Dinner at Vege Rama, West End

Vege Rama
Shop 2a, 220 Melbourne Street, West End

I'm not vegetarian by any means but I love the sound of certain vegetarian cuisine. I tried to become vegetarian for a month just so I would be forced to order more vegetarian options at restaurants. They often sound like the best dishes for me but I feel like I 'should' get a meat option or I'd be missing out. I always see Vege Rama when I'm driving around West End and I was curious to try it but there was no way Marc was ever going to come with me to a vegetarian restaurant. Even if I did manage to pressure him into it, he would have sulked and whined the entire time with variations of "where's the rest of the meal" comments. Luckily I have some girlfriends who are more open minded.

Blossom and I arranged a catch up over dinner last week. I got to Vege Rama a tad early and they were almost packed. At first I tried to squish up on the high seating at the window but then I spotted more spacious seating outside. The waitress was happy to relocate me and even turned on the heater.

Roast Capsicum and Goats Cheese Tart

Roast Capsicum and Goats Cheese Tart
Home Cooking

This post is an example of what could be called Cooking Vanity. This again, goes back to my family Christmas dinner where we were all supposed to bring some food. I wasn't even going to bake a tart; in fact, I initially was just brining salad and later stretched that to include and ice-cream. I was leafing through Nick Malgieri's The Modern Baker for dessert recipes (where I found this) and accidentally fell onto this recipe for a goats cheese tart. I decided right then and there that I would also bake that for my family.

Activated Nuts and Coco-nutty Granola

Activated Nuts and Coco-nutty Granola
Home Cooking

There's a lot of nutritional mumbo jumbo in this post about the theory of cutting sugar from one's diet and my opinions on it. If you're interested, read on. If you just want to know how to make delicious sugar-free nuts to eat at breakfast time or as a snack, skip to the recipe at the bottom.

Mochi, my friend and past regular on this blog has turned into a health fanatic. She's my idol! I'm totally inspired by her and wish I had her willpower. She told me a while back about how she was trying to cut out sugar from her diet. This seemed pretty intuitive until she mentioned that fruit was also out. I often eat fruit as an alternative to dessert to cut sugar cravings so for me, this was terrible news. I also found it non-sensical that fruit would ever be considered our enemy. I wrote it off as a quack theory and continued along my normal diet.

Just last week, I was roaming the internet when I stumbled across Sarah Wilson's blog and her plight against sugar. I started reading... and read enough to download her eBook 'I Quit Sugar'. What grabbed me the most was that she described herself as a past sugar addict who didn't appear to be a sugar addict. She had a seemingly 'healthy' diet, substituting honey instead of sugar, avoiding most processed foods and so on. It was reflective of my own diet and intrigued, I read more.

Honey Roasted Pumpkin with Goat's Cheese and Hazelnuts

Honey Roasted Pumpkin with Goat's Cheese and Hazelnuts
Home Cooking

One day, I was rummaging around in my fridge when I stumbled across half a pumpkin that I'd totally forgotten I bought. I didn't really know what to do with it and I couldn't be stuffed mashing and using it to bake something (which is what I normally do with pumpkin) but I couldn't let it go to waste either.

I roughly chopped up the pumpkin and threw the pieces into a baking tray. Making it up as I went along, I added a drizzle of olive oil, salt and some sprigs of fresh thyme. As an afterthought, I added some honey to the mix. The pieces were left to roast until tender. I had already eaten that night so I didn't even use the pumpkin until the following day but that's irrelevant.

Savory Pumpkin Bread

Savory Pumpkin Bread 
Home Cooking

I went cucko about a month ago about bought all these vegetables that I didn't know what to do with. Pumpkin was one of them. I thought about just boiling the bejeebus out of it and making mash but I didn't want to eat pumpkin mash so I started scouting around for recipes that I could use it in. I found this recipe on Taste.com, which sounded perfect because it required 500g butternut pumpkin and that was EXACTLY what I had, once my pumpkin had been peeled and deseeded.

Apple Oatmeal Brulee

Apple Oatmeal Brulee
Home Cooking

This post is about a sort of boring food item so I need to start with a story. I was just at the onset of my current cooking mood and all keen about what to bake/cook this week and the following week and the week after that and so on. I had a portion of turkey mince in the freezer and came up with the bright idea of making Donald Trump's turkey burgers. They're not actually 'his' but they're an item sold at his private club, Mar-a-Lago and Oprah raved about them in an episode of her show. I didn't end up making the burgers (a particular brand of pear chutney is one of the critical ingredients and I just couldn't find it... or any kind of pear chutney I could use as an alternative) but I did find some other recipes trawling through Oprah's site.

The apple oatmeal brulee was one of them. I am like a horse when it comes to oats. Horses stereotypically go nuts for oats, right? I like oats especially in winter. Or when I'm sick. Or when I'm depressed. Or anytime really. Porridge is rad! I'm picky with oats. I don't eat instant oats. I need the traditional whole oats and I cook them slowly in milk (it has to be all milk, no water) with sultanas and dried apricots. Occasionally I'll add chopped up green apples or pears and a sprinkle of cinammon. I usually sweeten with honey. My biggest barrier in eating oat porridge is that milk is not a common feature in my fridge. I try to keep some long life stuff in the pantry but I prefer to use that for baking emergencies. I know that not having milk is inconceivable to most but I just don't drink it that much (my instant coffee only needs water) and I hate stuff going off.

Nigella Lawson's Orange Breakfast Muffins

Orange Breakfast Muffins
Home Cooking

My current morning breakast ritual is simple but effective. It requires flipping on the kettle and pushing 45 seconds into the microwave. The former is for instant coffee and the latter is to warm up a muffin. I'm loving morning muffins so much sometimes it keeps me awake the night before in anticipation. The raspberry and oat muffins kept me going for a while but last week I moved onto these orange muffins.

From cookbook to tray to plate

I first spotted the recipe in Nigella Lawson's 'Nigella Bites' about a month ago. All the ingredients were bought and ready to go but I came down with a cold so my baking plans were foiled. It's interesting because as a child, I was never a huge fan of fruity flavors in ice-cream, desserts or candy but it's something that has grown on me over the years. My craving for orange muffins was so severe I repurchased the necessary ingredients and whipped up a batch last week. I've been happily munching on these every morning for breakfast since then.

Oat and Vegetable Torta

Oat and Vegetable Torta
Home Cooking

My long lost friend Mochi has been initiated into the world of healthy, organic eating. She's detoxing from sugar and green-juicing it. I am so proud of her. I try to eat as 'clean' as I can during the week but man, sugar is in bloody everything! Everything good, that is. I've cut it out of my mixers at home (now buying sugar-free soda water or lemonade to pour my vodka with) but I don't know if health benefits are identifiable when you're drinking alcohol. Anyway, at least she's inspired me to some extent and that's better than nothing.

Mochi recently posted a link on my Facebook wall for a recipe to make an oat and vegetable torta. We are similar in that a lot of boring/weird-sounding foods appeal to us. We like things with oats and nuts and desserts made from vegetables. Whenever I bake these days, I always question "does this only sound good to me, or will other people eat it too?" For many items, I'm sure they would only sound good to me and Mochi, so I bypass them and stick to the conventional.

I'm not sure how an oat and vegetable torta sounds to anyone besides us but I can imagine Marc pulling his face and asking "where's the meat?" or "why are oats and vegetables in the same dish?"

Homemade Lemon Curd

Homemade Lemon Curd
Home Cooking

My baking project for the week was lemon cheesecake squares. I was in a lemon cheesecake kind of mood. I wanted it to be baked and I wanted it to have layers. When my mind is set on something, there's no compromising.

I found this great recipe, which was pretty much EXACTLY what I wanted (post to follow). Only, I had 2 egg yolks left over from making the low fat raspberry muffins (using 2 egg whites there) so I wanted a lemon curd recipe that used up egg yolks. Instead of using the lemon curd recipe suggested in that link, I went and found my own. If that seems irrational to you, just think about having 2 rogue egg yolks sitting in your fridge. It's unseemly. It's one of those things that bothers me. The same applies to unused egg whites. This recipe from Taste.com came to my rescue.

Apple and Rosemary Muffins

Apple and Rosemary Muffins
Home Cooking

This post is from a couple of weeks ago but I somehow forgot about it so the photos have just been sitting in a folder, abandoned. I think part of the reason why is that I demolished these muffins as breakfast/snacks so speedily that it wasn't long before they were a shadow of the past. My original plan was to give some to mum and dad and some to Marc and not have to live with the pressure of finishing 12 muffins on my own. Two things happened that interfered with that scheme: 1) I got into the habit of eating breakfast (prior to that it was just instant coffee before work) and 2) I developed this paranoia that no one else would be able to cope with the rosemary, vomit out my food in disgust and put me off baking for life.

I personally LOVED the addition of rosemary. I took a basic apple muffin recipe and added the rosemary myself. It wasn't a very difficult or even innovative alteration. I really just chopped up some rosemary for the batter and put more on top of each muffin before baking. Apple and rosemary has been used in combination for yonks, mostly in savory items but it's definitely not unheard of in desserts. If you're after a boring plain old muffin, go on, click the original recipe. If you believe you only live once, want to try something different, get excited by savory elements in sweet things (or vice versa) or even just like rosemary, sprinkle some fresh rosemary in. It may surprise you!

Sweet Potato and Coconut Soup

Sweet Potato and Coconut Soup
Home Cooking

Soup and winter: two things that go hand in hand. I wrote this post a couple of weeks ago and it's now spring so I better publish it before the heat waves strike and everything I say becomes irrelevant.

Soup is one thing that makes the cold mornings, dry air and shorter daylight hours almost worth bearing. We had a couple of weeks in Toowoomba a while back that were close to the 0 degrees mark through the night and barely 10 at maximum. I know that would be mild for some but I'm a Brisbane girl and to me, that's slit-my-wrists cold. Maybe not that extreme but I sure as hell didn't feel like getting up for work in the mornings.

Soup makes everything better.

Corn and Split-Pea Soup with Feta with Tomato Damper

Corn and Split-Pea Soup with Feta with Tomato Damper
Home Cooking

In continuation from the story of "Why I should never bake on my lunchbreak", I will now present the sequel: "Why I shouldn't cook ANYTHING on my lunchbreak", which could be simplified to "I suck at life".

I just had the most hilariously, chaotic and unruly day of my existance. I can't back that up with evidence but however accurate/inaccurate that statement may be, today has been rediculous.

I've caught something. I've been inflicted with the comic equivalent of Murphy's Law. I hope it's not contagious or my heart goes out for those I've come in contact with today.

Today's story starts with an hour and half break during work. Last week I picked up a copy of Masterchef Magazine and found a recipe in the 30 minute meal section for corn and split-pea soup.

My first 'incident' was spilling the yellow split peas all over the floor. I had already started frying the onions so I was multitasking, vacuuming and stirring at the same time.

The next stupid thing I did was try to blend my soup in my horrible, tiny, old food processor. I just bought a brand spanking new food processor the other day but I thought it was a waste blending soup with it so I used the old one. Which, apparently, unbeknown to me wasn't watertight. Or was broken. Or something. The end result was hot soup squirting all over the bench, onto the floor (which I had just vacuumed) and of course, my face got a lashing too.

My final casualty of the day was a gash on my palm from my food processor blade. After a mad scramble to slap on a bandaid, I was in a rush back to work and ended up heading out the door in my trackies (which I change into at home so I don't get food slop on my work pants). Yup, I finished my day at work in my track pants, hiding in my chair and hoping no one would notice.

At least dinner was ready for me when I got home!

Note: I halved the original recipe, which is supposed to serve between 6-8. My halved serving was roughly enough for 2. Maybe I have an extra large appetite? You be the judge. Below is MY version, which I think is enough for 2.

Corn and Split-Pea Soup with Feta with Tomato Damper
Serves 2

Ingredients:

For the soup

• 1/2 onion
• 1 clove garlic
• 1/2 tbsp olive oil
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 100g (1/2 cup) yellow split peas
• 1 tsp smoke paprika
• 250g frozen corn kernels
• 20g butter
• 1 green chili, thinly sliced

For the damper

• 150g (1 cup) self-raising flour
• 1/2 tsp caster sugar
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 125g (1/2 cup or 1/2 can) chopped canned tomatoes
• 2 tbsp olive oil
• 70g feta cheese

Procedure:

1. Preheat the oven to 210 degrees Celsius.
2. Roughly chop the onion and garlic. Heat the oil in a large saucepan over medium-high heat. Add the onion and garlic and 1/2 tsp of salt. Cook, stirring for about 5 minutes or until the onions have softened.

3. Rinse the peas and add to the pan with the paprika and corn. Cook, whilst stirring for another 5 minutes or until the corn has thawed.

4. Add about 700ml boiling water. Bring it up to the boil, reduce the heat to medium and simmer, parially covered with a lid for about 15 minutes or until the peas are tender.
5. Meanwhile, to make the damper, combine the flour, sugar and salt in a bowl. Add the tomatoes and olive oil.

6. Using a knife, combine the ingredients with a cutting action until the mxiture just comes together. It should still be a bit wet and sticky.

7. Using floured hands, divide the mixture into 4 balls and place next to each other on a tray lined with baking paper. Flatten them gently, use a knife to mark a cross on each ball and crumble some feta over the top.

8. Bake for about 15 minutes or until risen and lightly brown.

9. Once the peas in the soup are tender, add butter and use a stick blender to blend until smooth. Season and if necessary, thin with extra water.
10. Ladle the soup into bowls and top with remaining feta and sliced chilis. Drizzle with a bit of extra olive oil. Serve immediately with the feta and tomato damper.

I don't know why this is counted as a 30 minute recipe. The yellow split peas take much longer than 15 minutes that to soften. Mine simmered for close to 30 minutes and I still think it should've stayed there for longer.

The soup was very simple and hearty without being too thick or rich. I like winter warming soups that aren't necessarily full of cream. The soup on its own is boring... it really needs the feta topping for some oomph.

What I REALLY loved was the tomato damper, which is basically like tomato scones. The texture was soft, light and slightly doughy like a scone anyway. They were an absolute cinch to make AND you get to play with pink dough when you make them.

I wouldn't say they were flavor packed but I think they're bland in a 'versatile' way, rather than a 'boring' way. Like the savory version of plain scones. They would make a great accompaniment to many dishes or even just as a snack on their own. I can imagine these warm with a bit of cream cheese or sour cream and sweet chili. Yum.

Melbourne in May 4 - Dinner at Vegie Bar

Vegie Bar
http://www.vegiebar.com.au/

Something strange happened to me on the Sunday we were in Melbourne. After a ginormous meal from Vue De Monde, we went back to the hotel and napped. I woke up STARVING. What the heck? Did the food evaporate from my stomach? I WISH it were that easy. Who knows. Maybe my appetite just grew 10 fold. In any case, it was 8pm and I was growling for food.

Mochi arrived at our hotel with a short list of possible options. There had been talk of going to Chin Chin but the no reservation policy made things inconvenient. We called anyway and were told there was roughly an hour long wait for a table. Uh, no thanks. I'm not sure I'd wait an hour for a table on a normal day and especially not when I have a dire hunger situation happening.

Roast Pumpkin and Chickpea Salad

Roast Pumpkin and Chickpea Salad
Home Cooking



It recently came to my attention that I am not eating enough vegetables. Aside from garden salad as a side to food I order from restaurants, I seem to eat no vegetables at all.

To rectify, I decided to put together a salad... a NUTRITIOUS salad as one of my contributions to a recent dinner party we hosted.



I kept thing simple and plain old Googled a pumpkin and chickpea recipe. The reason behind this is that I love pumpkin and I spotted a can of chickpeas in my cupboard.

Crunchy Wombok Salad

Crunchy Wombok Salad
Home Cooking



I have a new favorite salad. I admit that I do like salad. There exists people in the world who see 'salad' on the menu and immediately erase it as a potential choice. I, on the other hand, frequently order salad at restaurants at the expense of a protein main. And I'm rarely disappointed.



BUT... my idea of a home salad is somewhat less exciting. I usually throw together a concoction of pantry spares. This means: leaves, ham/tuna, boiled egg and a piece of bread toasted and torn to simulate croutons. If I'm lucky, I'll have an avocado ready too.

Cherry Tomato, Basil and Bocconcini Salad

Cherry Tomato, Basil and Bocconcini Salad
Home Cooking



This is another one of my lazy throw-togethers that don't really deserve the description of 'home cooking'.



The idea of combining tomatoes with basil and bocconcini is hardly original. I've seen it as an entree on many bistro menus. Often, it's presented in stacks, or as skewers.

Vegetarian Stir-fry

Vegetarian Stir-fry
Home Cooking



A while ago, Byron bought this weird can of vegetarian abalone. I thought he was crazy. We didn't end up using it for whatever he wanted to make that time and the can sat in the pantry, unloved, for a long while.



It ended up traveling with us to Toowoomba and we finally found a use for it. I say 'we' but it was really his own little food project.

Pasta with Ben and Jerry

Pasta with Ben and Jerry
Home Cooking



Today, a tray of 4 tomatoes cost me $13.

This is the story...

Last night, I was watching Gourmet Farmer on SBS and Matt made this really simple pasta that somehow looked amazing. He was investigating the use of goat produce, namely goat's milk and goat's cheese. The pasta involved fresh tomato, basil, olive oil and goat's cheese tossed with freshly cooked pasta. Sounds easy, yeh?



I woke up today with a huge craving for it and thought 'I won't even need lots of ingredients... this will be a cinch'.

Veggie Breakfast Fry-up

Veggie Breakfast Fry-up

Home Cooking

I haven't done a breakfast post in a while! Part of that is because I've just forgotten about them and also because during exam time, my eating got really erratic and breakfast was often missed.

I know, I know, that's bad, unhealthy, irresponsible, a form of eating sin rarara. The fact is, busy people often miss breakfast or get up so early that they're just not hungry at the time.
Soon as the stressful period was over, I treated myself to my version of a healthy, fulfilling breakfast.

Homemade Muesli Bars

Homemade Muesli Bars
Home Cooking



It's been a million years since I blogged (slight exaggeration of 2-3 weeks) and the reasons are as follows:

• constant sleepiness
• laziness
• unwillingness to write about muesli bars that I made over a month ago while I was in a healthy food phase (lasted all of 3 days)
• not in the mood

And the list goes on. Ah well, back in business.