quinoa porridge

I have lately been feeling very virtuous in the breakfast department. Lots of vegetables in my fuscrams; lots of avocado and tomato on toast (instead of plain jam); mushrooms on toasts; extra fruit in my cereal. And on one very excellent occasion, fruit cake cupcakes. The breakfast of which I have been feeling most pleased is the red quinoa porridge.

RED QUINOA PORRIDGE. OH.



It's really easy. The most arduous part is washing the quinoa, over which I always stress. The rest of it is pretty easy. Wash one cup of quinoa three or four times. In a saucepan with one cup of water, one + a half cups of *milk, and a quarter of a cup of (chopped) dried fruit, bring to a boil, then reduce heat and simmer partially covered for about fifteen to twenty minutes, or until it's of a consistency that you like. You could also add a tablespoon of sugar (preferably brown) during this simmering process. You may want to add more liquid if that is your fancy, though don't expect it to ever hit an oat porridge consistency.

Top with whatever you like. I like shredded coconut, dried fruit, chopped almonds and a little golden syrup.

(not actually a) mississipi mudcake

Following a discussion around the existence of vegan mudcake, I was provoked in to committing acts of the same, guided by this Mississippi mudcake recipe on vegweb, and goaded on by Certain Vegans.



This cake was good. It had a lovely flavour, lovely consistency and texture and was easy to bake and held up well over a few days, but it was not mudcake. It was too light and fluffy and not filled with any molten chocolate at all! However it is a recipe I would repeat, and I have ideas for transforming it in to mudcake.

I made no mods! Which is terribly unlike me.

nudel bar iii

Last week I caught up with Miss T Princess Vegan for after work drinks and dinner. After a very stressful Wednesday where I wasn't sure I'd ever leave the office, we met up at Lane's End where I ended up with a delicious cocktail which contained strawberries, mint and lemon in it, and then we tipsily wandered across the road to Nudel Bar.

Service on Wednesday was great. Super attentive and very vegan-ly helpful.



We shared the mee goreng (with rice noodles instead of egg) and the vegetable and noodle dish, which as always was deliciously heavy on the mushrooms and contained my second favourite type of noodle, the flat rice noodles that go in CKT. Oh yeah.

We rounded out the meal with the sago pudding, which neither of us had before had. The pudding was chilled, and contained lotus and water chestnuts, served with a side of golden syrup. This was super delicious! I loved adding the sugary syrup, and it was fun to eat.

We also drank two pots of the most delicious Jasmine tea I've ever had. When we inquired, as there were some lovely flavour notes in it, we were informed that it's fresh tea, rather than dried. That was pretty delightful.

What a lovely evening!

visits one and two

Nudel Bar
76 Bourke St
Melbourne

gluten-free available

potluck 2: deadline extension!

The deadline for Potluck:2 (Comfort Food) has now been extended until May 31st! That gives you a whole extra two weeks to get something in! Have at it! Just a reminder:

Submissions can cover anything you like, and you do not have to stick to the theme! but please remember that we are trying to talk about intersections. Potluck is, after all, intended to be a carnival for multicultural and intersectional discussions of food, including but not limited to food discussions intersecting with disability, gender, sexuality, fat, animal rights, and cultural and racial issues.

More details at the original post! Please submit! TELL YOUR FRIENDS.

reminder for potluck 2

Just a reminder that submissions for Potluck 2: Comfort Food are due in about a week! (The 15th) You do not have to be vegan to participate, posts from all types of eaters are totally cool, so long as you are talking about food and intersectionality!

Guidelines are available at the original post! Please submit something!

I should write something too, whoops.

you can't have these cupcakes (yet)

I went to a wedding at Scienceworks last week! Scienceworks is a pretty cool venue for a party, I had lots of fun taking photos and hanging out with the gauges and stuff.

Although the wedding was not vegan, and it was just a cocktails kind of party, I found that I was amply catered for. There was a vegan version of most of the little courses, and the person with the vego/vegan platter would always try to find me first so I got something, and that was all very lovely. And then, there were the cupcakes.



Ant's sister Cate, who is not actually a baker (though aspires to running a cupcakery + confectionary), made this amazing cupcake tower for the party. Here is what makes this cupcake tower so amazing, though. The level that I could eat was not, in fact, the bottom, plain chocolate (mudcake) cupcake layer. Oh no.

It was the blackforrest cupcake layer.



Basically, this was so amazing that I can't wait until she has an actual cupcake shop so I can eat this all the time. And try making it. And so other vegans I know can employ her to bake for their parties. This was SO GOOD.

Also, I love it so much when my non-vegan friends make sure that I am just as over-the-top catered for as everyone else.

home cooked perth noms

The other thing I do when I'm in Perth is eat things that people cook especially for me.



I don't know how to describe my levels of excitement when these Welsh cakes appeared in front of me! I went for afternoon tea with the Ex-Laws, and Nan went to experimental lengths to make me vegan Welsh cakes, and apparently they were just as they should be! Certainly I found them just as they should be (delicious), and had to fend off non-vegan interlopers who could have had their pick of the raspberry slice she'd brought, or the cupcakes already there, and instead tried to eat all my Welsh cakes. They were SUPER DELICIOUS, I will have more please!



On my first night at my parents' house I was way too tired (after five days in the con hotel with (surprise!) not a lot of sleep) to actually go out for dinner, so I requested my mother make CKT for dinner. Which she did! I love it when my mum makes CKT, she makes a portion for every person because everyone wants it slightly different. But this means sometimes she forgets things from batch to batch: in my case, chilli.



On my last night staying with my parents, we decided to cook some curries and things. Featured here are a vegetable curry (cooked by mum); a chana masala (cooked by me); and some gailan and mushrooms. OH YEAH this is one of my favourite meal sets.

Thanks, Perth! As always you were delicious.

miscellaneous perth foods

Sometimes I go to Perth and eat things:



Tell me where you go for your favourite dosais! My favourite is at Mela Indian Sweets, in Northbridge. I always get the masala dosai, the potato in the masala starts to mush together and it's filled with fresh chillis, and caramalised onion, and cashews. Cashews! They are a delicious addition. The dosai at Mela is always served with a rasam and tiny little side dishes of coconut and tomato. $15 well spent every time!



My favourite flavour combination at the Junction Icecreamery is always ALWAYS passionfruit and chocolate. There are a few other soya flavours but they are the best!



Ended up at the Swan Valley Cafe again with my parents and my sister, this time for lunch. The lunch menu is not as exciting as the dinner menu (though there are some pizzas on the take away menu which I might try for next time), and I opted for the burger with a tomato chutney. This is a perfectly serviceably burger, but it does noticeably require the chutney, as it is not exploding with flavour. My sister had a tart (not vegan) with salad, and the quinoa salad was terrible, it clearly hadn't been washed enough times. Still happy to go back, especially as it's the closest vegetarian restaurant to my parents' house, but it was a little disappointing.

I still didn't make it to the new Indian vego restaurant in Midland! (I tried, but it was closed)

Mela Indian Sweets and Eats
428 William St
Northbridge

The Junction Ice Creamery
Corner of Great Eastern Highway and Morrison Road
Midland

Swan Valley Cafe
990 Great Northern Highway
Millendon

previous visit

[product] bare crush fruit spread

In Perth recently, Emilly and I ventured up to Fresh Provs to provision our hotel room with deliciousness for the con+Easter weekend. Within Fresh Provs' delightful shelves we found this deliciousness: Bare Crush fruit spreads. I went for the mango and passionfruit, she picked the raspberry strawberry.



These spreads were totally delicious. They're not exactly jams; they're not rendered down as much as jams, and they start to spoil very quickly so they've clearly not been preserved in the way of jams. Spreading the raspberry strawberry across my bread the first morning (no toasters in five star hotels!), I found an entire strawberry in front of me! The flavours were delicious and not too sugary for an early morning start, and I think of the two I preferred the strawberry raspberry.

These are pretty expensive, but I would buy them again if I were in Perth long enough to finish a pot.

mini cheezecakes

I went on a picnic and baked some mini cheezecakes (as the birthday girl didn't want an actual cake).



These cakes were coincidentally based on the cheezecake I baked for Em last year, but why change a delicious cake? I love this cheezecake a lot, and I've been a bit obsessed with mini things lately, so it seemed like a good time to give them a go.

I only needed about three quarters of the biscuit base mixture, so it's a shame I accidentally poured the whole packet in to get mushed, as there is now a whole heap of biscuit mixture in my fridge! I pressed about five millimetres of biscuit in to the cupcake containers. A note: use foil cups ONLY. Do not use paper cups. It will end in tears and recriminations when you go to eat it the next day.

Other than that alle the ingredients remained the same. I poured the cake filling in to the cake cups, on top of the bases, and put in to bake at 180C for a while. Then I let them cool completely, and made the berry compote and poured it on top. Rich, delicious success!

The picnic was lots of fun, it was a perfect day for it. Shar brought soup, which was super delicious, and Danni made the most successful pizza ever. And there was scrabble! And surprisingly I enjoyed watching season one of Friends.

baking from babycakes

I've been a little bit intrigued by Babycakes ever since I first heard of it; however I have little chance of visiting the shop any time in the near future, so it was with delight that I borrowed the Babycakes cookbook from Emilly.


I've tried baking two things so far. The first was the gingerbread cake, which I first tried at Emilly's birthday. I was taken by how moist and delicious this cake was. The added pumpkin makes it really moist. I cheated and made a very sugary cream cheese topping instead of making the frosting in the book, but the cream cheese complemented it quite well.

The cake itself was tasty, but it dried out very quickly, which is a shame as it makes quite a lot, so there was a lot to get through.


look at all that spare apple!
I followed this up with the apple and cinnamon muffins. I get really grumpy at recipes like this, where they tell you to do something (roast eight apples) and then you only use a portion of the end product (one cup of roasted apples). It is a good thing I was feeling lazy and only ended up roasting five apples.

There were other modifications I made as I went on, most of them already written in pencil in the cookbook; significantly reduced the amount of agave and the amount of vanilla essence (two tablespoons!), and some other modifications I cannot recall as the book is not in front of me.

Overall I've found the book a tasty experience so far, though of course I will require more testing in order to truely guage how I feel about the book.

pre-MICF noms, melbourne cbd

I went to see another MICF show (Fear of A Brown Planet) with Danni, and we decided to go on a hunt for dumplings. Nix had introduced me to Shanghai Village a few weeks earlier, and in our rush to catch a movie for MQFF I hadn't stopped to take photos.


photo by danni
Shanghai Village has the usual decor, and very fast service. Both times I've been now I have been able to get a table without too much fuss. The tea is over-steeped but free. We ordered a serve of steamed dumplings and a serve of fried. They're filled with the same things: mushrooms, spinach, carrot, tofu and spring onions (I think); but I like the steamed ones more.

This amazing dumpling feast cost $13.50, shared between two, and it was almost too much to finish.

**

Last night I saw my final MICF shows (Hannah Gadsby and Claudia O'Doherty), and I had been thinking about soup all day, so Emilly and I met up at The Soup Place for a quick meal. I'd never been here before, and I'm trying hard to find new dinner places to go to before shows that aren't just LotF (as evidenced by trying out the dumplings).


All of their soups are dairy free and gluten-free, so their vegetarian ones are also vegan (they don't put egg in them either), which gave me a big choice to choose from! I went the pumpkin, to which I added a little bit of chilli and salt, and it was perfect, exactly what I was after! Emilly went for the lentil and vegetable, which she said needed a bit of salt but otherwise was good. The bowls are big and at only $8.90, not bad for a quick meal before a show. Or before two shows.


Shanghai Village
112 Little Bourke St
Melbourne

The Soup Place
14 Centre Place
Melbourne

kind of like a kapitan curry thing

For ages I had planned to make this curry. A friend modified her step-mother's fish curry so that it was vegan, especially for me, and it was simple and tasty and filled with familiar delicious flavours. So this recipe sat in my inbox for months and months, and finally last week I went to make it...and every where I went I could only find mock fish with whey in it. Even brands that were previously vegan contained whey.

Too lazy to look up any other recipes for new curries, I amalgamated this instead with what I had in the house and in my head (which is like an ode to curries).




kind of like a kapitan only not really

200gm mock chicken pieces
1cm knob ginger, minced
1 clove minced ginger
half of a brown onion, sliced finely
a whole lot of curry powder* (I didn't measure, but about 1 and a bit tablespoons)
1 teaspoon ground cumin
1 teaspoon tumeric
half a teaspoon garamasala
a dash or three of ground coriander
1 large tomato, diced
small handful of snake beans, ends off and halved
some curry leaves
a couple of lime kaffir leaves
400mlish coconut milk
a cup or two of water


*so here is the thing about curry powder: sometimes people refer to it as 'inauthentic.' This is a smokescreen! Curry powder comes from the curry leaf. You should never use it as the only spice in a curry, but it is a perfectly cromulent addition to your curry along with many other ingredients! Unless you would like to tell my mother that she is inauthentically Malaysian Chinese. That would be amazing.


method:
In some oil, fry the onions over a medium heat until they are soft and translucent (about ten minutes), then add the garlic and ginger until fragrant. Then throw in the curry powder, cumin, tumeric, and garamasala, mix it all together, then throw in a little bit of the water. Let it simmer for a few minutes so it all mixes through and renders down, then throw in the mock chicken pieces. Let these fry in the spices until well coated, then add the tomatoes and the rest of the water. Bring to a boil, then reduce the heat and simmer covered for fifteen to twenty minutes. Or even longer, if you like. After this, add in the snake beans, curry leaves and lime kaffir leaves, and leave to simmer for another ten. Then add the coconut milk, simmer another five, and it is ready to go!

veg out time, south yarra

So the next comedy show I went to see was Ava Vidal (will link my review when I write it), at Chapel off Chapel. I am not a huge fan of going to Prahran, mostly because I don't know anywhere to eat in the area. I tried to book us in to Oriental Tea House, which Fi had totally talked up; however they were booked out, so I decided Veg Out Time would have to do.

After some unfortunate shenanigans, the likes of which we do not talk, Danni, Emilly and I wandered in to Veg Out Time, which was almost completely empty! Danni has already blogged about her meal (summary: tasty).



I went for the two curries + half (brown) rice, which was I think $8.90. The curries in the bain marie are all clearly labelled vegan where suitable. I selected the chickpea + potato, as well as the pumpkin curry. The pumpkin curry was really tasty. Soft and flavoursome. The chickpea curry was also pretty good (I'm really in to chickpea curries right now).

Emilly went for the dumpling salad (no photo because it was too blurry). She reports that the dumplings were delicious, but there were only half a dozen of them, on the side of a giant plate of mostly lettuce-y salad, so it was not as satisfying and/or exciting as it was promising to be. Would probably not order again, was the verdict. Maybe she should have tried the dumpling soup?


Veg Out Time
366 Chapel Street
South Yarra

Clear maneuverability and pathway through but the bain marie is probably a bit of an awkward height.

Other reviews: In the Mood for Noodles (and previously).

vegie bar iv, fitzroy

Really quick visit to Vegie Bar on Friday after the launch party for Peril 10: Skin, which you should all read. I really recommend Footscray Whitewash by Thuy Linh Nguyen, but I recommend you read them all! Also the next edition is on Food, so you should submit if you can! Which reminds me I should put something together before submissions close at the end of April.

Anyway, Vegie Bar. We rolled in there about 10pm, and fortunately the kitchen was still open. Everyone else had eaten beforehand so they all went for desserts and entrees (dumplings + cakes). I had been craving pizza since about 6pm, when my friend Lisa had sat in front of me at Friday Drinks and eaten an entire very unvegan molten pizza, and all I had been able to think about from that point on was pizza.



This was not that pizza. The flavours were fine, and I was so hungry really anything would have satisfied me, but it wasn't amazing.

previous visits: one and two and three.



The Vegie Bar
378 Brunswick Street
Fitzroy

Step up, tiny rows, average to low for accessibility
Nobody seems to have reviewed it recently so no links for you!