• Home
• About
• Eating out
• Twitter
• Instagram
• Flickr
• RSS
• Admin

The week in brief

Posted on | February 12, 2012 | No Comments

This week: there’s not that much to see here. Apologies! Hey, have you entered my Better Homes and Gardens competition?

Read more

Competition: Better Homes and Gardens Live

Posted on | February 10, 2012 | 8 Comments

Long time readers will know this about me: my gardening skills suck. Need evidence of exactly how terrible a gardener I am? I once tried to grow cat grass and was unsuccessful. GRASS, folks. I couldn’t grow GRASS.

I keep trying though, because I live in hope that one day I will have a wonderful, lush, green garden to go with my effortlessly stylish, clean house.

Yes, I’ll keep dreaming.

Read more

Steer Bar and Grill

Posted on | February 7, 2012 | 15 Comments

Disclosure: We dined with Thanh, who is friends with the staff at Steer. The Chef put together a tasting menu for us. So – special treatment alert. However, we did pay for our meal.

This post is for all the beef lovers out there.

Steer opened just over a year ago, starting off as a steakhouse with a Brazilian influence. Since then, it has evolved into a New York steakhouse, obviously still with a focus on beef. Just after Christmas, Alastair and I had dinner there with Thanh, Michele, April and her hubby. With all our stomachs stretched from Chrissy, we were ready to eat ourselves some meat!

Read more

The week in brief

Posted on | February 5, 2012 | 9 Comments

This week: interesting skies, home cooking, stuff on skewers, seafood and steak.

Read more

Wayside Inn

Posted on | February 3, 2012 | 9 Comments

Disclosure: Alastair and I dined courtesy of Wayside Inn.

Located on a stretch of City Road that doesn’t seem to have much else around it, Wayside Inn was taken over late last year by the team behind Station Hotel. Being a big fan of Station Hotel (see posts here and here) I was pretty keen to check it out. And so when I was invited a bloggers dinner there before Christmas with stickifingers, Claire and Gem, I was a happy gal indeed.

Read more

Brioche

Posted on | February 1, 2012 | 2 Comments

Five reasons why brioche rocks:

1: Butter.
2: Butter.
3: Butter.
4: Butter.
5: Butter.

Need more convincing? Here’s five more reasons.

6: You can fill it with almost anything.
7: It justifies buying a stand mixer.
8: It can be sweet for dessert, or savoury for a snack.
9: It’s French for awesome. (I might’ve just made that up. Actually – I definitely made that up.)
10: It’s like bread, pastry and cake all mixed together.

Read more

The week in brief

Posted on | January 29, 2012 | 10 Comments

Happy Sunday! This week: mashed cauliflower, Australia Day picnic, mini burgers on brioche, ice cream cone cupcakes, and piggy piggy piggy on a spit.

This was dinner one night this week – I fried up some lamb rump steak, sauteed baby spinach and onions, and ate it with mashed cauliflower. Oh. My. Gosh. Mashed cauliflower is SO GOOD. The cauli was steamed until soft, and then I processed it in the food processor with a little bit of water, salt, pepper, and a teeny tiny amount (not even half a teaspoon) of coconut oil. I think… it is better than mashed potato. Yes, I swear it’s true. The small amount of coconut oil gave it a bit of fragrant nuttiness. I have a new love, mashed cauli is its name.

For Australia Day, we went to a picnic. (These aren’t my jandals. I’m not a jandal kinda gal.)

While at the park, an ice cream truck pulled up and *naturally* I wanted an ice cream. I really like trashy soft serve…

Whenever I go to a picnic, I seem to make mini brioche buns. This time I made meat patties from pork and beef mince and put together some mini burgers. They were delicious, natch.

I love making brioche – it’s so rewarding. Will blog the recipe soon.

I also took dessert along – chocolate ice cream cone cupcakes with Swiss meringue buttercream. Ah. Maze. Ing. Will also blog this soon. (Please ignore the fallen over cones in the background. I was devastated when they fell over in the car ride to the park. Devastated!)

Oh – hehee – here’s me with a massive box of chocolate.

I took Friday off to enjoy a four day weekend and headed into the city during the day. Yes, I visited Snag Stand yet AGAIN. I am obsessed. This time I tried the toulouse – with onions, rosemary mushrooms, truffle aioli and a brioche bun. It was delicious, tho (and I say this every time) the chilli dog is still the best so far.

That night we had dinner at Chillipadi in Flemington. I had teh peng – perfect for the hot night.

Alastair and I shared a roti telur, and I also ordered a nasi kerabu ayam percik. I’d never tried it before, and unfortunately I didn’t really like it. The chicken had a very floral note and wasn’t seasoned enough. Oh well! At least I tried something new.

Yesterday it was pigs and cider for Daz’s birthday. All guests were tasked with taking along a couple of kinds of cider for a cider tasting. Maz throws great parties, and she had clipboards all ready so we could score the ciders. Everyone’s clipboards had different quotes / sayings on the back. Apparently I like long walks on the beach and movies that make me cry – bhahaha.

There were three categories for cider tasting – pear, apple and fruit. We sampled and scored about 12 different ciders overall in blind tests. Alastair and I had to bring pear cider and we won our category. Whooohooo. Ours was the Napoleone & Co apple and pear cider which was slightly controversial because it wasn’t straight pear. Whatever. We deserved to win.

When all categories were judged and scored, there was a final taste test for the top over all cider. The people who brought the winning ciders weren’t allowed to vote so we wandered inside while the others choose their favourite.

And – ours won. YAY. Winner winner chicken dinner!

Warning: pig on a spit photos coming up. They look a bit macabre.

While cider was being consumed, the pig turned away on the spit.

And after eight hours of cooking over coals, it was finally ready to be eaten. And guess what? I got to take the head home! It’s currently sitting in the fridge – I haven’t decided how I’m going to deal with it yet. Any ideas?

Oh yeah, the piggy rocked.

Well, that was my week. How was yours?

Thomas Keller’s Fried Chicken

Posted on | January 23, 2012 | 11 Comments

I’m slightly obsessed with fried chicken at the moment.

There was fried chicken on my birthday last month.
There was fried chicken after Christmas thanks to I-Hua and her awesome man.
There was fried chicken at St Katherine’s the other week.
And finally, on Sunday we had a Fried Chicken Party.

Mazzle, Bro and I recently had an email conversation where we sent each other fried chicken recipes that we found online. From there, it was only a small step to planning a Fried Chicken Party. We decided that Maz would make a batch of chicken using the St Katherine’s recipe (KFC) while I decided to follow in the footsteps of I-Hua’s man and use a Thomas Keller recipe from Ad Hoc at Home.

Read more

The week in brief

Posted on | January 22, 2012 | 8 Comments

This week: ramen, West side representing, and Fried Chicken Party. Oh yeah!

Read more

Loam, Drysdale

Posted on | January 18, 2012 | 12 Comments

At the risk of sounding like a 90 year old – the modern world constantly impresses and delights me. Even though I grew up with so many technologies that we now take for granted, when I think about them they still amaze me. For example: GPS. We all know what GPS is, since it’s now an everyday thing, but have you ever thought about what’s involved in making it work? It’s a space-based global navigation satellite system – hello, SATELLITES in fricking SPACE. That tell you exactly where you are. If that’s not amazing, I don’t know what is.

However, even with all the wonders of technology, it’s not exactly foolproof. Case in point: last year we used the GPS to direct us to Loam in Portarlington. It sent us down a dirt road and then said, “You have arrived at our destination.”

Except… we were still in the middle of nowhere. We were definitely not at Loam.

Did we have the right address? Were we even in the right suburb? Where on earth were we?! (Well, the GPS told us, but could we trust the GPS?) We kept driving down the road, and then lo and behold: LOAM. We had arrived! (Mostly thanks to the GPS.)

Read more

keep looking »

Agenda Daily

Melbourne Restaurants & Deals powered by Agenda

Subscribe

Search

Recent Posts

• The week in brief
• Competition: Better Homes and Gardens Live
• Steer Bar and Grill
• The week in brief
• Wayside Inn

Archives

• February 2012
• January 2012
• December 2011
• November 2011
• October 2011
• September 2011
• August 2011
• July 2011
• June 2011
• May 2011
• April 2011
• March 2011
• February 2011
• January 2011
• December 2010
• November 2010
• October 2010
• September 2010
• August 2010
• July 2010
• June 2010
• May 2010
• April 2010
• March 2010
• February 2010
• January 2010
• December 2009
• November 2009
• October 2009
• SEARCH: