yemen skhug sauce at lotf

Thanks to the generosity of Lord of the Fries, I ended up at a tasting event in December where I tried lots of things on the menu that I'd never eaten before. Part of my delicious problem with the Lord is that I have some things I really really love, so every time I go there I buy the same thing (cone of vegan french canadian, mini original burger OR mini parma burger), which is delicious and wonderful but sadly means there are huge swathes of the menu that I've never tried.

Fi has already blogged about our excursion to this tasting event, which is handy because in my uncharacteristic* tardiness in blogging, I've managed to delete all the photos I took of the evening. However I can tell you that it was delicious and fun and the owners are charming, answering all of my questions and allowing me to sample anything I wanted to, including the chocolate mousse,** and the vegan mayo, and the chilli poppers, which are breaded hot chillis stuffed with vegan cheese and basically the most delicious, most ridiculous things I've ever eaten. I love them. 

Anyway, now I order the chilli poppers all the time, which is great because now I can order the potato cake and chilli popper munch box. And I was also furnished with this awesome VIP card, which lets me get a free cone with any sauce every month, and which I am using for the awesome experiment of trying every Sauce of the Month for the year of 2013 without depriving myself of the poutine in my LotF budget. 

I think, in the three and a half years*** I have been living in Melbourne, I have tried LotF's Sauce of the Month once only. I know! So now I am living on the edge, trying them every time. 

Today Fi and I had a midweek lunch picnic at Flagstaff Gardens, joined by Danni and E, and of course the Rocket. I baked orange and poppyseed biscuits (recipe tomorrow), but in my geniusness decided to scoot on over to visit the Lord at Melbourne Central and grab a cone of this month's sauce in my handy-dandy tupperware container.****

This sauce, the Yemen Skhug, is super delicious and this evening there has been much lamenting around the house that no sampling of this delicious sauce had occurred previously, and now the month is nearly over! The Yemen Skhug is based on skhug, or zhug, and the Lord's January newsletter tells me that it is a hot paste common in Middle Eastern and North African cuisines, and the Lord mixes chilli, tomato, garlic, olive oil, coriander, parsley, lemon, herbs and spices together. 

I'm interested in learning more about skhug, in both its red and green forms, and the Yemeni cuisine it traditionally accompanies. That's how great I found this sauce. 

Lord of the Fries
You know where to find it, it's everywhere. Except Brunswick and Southern Cross, where I really want it. 

*this is a lie

**at this point in writing this review, I paused to go and buy the ingredients for chocolate mousse, which is now setting in the fridge

***TECHNICALLY two and a half years, because China
****this was a genius idea and I recommend it to you and all of your friends, especially when you're on your bike

berry and chocolate slice

The super awesome Fi bought the also awesome Danni the Vegan Junk Food cookbook for her birthday, and then it sat on the shelf for a month until I decided something needed to be cooked from it. I was, as I often am, keen to bake something but completely uninterested in leaving the house, so I picked the white chocolate raspberry bars (pg 205), and then modified them to work with what I had in the house and what I felt like.

And they turned out sweet, but excellent. Seriously, so sweet I needed water or black tea to drink with it to offset the sweetness, but if sweetness is your thing please feel free to go with it. 

I used a combination of strawberry, raspberry and mixed berry jams, because that was what I had in the house (there is a surprisingly large amount of jam in my fridge), but I suspect just about any jam would work. I have a pear and blackberry from Babka's that I particularly want to try in it. 

I've tried a couple of other recipes from Vegan Junk Food; book review coming soon!

berry and chocolate slice

modified from the white chocolate and raspberry bars in vegan junk food

you will need:

1 cup sugar

3/4 cup margarine and/or copha

2 tablespoons plain oil (canola or similar)

1 teaspoon vanilla

shake of salt salt

2 and a half cups of flour (I used a mix of plain and baking)

1 teaspoon baking powder

100g chocolate

half cup applesauce 

1 cup of raspberry jam

so then:

Preheat the oven to 175C!

With a fork, beat the sugar, vanilla, oil and margarine (melt the copha if you're using it and be prepared to wait one million years). Add in the flour and mix until crumbly. You may want to use your hands for this. When it's all crumbs, set aside a heaped cup of this mixture. 

Melt the chocolate, and add this and the apple sauce to the bigger portion of the crumb mixture. Mix it all together and then press into a lined square tin.* Bake this for 12 minutes, then remove from the oven, spread the jam over it, and sprinkle with the remaining crumb mix. If you had any more chocolate lying around the house you could put some on top, but I ran out. 

Bake for 25 minutes, and allow to cool completely before cutting. It'll still fall apart a little anyway, but it's better this way. 

Variants: desiccated coconut on top of the crumbly topping.

*I used a circle tin but only because while I was in China my square tin went missing !!!

spiced sweet potato and pistachio cake

I wanted to bake something today, and there was half a sweet potato in the house, and I thought, why not? No regrets, it was delicious straight out of the oven and if you give me half a mo, I bet I'll declare it's delicious cold with a cup of tea, too.


sweet potato and pistachio cake

you will need:
one and a third cups of flour (I used half self-raising and half plain)
1 teaspoon of baking powder
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1 very heaped teaspoon of ground ginger
a shake of salt
a shake of ground cloves
half a teaspoon of nutmeg
an amount of sweet potato that makes 1 - 1.5 cups after it's boiled and mashed
1 cup of sugar (i used castor, but i bet brown or coconut sugar would also work great)
1 teaspoon vanilla essence
one third of a cup of oil (canola or something plain)
two chinese soupspoons of apple sauce
a handful of pistachios.

to make it:
peel, dice and boil sweet potato, then drain and mash. let it cool down a bit (i used this opportunity to read some more blogs). then combine flour, baking powder, spices and salt in a large bowl. in a separate bowl, whisk together the oil and the sugar until combined, then add the vanilla essence and the apple sauce. mix this with the sweet potato until it's a nice consistency, and pour into the dry ingredients. mix until it's just combined, then throw in the pistachios and give it a stir twice more just to get those through.

bake at 180C for about 30 minutes, or until baked through. i used baking paper in my loaf tin.

laksa king [flemington]

One of the hardest things about being a vegan from Penang living in a not very Malaysian Australian city (Melbourne why, all I do is love you and this is how you treat me) is how hard it is to find good (vegan) laksa. Perth, no problem! Penang, obviously no problem. Melbourne, why.

Anyway, all that is to say, I have been wanting to visit Laksa King in Flemington for a while now, having heard many good things about it, and when the opportunity arose Fi and I moseyed on over there and both ordered the vegetarian laksa, made vegan. While ordering the vegetarian laksa, with vegan option (this emphasis may be annoying but I promise it makes sense soon), we also ordered the fresh-made tofu with mushrooms and wolfberries (you may know them as goji berries), and I ordered a soya bean milk because I'm Malaysian and can't drink a Milo Ais or a teh tarik, which is the only way I could have been more Malaysian at that moment. 

Sadly, they brought out my nemesis, Vamino soy milk, the only azn soy milk around that contains cow milk, and also incidentally tastes gross. Why a Malaysian place wouldn't serve Yeo's, basically the most SEAZN brand there is, I don't know. 

Then came the tofu fresh made on premises, and I knew. Oh, I knew. I stuck my chopsticks into that tofu and broke off a piece, and I knew. That fresh made tofu was egg tofu. Which was a shame, as we'd made such a point of ordering the vegan laksa that I didn't even think to check that the fresh tofu wasn't egg tofu. Saddest. 

The laksa was fine. There was my least favourite tofu (least favourite other than egg tofu, obviously), but lots of noodles and greens, and as is traditional I took most of Fi's noodles because she can't eat all the joyous carbs and she stole some of my soup, which was much less coconutty than hers. And I slurped my way through my noodles, piling them into my spoon and getting laksa everywhere, and laksa is like a little balm on my soul no matter its quality. But they were super coconutty laksas with no spice at all, though nicely oily, and in the end it was okay but nothing spectacular, and maybe if I was in the area again I'd try one of the other Malaysian places nearby, or default to Chillipadi across the street.

Ugh will no one make me an assam laksa?

Other reviews: Fi (on our visit); Cindy and Michael; Pip. Non-veggie meh agreement: the cooking capers.

Laksa King
6-12 Pin Oak Crescent
Flemington
Get there on the Craigieburn train or the 57 tram. Ramp to get in, didn't check out the bathrooms. Mid-to-high price for a lunch ($9 something for the laksa, but $17 something for the tofu).

easy good food: pasta salad with marinated tempeh

I've had a few requests lately for easy, nutritious, fast, after-work vegan food, so this is the first post in an occasional series of easy good fast foods. For the most part they're rounded meals on their own, or close enough. They're my comfort foods, my lazy foods, my whatever is in the house foods. I almost always have the supplies, or most of the supplies, in the house required to make these meals.

They do rely in part on pre-prepared things, but no shame, I mean, I'm not gonna sun dry my own tomatoes, am I? (spoilers: I'm not)

We'll start with one of my favourite summer recipes, sun-dried tomato pasta salad with marinated tempeh.

I know! How can something that involves marinating be fast? Trust me on this one. It's great. It's so great I made this salad twice on Thursday last week, and a big batch of it on Boxing Day (not just for me).

To serve two people (maybe three)
Pots and things that will need washing up: two (a pot for pasta, and a frypan, but maybe you can mix the pasta in the pot). Also a colander.
Time: ten minutes for prep, ten-fifteen for cooking
Complete meal: you got your proteins, your fresh vegetables, your grains, your oils/fats, your deliciousness.

You will need:
100g plain tempeh
some five spice powder
little bit of sesame oil (teaspoon or two)
a tablespoon or three of light soy sauce

200g pasta spirals (spirals! very important!)
100g sundried tomatoes (if they're pre-sliced strips, this is easier, but if they're not remember to cut them into strips)
dash of lemon juice
dried chilli flakes to your desired hotness (I usually use about half a teaspoon) (these really should be flakes, by the way, not ground)
big handful of something fresh that you can eat raw (such as snow peas, or capsicum)
handful of nuts or seeds (such as cashews or sunflower seeds)


What you do:
Slice the tempeh thin, like bacon strips or something, then mix together the five spice, sesame oil and soy sauce and marinate the tempeh in it. If there's not enough liquid, add some more. Sometimes I add minced ginger if I have any in the fridge, but it's totally not compulsory. Leave to marinate.

Put on the pasta to boil. Slice up the fresh things (and the sundried tomatoes if necessary) into nice single bite chunks. You will notice this is basically everything. At this point, fry the tempeh in a little vegetable oil until it's nice and brown on both sides.

When the pasta is firm but ready, drain it and then in a bowl (or the pot!) mix together all of those ingredients that aren't the tempeh or marinade, including the things that look like dressing (lemon juice, chilli, and the oil from those sun-dried tomatoes!), and the nuts. Mix well to make sure the dressing is even! Serve with tempeh on top or beside. Eat.


Variations:
This seems oily, I know, but you control the oil via how much of the sun-dried tomato oil you put in. Other than that, you can change up your fresh veggies, your nuts and seeds, and even swap out the tomato for marinated artichokes or capsicum if that takes your fancy! Don't swap out the spirals, they are perfect for grabbing onto the flavour.
I am submitting this to Cate's Cates for the Substantial Salads Challenge. You should submit stuff too!

curious goose [brunswick] (or: spoilers, secret dairy)

My friend Liz and I occasionally meet up on Wednesdays for brunch at random places. Yesterday we were hoping to go to A Minor Place, but alas it was not to be, for they were closed for the new year, as were Wide Open Road and Tom Phat. So we decided to give newish cafe Curious Goose a go.

Let me start with: the service was really great. Our waitperson was really helpful, friendly and lovely, very attentive, and didn't mind all the questions I asked about the menu and making it vegan. Which was handy, as it turned out basically nothing was vegan. The mushrooms were soaked in butter, the potatoes had cheese, the avocado had aioli (apparently usually there were fresh avocados too, but their delivery was unripe and they didn't want to serve it to me, for which I thank them. This aside is getting very long but I recall the time Miss T was served unripe avocado, and am glad that wasn't me).


In the end I got a whole bunch of things (and somehow some mushrooms, though I had been denied them earlier with suggestions of butter), and they tasted good. Though beetroot is never my thing, this one, hidden behind the beans, was so delicious I ate it all up, and was served with a chilli dukkah that was pretty great. The beans were delicious and the bread (baked on premises) was lovely.

But my friends, not only am I vegan, but I am lactose intolerant, as is (non-vegan) brunch-buddy Liz, and after our meals, after a short period of wandering up Sydney Road doing errands, we ended our brunch date in order to go and commune with the porcelain gods, which can only mean one thing: stealth dairy.

There are so many amazing places willing to provide a brunch-oriented vegan with food in Brunswick, that despite the nice flavours and the excellent service and the really fun (but not vegan) menu, the Curious Goose is unlikely to be a repeat for me.

Curious Goose
307 Sydney Road
Brunswick
7 days a week, breakfast and lunch

I was distracted and didn't check steps and things: tables are spread apart and service is seated at them. Lighting is low during the day but not too low. Get there on the 19 tram.

ginger and five spice biscuits

So we went vegmeling to celebrate the end of the year, and one of the things I made were Catherine's Gingernut and Five Spice Biscuits. Well, sort of. And in a few different variations.

First I made them in the Friends of the Earth kitchen, using ingredients found in the FoE Melbourne food co-op, which meant all sorts of substitutions. Then, after beautifully and successfully doing that (pictured above), I went home and did it all again, only this time much closer to the original recipe but gluten free, which included sitting on the floor of my kitchen stone grinding star anise for the five spice. 

The gluten-free version, with the original treacle and golden syrup, caramalised the recipe when it was baking and made it crunchy and gingernutty. The FoE version, with its agave syrup and coconut butter, was softer, more like a gingerbread biscuit in texture, and more spicy, I think enhanced by the agave. 

I enjoyed the more original recipe, but I loved my revisions, so I copy them below. 

This recipe is very flexible, it took me over an hour to put together what with constant interruptions in the Co-op, often leaving the batter half mixed in the heat. When it got too gloopy I dropped it in the fridge for five minutes, where it dried out quickly (because I forgot to cover it) but was easier to manage.

For gluten-free, just do a direct orgran's substitute. All good! And make sure your five spice is gluten free - it often isn't, even if it doesn't admit it on the pack. 

Ginger and Five Spice Biscuits

Modified from Catherine

ingredients

200g bakers flour or SR flour (or a combination of the two)
100g coconut butter (originally nuttelex/butter/margarine thing)

75g brown sugar

90g dark agave

30g light agave

2 tablespoons of Chinese five spice mix (mostly this was because I misread teaspoons instead of tablespoons, but I loved the added flavour so kept it)

2 tablespoons of ground ginger

halfish a teaspoon of bicarb

method

Melt the cocoa butter, and combine with the agave and the sugar. Add in all the other ingredients, and mix so it's even. Roll the biscuits to about a centimetre thick, and cut out into biscuits (I used a glass tumblr). Place on a lined or greased baking tray, and bake for 9-12 minutes at 180C. Allow to cool, then eat. 

After much deliberation and consultation with other people in the co-op that day, I elected to put a pistachio nut into the centre of each biscuit. You could also use a sultana or a goji berry or anything like that. Or elect not to put in anything. 

things to do with avocado

Say you have spent almost a year in China, with intermittent access to good avocado, and now you are home in Melbourne and eating every avocado dish in the inner north (post on this to come), but maybe this is becoming a bit expensive what with the two soy flat whites and the at least $10 for avo on toast and the inevitable distraction on the ride home where you accidentally end up at Radical Grocery or Savers or something, and you are thinking you should eat more avocado at home.

Here are two things Fi and I did with avocado this week (I was more of a consultant but definitely at least an executive consultant):

Avocado and tomato on toast with dukkah and a little olive oil; avocado and grapefruit with coriander and mint (also on toast) (and I don't even like coriander, which makes me the worst SEAzn ever, but it was delicious in this combination).

Proportions are up to you, though I would not over do it on the grapefruit, the grapefruit is there to add a delicious tartness but not overwhelm the essential avocadoness of this. I recommend only a small amount of olive oil, drizzled via a spoon in order to control the flow and amount. Cut the avocado and grapefruit up into similar sized cubes, and slice the tomato (then slice again, so they are thinner than the avocado pieces but maybe a little longer). No need to put anything on the toast, though you can add a little olive oil if you like.

DELICIOUS.

merry cupcakes, fitzroy

Regular readers of my social media will probably already know that my cupcake heart belongs to Cupcake Central, run by the super awesome Sheryl, who helped my friends bring me cupcakes when I was living in China, who when I hint around vegan things (like Oreos) invents new flavours to accomodate it, and is generally really awesome and inspiring.

But I was in Fitzroy on Saturday, as I so often am, and thought I should give the newly opened all-vegan Merry Cupcakes a go.

Clockwise top left: the beet it (red velvet with beetroot); the wakey wakey (i think - coffee); strawberry fields forever; 'bruce banner' (zucchini and and banana).

I love vegan shops. Love love love them, so I'm automatically always excited. My favourites were the pop culture cupcakes (strawberry fields forever and bruce banner) - the strawberry one had a really fresh strawberry flavour, and dr banner was delicious (things I never thought I'd say). Apparently people often don't get those references, even though they're the best!

The beet it was a bit weirdly nutty, and the wakey wakey was fine but just a generic coffee cupcake. Would return though, 50% is still a pass and there's so many other flavours to sample; plus, service was lovely and friendly and helpful, and I'd like to try their coffee!

You can find their spring menu here. They're currently only just now moving in to gluten free cupcakes with one or two flavours.

Merry Cupcakes
261 Brunswick Street
Fitzroy
Closed Tuesdays

Get there on the 112 tram. I think there was a step up into the shop, service is at the counter.

brunch at little creatures

Being both originally from WA, when Mez and I discovered that Little Creatures in Fitzroy had a breakfast menu we thought it'd be awesome to drop in.

The only item that could be veganised was the avocado + feta with dukka and spinach on toast, without the feta; I couldn't order the beans because they are cooked with butter.

This was plain and nothing special, and there was actually no dukka on my avocado, but the coffee was nice and the atmosphere in the mostly empty pub was pleasant and the company was, as always, delightful. If I'm in Fitzroy I'd rather dart across to Las Vegan, but it was a very nice morning nearby where I had to be for my next engagement.

Little Creatures Dining Hall
222 Brunswick Street
Fitzroy

Entry has a ramp, lots of lighting, tiny menus, ordering happens at the table. $14 for my meal. Get there on the 112 tram (not accessible).

disanxian & tofu + cabbage soup

Two of my favourite discoveries while I was living in Beijing were 地三鲜 (disanxian) and 豆腐白菜汤 (doufubaicaitang). 地三鲜 is the greatest eggplant dish ever, featuring the 'three earth treasures', a complicated and oil heavy (but delicious!) combination of eggplant, potato and green capsicum in a soy saucey roux. 豆腐白菜汤 in contrast is a simple soup made up of tofu, chinese cabbage, and not a lot else, which is deceptive in its tastey-ness. It looks really boring and sounds really plain, but it's actually one of my favourite soups ever. Be warned if you order either of these in restaurants, though - sometimes they're made with chicken stock!

As I have mentioned before I learnt how to cook a lot of dishes during my year in China, and I hope to share a lot of them with you now that I'm back in my own kitchen and trying them out here at home, but these are by far my favourites and hence why they were almost the first thing I cooked upon my return. The delay in blogging them is mostly because I was too lazy to translate out of Chinese and into English for you. Sorry! I promise I do love you!

I'm posting these two recipes together because I only have the one picture - tofu and cabbage in a white bowl on a white background makes for the brightest photo ever! So it didn't really work out.
地三鲜 / Disanxian 
Three Earth Treasures
ingredients
2 garlic cloves, minced ish
two chinese soup spoon of dark soy, and the same of light soy
half a cup of stock
a little cornstarch

1 big eggplant (or 2 small eggplants), cut into chunks that are about twice as big as the potato.
2-3 medium potatoes, cut into funny, irregular but similarly sized chunks
1 green capsicum, cut into chunks

a whole lot of oil

method
Bring up the heat on your wok and load it up with some oil. Fry the potatoes until golden! Remove them, and (in the same oil, add more if necessary) fry the eggplant until golden! Fry the capsicum for a minute or two! Remove most of the oil (if you need to, I usually use just enough oil from the beginning that by the time I get to this stage there's not much left whoops), leaving just enough to do some stirfrying.

Fry the garlic, then add the stock and the soy sauce. Bring the soup to a boil, and thicken it, then add the vegetables and give it all a chance to reduce. You want this dish to be a little saucy but not too much!

Fried and delicious, it's so tasty. Serve with other dishes and something carby.


豆腐白菜汤 
Tofu + Cabbage Soup

I would just like to reiterate that there are no words to describe how much I love this soup. It can also be served with some rice noodles, but I like to have it as a final dish in a banquet.

ingredients
an appropriate amount of chinese cabbage, enough to fit into two hands when it's shredded thickly
five or six cups of veggie stock
a shake or two of salt
a shake of rice wine
thinly sliced ginger, about 2cm
400g firm tofu, diced into cubes of about 2cm
a teaspoon of sesame oil
optional: a star anise, a shake or three of light soy sauce, some rice noodles, dried shiitake mushrooms

method
Bring stock to a boil and add the ginger, salt, cabbage and rice wine, as well as the soy sauce and star anise if you're adding it. Allow to simmer, covered, for 15 minutes, then add tofu, and allow to cook through (about five minutes). Add (rehydrated) mushrooms, noodles, or sesame oil at this point if you're adding them.

Serve with your meal. It's delicious.

dan dan mian / 担担面

As soon as I got back to Melbourne, as per discussion with Wendy, I started search Melbourne's Chinese grocers for Very Important Ingredients, in case she would have to sneak them in on her return. Then, just over a week ago, my cookbooks arrived in one of my boxes posted from China, and I was able to start the joys of replicating the things I learnt.
One of the things I was looking for was sichuan peppercorns, which Cindy kindly provided to me, on the condition that I write up the things that I cooked with it. And I am happy to oblige!

I was tweeting with my friend Stefefanie (defined so because I am the Steph who came first) at the same time as deciding on this recipe, and she mentioned that dan dan mian is a go-to dish for her because it's so easy. I'd suggest, it's an easy recipe if you don't decide to a) grind your own sichuan peppercorns, and b) also decide to make your own infused chilli oil before starting.* It's still pretty easy, though! And super delicious.

dan dan mian / 担担面

these proportions will make two servings

ingredients

for the sauce:

1 teaspoon ground sichuan peppers

a whole lot of chilli oil, enough to make it super spicy but not so spicy you couldn't eat it, this will vary on your chilli oil and your tolerance. i recommend five or six tablespoons.

1.5 cup stock (I used the massel vego chicken stock, but vege is fine)
2 tablespoons light soy sauce
1 clove minced garlic
a heaped half tablespoon of tahini (or sesame paste, if you can find it)
1 tablespoon chinese rice vinegar
2 tablespoons sesame oil

"meat"
200g plain tempeh (crumbed)
handful dried shitake mushrooms
little peanut oil
1 clove minced garlic
minced ginger (about a cm worth)
a shake of rice wine
a shake or three of dark soy sauce
2 spring onions (chopped) (including both green and white bits, but keep separate)
one small carrot, grated

some noodles! enough for two people. preferably yellow wheat noodles, but whatever you prefer is fine.

method

soak the mushrooms in some hot water for 20-25 minutes, until they're soft. squeeze out all the water, and dice them as finely as you can. reserve the mushroom water.

cook the noodles as per your requirements! in the meantime, make the sauce: combine all the sauce ingredients together, add in the mushroom water, and mix them until they're looking well combined. Put this aside, and when the noodles are ready, drain the noodles.

in your wok (or a frypan), fry the garlic, ginger and the white bits of the spring onions in the peanut oil until they're fragrant, then add the tempeh, carrot and mushrooms. fry this until it's starting to colour/cook, then add the soy sauce and fry through. add the rice wine at the end to deglaze and remove from heat.

to serve: noodles in the bottom of the bowl; pour in half of the sauce mixture, and layer the meat mixture on the top. garnish with the green bits from the spring onion.

changes: this dish is often served with bok choi, which is first steamed and then layered in before the meat; sometimes this dish is served dry ish, as here, and sometimes it is served as a spicy oily chilli broth with a few pieces of noodles and meat, in which case double the sauce proportions and leave the rest as is.


*Chilli oil how-to to follow soon

storm in a teacup [collingwood]

Paused for a cup of tea and a slice of cake at Storm in a Teacup this afternoon. Another place that has opened since I left Melbourne, I was delighted to find they had some vegan cake and a variety of Chinese green tea I've never had before, listed as maojian but which I'm assuming is actually 信阳毛尖, which was lovely.

Storm in a Teacup is a tea cafe, with a wall of teas available (though you'll have to take my word for it as the photo failed to work out). It has a lovely atmosphere, light and airy and chilled, which is a stark difference to its previous life as Trippy Taco before it moved around the corner. The walls are decorated with clouds, which suggest some cocktails (I mean that literally - there is a tea cocktail menu inside the clouds).

It also has some cakes! Today's vegan cake was carrot and walnut with blood orange icing, and it was lovely! Moist and a little fruity, combined with my tea and the delightful company of my friend A, and the lovely service, it was a wonderful hour late in the afternoon.


Other reviews: Hot or Not; Milkbar Mag

Storm in a Teacup
48A Smith Street
Collingwood

Step to enter, not much seating, bright in the day (unsure at night).

wide open road [brunswick]

I am completely out of the habit of blogging in Melbourne, and I still have half a dozen posts I want to make about my time in China,* but I have started eating again in Melbourne and adventuring to exciting new places, and I don't want to too far behind in that. So: Wide Open Road!

While I was living in China,** the new place I heard the most about was Wide Open Road, situated near Sydney Road and Barkly Square at the bottom end of Brunswick. As I'm currently between jobs, I'm endevouring to take advantage of this by having as many weekday brunch outings as possible (because good vegan brunch is basically impossible to get in Beijing, and I need to make up for lost time), and used one of my early brunch opportunities to visit Wide Open Road.

It was a beautiful warm day, so Emilly and I sat outside in the glaring sunlight, unfortunately situated on Barkly Street, outside Barkly Square, so it's not the most pleasant of sidewalk seating areas. But the inside is lovely and the coffee is pleasant, and I loved these tomato and smoked paprika beans so much. The paprika is lovely (though could have been a bit stronger), and they soaked into the bread delightfully, and I loved that it comes with a salad. The only thing that could possibly have made it any better was avocado; but then, avocado makes most breakfasts better.

Emilly had the tofu (not pictured), which she said was good but not very moist, so it didn't soak into the toast at all and as a result could have done with some olive oil or something.

I have been talking the beans up to all my friends, and there are heaps of vegan options on the menu, and I hope to return there soon.

Wide Open Road
274 Barkly St
Brunswick

Two (?) steps to enter, dim visibility inside but that could have been due to the brightness outside. Ordering and paying can happen at the table. Get there via the 19 tram (5 mins walk from a stop) or the Upfield train (ten minutes meander from Jewell Station).

recent vegmellians at wide open road: Carla (who tried a previous iteration of the beans, judging from the picture); Johanna.

*I love talking about my time in China
**See what I did there?

Black Forest Cheezecake + a Birthday Picnic

Recently Planet Vegmel turned three! To celebrate there was a picnic at the Edinburgh Gardens, as well as our favourite new tradition of making a zine. This year's zine features secrets of not the inner North, and you should all download it!

I made the super awesome vausage rolls because I really wanted Wendy to try them (having spent the last six months in Beijing talking them up to her), but this meant bringing a gluteny savoury that K couldn't eat! To compensate, I went to extra special effort with my sweets contribution: vegan, gluten-free black forest cheezecake.


This recipe was inspired by a piece of cake I had at the Heavenly Plate on a recent trip to Perth which was amazing and I was so excited to try making some sort of black forest cheezecake myself. This version isn't quite right, there are several changes I have in mind for the next iteration, but for a first attempt (and my first cheezecake in over a year) it was not bad at all.

I used the triple threat chocolate cheesecake in My Sweet Vegan as inspiration/guidance for proportions.

black forest cheezecake

ingredients

1 packet of chocolate biscuits (I used the leda tim tam substitutes)
third of a cup of sugar (I used a mix of white and coconut sugars)
two tablespoons margarine


3 tubs of vegan cream cheese (approx 700g)
300g silken tofu
300g dark chocolate
three quarters of a cup of white sugar
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
shake of salt

a can of berries, preferably cherries but mixed will do
1 tablespoon lemon juice
1 tablespoon cornstarch
quarter cup sugar
extra chocolate for drizzling

method

Crush the biscuits, mix with the third of a cup of sugar and the margarine. Add some extra chocolate in the form of cocoa if you like. Press into a lined 22 cm cheesecake or springform pan for a thin crust, or a smaller pan for a slightly thicker crust.

Mix together the cream cheese, tofu, vanilla extract, salt and the three quarter cup of sugar until smooth. Melt the chocolate and combine through until looking delightfully brown. Pour carefully into pan on top of crust, and drop the pan a time or two to smooth it out if necessary. Bake at 175C for about 50 minutes.

After it has cooled (I usually do this overnight), over heat bring together the can of berries (mostly drained, but with a little of the syrup), the cornstarch and the lemon juice with the remaining sugar. Stir over heat until it's come together like a jam, and let cool a bit. Then pour it over the cake. When this has cooled a little more, melt the remaining chocolate and drizzle it over. Serve and eat it, it's so good.

Changes I would like to make in the future: an extra berry layer on top of the base; a thicker base (maybe half again); something "white creamish" like a real black forest cake (maybe a white chocolate tofu layer); fresh cherries on top.