Disclosure: Alastair and I ended the Sweets Festival preview courtesy of the Immigration Museum.
Do you have a sweet tooth? My sugar loving friends, this post is for you. (And see the end of this post for a giveaway.)
This week I was invited to the Immigration Museum for a preview of one of their upcoming exhibitions on sweets. In March, the museum is launching a program called Sweets: Tastes and traditions from many cultures. There’s an exhibition, a festival, and a dinner, which will explore sweet foods and drinks from several Victorian communities: Indian, Italian, Japanese, Mauritian and Turkish.
Disclosure: Alastair and I received an entry pass courtesy of Hothouse Media and Taste of Melbourne. We paid for our own crowns.
Is anyone heading to Taste of Melbourne this weekend? Just like last year, Alastair, Bro and I stopped by the gorgeous Royal Exhibition Building on the opening night to check it out. (more…)
Taste of Melbourne is back again next week at the Royal Exhibition Building – check out my post from last year.
At Taste of Melbourne you can create your own little degustation by purchasing small dishes from participating restaurants, as well as try out food and drink samples from the various stalls dotted around the building.
I won tickets to go to Taste of Melbourne from My Food Trail, and I used them to attend tonight’s session at the Royal Exhibition building. Isn’t the Royal Exhibition building gorgeous? I love this building!
Naturally, I planned what we were going to eat well before I arrived. Here’s what we ate! (more…)
It’s time for another global food party – last time we made gnocchi and this time we’re doing pizza pie!
Waka, waka, waka
Now I know that pizza pie can refer to just a regular pizza, but I really wanted to do a PIZZA PIE. So I have two offerings to bring to the party.
The first, is a pizza in a pie form – pies with a pizza filling! I made a savoury shortcrust for the bottom pastry, which was then placed into pie tins and blind baked. Then I filled the pie shells with pureed tomatoes, salami, olives, mushrooms and mozzarella. Then it was topped with a lid of (store bought) puff pastry and baked to pizza pie perfection. Despite my lack of pie making experience (and trust me, it showed when I just tried to whack the puff pastry lid on top without wetting it, thinking it would stick by itself) these were still very good. My shortcrust pastry was buttery and soft, and the filling tasted just like pizza. A definite pizza pie success.
My second pizza pie is a pie in pizza form! I cooked up a pot of meat pie filling by browning some diced beef in seasoned flour, and then stewing it with a couple of diced carrots, onions and celery and chicken stock. I made pizza bases from no-knead pizza dough, spread on pureed tomatoes, and then added a thin layer of meat pie filling. Shredded mozzarella went on top of that, and then a piece of puff pastry. Again, it was baked to pizza pie perfection – I LOVED this version, most likely because the pie filling was savoury and moreish.
I did also do regular pizza, but unfortunately Bro ate the ones I was going to photograph (nice one, Bro!). And you may also be wondering about the cupcakes? Well, it’s Penny’s birthday and it can’t be a party without cake. So Penny received vanilla cupcakes with lemon buttercream and pizza slice fondant toppers. Happy birthday!
A big thanks to Dany for coming over and critiquing my pizza pie creations. Huge thanks also to Alastair for doing the mountain of dishes I generated! I hope you enjoyed my offerings to the party – visit the other attendees to see what they prepared:
The Melbourne Food & Wine Festival is over for another year. I only went to two events this year, and the first was the very popular Heat Beads Hawkers’ Market held at the Queen Victoria Market.
Held on a Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday night, there were two sessions on each evening. We attended the later one at 8:30pm on the Tuesday night. A ticket for the event included four vouchers to purchase four small dishes from the various stalls.
I was a bit worried that it would be crazily busy, and the night was going to involve lots of lining up to get food, but fortunately that wasn’t the case. There were twelve restaurants represented, with each restaurant presenting a small selection of their dishes.
As soon as we arrived, we nabbed a table. I specifically chose one that was close to the food stalls and under good lighting.
Alastair and I shared our dishes, so we got to sample eight dishes plus a bonus.
We started at Dainty Sichuan. I was VERY overwhelmed with the choices on offer – the lady at the stall rattled them off at breakneck speed and by the time she got to the end I had forgotten what she had first said! It would have been great to have them listed on a piece of paper. I ended up with a prawn skewer, a chicken wing and some pork ribs. I didn’t actually ask for a chicken wing – I normally steer clear of barbequed chicken – but it ended up on my plate, so I just accepted it. Turns out that the wing was good anyway. The wing and the prawn skewers had a spicy, tongue numbing quality to them from Sichuan peppercorns.
We tried a serve of the goat masala and daal from Chilli India. This was just okay, I thought it was a bit bog standard.
Next up, we tried the pork cheek from Pan Asian. This was VERY fatty, and very tender. I was a bit worried that Alastair would be put off by the fattiness, but it turns out that he was in an eating mood and gobbled it up.
Oh, and remember how I mentioned that I specifically choose a seat with good lighting? At this point THEY TURNED OFF THE LIGHTS IN OUR SECTION. Rahhh! Hence the funny lighting in the rest of my photos.
We had the fish grilled in a banana leaf from Laska Me. The fish was tender and moist, with some subtle spices. It was very nice.
From Maedeya, I selected the okonomiyaki and sweet potato. I was surprised that the okonomiyaki was actually pretty good – it was still nice and hot which definitely helped. The texture was very soft, but it was tasty. One of the best dishes we ate that evening.
We also tried the japchae from Hallah. Points for being freshly cooked, but unfortunately taste-wise I found it to be far too sweet.
By this stage we were getting full and I was running out of things I wanted to try! Lots of places had also sold out of dishes as well, which cut down my options. So I gave a voucher to Kenzan @GPO for a serve of their yakisoba and cooked tuna sushi roll. The yakisoba was just so so – like the japchae, I found it too sweet. The sushi roll was nice though.
Thanks to Bro for the picture!
After this we were too full to eat any more savoury food, so I headed to the ice cream stand. You had to pay for ice cream though, and while I normally wouldn’t have minded, I still had two vouchers left! So I figured a compromise would be a banana fritter from Dumpling King, which came with a scoop of ice cream. I don’t know why they stuck sparklers on their banana fritters, but it was cute! Thanks to Bro for taking the photo, because the sparkler fizzled out before I made it back to our table.
Oh, and the banana fritter and ice cream was great.
For my final voucher, I handed it in at Warung Argus and received a serve of black rice pudding. What I had actually wanted from them was the suckling pig, but they had sold out by the 8.30pm session (BOO). The rice pudding was very runny and coconutty, with the rice still quite firm. It wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t amazing either. Pork would’ve been better!
Bro received an extra voucher from someone who was too full to use all theirs – apparently he looked “deserving”. Heh! He finished with a bowl of laksa!
There was entertainment…. but we were too busy eating….!
While four vouchers each doesn’t sound like a lot, it did end up being quite a lot of food, and we were STUFFED afterwards. While some of the food was just so-so, overall it was a good event and we really enjoyed ourselves.
We went to the Footscray Lunar New Year Festival recently – Chinese New Year is tomorrow, but the Festival was held a couple of weeks ago. It was a hot and windy day, so we showed up at Footscray early in an effort to beat the heat.
We did a quick lap of all the stalls, and then decided we would have yum cha and then return to the Festival. We headed to our usual yum cha haunt – Dai Duong.
We pretty much ate all our usual stuff. The first two things we had were pork buns and radish cake. Alastair ate both the pork buns, so I don’t know what they were like, but the radish cake was good.
Bro said yes to a basket of tripe. The tripe was really good – lovely flavour and not too chewy. I know most people don’t like tripe, but it’s really so good! We also had some pan fried pork dumplings. I love these with red vinegar.
Next up was a basket of steamed dumplings – I think these had prawn and garlic chives. They were fantastic. The wrappers were smooth and thin, and they had big pieces of prawn in the filling. We also had beef cheong fun, which were fine.
Yum cha isn’t over until Bro has eaten a basket of chicken feet (normally a whole basket by himself) whereas I don’t leave until I’ve eaten an egg tart. There were only two egg tarts per plate, so we had to get two plates so everyone received one. I got to eat the extra one. Wahoo! Alastair finished off with a bowl of dessert tofu.
After filling up on yum cha, we went on a walk through the festival and took some photos. Unfortunately we were too full to eat anything! Waah! There was lots of grilled stuff going on.
More grilled stuff.
I was full, but still bought a drink – this was a basil seed drink with what I think was grass jelly. It was kind of strange. The seeds sort of looked like tadpoles!
There were lots of dodgy looking rides and games.
Some kids looked like they were having fun on the rides, but I don’t know if I’d trust my life on them!
The MFB had a tent, and they were giving out paper models of fire engines – complete with road cones and little paper firemen! Squee!!
We arrived just in time to see the firecrackers being lit, but unfortunately there was a crowd and I couldn’t manage to get a photo. Afterwards there was a lion dance. A stall was also selling funky balloons.
Some more drinks on offer.
And more grilled stuff – corn, betel leaves and meat on skewers.
There was also dried squid hanging up for sale.
This was a big pile of betel leaves stuffed with beef.
And egg cakes (I think! Someone correct me if I’m wrong!)
I have no idea what this was, but it was GREEN. And HIGH. How could I not take a photo??
Happy Chinese/Lunar New Year and Valentine’s Day! We aren’t doing anything for CNY (I haven’t even cleaned the house – gasp!) but we are going out tomorrow for a late lunch/early dinner. More later. I hope everyone has an auspicious and love filled day!
This post is all about offal. If offal makes you squeamish, you may want to skip this one!
Did anyone do any Melbourne Food and Wine Festival events? I only ended up doing one thing – Animal Farm at Baba. Details from the program:
“a seven course menu exploring the flavours of Turkey and the Middle East, matched with wines from Spain and Italy. Featuring bone marrow, heart, brains, tripe, liver and kidney mezze, claypots and kebabs, with Turkish delight, gelato and Turkish coffee to finish, this is a culinary feast not for the weak at heart – but for those who eat it.”
Only Bro and I went to this dinner – Alastair stayed home and had a “safe” dinner of curry. 🙂
A long table was set up in the middle of the restaurant, with tables for normal diners around the edges of the dining area. We were told that the food would be served communally, but as not every seat was filled there was space between groups and each group received their own dishes.
The first course was a rich and smooth chicken liver parfait with middle eastern melbas and cornichons. A rather safe dish to start off with and good smeared on the crispy bread.
Next was roast bone marrow with smoked lemon, caper and parsley salad and Turkish bread. Little dishes of pink salt from Tibet were placed on the table. To eat the bone marrow, we scraped it out of the bone, spread it on the toast, sprinkled with a bit of salt and then topped it with some of the parsley salad. Mhmmmm it was buttery and soft, plus mildly meaty with the salt and parsley helping to balance out the richness.
The third course was Libyan baked lambs brains in gadaffi pastry and harissa. GAK. The brains felt sooooo greasy and just seemed to coat my mouth in fat. It was the fattiest thing I’ve ever eaten (more than the bone marrow)! Looking around the table at other diners, many seemed to share my distaste. The brains weren’t a very popular course!
Happily, the next course was tripe soup with cumin, currants and coriander. The soup was lovely – very strongly cuminy, and the tripe was cooked until very, very tender (I may be strange, but I thought it looked very pretty in the soup). Every now and again I would get little bits of currant and crunch down on cumin seed (one of my favourite spices).
The fifth course came out in three separate dishes. Oh boy, things were getting heavy!
First we had sweetbreads with basil and tomato. I don’t think I’ve had sweetbreads before, but I really liked them. They had a kind of firm, bouncy texture and reminded me of chicken nuggets.
Then there was a sumac seared ox liver with a glazed onion and chickpea salad. The ox liver was good too – rather rich, but the zingy sourness from the sumac and chickpea salad helped cut through the richness.
And last for this course was a za’atar grilled lamb kidney kebab. It was bought out to the table last, and we were already eating the sweetbreads and liver by the time it arrived. As soon as it was set down, all I could smell was that awful kidney scent. I ate a kidney, and while it tasted fine I couldn’t get over that smell. Even if my stomach hadn’t been approaching full I wouldn’t have been able to eat the whole kebab.
The last savoury course was an East Brunswick bunny boil-up. In the boil up was rabbit kafta dumplings, chicken hearts, lamb sweetbreads and peas. We also received a small dish of pilaf. The pilaf was really good, lovely and buttery, but unfortunately after so much offal we could only eat a couple of bites. The dumplings, hearts and sweetbreads in the light broth were all fine and good, but even the most hardened offal lover would have been a bit weary by this stage (and we were a bit…. weary….).
And finally, to finish, there was Turkish delight gelato, served in cones with a lump of Turkish delight on top. Thank goodness dessert didn’t follow the offal theme! The faintly rosewater flavoured gelato was a good way to end the meal and I loved the cones.
We didn’t stay for coffee – we had been sitting there for about four hours and we were desperate to get out of the wooden seats. The seats would’ve been fine for a normal dinner but four hours called for a cushion! Food wise, it obviously wasn’t the most balanced dinner (did you notice the distinct lack of any green stuff?) but we knew what we were getting into. In the whole we thoroughly enjoyed it, with only the brains and kidneys kinda defeating us. It was definitely a meal for the brave….. or for the ones with cast iron stomachs!
Baba Levantine Trading Company 80 Lygon Street, Brunswick East Phone: 9380 8534
There’s a new year coming – Chinese/Lunar New Year! Celebrations have started around Melbourne to ring in the Year of the Ox, which officially starts on 26 January (which also happens to be Australia Day this year). There were festivities in Footscray the other weekend that I missed, but which Towser from Spot4Nosh has blogged about. And yesterday, there was a festival in Victoria Street, Richmond.
Victoria Street was closed to traffic between Hoodle and Church Streets, and along its length were food stalls, rides, random knick knack sellers, performances, and information stands. Food wise, it was Vietnamese, and there was lots of deep fried stuff, grilled food, and skewered items, with most stalls offering similar things.
Top left: Beef in betel leaves being grilled. Top right: Corn on the cob! Bottom left: Rice cakes (?) being cooked. Bottom right: Bananas in sticky rice. I haven’t tried these yet, and got too full for one! It’ll have to go on my “to eat” list next time.
Top left: Chive cakes. Top right: Skewers, skewers, skewers! Bottom left: More skewers! Bottom right: Sugar cane. Bro and I shared a cup of sugar cane juice, but we wanted straight sugar cane juice like we’d had in Hong Kong. The juice was mixed with something citrusy (cumquats?) and just wasn’t the same.
Top left: Dried squid for sale. Top right: Random pork sausage on a stick. Bottom left: Deep fried Mung bean cake thing topped with a prawn. Bottom right: Inside you could see the mung beans. It was soft and fairly flavourless.
Top left: Deep fried prawns on a stick. Top right: Beef in betel leaves. My favourite item of the day. I could’ve eaten many of these sticks! Fortunately I restricted myself to one. Bottom right: Pork jerky in different flavours. I didn’t buy any (I’m not sure my teeth could handle it yet) but I do like this jerky far more than is healthy. Bottom right: Egg rice cake with a sweetish, fish saucey, vinegary sauce that I poured over. The rice cakes themselves didn’t have much flavour, although Bro said that they had a fragrance that put him off (he thought almond, I thought perhaps coconut). And BOY, you should’ve seen how much oil some the vendors were using to cook these.
Yesterday turned out warmer than I was expecting, and the sun and heat meant we soon wilted. Plus the oiliness and deep fried factor of most foods, also meant that it wasn’t long before we couldn’t face eating yet another unhealthy item (unusual for Bro and I, but there you have it). At least we have another year to recover!
Disclosure: I didn’t take as many photos as I wanted to. However, we went to the Vic Street Lunar New Year Festival a couple of years ago (before I started blogging) so I have supplemented this post with some of those photos. Sneaky!
Last Sunday we went out to Hanging Rock for the annual Harvest Picnic. I had given the Boys a leaving time before we went to bed, but unfortunately my Bro was a touch hungover and needed a bit of prodding. It was a slower start than I wanted, but eventually we climbed into the car and headed off.
45 minutes later we had arrived and parked (in a paddock). All around us were people pulling chairs, baskets and eskies out of their cars. It was our first time to the Harvest Picnic, and we felt very under prepared carrying a single picnic blanket!
We had a wander around before deciding on what we were going to buy/eat. Typical of these type of events, there were lots of stalls offering samples/tastes of wine, cheese, spices, preserves and oils. There were also quite a few stalls where you could buy different things to eat.
The Boys had a buffalo sausage. I sampled some buffalo cheese, which was rather good. I didn’t buy any though.
They also had a caffeine fix. I’m told it was average coffee, but then what can you expect from a portable stand?
I had a lamb, cheese and spinach gozleme. There was a big queue by the time I got to the stand but I entertained myself by watching them being made.
The gozleme was a tad salty, but got scoffed down pretty quickly.
Bro had a chicken pie. It looked awesome but I’m told it was just okay.
We also had a calamari skewer and a sweet chilli prawn skewer. I’m not a fan of sweet chilli, but the prawns were actually really good. They tasted more garlicky than the usual sickly sweetness that sweet chilli has. The calamari wasn’t so great though – by the time I walked them back to where our picnic blanket was located they were cold and a tad tough.
And finally I also bought a smoked salmon plate to share. A couple of pieces of pide, a fair amount of smoked salmon, pickled onions, gherkins and some tartare sauce. I somehow managed to inhale the vinegar fumes when I was eating the pickled onions and it gave me a big coughing fit!
To finish off, I had a nice piece of Turkish delight that I neglected to take a photo of. It was rather nice, but not the best Turkish delight I’ve ever eaten. I’m not a huge fan of Turkish delight, but I once ate a piece that was super smooth and silky. I’m still trying to relive that moment.
We also went home with a few items – some fresh mushrooms, 3 blocks of cheese (two cheddar and one blue), and some spices and dukkah. I’ve been eating little pieces of cheese every day since we got back. Now I remember why I don’t buy nice cheese unless there’s an occasion. I eat too much of it!
