Admiral Cheng-Ho II - 23 June 2014

Winter finally hit Melbourne, although the ridiculously warm autumn obviously confused the local flora: trees are budding and there has been a host of daffodils outside the Grainger Museum for weeks.

On a horribly blustery and wet day, I made my way to Collingwood to meet up with a friend and her delicious, beautiful, bright five-month-old daughter. Though the area is replete with brunch options, we settled on Admiral Cheng-Ho, since I knew from last time that it has a multitude of choice for GF vegans. I had also intended to go a few days earlier, but ended up having vegan phở at Fina’s in Richmond (which was, as it happened, perfect given I was incubating a vile virus).

The menu had had a few subtle changes since my last visit, and I was beset by indecision. Sweet or savoury? Do I have what I had last time, since I enjoyed it so much?

Plenty of dishes looked divine on paper, but Reason pointed out that a few could more-or-less be replicated at home. Whilst I love avocado & toast variations, for instance, I have a bag of avocados in my kitchen so it would be ludicrous to pay someone else to feed me this.

After drinking most of my long black, I eventually settled on The Admiral - zucchini and kale fritters with seasonal vegetables (carrots and beans), beetroot relish and cashew cream (and sunflower seeds).

What the photo doesn’t really indicate is how substantial the fritters were. If they hadn’t been so madly delicious I would’ve struggled to finish, but the combination of perfectly crisp exteriors and smooth vegetal interiors proved to be irresistible. The beetroot (with microherbs) gave a lovely earthy freshness, and the cashew cream and seeds added a sophisticated and technically adept finesse.

Perfect food for lousy, cold weather, and more than sustaining for a walk and bike ride home through the wind and rain some hours later.

Cornish Arms - February 2014

Finally - I sampled the Cornish Arms’ vegan fish and chips. After a 36-hour fast (thanks to a medical procedure) I was more than in the mood for pub grub. I had planned to go to the Sweetwater Inn, but by the time I was discharged I couldn’t face the thought of going to South Yarra when I had the Cornish round the corner from home.

This is obviously pre-GF regime (indeed, it marked the end of a rather vile gluten challenge), as the batter contained both flour and beer. It was pretty damn worthwhile the ordeal, though.

The three whopping chunks of battered “fish” tasted very much like the vegan cod I had bought from Vincent Vegetarian Food in Footscray, on a mad mock-meat-buying extravaganza, but beautifully beer-battered. If you’re curious, it doesn’t really taste fishy as such - there is a little nori, I think, to evoke the sea - but the texture is probably a reasonable analogue.

The chips were, as per my past experience of the Cornish Arms, absolutely perfect. (I am incredibly fussy about chips - unless they are perfect I don’t want to know of them. Most chips are mediocre, if not crap, so it’s generally easy to resist.)

A bit of salad was a welcome addition. I know some people would see it as superfluous, or even a joke, but I actually like a bit of greenery amongst the batter. The tartare sauce was also welcome, and vastly nicer than any tartare sauce I'd had in pre-veg*n days.

I’d try to make it to the Cornish Arms more often, but the substantial meals tend to necessitate extreme hunger, bordering on hanger, that I can’t be bothered to invoke very often. I do have another half-marathon approaching later in the year, though…

The Grain Store - 22 April 2014

In the midst of my rural GP placement in Mildura, the Easter holidays arose, giving me an excellent opportunity to come back to Melbourne, meet up with one of my favourite people and do one of my favourite things - brunch.

My lovely companion suggested The Grain Store - I had already drooled over the menu online, with great delight that it had options for awkward dietary-requirement types.

I was more impressed still when I arrived to find one of the most aesthetically pleasing cafes in all of Melbourne - very much on a par with those in well-heeled parts of London.

The staff were also very patient with me and my awkward enquiries about what could and couldn’t be adapted from the menu, including suggesting a build-your-own from the toast + sides menu.

In the end I opted for the default vegan/GF item, currently listed as “Vegan cauliflower, quinoa & amaranth pops - roasted pumpkin hummus, goji berries, parsnip crisps, nigella seeds”. I think this has changed since April, however, as I had beetroot and endive rather than parsnip.


This was a spectacular and pretty dish. A marvellous combination of textures and tastes, from the velvety-smooth and sweet pumpkin hummus to the crunchy, savoury quinoa and amaranth, to the chewy and tart goji berries. I wouldn’t have thought of using goji berries in a largely savoury context, but it’s an idea worth using in other iterations.

The Grain Store has had its fair share of attention and positive reviews. Indeed, when I tried to go for coffee a few Sundays ago it was packed and we faced a 30 minute wait. All I can say is that it is worth a visit - there is surely something for everyone to enjoy, in civilised surroundings - just perhaps try to go on a weekday.

Smith & Daughters - 14 June 2014

Much anticipated, Smith & Daughters opened while I was on my rural GP rotation - an experience that could not have been more different to that of my normal life living in the cyclist-vegan-Green paradise that is the Inner North.

What this meant was that while I was being compared to livestock (“Jeeze girl, you look like you need to spend a year in the lucerne paddock!”), my hysterically flighty internet connection brought forth a flurry of Facebook and blog posts from those who were enjoying the latest addition to the Fitzroy epicentre of vegan cuisine.

“Damn you, Melbourne. I’ll be back soon and I’ll get my fill of plant-based Mexican deliciousness,” I vowed.

Following my return, a completely ridiculous amount of time then passed, in which I luxuriated in the convenience of the new Aunt Maggie’s in Brunswick (kale!!), resumed making my protein powder concoctions, and had the relief of seeing my weekly food bill drop dramatically in price.

The insanity of a voluntary exam - for only medical students would be so crazy to opt for additional testing, which has no effect on actual university marks and is therefore just a weird masochistic exercise in realising, Socrates-like, that one knows nothing - presented a valid excuse for a lunch treat.

After three hours of sitting semi-motionless filling out an MCQ sheet, my dining companion and I were both slightly frozen. She was at a greater disadvantage having got thoroughly drenched during her bike ride in (a rare advantage of my leaving-it-to-the-last-minute habit: I missed the downpour). A quick bike ride brought us to the warmth of Smith & Daughters, which was also, mercifully, not crammed with people.

After some slight confusion about what could and couldn't be done gluten-free, my brunching companion and I ended up choosing the same item - the Mexican omelette with corn tortillas. Accompanied by, in my case, a long black. My companion had a cappuccino with coconut milk. 

I was pretty ravenous by the time this came out, but managed to pause long enough to drown the above in Cholula sauce (I am finishing off a bottle at home, and know that for me it is pretty mild). 

The omelette thankfully did not replicate an eggy dish in flavour; texturally it was more like a savoury pudding. The sauces and avocado brightened up the dish, visually and in terms of flavour, and the corn tortillas were by far the best I've had. Best of all, the cast iron pan - though scorching hot initially - was another welcome source of warmth. 

So my Smith & Daughters desire has been partially sated - I need to sample the evening menu next, obviously. 

Celebrating autumn - and why I shop at markets

The pith, the nutshell, whatever edible euphemism you like - I shop at markets because:

• I hate what corporatism is doing to nations and peoples. 
• I despise marketing, which maintains the above.
• I will not buy junk, and so most shops (supermarkets and retailers generally) do not acknowledge me as they have nothing worthwhile on offer.
• I despair at the cult of the lowest common denominator.
• I refuse to buy imported produce. Having grown up in England, I appreciate Australia as a primary producer par excellence, and it is criminal to eschew home-grown food for something laden with food miles.
• My tastebuds are still very much intact.
• As a full-time student in the midst of a career change, I have a risibly tight food budget. That story on News Ltd's website about sticking to a $35 weekly food budget? Luxury!

I shop opportunistically. I trawl the Vic Market close to closing time at the weekends, and I make good use of the slightly tired (but perfect for my purposes) half-price produce at places like Wholefoods. In spite of monetary constraints, I manage to eat a fair bit of organic produce. 

I shop seasonally. Boxes of mangos, trays of tomatoes in the summer. Bags of apples, magnificent heads of cabbage in the winter. 

I have a fridge full of pickles from when I got proper gherkins for $2. My mother's larder has the jam I made with the last of the summer apricots. 

Today yielded quinces for $1 a kilo, to be slowly roasted with wattle seed as an accompaniment to homemade bread, coconut yogurt, muesli. 

Best of all, a bag of pine mushrooms for a hysterically trifling $2. To be devoured, by me, in an act of greed justified by the grim weather and my last hurrah before I am off to the back of beyond to finish my rural GP placement (in a town surrounded by farms, but with no greengrocer, and where pickup trucks line up every night outside the fast food outlets - proof this country has a completely warped attitude towards food).

Christmas 2013

Yes, I know. It’s mid-March. But I have only just got round to transferring pictures from my iPhone, itself a complete novelty for me, and found these.

It was a relatively warm Christmas in 2013. My mother avers that Christmas in Melbourne is always 25˚C and overcast, but we’d had a spell of hot weather and it was a bit more summery than that.

Neither of us is particularly bothered about Christmas, and we’ve never done it conventionally. Turkey etc has only appeared if we went to relatives’ homes for Christmas, and I’ve not eaten meat since I was about 13 anyway. Moreover, quite a few Christmases have been spent with other vegetarians.

My proposal for the 2013 Christmas was plant-based dishes, and some meaty/cheesy accompaniments for my carnivorous mother, in a kind of mezze-ish arrangement.

As usual, the inner North came up trumps for interesting and reasonably-priced provisions. On the (vegan friendly!) plate are:

Organic baby spinach + organic orange salad;

Organic heirloom radishes (purple, red, white) with Mount Zero salt;

Tomato, red onion, avocado;

Roasted Japanese eggplant with pomegranate arils;

Roasted asparagus (which was a ludicrous 25c a bunch) and roasted chopped almonds.

Plus gigantic Macadamia nuts; Edwards pumpkin seed sourdough; fruit loaf (can’t remember which bakery - either Philippa’s, La Madre or Zeally Bay, courtesy of the Brunswick IGA).

For Madam Carnivore, Chianina bresaola and Fromager d’Affinois with truffles (from DOC Delicatessen), plus butter from Isigny Ste-Mère.

Dessert for the omnivore was Pavlova. I bought half a kilo of cherries from the Vic Market, paid a (relatively) scary sum for red currants, and got some wildly cheap strawberries (not cheap in taste, fortunately). The pavlova recipe was nothing special - Google will yield many, all basically the same. I might have used ACV instead of white vinegar, but otherwise no fiddling there. The cream was vanilla bean cream, though I had originally planned to use marscapone.

I gorged myself on cherries, nearly (but not quite!) sickening myself of them in the process. 

I think the most significant lesson from this was that the odd luxury item, like a pomegranate, can make an enormous difference to a dish. Realistically, a couple of dollars on the odd special ingredient shouldn't be kept only for Christmas. So I will probably make the eggplant dish more often. 

Echt Apple Pie

This, I apologise, is not remotely vegan, but easily veganised.

I spotted Bramley apples at one of the Vic Market’s organic stalls last week, and promised my mother that the next time I visited I would make a proper apple pie. Happily, when I went to get said apples, I saw that new season Cox’s were also available. Hurrah for freedom from the tyranny of Royal Galas (my particular bete noir) and other mainstream apple varieties.

According to St Delia, and others, the best apple pies involve two sorts of apples: Bramleys, which are unpleasant raw but turn into velvety fluff when cooked; and Cox’s. (Incidentally, the Wiki page needs correcting - it’s not the case that Cox’s are unsuitable for cooking.)

Pleasingly, Delia’s recipe (in her Winter Collection) uses parsimonious quantities of fat and sugar, and a colossal quantity of apples. Intriguingly, she also uses Cheddar cheese in the crust.

I made a number of variations to her recipe.

For the pastry, I used all butter, rather than half butter and half lard. I omitted the cheese, because the only cheeses in the house were completely unsuitable. I also substituted about 80g of the plain flour with lupin flour, because it was there and because I could. (This ups the protein content slightly.)

For the filling, Delia recommends scattering semolina over the pastry base before alternating layers of sliced apples with sugar and studding with the odd clove.

I mixed together apple cake spice (Gewurtzhaus), sugar, vanilla sugar, cardamom pistachio sugar (Gewurtzhaus again!), ground linseed/flaxseed.

It was appallingly steamy in Melbourne, so I had to work quickly with the pastry. Fortunately it rolled out beautifully. Just under half was used to line a glass pie dish (though metal would be better), and a scattering of the ground flaxseed mixture went on top, followed by layers of apple and the flax/spice/sugar mix. The remaining pastry was rolled out, draped over the top, sealed and covered with egg wash.

In view of the weather, the pie was refrigerated while the oven heated up.

I had to ignore the cooking time, since my mother’s oven is markedly cooler than it pretends to be, and it was well over an hour before it was ready. 

And obviously vanilla ice-cream was mandatory.

What was good about this recipe is that, apart from the tedium of peeling, coring and slicing the apples, the rest was dead easy to assemble. No blind baking. No pre-cooing of the apples. In general, not a lot of faff.

I’ve yet to try vegan pastry making, but presumably it would be easy enough to veganise with appropriate non-animal fats.