Waffles with hot chicken wings

My first "Featured Dish" in over a year!

Rumbled eggs with pancetta & truffle pecorino on griddled Dr. Marty's crumpets

This brunch dish from Stables of Como is one of the best things I've eaten all year. These pictures are from a brunch we had quite a few months ago, and the menu does seem to change quite regularly, but luckily the rumbled eggs have stayed.

Grilled crumpets are topped with creamy creamy eggs and a generous sprinkling of truffled pecorino - the truffle flavour is present, but not overpowering. Crisp batons of pancetta and chives complete the dish. It is generous and indulgent, but also well balanced. So delicious!!

Rumbled eggs with pancetta & truffle pecorino on griddled Dr. Marty's crumpets

EDIT: After reading Lorraine's comment below, I just had to Google - apparently "rumbled eggs" is a 19th century term for scrambled eggs, and are made by cooking beaten eggs, cream or milk, butter and a little water, either in a saucepan or in a double boiler.

Stables of Como
Lechlade Ave
Como House & Garden
Cnr Williams Road
South Yarra VIC 3141
Ph: (03) 9827 6886
Website

Bagel of awesomeness

A new featured dish: my favourite noodles ever!


Hills BBQ in Box Hill is famous for its roast meats, but if you can tear yourself away from the glorious sight of the shiny lacquered ducks, the crispy roast pork, and the glossy chickens hanging in the window, may I suggest you check out their menu of noodle and rice dishes?

The beef on fried noodles (AKA ngow yok chow minh) is my favourite dish at Hills - well, one of my favourite dishes anywhere! I love them so very much. Only $8.50 for a massive plate, and they always come out steaming hot and deeelicious. The best part of these, for me, are the noodles themselves: the fried egg noodles are crunchy in parts, with those in the middle going delightfully soggy from soaking up the flavoursome sauce. Add crunchy fresh gai laan and a generous amount of beef slices, and you are in flavour country!

My family has been ordering this dish for at least the last decade and it's always been great. (Yay for consistency!) My brother, especially, craves it when he's been away for a while.

Side note: I had a little fangirl freakout moment when Sami Tamimi replied to my (non-Ottolenghi-related) tweet about these noodles. Woo!


(I'm assuming he meant looks "delicious", hehe).

Hills BBQ
586 Station St
Box Hill VIC 3128
Ph: (03) 9899-3382

The last time I did a "Featured Dish" post (St. Ali's incredible Bo Peep!), I said I'd be trying to do one every Monday - and that was four weeks ago! Whoops! As I'm sure you've gathered, this past month has seen me blog less frequently than I usually like to: moving house meant three whole weeks without proper internet, there was that little trip to Sydney, and I started my new job. It's been CRAY-CRAY! Now I'm settling into my new routine, I finally have the time for many more blogposts, and I'm looking forward to getting back to my usual blogging levels. Yay!

Snag Stand, Melbourne Central, with the Currywurst sign circled - why so hidden away?

Obviously, I loved it, primarily for the novelty of being able to buy Currywurst here, but it tasted good too! I thought the sausage itself was of high quality and very tasty.

The Currywurst seemed very inauthentic though, with Aussie-style thick cut chips, and not nearly as much ketchup as the Currywursts I've had in Germany. (See my Berlin 2006 post for an example!) However, I do think that Germans (and West Europeans in general) have a higher tolerance for sauce-soaked foods than we do. It was, surprisingly, incredibly spicy (i.e. the level of heat you'd normally find in Szechuan noodle soups like Dan Dan Mien), rather than having that mild curry flavour that seems so popular in Germany. I love hot food, so I was happy with this, but unless you really, really like very hot food, you might struggle. I wonder if this was intentional or a mistake? Either way, I liked it!  Apparently you can also request curry ketchup on normal hot dogs (i.e. the ones with buns), not just as part of the Currywurst, so get to it!

Snag Stand
Cnr La Trobe & Swanston St
Melbourne VIC 3000
Ph: (03) 9639 6544
Website

Yay, another featured dish!  I'm going to attempt to post these up every Monday morning from now on - a little inspiration for the week ahead!


I had the Bo Peep at St. Ali a short while ago, when I was invited to try out their new menu. If you've been to St. Ali before, (and I'm sure that means most of you), you'll know that the portions can be very generous, and between the two of us, we only managed to try two items from the new menu. I must admit we weren't very impressed by the Friends with Benefits waffle stack ($18.50), which came out lukewarm, drenched in syrup and was overpoweringly sweet. However, I totally adored the Bo Peep. Adored it!

The day we visited, it happened to be blisteringly cold and wet, and this hearty dish really hit the spot. There were generous pieces of tender slow-cooked lamb and chunks of potatoes and carrots, all in a gorgeously rich gravy. I loved the generous garnish of flat leaf parsley, and the textural interest provided by crisp chickpeas. Reading the menu description of "pan fried chickpeas", I thought they'd be ordinary soft chickpeas heated through in a pan, but they were more like crisp little bar snacks - an unexpected, but totally welcome component.

I thought of it as a homely dish, done in a sophisticated way - a really excellent meal.

St Ali
12-18 Yarra Place
South Melbourne VIC 3205
Ph: (03)9686 2990
Website

Sarah and Sandra ate lunch as guests of St. Ali.

Hello hello! Welcome to a new segment here on my blog: the Featured Dish. Basically, these are going to be short, sharp posts highlighting a truly excellent dish that I've enjoyed and want to share with you all. Cheap, expensive, savoury, sweet, whatever - the only criteria I'm setting for myself are that it needs to be something available for purchase (i.e. not something home cooked), and that I need to absolutely love it.

So, without further ado... here is my first featured dish!



I saw this dish on Twitter one afternoon, thought it looked amazing, and swiftly arranged to have brunch at Goldilocks the next day.

There's a fantastic balance of textures and flavours on the plate: two perfectly poached, soft eggs are coated in a thin layer of panko crumbs and deep fried, to make a great crispy, edible shell. (Shell, hah! Get it?) Eggs, of course, love salt, which is provided by a smear of miso purée, as well as a light sprinkling of sea salt. Finally, the salad of thinly shaved raw asparagus adds a lovely lightness to the fried eggs and intense savoriness of the miso.

Mmm... gooey eggs

I thought it was a delicious, creative, and well-executed meal, which made a fabulous light lunch.