August 12, 2010

Assorted eats

Agnes babble, eating out, food roundup, north melbourne, south melbourne, suburb

I know that I’m not the only food blogger who struggles with this. Basically, I eat more than I blog, which means I have a rather large amount of photos accumulated. In order to get through some of them, I’m going to cram several places into a couple of posts. After that maybe I’ll tackle the photos of food I’ve cooked but haven’t blogged?

Dead Man Espresso
Libertine – Suckling Pig Banquet
Auction Rooms
St Ali vs Vitasoy

Back in April, Alastair and I attended a suckling pig dinner at Libertine – organised by the lovely Gem from Eat Drink Stagger. Dinner was a three course meal, and the main course was a whole roasted suckling pig. It was as amazing as it sounds.

For entrée, there were three choices: chevre and potato paupiette with sweet corn basil soup, terrine du jour or Hervey Bay scallops.

I had the terrine, which was venison and pistachio with mustard and pear chutney.

Alastair tried the scallops. Alastair said the scallops were very nice, though my terrine was much more filling than his dish!

For the main course, we had a whole suckling pig (about 15 weeks old) that had been roasted for a couple of hours. The whole roasted pig was walked out on a tray for us to take photos of before it was cut up – it looked beautiful! Here it is all plated up – the meat was covered in a generous amount of creamy sauce and on top of mashed potatoes. It was delicious. The only sad thing was that the skin wasn’t crisp – possibly due to the age of the pig? A suggestion around the table was that perhaps there wouldn’t have been enough fat to get the skin crispy.

It was served with super duper creamy mashed potatoes and vegetables – with extra serves placed on the table, not that we needed any. It was a lot of food already.

Oh, and Gem’s friend got the pig head. Hehehe. I’m pretty sure he took it home with him!

For dessert, there were three options – a crème caramel with Calvado and herbal tea sorbet, a passionfruit marshmallow with autumn fruit and seeded shard, and chocolate pave with warm plum mousse and almond crumbs. Alastair and I both had the chocolate pave with plum mousse, which was VERY rich, very dark, and probably a bit too much after all that pork! But we still ate it all because it was very good, and fortunately the tart plum mousse did help cut through some of the richness.

If you like suckling pig – it’s definitely worth trying to get a group together! They do the dinners for groups of 10 people or more at $75pp. Hmm. I think I should try and round up another 8 people to have it again!

See Eat Drink Stagger or MSG for more details.

Libertine
500 Victoria Street
North Melbourne
Phone: 03 9329 5228
Web: www.libertinedining.com.au

Auction Rooms is one of our go-to cafes and when my in-laws Annette and Terry were visiting earlier this year, we made sure we took them there for lunch.

Alastair and I have pretty much eaten our way around the menu, but I wanted to show you this mushroom tart that I ordered for lunch. It was fantastic! It had great buttery pastry, and a tasty savoury mushroom filling that was complemented with the slightly sweetish sauce on the plate. Seriously, best dish on the table! Yay me!

Auction Rooms
103-107 Errol Street,
North Melbourne
Phone: 9326 7749
Web: auctionroomscafe.com.au

Disclosure: I was invited to this event by St Ali and Harvey Publicity.

Last month I was invited to a St Ali vs Vitasoy event held in a warehouse down from St Ali in South Melbourne. The event featured cocktails made from the guys at Der Raum. The cocktails served were like a posh pina colada, made with pineapple juice, rum, agave nectar and topped with a warm white chocolate and (Vita)soy milk foam.

At the entrance of the warehouse was a graffiti artist spraying a mural on to Vitasoy boxes, a couple of fire dancers twirling around, and inside were cocktails, food, a DJ playing music, and funky coloured lights.

Several canapes were served – oysters with a soy and mirin dressing, little cups of miso soup, Asian style pulled pork on crackers, chicken and mushroom pies and spicy, salty chicken wings. It was VERY dark inside, despite the funky coloured lights, so I didn’t bother taking any food photos – but check out some of the other blog posts below for food shots!

The food tasted good, but it was pretty difficult to eat standing up, with the exception of the pulled pork on crackers and soup. The pies flaked everywhere, the chicken wings had bones, and oysters…. well, the problems with oysters at stand up functions are obvious. Your hands end up smelling like oysters, and what do you do with the shell afterwards? But – rant over! Like I said, it did all taste good. And dessert was easy to eat at least. We were served little doughnuts filled with passionfruit curd and with a pineapple glaze on top. They were totally lovely, and a perfect couple of bites.

Later on in the evening, the two fire twirlers came inside the warehouse and did a performance. They were cool, though we did laugh about how there might have been a danger from the fire igniting the paint fumes from the spray painting at the entrance. (Obviously it didn’t happen! Though to be honest, the paint fumes inside were rather strong. Or perhaps we’d had too many cocktails – ha.)

For more posts on the evening see:

Sarah Cooks
I Eat Therefore I Am
My Kitchen and Gym Diary
Addictive and Consuming
Iron Chef Shellie