November 27, 2011

This week in brief

Agnes food roundup

Big week this week. I had several very good meals out – fun times!

But before I get into my week, the winner of the Streat tickets is Miss T. Congrats for being lucky #8!

So this week when I wasn’t eating out, I was mostly eating ox tongue (that I made last weekend) or pulled pork (which I also made last weekend) with salad or broccoli. The ox tongue was SO AMAZING, very buttery and tender. I was really sad when it was all gone.

After I had run out of tongue, I resorted to eating tomato, gucamole and ham for lunch. I love avocado, so that wasn’t a bad thing.

On Wednesday night, Alastair and I went to The Brix with I-Hua and Aaron. We had the 5 course tasting menu.

Isn’t their food beautifully presented? Look at this piece of cured beef… phwoar.

My favourite dish of the night was the lamb. Meltingly tender, slightly fatty, but with crispy edges – the only thing that let the dish down was the bloody peas. Peas, stupid peas, why oh why?! I had the most peas too – AAAAHHH.

(Apart from the peas, it was mostly a good meal.)

On Friday, I took the day off work – you’ll see why soon. Since I had the day free, I scheduled in a couple of things, one of which was a visit to the blood bank. I had a morning appointment, and made sure to drink plenty of water and have breakfast, which was a huge smoothie with a salad’s worth of baby spinach, blueberries, coconut milk and some honey. Yes, I was rather enthusiastic with the spinach! You can’t taste it, but it does make the smoothie an incredibly disgusting colour.

After chugging my smoothie, I headed into the city for my appointment. If you’re eligible – donate. That’s all.

After that, it was time for a long overdue catch up and a coffee with Twinsy.

And then I headed to the other side of the city to meet up with Maz and I-Hua for lunch at Vue de Monde. YES.

We were 15 mins early, so we sat in the Lui Bar for half an hour and sucked down a cocktail. No, of course 1pm isn’t too early for a Negroni…

Finally, our table was ready and we were allowed into the restaurant. We were there for the 1 hour express lunch (2 courses for $60), but added a third course. Then there were two amuse bouches (one of which was these ham and cheese donuts), bread, two palate cleansers and petit fours and… well, 1 hour turned into 3. SO worth it, but I didn’t have to go back to work, unlike I-Hua. 😀

This was my grilled shrimp entree. Shannon Bennett was there and came over to grill our shrimp at the table with a blowtorch. Unfortunately, we were in fits of laughter at the time and had to hurriedly compose ourselves and try and look serious. Errr. At least we were having fun??

I choose the waygu beef for my main. The mains came out with two side dishes – a cheese, watercress salad and fried potatoes.

I’m really trying not to show every single photo, but I can’t resist a couple more. Chocolate souffle was for dessert – very light and fluffy, but also very, very sweet.

And finally – we finished with coffee and petit fours. Such a good lunch!

(Note: sadly, I must inform you that the express lunch is ending in November – and I believe they’re fully booked for the last couple of days. Hopefully they bring it back.)

After Saturday’s torrential rain, it was nice that the sun came out today! Have you ever heard of The Dip in Sydney? Maz and Daz ate there a couple of weeks ago, and started chatting to one of the owners. They found out he was coming down to Melbourne to DJ and cook some food at the Mercat Cross Hotel.

So that’s what we did this afternoon – we drank cider and ate hot dogs and burgers out on their balcony. We had a Lev’s dawg, a hot dog with a grilled kosher frankfurt with tomato salsa, pickled yellow peppers, chipotle mayo and mustard on a steamed brioche bun. The burger was filled with grilled watermelon, bacon, onions, rocket and lime mayo. And finally there was grilled corn with lime mayo, chipotle salt and coriander.

The watermelon in the burger sounds weird, but it was strangely good. I must check out The Dip next time we’re in Sydney.

And finally – here’s a photo of one of my kitties (just cos). Awwwww.

That’s it from me – how was your week?