Spatula, Spoon and Saturday

Note: This is a scheduled post. I am off having a baby!

I have visited the Pacific Seafood BBQ House twice. Both times just for a quick lunch or a very early dinner on week days so I can’t comment on what the service would be like when the place is packed. And from all that I have heard, this place does get rather packed and it is one of the more popular restaurants on the Victoria Street eating strip in Richmond.

(complimentary broth day #1)

The dining room is sparse, no frills decor with a roaring takeaway on the roast meat selection that hang just inside the glass window. A waiter came by and deposited a little bowl of broth and a pot of tea for me before taking the order.

(complimentary broth day #2)

As the roasts seem to be the goer around here and there is usually a line of people queuing to take away the roast meats home, I decided on the roast duck and roast pork belly noodles (dry). Read the rest of this entry »

Note: this is a scheduled post, I’m off having a baby!

This was a pure farmers’ market cook-up. I love farmers’ markets but I find it really hard to get out of bed early enough on a Saturday (that’s when my local farmers’ market is on) to be there when the nice veggies are still there. They usually sell out if I get there at about 11am. Anyway, one day we managed to rock up there relatively early by my standard (about 10!) and because it was wet and rainy and flooded, all the lovely veggies were still there and naturally I went nuts and we basically ate veggies for the rest of the week.

Which was probably not a bad thing! Anyway I also scored some lovely super duper free-range-pigs-flying-made-in-the-air-organic pancetta as well and hence this dish was conceived.

Read the rest of this entry »

(Antipasto plate – $18 as of ’09)

Note: pictures are from various visits over the years. So I might be a bit hazy with the description.

Be prepared for the upcoming gushing. The Cellar Bar is probably one of my all-time favourite Melbourne haunts. Sure, I’ve been to its big brothers Grossi Florentino: the Restaurant (where Josh proposed, now everyone, go awww) and the Grill but neither of them impressed me the way the Cellar Bar does and continues to do so over the years.

It’s a place we go back to when we find ourselves wandering in the CBD and want a nice meal for not a lot of money. It’s the place we go to for dessert and coffee at 11pm at night.

(Complimentary bread and dipping olive oil)

The menu at the Cellar Bar seems rotate itself around with a few pasta dishes and meat. I am yet to have a horrid dish from there and believe me, as much as I am against visiting the same restaurant over and over, we still manage to end up there 5-6 times a year. Read the rest of this entry »

These are the savoury muffins I made for our Melbourne Cup Day picnic at the Canterbury Gardens. I personally don’t quite understand the races I am happy for any excuse for a day off. We ended up going to the Canterbury Gardens and feasted on these little muffins, garden salad, chicken and beetroot sandwiches, best-ever scones*, fresh strawberry ‘jam’ and my homemade lemonade. We even missed the drizzle and got all the sunshine hours. Bliss.

This recipe was based loosely on Stephanie Alexander’s American Muffin from the Cook’s Companion.

Muffins for the Race Day

(Makes 6 muffins or 12 mini muffins – this recipe uses standard Australian measurements.)

1. 220 g. self-raising flour
2. 3/4 cup milk or buttermilk
3. 1 egg
4. 3/4 cup vegetable oil (not strong-flavoured like extra virgin olive)
5. pinches of salt and pepper, to taste
6. 1/4 red capsicum, diced into very small pieces
7. 1/4 block of feta, diced into very small pieces
8. 2 rindless rashers of bacon

Note the capsicum, feta and bacon should come to about 100g all up.

Preheat oven to 180′c. Whisk together the wet ingredients (milk/buttermilk, egg and oil) together until combined. Add dry ingredients and mix together just until combined. Do not overmix as this will toughen the muffins. Bake in non-stick muffin tins for about 20-30 minutes. Leave to cool before attempting to remove the muffins from the tin otherwise they stick!

This recipe has also appeared on my new blog, With What We Have. It won’t be a food porn blog like this one but I hope you’ll find it interesting.

This time last year I made: A Most Excellent Rogan Josh and Saffron Rice

* Coming soon to Spatula, Spoon and Saturday. Soonish. Some time. Promise.