says 30 minutes but who the hell can wait for that?). This pie tastes awesome cold too. Bon apetite!

English Muffins

This was ridiculously easy (if you've 'grasped' yeast stuff - or even cooked yeasty things a couple of times). Fluffy, slightly chewy, golden brown English muffins. I was unsure as to how far they would spread or 'puff up' so I did cut them too small. Follow the recipe exactly and they will be perfect. Yum. Yum.

Recipe from Vegan Brunch.

Ingredients

1 tsp of dry yeast
1 tbsp of sugar
1 cup of lukewarm water

2 1/4 cups of flour
1 1/4 tsp of salt

3 tbps of margarine, room temp

A few tbsp of cornmeal
Margarine for skillet

In a small bowl combine the yeast, sugar and water; set aside until the yeast has dissolved (its goes a bit foamy on the top). In a large mixing bowl, combine the flour & salt, make a well in the centre and add the yeast mixture and marg. Slowly add the flour to the centre well and make a dough, knead until smooth and elasticky (about 8 minutes by hand or 6 minutes in a dough hook mixer). Place dough back in a large, lightly oiled bowl and cover with plastic wrap or a damp towel and leave to double in size. (this is where I put the bowl on top of the heating up oven to give the yeast the kick start it needs, if your kitchen is warm it might not need this). Can take anywhere from 45 minutes to an hour and a half.

Preheat your over to 180 degrees. Punch down down and knead for a minute, then roll out on a floured surface until 1/2 inch thick. Cut into 3-inch rounds using a cookie cutter and pat both sides into cornmeal. Preheat a large skillet (I used a fry pan), melt about 1 tbsp of marg over a medium heat. Cook the muffins, working in small batches, until lightly golden on both sides. Put straight from the pan into a cookie sheet and cook in the oven for 6-10 minutes.

crispy, chewy, chocolate chip cookies

I've tried millions of chocolate chip cookie recipes, but this is the one. Crispy, chewy, practically a kg of sugar, it's enough to make a pre menstrual woman drop the knife. I eat these for breakfast when I'm pmsing and lordy does it save the human race from krakatoa. Recipe straight from "In the Garden of Vegan".

ingredients
3/4 cup of flour
1/2 cup of dry sweetener
2 cups of rolled oats
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1/3 cup of tofu or 1/2 banana
1/3 cup of olive oil
1/2 maple syrup
1 tbsp of vanilla extract
1 - 1 1/2 cups of chocolate chips (vegan of course)

method
1. Preheat oven to 180 degrees.

2. In a large bowl combine all the dry ingredients and mix.

3. In a food processor (or blender or with a stick blender) whizz all the wet ingredients and mix into the dry ingredients.

4. Spoon a heaped tablespoon of mixture onto a baking sheet and press flat. Bake for about 12-15 minutes until starting to brown. The cookies are hard to handle straight out of the oven so you have to wait a little bit for them to firm up before you can remove them from the cookie sheet. Makes about 14 cookies.

Chilli 'non' Carne Calzone - Las Vegan Nirvana - Collingwood

Las Vegan Nirvana are now open on a Thursday and Friday night! (or is it Friday and Saturday?!) anyway, I finally made it along. I had the most un-nutritious meal at the table with the 'chilli non carne' filled calzone, chips and satay sauce dip. Meelee had the 'sloppy joe' burger, a rich smoky tvp tomatoey extremely sloppy sauce and Simon had the lentil burger, all served with salad and chips. Las Vegan Nirvana is not going to win any culinary awards any time soon, but it is cheap and cheerful vegan food, and the couple that run it are soooo gorgeous. I cant wait to go back and try everything on the menu, its becoming really important to me to support vegetarian only restaurants/businesses. Definitely one to try and just as good as the East Brunswick but for much more reasonable prices.

Deets: 22 Smith Street Collingwood, Victoria 3066 (03) 9415 9001
$$: burgers with chips and salad were $13 my calzone was $6 with side of chips $3 and satay sauce side $2

shakahari - carlton

Eating pants, stat! Ive been living in Melbourne for almost 6 years now (I spent 18 months overseas during that time) and have always heard the reports about Shakaharis, "its really good but its too expensive for what it is". Why the hell did I listen to other people?!?! This is some of the most delicious vegan food I've ever had. Hands down. The service is impeccable, the space is beautiful without being too formal (just what I like) and the price is only fair for the level of effort, quality of produce and uniqueness of their dishes.

I did a fair bit of scratching around the interweb, reading other bloggers reviews and they were all unanimous that the avocado rolls were THE thing to try. Everyone else seemed to be impressed with everything they ate, however I decided to stick with asian cuisine there and not do any of the italian inspired dishes. Win. Win. Oh and did I mention this entire meal was gluten free?

Photo 2: Avocado Tempura Rolls with coriander sauce. This is one of Shakaharis signature dishes and its just divine. The tempura rolls are filled with avo, capsicum, eggplant and some sort of cream cheesey substance, lightly fried in tempura batter and served on top of this sweet, zesty (will be the word for the evening) coriander sauce. Dude!

Photo 3: Asparagus and rice noodle salad. Perfectly cooked asparagus spears with rice noodles and I cant remember what the other salad was but it was delicious! Served with a tongue tingling wasabi dressing.

Photo 4: Tofu and Lentil parcels with minced shallots, ginger salad and reduced ponzu sauce. The end. Amazing.

Photo 5: says it all.

Photo 6: Tofu Creme Caramel with roasted pistachios. So amazing SO SO SO amazing.

Photo 7: Black stick rice with mango. I loved this, it was not so sweet and more like a crumble or even breakfast. Clare didn't like it so much. Its more of a 'healthy' dessert.


Deets: best to book to avoid disappointment 201-203 Faraday St, Carlton ph: 9347 3848
$$: the 3 entrees were $13.50 each the 2 desserts were $12.50 each, champagne $8, green tea $3, soy chai $3.50

movida next door - melbourne

Ok get your Hannibal Lecter jokes out now. tee hee. Situated on the corner of Flinders St and our most iconic and apparently largest tourist attraction to Melbourne, the heavily graffiti-ed Hosier Lane, Movidas Next Door is hands down my favourite restaurant in Melbourne. The service is sublime, the wine and food sublime. The space, you guessed it, sublime. Served with salt crusted bread, this dish is pitch perfect. Vegans can also have the 'patatas bravas' there with the mayo on the side for your omni friends which will be featured here soon enough. The menu is limited for vegans (there is one other bean dish you can have without the tuna) but I find those two dishes are enough and its more about soaking up the service and the last bits of oil with my bread there than having a bajillion dishes to choose from (apparently Movidas proper has a larger selection available). Serving food until 11pm Tuesday to Saturday, its the perfect late night drunk food. Pure relaxed sophistication. If you're lucky you may spot *the* Franco Comorra cooking in the kitchen, in his year round shorts and sandals. Franco if you're reading this, marry me.

deets: Hosier Lane cnr Flinders st 03 9663 3038
$$: wine, generally around $12 mark per glass, artichoke hearts: $15

"Chicken Schnitzel" burger - East Brunswick Club - Brunswick natch!

Clare and I finally made it down for $12 Mondays. We happily shared this and were stuffed (well had enough room to share a dessert*) sooo good if you want a fake meat fix! FYI there is an extremely limited menu on $12 Monday (I think 2 choices for vegan and 2 for omni) their more extended menu is really great but I feel far too expensive for what it is. They also use tofutti products which I dont like.

*we finally tried the vegan tiramisu at vege2go.. soo not impressed so no picture/review.

deets: 280 Lygon Street, East Brunswick, Victoria 3057 Phone Front Bar 03 9388 9794
http://eastbrunswickclub.com

$$: $12 for the burger and $9 for a pint of cider

Monday Melbourne Roundup

I've been mainly having dinner with friends lately. Clare and I just gave up on our subscription to the MTC. We had 2 more plays to go and I just couldnt bring myself to go last week, its been so truly awful! But apparently it was pretty amazing. I cant tell though anymore. Poo.

Out

Chris Marker - Cinematheque

I went to 2 out of the 3 Chris Marker session at Cinematheque @ ACMI. Wednesday nights session was predominantly about communism and Marxism in France and Germany in the late 60s'. Interesting but also mind numbingly freaking boring. I really love Chris Marker as a film maker, he had an amazing eye and such a unique narrative.

eats/Drinks

Oriental Tea House

Review

Movidas Next Door

Review

Las Vegan Nirvana

Review

Shakaharis

Review

East Brunswick Club

Review here

Oriental Tea House - South Yarra - Melbourne

I had been to The Oriental Tea House before in the city and wasnt that impressed with it. I recently had a day wandering around south side (as its extremely rare I cross the river) and decided to drop in for lunch. The location is much nicer than their city store and I sat in a light filled window people watching and reading my book. It was really lovely. I had the vegetarian san choy bao (amazing) and the specialty dish of the spicy eggplant. The eggplant was ok, but I think after the amazingness that is the sczechuan eggplant at Idea Food and Wine, nothing else compares. I had a mug of the 'relaxing' tea, which they refill with hot water free of charge. Their tea selection is impressive and the service was good once I finally flagged someone down to take my order (I had waited 15 minutes).

Space: a light and airy 8/10
Service: 8/10
Food: 8/10

Overall: 16/20

deets: 455 Chapel Street, South Yarra Vic 3141, Tel: 9826 0168 (restaurant)
$$: San Choy Bao $6.90 spicy eggplant $6.90 rice?? I think the tea was $2.90

I'm not dead.

Spring.has.sprung. After non stop blogging for veganmofo, I need some time off! See you next week kidlets! xo