dainty sichuan [melbourne cbd]

Monthly 北京人 dinner was held at Dainty Sichuan on Bourke Street last week, and it was so good that I not only can't believe I've never been there before, but I cannot wait to get back there again.


Just getting inside was the most Chinese experience I've had since returning to Australia. A broken escalator, a queue at the door, westerners turning away with a grumble when told of the wait time, a lot of Chinese people sitting around waiting for their turn to get in. The smell of chilli and frying and tea and beer on the air. Oh so good, oh so delicious. I even spoke Mandarin on my way in.

We ordered five dishes between the six of us, which actually turned out to be a perfect amount of food. One was meaty (kungpao chicken, ex-housemate V reports it was really good), the other four were straight from the 'vegetable' section of the menu: fish-fragrant eggplant, tudousi (yesssss), a mushroom + greens dish, and a dish predominately comprised of lotus root and black fungus.

The mushrooms and greens dish had a whole lot of oyster mushrooms, and those oyster mushrooms were perfect. The tudousi was tudousi (ie, potato and delicious and oily), and the fish fragrant eggplant (free of fish, if you are unfamiliar with the dish) was so good. The dish with the lotus was a refreshing change from the spice and the oil.

Service was a little hard to attract, and tea was charged $2pp which is the most I've ever paid for tea at a Chinese restaurant (though they did obey the action for 'omg more water in my teapot'). Bookings are definitely required as it was so busy. But I loved this meal. Food came out food and it was all delicious, and it only came to $17pp. I definitely look forward to returning.

Next time I'd like to order the mapo doufu (modified to have no meat), the cabbage and chilli, and the cold black fungus with chilli, which is an old favourite. I hope to eat these things in the very near future, so hit me up if you need a friend to go with!

I really love Sichuanese food. Om nom nom.

Wendy has reviewed the South Yarra location recently and said nice things about the cabbage and chilli (om nom, one of my favourite dishes)

Dainty Sichuan
Level 2
206 Bourke Street
Melbourne
96502188

Get there on most trams and trains. It's in the shopping centre next to JB-Hifi, follow the signs up to the karaoke on the top floor. There's an escalator up, but I'm not sure if there's a lift.

vegan about china: eight tips to getting by as a vegan in beijing

Some words and things to help you navigate your way, especially if you don't speak (much) Mandarin. It helps to bring a buddy along who speaks it, though.

1. wǒ shì sùshí zhě - 我是素食者 - this is "I am vegetarian", but it's not as helpful as you might hope. Often in Beijing, eating vegetarian just means you don't want meat as the main ingredient. So you want to emphasise that no meat thing.
2. wǒ bù chī ròu - 我不吃肉 - I don't eat meat. This isn't going to cover you for everything, but it's a start.
3. méiyǒu - 没有 - in a pointing at the menu context, méiyǒu means 'without'. So many of my non-Mandarin speaking friends got by in Beijing by pointing at the menu and going 'meiyou X'
4. ròu 肉 meat; yú 鱼 fish; dàn 蛋- egg; niúnǎi 牛奶- cow milk
5. dòunǎi - 豆奶 - is soy milk, critical for ordering your coffee at Starbucks.
6. Things you can order relatively free of meaty secrets: suàn lā tǔdòu sī - 算拉土豆丝 (sour and spicy shredded potato); suàn lā báicài - 算拉白菜 (sour and spicy cabbage); dì sān xiān - 地三鲜 (the three earth treasures, eggplant, potato and capsicum, I love this dish a lot). 
7. Eggs are considered a savoury ingredient - if you ask if something sweet has egg in it, you will be told no, but it will almost certainly contain an egg wash. 
8. Emergency breakfast: hot soy milk from the street venders in winter. It's vegan, it's delicious, it's warm. 

Good luck, vegans! Get out there and eat China. It's delicious, even for vegans.


Bonus: Check out the cold menu. Lots of good vegan stuff on there.

choc hazelnut cookies

These are a variation on the ginger and five spice cookies that I bake all the time. If you've never tried my ginger and five spice cookies you should give them a go, or ask me to bake them because I love them and I will.


Chocolate and Hazelnut Cookies

ingredients
150g bakers flour or SR flour (or combination of the two)
100g coconut butter (or marg/nuttelex)
75g raw sugar
90g light agave/dark agave combo
50g cocoa
halfish teaspoon of bicarb
big handful of hazelnuts, crushed to smallish but not too small

method
Melt the coconut butter, combine with agave and sugar. Add in all the other ingredients (not the hazelnuts), and mix until it's even. Then mix in the hazelnuts. Roll to about a centimetre thick, cut into biscuits. Bake on lined/greased baking tray, and bake for 8 minutes at 180C. Allow to cool (someone I know burned their mouth on these today!), then eat.

Easy peasy.

accidentally vegan

One of the things I love is when you pick up a packet of something that is surely not vegan and miraculously, accidentally it is! (I'm looking at you, Arnott's BBQ Shapes and Nanna's Lite Apple Pies).

For the good of all vegankind, or at least those who will be attending the Melbourne Queer Film Festival this year, in the comments I'd appreciate it if you'd tell me your favourite accidentally vegan lollies! I specify accidentally, because I don't think the budget will stretch to delicious lollies that are carried by Radical Grocery or are otherwise more costly than generic packets you get at your IGA.

Sherbies are still vegan, I think. And those hard jubes from K-Mart.

Colourful Yunnan [carlton]

For all the food blogging I did while I was in Beijing, there are a few places I visited regularly that I never got around to blogging, for a variety of reasons. One of those places was a little Yunnanese restaurant close to where some of my friends lived, at which we quickly became regulars, often ordering the same dishes over and over again. It was my first real experience with Yunnanese food, and when I left China it was one I was worried I'd struggle to continue, given the lack of Yunnanese food in Melbourne. 

The only restaurant that Google spits out, other than the Neil-Perry Spice Temple, is Colourful Yunnan, on the corner of Grattan and Swanston in Carlton. So it was to here that me and my China adventure compatriots ventured on Friday night. 

There are so many amazing things on the menu here (take your meat eating friends). 

Wendy and I carefully selected some noodles, a delicious cabbage dish, and my long-time favourite, 土豆丝 (shredded potato). 

Yunnan food is spicy. Not as spicy as Sichuanese food, but it's getting up there, with lots of chilli all over the place. So I tried to order a mix of dishes, including some that would be less spicy for our less spicy friends, which means that we missed out on some of our favourites (cold black fungus - so good, but if anything the fact that it is chilled makes it more spicy. I know it sounds odd but trust me, if you like mushrooms and spicy food, order this. Or wait for my next review). 

土豆丝 was fine. Nothing super special, a little too heavy on the chilli and the oil, but pleasant enough. 

Chinese cabbage I love at any time, and I especially love it sour and spicy (算拉白菜). So good, and this one was great, I haven't had it in a while and it was a delight to eat. 


These noodles! Wendy cleverly took a photo of the menu because the name was long, but foolishly I thought I'd remember it. I was wrong, and I will update this post when I am able with the name. However what I was not wrong about was the deliciousness. We had to order this vego specific, I think, and it comes with chilli, carrot, peanuts, mustard greens, beanshoots, hand pulled noodles and tofu, and you mix it all together and it's great. 

Service was prompt, even when we ordered more dishes halfway through the meal. This entire meal cost me $12. So cheap, so good, so happy. Will return, even if just for the noodles, which would make a meal for me and maybe even some takeaway.

Colourful Yunnan
680 Swanston Street
Carlton

This blog post suggests there is also a Flinders Lane location

Get there on any tram that goes to Uni Melb. Totally inaccessible to wheelchairs. Very brightly lit, can order and pay at table. Outdoor seating. Menu is in English and Chinese characters, but is very word heavy and a little confusing. Cash only.

Gong De Lin / 功德林 [melbourne cbd]

Hey remember that time I lived in China and ate the most amazing Chinese vegetarian food? Yeah, me too. I love Chinese Australian vego food, but there are definitely some distinct differences, so I was super excited to hear that Gong De Lin, one of China's oldest and most awesome vegetarian restaurants, had come to Melbourne. Wendy canvassed her veg family members who claimed it was part of the brand, not some copy cat, and we immediately scheduled a visit to check it out. 

Gong De Lin specialises in Shanghainese style food, and the menu is filled with all sorts of delicious goodies, lots of mushroom dishes and an awesome cold menu, which is definitely something I've been missing. If you've never tried the cold items on a mainland Chinese menu, I recommend it. 

Wendy and I were immediately drawn to the 上海冷面, which literally translates to Shanghai Cold Noodles, but I'm not sure if that's their English name. Anyway, they are some fun noodles to eat and I love them very much. They are hand pulled and freshly made. They are usually served with an array of sauces so you can mix up whatever your favourite combination is. My favourite is soy sauce, sesame sauce, and chilli oil with a smattering of vinegar soy, which nearly brought Wendy and I to blows because she likes to use all of the vinegar soy. 

Although the noodles are on the menu as a two person serving, we decided to supplement by sampling the mapo doufu. This was a great if disorienting version of this dish, mostly because I'm so used to eating mapo doufu in non-veg restaurants, where I ask for it without meat, so to get it with the little meaty bits was freaky. But delicious. I enjoyed this dish, though it was a little sweeter than I'm used to, mostly because Shanghainese food is often a little sweeter than Sichuanese food. 

Gong De Lin is brand new in its Swanston Street position. The service was really delightful, with the waitstaff being very helpful letting us buy off menu (extra noodle portions) and very friendly. The menu is a little on the upper edge of a reasonable city lunch, at $38 for the two of us, with a little extra noodles each to take home for dinner. 

Gong De Lin is located on top of Noodle Kingdom, and I think they share a kitchen which comes up via a food elevator that buzzes when the food arrives. This was annoying but easy to get used to.

And I'm going to get used to it. I definitely plan to return. As much as I love Enlightened Cuisine, I think this is probably my new favourite Chinese vego restaurant in Melbourne, and I'm very happy to have another choice when in the CBD.

Gong De Lin

Level 3, 264 Swanston Street

Melbourne

Open 10am-10pm 7 days

Get there on any train or just about any tram. Brightly lit, menus in English and Chinese. Access via an elevator, no stairs. Toilets are accessible. Ordering and paying can take place at the table, though they're fairly tightly packed. 

Other reviews: Milkbar Mag

into the new year

  dragon made of water bottles! 恭喜发财！新年快乐！etc etc

hope the nian was scared away and you got lots of oranges and noodles and good wishes and little sacks of gold (ie, dumplings). i had a dumpling party and failed to take any photos, except of me pulling faces with my decorations, but hayley brought tofu pancakes and catherine made saffron bread shaped like a snake, and everybody wore red and at 1am i called my mother whose reunion party (3 hours behind) was still going, and i had a lovely time.

dumplings are super easy to make, you should make them always

i hope your year is prosperous and golden

and full of noodles

vegan about china: things to do when you're in beijing

Tomorrow's LNY Eve, and two writers of my acquaintance are about to go to Beijing, and this time last year (this time lunar-wise, not gregorian) I was in Beijing wishing the fireworks would stop, and it means I've been thinking a lot about Beijing lately.

So I thought I'd put together this list.

There are so many of these lists floating around the internet, but how many of them were written by a queer, half-Chinese vegan Australian who fell in love with Beijing while working in an environmental organisation which was situated in the Emperor's Ancestral Temple next to the Forbidden City, and who got there by bike every day? None of them, that's how many.

If you are severely, severely limited by time, take them in this order until you run out of time.

1. Hire a bike
   You can hire a bike from just about any bike shop, and although the subway is cheap and extensive, if you're staying (and playing) within the 3rd ring road, bike is the way to see Beijing. Sure there's pollution and lots of cars, but I fell in love with Beijing from the saddle of my bike, weaving my way around the original city's walls and in and out of the hutongs. The bike lanes are huge, the city is flat and there is no wind, and there's a bike repair dude on every major intersection.
2. Eat hotpot for dinner on Ghost Street
   Below I recommend places to eat, and Haidilao hotpot is on there. It's awesome, I love it as a food chain, and the food is the best of the chains I've been to. But for an experience, I recommend wandering down Ghost Street at night, and being sung into Little Sheep by the staff out the front wearing sashes after avoiding all the hawkers, having a man with noodles dance for you, and yelling across the restaurant. It's lots of fun. Order the tofu mix dish. You'll recognise Little Sheep by its flourescent ugly green lighting and signage.
3. Dawn/early morning out at the Lakes Specifically Beihai, early in the morning when the sun is bright and clear and the oldies are doing their competing Taichi battles. It's musical and beautiful and hilarious and so China all at once.
4. Take a biking tour You can and should guide yourself, but there's heaps of guided bike tours led by Beijing-ren who have lived in the hutongs their whole lives and know lots of random facts, and I really recommend it as a pleasant two hours to see the lakes district. I went with Chihaner, which is run by a friend of a friend, but I've heard good things about the ones run by the China Culture Centre (where I learnt to paint).
5. Visit 798, the art district
   If you have any interest in art, visit 798. Located in an ex-warehouse district, it's filled with art of every kind by Chinese artists, tens of galleries and public art spaces and just a whole lot of awesomeness. When I was living in Beijing I visited at least once every two or three months. Definitely visit the Ullens Centre for Contemporary Art .
6. Take a Cooking Class
   The Hutong Kitchen is an awesome cooking and cultural school in an old Courtyard House, run by an Australian. They're super accommodating of my vegan requirements, and also sell the most delicious infused white teas. Email them in advance to book a place and let them know about dietary requirements.
7. Eat at the Veggie Table (six times)
   The Veggie Table is the only western vego restaurant in Beijing. It's got great couches, free wifi, and is next to the fixies and juggling store! It's located in Wudaoying Hutong, which is a great place to visit.
8. Visit the Great Wall
   This is the only big famous thing I'm recommending. The Forbidden City is fine but it's huge and crowded and tiring and you'll have time for it later. The Summer Palace is pretty (go if you have time, for sure), and Tiananmen is iconic, but the Great Wall is the Number One Must See of these big historic locations. It would also be higher on the list except that it takes up basically a whole day, so can be difficult for someone on a tight schedule. Please note however that not all parts of 长城 are made equal - don't go to Badaling, go to Mutianyu or Jinshaling sections. And take the go cart down the wall. 

bonus: top three places to eat

• Haidilao, various locations around Beijing. Haidilao is a hotpot chain across Beijing. It's delicious and fun. It's not a vegetarian restaurant but several of the stock soups are, and everything comes out separately so it's all good.
• Sunao, Dongsishitiao, Dongcheng. Fancy-pants vegan Chinese tea house. If you go at lunchtime either read Chinese or bring a friend who does, but dinner has a colour, multilingual menu. Eat the fish. It's delicious.
• The Veggie Table, Yonghegong, Dongcheng. Vegan western food. The chocolate cake is so good, and it's the only place I was able to get a vegan pizza in Beijing.

bonus bonus: three places for books and things

• Wangfujing Bookstore, heaps of books, including a floor in English; a great array of learning books (ie, books that are in characters with pinyin subtitles); and lots of fun tourist maps and the greatest of postcards. 
• Xidan Bookstore. Overwhelming but comprehensive. No English.
• The Bookworm. Expensive but fun. Mostly in English. For a subscription fee you can become a member and borrow books. Just try to return them (unlike my friend J). 

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.