Spatula, Spoon and Saturday

Book: Food Safari by Maeve O’Meara (recipe by Kumar Mahadevan) Theme: Indian Recipe: Rogan Josh

This week flew, didn’t it? The Cookbook Challenge Week 2 theme is Indian. I have been itching to buy myself an Indian cookbook as I love making Indian food but never really got around to it. The Food Safari book is the companion to the Food Safari series (which I love and have on DVDs despite not having a functional TV at home). It has amazing recipes – which better still can be watched individually on the SBS Food website.

This recipe is such a winner. It’s spicy, and oniony and meaty. The lamb was just so soft and rich. We have a bit of love for this Kashmiri specialty in our house because Josh orders a rogan josh when he is out of ideas at Indian restaurants simply because of its name. We amazingly enough never made it at home. I told Josh the night before about the idea of making rogan josh for the Cookbook Challenge and came home to find that he had defrosted the lamb chops, bought some tomatoes and fennel seeds and already made a start on chopping up the onions so I ended up backseat-cooking and helping him chopping things instead. He did most of the cooking.

We tweaked the recipe a little bit due to availability of ingredients – substituting here and there. But the full recipe, including a video, is available on the SBS Food site. Read the rest of this entry »

Dear Spatula, Spoon and Saturday,

You are one of the spices of my life…

My little blog. How you have grown.

Do you remember the time we had together when I worked in Singapore? And I was lonely, away from home and I had you to keep me company? I’m sorry I neglected you then. I’m sorry I never really got a chance to tell you about all the interesting, diverse food culture Singapore had to offer. Did you know that Singapore has the most food bloggers per capita in the world? You should have been one of the shining ones, but work required 60+ hours a week from me. It was hard.

But this year, I made up for it, didn’t I? We made Melbourne our home. Again, for me. You, for the first time.

When we, you and I, moved back to Melbourne, you neglected, me bored and unemployed. I started cooking and I wrote to you about it. Remember the Fig, Mozzarella and Rocket Salad? That post started our big Melbourne journey together. Remember how I got given a whole bunch of fresh figs from Nana’s tree? Throughout May and June (when I wasn’t busy going places), I started telling you about Josh and my honeymoon trip to Japan, even some about Singapore and snippets of my travelling around South East Asia especially Malaysia. I’m sad though, that I never told you much about Thailand, my home. We will need to fix that.

Over the few, but productive months that I also took you to Central Australia. I started working again in July (enough travelling)  and that was when I could afford to take you out to all the fabulous eating places Melbourne had to offer. Remember my silly drunken review of Cafe Vue cocktail night? And the fabulous Maha, Bar Lourinha and SiChuan Dining Room with all its chilli glory. And Coopers Inn – where I had my 21st birthday the rerun. And Tempura Hajime? Who could forget Tempura Hajime? Fresh plump scallops stuffed with uni. Droolworthy. Not to mention the dingy little Thai place, Me Dee Thai,  in Springvale that does proper Thai food and the infamous Pellegrini’s Espresso Bar. I still have lots to tell you. I haven’t even told you about my eternal Melbourne favourites: the Cellar Bar for its charming Italian heart, Mitsuno for its wonderous ‘Japanese-inspired’ cuisine. I haven’t even told you about Bombay By Night properly and how much we love these places. But I will.

I experimented a lot too. I made all sorts of interesting food. What about my seafood craze? The simple steamed blue swimmers? My first perfect spaghetti con vongole? Nicoise salad with seared lemon & thyme tuna? The paella? What about the roasts? Beef with Yorkshire pudd, pork with apple sauce, lamb with rosemary and garlic, chicken with fabulous gravy. Not to mention the greenie spaghetti with asparagus, lemon and shallot that I made up after being inspired by the farmers’ market (we do love our farmers’ market, don’t we?) and Joshua’s best lasagna in the world.

Josh has been making lots of Thai food lately. I’m so proud of him.

Have I ever told you this little fact: people on the internet are by far most interested in how to boil an egg in a microwave. It’s so strange that every months, hundreds of people from all over the world learn how to boil eggs on Spatula, Spoon and Saturday. One of those mysterious things in life, I suppose.

We have many years of posts ahead of us. I have asked the lovely Tara who is a talented graphic designer, and with my old web development skills, we will give you a brand new face. Not that you need it. You are already beautiful  but you do deserve a unique, new face. It will take time. But I will work on it.

Meanwhile, I still have lots to tell you about food. Hear me out. Don’t get bored of me yet.

With all my love,
Kat

This was back during the awful hay fever episode. I remember it distinctly as the night I barely slept and woke up at 6am and couldn’t go back to sleep. Generally, I would pick myself out of bed and go for a morning walk/run but because I barely slept I was just too tired so I figured let’s just hit Degraves St. for breakfast. So I pulled poor Josh out of a bed with a promise of breakfast treat.

(eggs florentine, poached eggs with spinach and hallandaise sauce – $12.00)

It was a lovely warm day and the day was heating up already (loves it) but we went in and sat in the booth at the back anyway. Unfortunately, I was grouchy to the max from lack of sleep and the fact that I had to be at work soonish didn’t help either.

The cafe was warmly decorated with interesting black and white photographs and while it was quite warm at the back, I didn’t mind. I am a tropical girl, after all. The breakfast options weren’t large with a few daily specials. Read the rest of this entry »

Nicole and I landed on Gertrude St. one night for a Book for Cooks event. Luke Nguyen was in town and he was promoting his new book (the Songs of Sapa) and Little Lantern Foundation. We originally thought we should probably hit a pho joint or something Vietnamese but Nicole didn’t want to be too far from the book shop and rush there last minute (so we went outlet shopping on Brunswick St. first, figures).

We went past Anada and I remember about this place being recommended highly by @redvespa so we decided we would go in. It was literally 5.55 and we were waiting for it to open at 6pm (we had to be at Books for Cooks before 7). They did, right on time and graciously let us in without a reservation. Despite it being Tuesday, the place filled up around 7. So make sure you get a reservation in.

As hungry as we were, we wanted to have a light meal and tapas seem perfect. We both ordered a few different dishes to try. I ordered a glass of sherry (you gotta have sherry, surely) and Nicole ended up with a glass of rose.

We were served some bread to start with some nice olive oil and funky black salt. It tasted like normal salt. Yes I did nibble at the salt crystals. I do that. Read the rest of this entry »

As I may have mentioned it once or twice, I eat far more than I take photos. And I take far more photos than I actually blog about them. So rather than letting them go to waste, I might as well put them up here.

Wow, I lied already. This was Pim’s strawberry tart from Brunetti in Carlton. I didn’t eat it.

Also lied. Didn’t eat this one either. Hong’s tiramisu from Brunetti. I’m not too sure why they felt the need to write it on edible white chocolate label. We know it’s a tiramisu.

Lunch at work one day – spiralli with Bolognese sauce and salad. People seem impressed when you eat salad at the office. Read the rest of this entry »

Book: Jamie’s Italy by Jamie Oliver Theme: citrus Recipe: Insalata di Strada

This post kicks off my participation in the week 1 of the Cookbook Challenge in this hot (and eventually rainy) week. First of all, allow me to ramble before I get to the crux of this recipe. I found it really hard to be doing citrus (such a winter theme) in one of the hottest Spring week in Melbourne history. And guess what? I have no one to blame but myself because it was I, who pulled the theme out of the envelope. D’oh.

So here I was, totally stuck with this theme. I’m definitely not giving in and bake orange and poppy seed cake (although I have wanted to do that, the sticking point would be I have no cookbook that has orange and poppy seed cake – actually maybe Stephanie’s Cook Companion, but I digress) because that would be too easy.

This recipe in itself was no picnic. It is, in essence, a winter salad. Its main ingredients proved difficult: Cedro lemon? Non-existent here. Fennel? Winter vegetable. Blood orange? Well, I’d be lucky to find them. But guess what? The market provided! I went through all the stalls in the market to find decent fennel (believe me when I keep saying it’s not fennel season), some new potatoes, a head of radicchio and some blood oranges. Read the rest of this entry »

Oh my god, I am so stoked about this place. I have read John Lethlean’s reviews on Epicure (review 1 & review 2) and in both reviews he stressed about how interesting the menu is so we decided to give it a go one (very) late Saturday lunch.

From the outside, the restaurant looks just like any other suburban Chinese restaurant (which was why we’d never been) but the dining room was large and spacious (I guess it also helped there only three tables were taken up) but the inside was rather nicely decked out. We, of course, have a TV playing Hong Kong movie in the corner (you’d need that).

It was yum cha hour but I decided that we wanted to try their menu. The menu was awesome. It had all the interesting things not available in your typical Chinese restaurant. I was so excited at how interesting the menu is. I have never even heard and or read about many of the items. So, with that in mind, please don’t think too badly of me that I ordered four dishes between the two of us. Read the rest of this entry »

(November 2009 Cocktail Night menu – theme is Belvedere vodka)

Last week my baby girl KJ came to town. So where’s better than taking her to the most fabulous cocktail event in town?* Nowhere! The Cafe Vue** Cocktail Night is hosted weekly on a Friday. For $75 over the space of 3 hours, you get the most fabulous cocktails and matching degustation plates from Vue. Bargain, I say!

(scallop linguine with cucumber)

The night started at about 7.30pm when the first cocktail was served (yes, they ran a bit late) and concluded at around 11pm (we left at 10.30 because we were starving) when people cleared off. So you’ll understand, I’m sure, the degradation of the picture quality due to lack of lighting and sobriety.

(Cytrus Pegu)

Our very first cocktail was called Cytrus Pegu, which was Belvedere vodka with err… lots of citrusy, orangey things done to it. The lovely waitstaff did announce every course and explained the logic of each make up of each cocktail. Suffice to say, they thought about it a lot. And we drank a lot. So I’m really sorry I can’t tell you more. What I remembered though was the lemon curd that lined the glass. It was so yummy I attempted to lick it clean. This lovely this little cocktail was served with a perfect little scallop served with buttery linguine and cucumber. Yum. But then we were starving. A tip: get some food in you first. The 5 courses served there were just not sufficient.

(Apple & Chilli Martini)

Our second cocktail of the night was by far the winning horse – the apple and chilli martini. But it wasn’t a normal apple & chilli martini, no, no. They started with 50% alcohol vodka and steep all the yummy flavouring fruits: apple, pear and chilli. It was intensely apple. It was intensely pear. And it was intensely chilli. No, it wasn’t hot at all. But it did taste every bit chilli. No only that, they attempted to turn it into a frozen cocktail by freezing it with liquid nitrogen rather than blending in ice (cos that would be too easy and ‘we would lose too much alcohol concentration’) so as delicious sounding as that sounds, it was lethal at about 50% alcohol. But oh my god it was yummy. They also topped it with deseeded chilli and a slice of dehydrated apple. Read the rest of this entry »

I got this idea from Jamie Oliver’s book Jamie At Home. It was a decent breakfast. Nothing beats bacon fat in the morning.

1. 2 eggs per person
2. 4 fat asparagus per person
3. 3 slices of mild pancetta per person

To soft boil eggs (I was fiddling with the asparagus and overcooked the eggs so the picture isn’t really of a soft boiled egg), cover eggs with cold water and bring to boil. Once the water is boiling, turn the heat down to gentle simmer and boil for 3 minutes.

Trim back the woody ends of the asparagus and wrap the pancetta around the asparagus. Bake in preheated oven for 20 minutes at 220′c or until the pancetta is crispy. Serve.

A fact has occurred to Rilsta that she has way too many cookbooks that she rarely cooks from. Frankly, this face has never occurred to me. Not until I realised that I have bought over 8 cook books over the past two weeks. But let’s face it, the more the merrier, right? RIGHT!??!

The idea of this challenge is very Julie/Julia-esque. We cook at least one recipe from any one of our cookbooks a week over 52 weeks and we blog about these dishes. Each week, we carry a theme. A theme could be a cuisine (‘Japanese’), an ingredient (‘Eggs’), or something totally abstract (‘fire’) – the theme is designed to be as nonrestrictive as possible  so we can use our creativity to marry with our inventory of respected author’s work (also, I just don’t want to be roped into doing desserts because I suck at them)

We came up with some fifty-something ideas and pull them out of a hat (or rather an envelope) to assign these themes to each week. Personally, I would have just written a macro that randomly assigns them but Rilsta thought an old fashion way is more fun. Well, she is boss!  So Rilsta, Shellie, Agnes and I came up with themes and Shellie made us a funky logo and we’re away.

First week’s theme (starts next Monday) is citrus. I swear I dreamt about it last night. Sad huh?

More information, head over to Rilsta’s blog: My Food Trail.