Unblogged

The Unblogged Files: May 2015

6/01/2015 10:41:00 PM

May Unblogged Files Time! You'd think things would have slowed down after the epicness of Sarah's Birth Month, but that was not the case! There were heaps of celebrations in May!

We celebrated my dad's birthday with dinner at Centonove (109 Cotham Road, Kew, 3101). Excellent food and great service. Blogpost to come!

Frangipane and blackberry tart with clotted cream - $16.50

For my friend Kimba's birthday, we cooked her a big roast lunch with all her favourites: roast pork rack with crackling, goosefat roast potatoes, petits pois à la française, and vanilla bean crème brûlée.

Kimba's birthday lunch

We celebrated the lovely Ashley's birthday with barbecue at Le Bon Ton (51 Gipps Street, Collingwood 3066). I liked it even more the second time around - blogpost coming soon.

Le Bon Ton

It was also Mothers' Day in May, and we cooked a special brunch for my mum. There were roast cherry tomatoes, garlic and butter mushrooms, hash browns, Peter Bouchier dry-cured streaky bacon, hash browns and scrambled eggs. Yum!

Mothers' Day Brunch

Scrambled eggs

It was also Sandra's birthday in May - hooray! She didn't want to have a big celebration, but definitely wanted a nice family meal. We had dinner at Bamboo Chopsticks (10 Mitchell St, Doncaster East VIC 3109). It's a favourite of my parents, and the food is awesome! I highly recommend ordering the yam / taro duck if it's on offer, as well as the spicy eggplant and minced pork, and the salty chilli chicken ribs. So basically everything.

Bamboo Chopsticks

And on her birthday itself, we visited our favourite cafe: Beatrix (688 Queensberry St, North Melbourne, VIC 3051)! I loved the meat-free ciabatta they had that day, The Kermit. (Roast broccoli, That's Amore buffalo mozzarella, parsley, green olives, aioli and preserved lemon). We shared a slice of ridiculous Helle's Belle cake (brown butter cocoa sponge, white chocolate mascarpone cream, pear jelly, poached doyenne pears, pear liqueur and cocoa glaze). As you can see, we also brought some cakes home to eat later. Heh. The cocoa meringue roulade was delicious!

Beatrix

And now returning to normal programming... here are some breakfasts. I was pretty slack this month - I managed a nice yogurt-granola-fruit combo a couple of times, but more often than not it was (unphotographed) toast, or quickly inhaling something at my desk. (The pancakes in the photo below were made by Sandra one Sunday and served with a fab lime-verjuice syrup and freshly ground coffee. Yay for weekends).

Figs, yogurt, granola
Pancakes with lime verjuice syrup
Tea and "Herman the German Friendship Cake" (made by my friend Amelia!

I also received a massive shipment of yogurt with steel-cut oats from Chobani this month (thanks guys!), so I had that for breakfast really often. (Maple-Banana is my fave flavour!)

Chobani delivery!

I also bought breakfast a couple of times.

Top left: Breakfast stack at Thrive
Top right: Egg and Bacon roll, Boroondara Farmers Market
Bottom row: Spiga Special; Eggs Benedict at Spiga (360 Elizabeth Street, Melbourne, VIC 3000)

As I mentioned in my last post, I've gotten into the habit of cooking a big batch of food on a Sunday evening to have lunches for the week. I think I've done pretty well with this, so I'm going to try and keep it up!

Top left: Baked bulgur with tomato, white wine and saffron sauce, kale and feta
Top right: Pork patties with zucchini noodles, roast broccoli and mashed sweet potato
Bottom left: Chickpea'd couscous with lamb backstrap
Bottom right: Spinach, kale and triple-cheese slab pie

As per previous months, I'm still only eating out once a week for lunch. Here are some work lunches that I bought!

Top left: Chilli wonton noodles, Dumpling King Melbourne Central
Top right: Beef burger, boiled egg, zucchini noodles, sweet potato bake, Thr1ve, Level 3 Emporium
Middle left: Vegetarian gyoza and iced green tea, Ramen-Ya, Emporium Basement
Middle right and bottom row: Xiao long bao, pan-fried pork dumplings, pork belly gua bao, New Shanghai, Level 3 Emporium

Homecooked dinners. As you can see, I tried to go for the "protein + vegetable side" meal quite often. (I think of this as a good starting point when I can't think of what to eat!)

Top left: Steamed salmon, roast broccoli, mashed potato
Top right: Lamb chops, chickpea salad, couscous, yogurt
Bottom left: Steak, steamed veggies, spinach salad
Bottom right: Salmon, steamed veggies

And here are some more comforting options:

Top left: Pumpkin risotto
Top right: Chilli con carne
Bottom left: Taiwanese meat sauce on rice
Bottom right: Beer-battered whiting and zucchini, potato salad, mushy peas

I did a couple of invited (i.e. complimentary) meals and events this month...

Burgers at Brother Burger and the Marvellous Brew (560 Chapel Street, South Yarra, VIC 3141). The burgers were really impressive - crispy bacon, juicy and crisp wagyu beef patty, excellent house-made pickles, and lightly toasted buns that didn't fall apart. Sandra declared these the best of the fancy burgers we've had in Melbourne, and I must say I agree.

The "Fair Dinkum" - 100% Wagyu beef patty, bacon, free-range egg, cheese, house-made pickles, BBQ sauce & mustard-mayo - $15.80

There was also a Cinco de Mayo dinner at Touché Hombre (233 Lonsdale Street, Melbourne VIC 3000). Tequila cocktails and tacos, wahey! The dinner was the launch their new menu, but I'm super glad that their fatty lamb ribs have stayed. Blogpost to come, but in the meantime you can read about my previous (and paid for) visit to Touché Hombre.

Fatty lamb ribs

I was also invited to the "Breaking the Rules" dinner at Woodland House (78 Williams Road, Prahran VIC 3181), as part of Good Beer Week. I was thrilled to be invited to this one - five courses with matching beers, specially put together by Woodland House's chefs and sommelier. It was such a great night! Can't wait to blog this and share it with you.

Squid, braised radicchio, lovage, dandelion
Dainton Family 'The Good Son' Golden Ale, Kialla, VIC

I did a little baking this month. I loved this plum and apple winter cake I made (adapted from Nigella's Winter Plum Cake in How to be a Domestic Goddess). I served it warm, with lashings of vanilla bean custard (leftover from Kimba's crème brûlées).

Winter Plum Cake

And Mary Berry's loaf cake with apple and cinnamon was very easy and wonderful with a cup of tea.

Mary Berry's Loaf Cake with Apple and Cinnamon

The lovely Mr and Mrs Food Trail hosted a pot luck at their place, which included no less than THREE chocolate cakes! Yum!

CHOCOLATE CAKES

My buddy Duncan had us over for lunch one weekend. Delicious home-made pretzels, Krautsalat and Kartoffelsalat. Oh so lecker!

Pretzels!

And speaking of lovely friends being generous with time and food... my coworker Frank arrived from Germany this month, laden down with Milka treats! Yay! Those Choco Break biscuits (mit Haferflocken!) are off the hook! Cannot wait to go to Germany again and stock up!

Milka

My dad also arranged a stealth delivery of ricotta fritters from Pure Italian (249B Belmore Road, North Balwyn, VIC 3104) after I gushed about them on Instagram. Thank-you dad!

Ricotta fritters, Pure Italian

I did Friday night drinks at Merchant Osteria Venezia (525 Collins Street, Melbourne, VIC 3000) one night. Campari cocktails and complimentary aperitivo for the win.

Aperitivi - the mortadella was awesome!

Front: Negroni sbagliato
Back: Some sloe-gin based drink, whatever

Apropos of drinks, Monkey King Bar (360 Elizabeth Street, Melbourne VIC 3000) does $12 espresso martinis during happy hour. You're welcome.

Espresso Martini - $12

I discovered a new cafe this month, Khopcha Coffee (53-61 Toorak Road, South Yarra, VIC 3141). I was in the area for an appointment, and was pleasantly surprised by the great coffee and really friendly owners. Yay.

Magic at Khopcha

Finally, presented without comment. Just a few coffees at Plantation (Shop 253, Level 2, Melbourne Central, 300 LaTrobe Street, Melbourne VIC 3000).

Plantation

Plans for June: A couple of low-key catch-ups with friends, a friend's bridal shower, and a trip to Merimbula!

You Might Also Like

2 comments

  1. I couldn't stop staring at that roast pork rack until I spied your winter plum cake. YUM!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Wow you and your peeps do birthdays well with lots of food! :D

    ReplyDelete

CONTACT ME

My email address is sarahcooks [at] hotmail [dot] com.