Spatula, Spoon and Saturday

Ah. Centre Place. Who doesn’t love it? A tiny and cramp laneway full of graffiti art and sandwich shops. LOTS of sandwich shops. In fact, this is this place should probably be named Sandwich Place. Either that or Copper Lane due to heavy lunching police presence from the cop shop up the street.

Centre Place has to be one of my favourite Melbourne sights. It often gets overlooked by weekend tourists and suburbanite Victorians because this laneway is only hip and happening, or rather, full of sandwiches, on weekdays in the morning into early afternoon with most shops starting to wind down at around 3pm.

(Tandoori chicken focaccia – $7-$8?)

Centro Espresso Caffe is situated in an ideal position of the corner of Centre Place and Flinders Lane. A perfect spot for people watching. That is, if you actually get a spot. The space here (and any other shops on Centre Place) is absolute premium and many people buy their toasted sandwiches to takeaway.

I have had a few sandwiches from Centro Espresso Caffe and found them to be a decent balance between taste, portion, price and choices. Centro usually has 3-4 different types of sandwiches in wraps or focaccia plus a few choices of salads. They also have the ‘home-style’ simpler sandwiches like curried egg and salad sandwiches with square breads.

(left – chicken and pasta salad, right – garden salad)

On the day these photos were taken, I ordered salami focaccia which was filled with a few slices of grilled eggplant, olives capsicum, semi-dried tomato, cheese and salad leaves. I had it toasted. It was decent and filling. In fact, I normally struggle to finish a sandwich from here which meant I had the leftovers to nibble on later in the afternoon when three thirty-itis hit.

Josh ordered the tandoori chicken sandwich which had a few slices of bland tandoori chicken typical of the tandoori chicken that is the sandwich filling variety rather than actual smokey, spicy tandoori chicken you get at your local Indian. It was covered in yoghurt sauce, cheese and had a few slices of tomato and salad leaves. It was also toasted. Surprisingly, it was quite all right. This would be the one sandwich I personally wouldn’t order myself but it was fine. Read the rest of this entry »

Note: Lots of pictures in this post. Sorry about the load time.

(Seriously)

King’s Creek Station is a bit of a tourist spot on the way to Watarrka National Park (King’s Cayon), they have a service station with a diner, helicopter rides, quad bikes and camel rides. All of which were very expensive by Melbourne standard. We went off to see the beautiful King’s Canyon at Watarrka National Park, which was amazing. Unfortunately, due to lack of choices in lunch, we stopped there for quick steak sandwiches.

(steak sandwich with the lot – $12.00)

The beef was a bit of a piece of tough old boot really. At one point when we were talking about camel riding, Mum stopped chewing and asked, ‘Um, what kind of meat is this? It’s not camel, is it?’

The ‘lot’ included fried egg, bacon, cheese, caramelised onion, tomato, lettuce, tomato and barbecue sauces. I’d say it was rather yummy despite the really tough bit of beef. But then again, it was 2pm and we had been hiking through King’s Canyon. We were starving!

And now for some obligatory pictures from the Uluru-Kata Tjuta and Watarrka National Parks:

The Uluru (Ayer’s Rock) at sun set

In chronological order:

Kata Tjuta (the Olgas)

The Uluru (up close)

(Yes, the tiny dots are the people)

King’s Canyon

Don’t have too many pictures from King’s Canyon without people in it:

And then we headed on to the town of Alice Springs. Ah, the Alice.

I have decided I’ll write all about my recent trip to Central Australia all in one go. Otherwise, we’d end up in with the Japanese situation, where we went for our honeymoon way back last Christmas and I’m yet to finish writing up about it.

We left Coober Pedy bright and early next morning after sleeping underground for the night (it was so amazingly warm and it was the first time in months I didn’t have to wear a jumper), we headed back on the Sturt Highway.

Not having a full kitchen (but with toaster, kettle and microwave), we had simple breakfast of toasts with various toppings. I boiled up some eggs for Mum in the microwave, Josh had a banana sandwich and I had jam and Colby cheese.

(Fueling up in Outback Australia = expensive exercise)

Just as we approached Lasseter Highway at around 11.30am, we decided to pop by at the Erldunda Roadhouse for a quick lunch and refuel.

Unfortunately, there wasn’t many hot food options available yet – saved for the curried sausage and fried rice. There was also a collection of deep-fried things like chips, dim sims, potato cakes, and chicken strips.

We settled on a small serving of curried sausage and fried rice. Mainly because my stomach wasn’t quite ready for roadhouse burgers yet. The curried sausages were extremely average and so was the fried rice which was clearly loaded with yesterday’s left over roast and yesterday’s side vegetables.

I also grabbed a box of mixed salad ($6.50) to share: it had cold chicken, cheese, tomato, cucumber, lettuce and fragments of sprouts plus some potato salad on the side. It was passable although the salad was quite nice and fresh. Came with a squeezy Masterfood Italian dressing, which was of course, horrid.

I also bought two strips of sweet chilli chicken. One of my favourite junk foods. I love how they just tasted the same everywhere I went. So that was a real redeeming feature of this meal.

Josh also made himself a schnitzel sandwich from last night’s leftover parma and some lettuce on our favourite rye bread.

And then we drove on towards the Ayer’s Rock campground so we could get there to set up our tents before the sun sets.

My breakfast the next day after we left Adelaide:

Fried eggs, bacon and salad (who says fried breakfast can’t be healthy?) Pretty much the same ingredients from the night before. Josh had settled on banana on toast and Mum on the leftover fried rice.

I fried up the bacon first and ended up with a lot of bacon fat, which I fried the eggs in. Hmmm. Bacon fat. I then scrambled a few eggs together, add a touch of soy sauce and made omelet. I also threw in the leftover bacon – only the rindless part though. The streaky bits would have been wrong eaten cold!

After we left Adelaide (ridiculously early, might I add), we headed onto the Stuart Highway on our way to Coober Pedy and had lunch somewhere along the way at one of the rest stops. It was amazing how the trees just disappeared.

(That’s Josh. Not me.)

We had the leftover bacon fried rice, the uber spicy, a bit of the left over salad and some sandwiches. It was a bit of a smorgasbord really.

(Josh’s invention #1: lemon & pepper tuna, tomato and Colby cheese on rye bread)

(Josh’s invention #2: omelet and bacon sandwich)

The strawberries were gone by lunch time. But the lovely cherries were still there:

I found Siamese twin cherries! Hehe.

And then we drove on to the dusty little mining town called Coober Pedy.

I spent the past week driving from Melbourne to Alice Springs and back. We spent a lot of time on the road! We packed ourselves a whole bunch of things to take along because we knew we would have little time to do food shopping along the way.

But for a start, our very first lunch stop in Horsham in a gorgeous park by the river after a few hours of driving.

(spicy prawn bamboo shoot stir-fry with loads of chilli and garlic, I call it ‘the uber spicy’)

Mum made her specialty: prawns and bamboo shoots stir-fry. It was uber hot. It had, like, 10 great red hot chillis in it. That will now be what I call this dish: the uber spicy. It was very yummy though. She pounded some really hot red chillis together with some garlic and salt. Fried the paste in hot oil (warning: will cause tears), add tinned bamboo shoots, prawns and spring onions. It was then flavoured with fish sauce and a chicken stock cube.

(I packed some rice to have with the uber spicy)

Josh took one bite of the uber spicy and decided that while it was very nice, it was way too hot for him. So he settled for a banana sandwich instead, which was buttered rye bread with banana.

(banana sandwich)

I found some really nice strawberries so I brought them along. They were the juiciest, sweetest strawberries I had had in a long time.

These strawberries were gorgeous! The last time I had strawberries this good, I was in Japan and paid a lot for those famous Japanese strawberries.

I also had some cherries. I also found some lovely seedless grapes at an Asian grocery store in Glen Waverley by accident as well as a bunch of really nice pink lady apples and mandarins. Needless to say, this trip to the desert was hardly lacking in the fruit supply!

And then we continued on to our destination for the day, Adelaide.