It’s late in the season and the blackberries are almost over. I love this time of year. It’s a time for blackberry and apple pie. And jam making, a wonderful way to preserve any fruit. We used to stomp through blackberry bushes making prickly mazes, hooking far flung fruit with walking sticks collected from dead relatives. We’d return home grazed, pricked and with purple fingers and lips from scoffing the sweet fruit. Jam making should be simple – for most […]
Recent posts
The great Easter bun hunt
I love this time of the year because I can indulge in hot cross buns. I love their spiceness combined with the sweetness of raisins on soft buns. Naturally, things have come a long way since I first ate them as a kid toasted, spread with a thick chunk of butter (we always at Lurpak slightly salted in those days) with home made blackberry jam and indoctrinated by Catholic brothers. Nowadays there are so many variations from chocolate chip to […]
A Temple that needs more spice
It’s very hip. It’s dark like a nightclub with individual lamps over each table illuminating the food. Not so dark that you could get away with the kind of nefarious under table hand shuffling that was reported in the defunct Bistro Guillaume bar that previously occupied the basement space. But dark enough to make any food photography futile. I could be anywhere in the world, but I’m in Melbourne in the basement dining room in Crown Casino insulated from the […]
Busting the great Pellegrini’s myth
People love Pellegrini’s Espresso Bar. It’s because of the atmosphere and the 1950s charm. It’s a great place to hang out and watch the top end of Bourke Street go by – as long as you are not eating or drinking coffee. If you have anything more ambitious than a glass of water (alcohol isn’t served) you’ll be disappointed because the food and the coffee are also both stuck in the 1950s. But the place is packed, so why would […]
Cibi: a cafe and a gallery by any other name
Cibi: try the green tea muffins Cibi is a cafe that thinks it’s a gallery. Actually, it is a gallery and regularly holds openings to launch the various (mainly kitchen) products it imports (mainly) from Japan. Housed in a modern warehouse building on Keele St, the Cibi space features a large open kitchen and grunge cafe mixing found objects and mismatched tables and chairs with a minimalist feel – if that makes sense. It’s the brainchild of former architecture nut […]
The wonder of Arzak
Restaurants are fickle things with short life spans. Even the most successful often close at their peak. But, in this world, Arzak Restaurant in Spain’s San Sebastián has been a constant since it was established in 1897. And what is more remarkable is that, four generations later, it is still in the Arzak family’s hands and has held a prestigious three Michelin stars since 1989. Today, the latest generation of Arzaks in the kitchen is Elena, who works in tandem […]
Shades of brown at The Spaghetti Tree
Fresh fish doesn’t smell. The seafood crepe ($17) at The Spaghetti Tree smelt acrid, of ammonia. I didn’t even want to taste it and one mouthful was enough to put me off the food for the evening. It was awful in smell, taste, texture and presentation and left barely touched by the three of us. An awkward yeast infection was mentioned and before even the garlic bread ($6.50) could arrive, halfway through our mains, the seafood crepe was renamed the […]
Bompas and Parr’s art of jelly
Meet the jellymongers, Sam Bompas and Harry Parr. The old Eton College pals have taken the UK party scene by storm with their flamboyant jellies, bow ties and jelly-stained trousers. Whether it’s flooding the ground floor of a stately home to make a giant cocktail navigable only by boat, or inspiring the world’s top architects to make jelly, the jellymongers recently also enchanted Melbourne with their brightly coloured, often alcoholic, and very wobbly creations. They whipped up funeral jellies for […]
Simple beetroot, carrot and goats cheese salad
A salad fit for @tammois’ pagan house burning tonight. One of the secrets of good cooking is to know how to pack flavour into a dish. In the bad old days of my childhood the school dinner lady boiled the crap out of beetroot and doused it in some kind of industrial vinegar. Needless to say I hated this particular root vegetable. But now I’ve come to love it. First, I don’t cook it but roast the beet, which concentrates […]