Taste Of Melbourne '09

Some people like the whole Taste of Melbourne concept, some don't. I'm one of the people that do. Compared to events like the Melbourne Food and Wine show, Taste is a million times better, in my opinion. The food and wine show is like a room full of those ladies that you see in the supermarket, offering you tastes of the latest Kan Tong Simmer Sauce, or Chicken Tonight.

Boring, if you ask me! And if you're against the whole mainstream foodie event, you could head to your local farmer's market or out of town to some of Melbourne's great producers.


I, however, don't mind a bit of a mainstream event like Taste. I think it's a really cool idea-being able to walk around and sample food from some of Melbourne's best restaurants. Sure there are quite a few missing and sure the quality and atmosphere is not going to be what it is in the real restaurant, but you get the idea. It can also help you decide whether or not you actually want to visit the real restaurant. Chances are, if they're going to give you a tiny, flavourless morsel at Taste, you're pretty likely going to get the same thing, when you visit in person.


I was lucky enough to get a couple of free passes from Spread My Butter (thanks!). We thought we would visit tonight (Thursday) as it was probably going to be the quietest session (well, tonight and Friday Lunch). We were right. While there was still quite a few people wandering around, it was by no means crowded and never any lines for any of the stalls (that we encountered, anyway).

You would think The Press Club if any of them would have had a queue, but the stands were well staffed and then only wait was a couple of minutes for your food, once you had ordered. Speaking of The Press Club, George Calmobares was on hand for photos and autograph signings. As was his Masterchef counterpart - Gary Mehigan. Most of the other chefs were there too, such as Frank Camora, Toby Puttock, Dallas Cuddy, etc. All of them were up the front and chatting to foodies, fans and whoever else wanted a chat.


The main difference I noticed from the last Taste of Melbourne I went to, were that the servings were much larger than before. Our first couple of plates were the Souvlaki and Saganaki dishes from The Hellenic Republic stand. After eating those, we were already half full!

Slow Roasted 'Berkshire' Pork belly, in the Style of Porchetta, with Lentil Du Puy & Salsa Verde - Fifteen
Lentils were VERY, VERY undercooked. I would have taken it back had I not have been talked out of it. The Pork was tasty, but nothing special there. No crispy crackling, which you'd expect at Fifteen, either.

Slow Cooked Cuttlefish with Chorizo and Chick Peas - Movida
I'd never had Cuttlefish before. It kind of has the texture of a thick piece of fat, except with a fishy taste. At first this dish was a bit weird on the palate, but I did warm to it. The chorizo was the highlight.

Seafood 'hotdog' with Corn Relish and Avocado - Oyster Little Bourke
This is one ugly dish! There was no recognisable fish in there, either. Based on this dish, I won't be going to Oyster in a hurry.

Lamb Souvlaki - Hellenic Republic
This was my favourite dish of the evening. Very slow cooked lamb with homemade chips in Souvlaki Bread. So nice to eat and I think there was a little horseradish in there, too. I can now never go back to the Souvlaki King.

Saganaki with Peppered Figs - Hellenic Republic
Another highlight of the evening. Stretchy, chewy Saganaki, with sweet figs, which were a little bit spicy from said Pepper. Delicious!

Pave' of Valhrona Chocolate with Burnt Orange Cream and Candied Cumquat - Botanical
This was very rich, nice Pave. The Orange Cream was so thick it wouldn't come off the plate. Stay away from that cumquat. No joy there.


Chocolate, Honeycomb & Salted Caramel Crunch, Circa- The Prince
Like a liquid cake with a weird textured chocolate at the base. Kind of a cross between a milkshake and a trifle. Worth a try.

One qualm that I did have, was that the whole night we were looking to buy a bottle of water, or some other non-alcoholic beverage. We couldn't find any at all. Might be an idea to have some soft drinks available for people that are driving or that don't drink.

Overall, we had an excellent night out - we spent $64 out of our $80 worth of crowns that we purchased. ($1 = 1 x crown). With our leftover crowns, we bought 2 cheeses from the Yarra Valley Cheese stall to take home. Thanks again to Spread My Butter for the tickets!

Casa Iberica's Portuguese Custard Tarts

25 Johnston Street Fitzroy 9419 4420

If you've never been to Casa Iberica, it's basically the Spanish version of the Italian Mediterranean Importers in Sydney Rd. Casa Iberica is located in Johnston St, Fitzroy, just near Nicholson St.

They sell everything from Paella Pans, Chorizo, Cheeses and the prized Spanish Jamon. As well as selling all that Spanish goodness, they also sell these delicious little goodies - Portuguese Custard Tarts. These are the best Custard Tarts available in this town. They are baked in the most delicious puff pastry which is both crispy and slightly soft at the same time. The custard isn't too sweet, has a little hint of vanilla and has a nice little skin on the top. Everyone I've introduced these tarts to has fallen in love with them and keep asking me to get them more! You must try them, you must!!

A little word of warning though, I've noticed these little goodies tend to sell out by the afternoon, so try to get in there early if you can.

Babka's Egg Loaf

358 Brunswick Street, Fitzroy, +61 3 9416 0091

When I've slept in on a weekend and I can't be bothered cooking breakfast, one of my favourite things to grab is a Egg Loaf from Fitzroy's Babka. This slightly sweet loaf is just so nice and even better if you manage to get them still warm and just baked. You don't need to do anything special to it, you don't even need to toast it. Just whack some jam on it, I prefer home made Apricot Jam and you've got your breakfast done. At $4, you can't go wrong for an easy way to start the day! ...and despite what that guy from 'The Breakfast Blog' says, I love the service at Babka!

Stay tuned for my review on Babka's Hot Cross Buns, which year after year, have people lined up down the street (even on weekday mornings) waiting for them!

El Fayha Sweets

648 Sydney Road, Brunswick Ph 03 9386 9674

After visiting A1 Bakery, we decided to cross the road and pay a visit to El Fayha Sweets. Their window claims that they have the “best Lebanese sweets in Melbourne.”
And you know what? I think they’re right. Inside this quaint shop, you’ll find a little Lebanese man sitting behind a counter, covered with various, Lebanese pastries.
Having never tried Lebanese sweets before I asked a lady who was waiting, which were the best to try. She said that she swears by the Pistachio version. Now to me, all the sweets basically looked the same; pastries, smothered in honey and sprinkled with nuts, the only difference being the shapes. From what I could tell, you are actually charged by the weight of the cakes you purchase. Some people before us actually bought $100 worth and another $50 worth! We asked for $10 worth of mixed pastries. The little man looks like he has been there for years- so much so, he didn’t even need to weigh our purchase.

When we got home and finally tasted the sweet little treats, there was little difference between the flavours of each different shaped pastry. One of them had some Turkish delight at the bottom, which was the main difference. Another had a little more honey than the other. Even though they all tasted almost all the same, they were all delicious. Very sweet, sticky, yet crunchy at the same time. The little old Lebanese man seems to have this sweet treat making thing down pat!

A1 Bakery

643 - 645 Sydney Rd, Brunswick, VIC. 3056 Phone: +61 3 9386 0440

Right in the middle of our very own Middle East- Sydney Rd Coburg, you’ll find A1 Bakery. A Middle Eastern Food Store, where you’ll find everything from Rose Water to vats of Olive Oil. Set at the back of the food store is a very busy bakery, which sells breads, pizzas and more. The prices here are cheap, REALLY cheap… and the food is great! When we visited I got myself a Sausage Pizza ($4.50 from memory), which was flavoured in tomato, olives and a spicy sausage, then covered in cheese. Crunchy around the edges and just soft enough in the middle, delicious. We also tried the Spinach and Feta Cheese Pie, ($3 from memory also) which was really tasy, but the liquid from the spinach had made the bottom of the pastry a little too soggy. Not to worry, it’s good, healthy, interesting, cheap, food.

Trout Fishing at Marysville Trout and Salmon Farm

Last Sunday while visiting the Yarra Valley (yes, again!) we thought that it would be cool to visit the Marysville Trout and Salmon Farm for a spot of fishing. After paying our $3.50 entry fee, we were originally planning on catching a Salmon. The salmon was $18kg, which doesn't sound too bad, but the guy who worked there told us that you could catch a salmon anywhere from 1kg - 4kg. We kind of feared the thought of catching a 4kg salmon, which would have cost almost $80, so we headed for the Trout ponds instead, where the fish were $11kg and significantly smaller. Now, you'd think that catching a fish at a farm would be really easy, but it actually took us 2 hours to catch a fish. If you're worried about having to kill the fish yourself, the guys there will actually kill it for you and then clean it.


The fish that we caught weighed 1kg, so we were off home to cook up our freshly caught Trout.I found quite a simple recipe in a Jamie Oliver book, which was basically lemon thyme bashed up in a mortar and pestle with some good olive oil and then rubbed all over the inside and outside of the fish. We also put some lemon and more thyme sprigs inside the fish's cavity.


We cut some thick slices of lemon and poked some bay leaves inside the lemons. I then laid the fish on top of the lemons keeping it off the tray so the fish would cook from underneath and also take on some of the lemon flavoured steam. I also parboiled some potatoes, sliced them up and then browned them in a pan with some salt and olive oil.

Throw in some nice, fresh rocket, dressed with some more lemon and olive oil and you've got just about the freshest dinner you could want and nothing could be more satisfying that knowing you caught it yourself. I'd never really had much trout before, but it was delicious, so soft and melting apart in your mouth. Not too many bones to pick out and the ones that were there were quite large.

Beechworth Bakery and Chandon Winery, Yarra Valley

I love the Yarra Valley, I’d move here if I could, but for the moment, I’m going to have to settle for the occasional day trip up there. After visiting the Werribee Harvest Picnic a few weeks ago, I noticed a sign that said there was a Farmers Market on in Yering this weekend, so I thought I’d drive up and check it out.
Unfortunately, I hadn’t bothered to actually check out where this farmers market exactly was and when we got there, I couldn’t actually find it. Oh well, I wasn’t too fussed, it was a great day, not a cloud in the sky (only smoke from the fires) so we thought we check out Healesville for a few hours.


Last time we were up here, we noticed that the Beechworth Bakery was building a branch of their famous Bakeries up here, so we thought we’d see if it was finished and that it was.
The bakery at the end of the main street is a country inspired building with a modern feel. It’s a huge place, which has both indoor and outdoor seating – even it’s own car park.
Since I was planning on having breakfast at the farmers market, I had an empty stomach, so I thought here was a good a place as any to fill up.
I had a Cheese and Spinach roll to start with. These can often be a bit hit and miss, often being dry and tasteless and all too often un-seasoned. Not this one though. This one was very moist, with perfect seasoning and soft crunchy pastry.


Being the ‘guts’ that I am, I then ordered a Chicken and Leek Pie. Unfortunately, unlike the Cheese and Spinach rolls, this pie was very, very dry. I needed to have a glass of water just to wash down each mouthful! However, apart from the lack of moisture, the taste was there and the pastry was nice too.


Now, even though it was mid-morning, I thought, after stuffing my face with pies and rolls, I would treat myself to dessert. I spotted something which looked so gorgeous and had a great name – the Snickerdoodles! I’m sure I’d heard of these before, I think Nigella has them in one of her books. Basically they are kind of Custard Tarts topped with super fresh raspberries and drizzles with sugar syrup. I absolutely LOVED these things. I wish I had of saved my money and bought another 5 of these instead of wasting precious tummy space on the pies and rolls!


I definitely recommend picking up one of these little gems if you’re anywhere near on of the Beechworth Bakeries around regional Victoria.
Next we dropped by K&B (Kitchen and Butcher), the new shop owned by the guys who own the Healesville Hotel. It’s a great little specialty food store with all your standard specialty cheeses, pantry products, kitchen tools, etc. It also literally doubles as a butcher shop, selling the best of local meats. While I was there I picked up some lovely fresh eggs from the Harvest Farm and also some Pomegranate Molasses, which will come in handy with my Ezard Challenge.


On our way home, we stopped off at Chandon Winery. This place is probably the most beautiful place I have ever visited in Victoria.

Everything is perfect, from the lush green grass to the hundreds of rows of the curly, whispy grape vines. They water their gardens with dam water from the property, so it’s one of the few places around where everything is still green.
We took a seat in the tasting room and Rach ordered the Sparkling Wine taster, which consisted of 4 half glasses of Chandon’s signature sparkling wines.


The colours reminded me of those old Crayola Crayons that you used to be able to get with the metallic colours of Metallic Silver, Copper and Gold. I don’t drink, so unfortunately I couldn’t enjoy the 4 pretty glasses of sparkling colours, but it did come with a small plate of bread, cheese and relish, which I did help myself to. The 4 half glasses of wine came to $15, which included the bread plate.


Like I said earlier, I love the Yarra Valley, if you’ve never been make sure you pay a visit- especially if you love your food!

Harvest Picnic - Werribee Mansion

I'm not really one for crowds. I didn't mind them when I was younger, but as I've gotten older - I tend to avoid them as much as I can. On a sunny day like today, I was prepared to make an exception for the Harvest Picnic at Werribee Mansion. To my delight, the layout of the area seemed a lot more spacious than my previous visit to a Harvest day - at Hanging Rock. As nice as the weather was though, the sun of course, brought out the crowds; the families and kids were out and even the end of year office parties were picnic-ing it up.


The big crowds meant that the lines to sample food from the many stalls were long and the tasting tents were full of people. We managed to wander around from stall to stall quite easily though, as it seemed most of the people were lined up for the Souvlaki and Paella stalls. Good to see people are being adventurous with their tastebuds!
It seems that most of these 'foodie' type events though are always full of the same old things. There's your flavoured Olive Oils, Dukkah, Wines, Jams, Honey and some very average hot food, which tries to be different. ie Yabby Burgers. Yabby burgers served at these do's are pretty much 70% potato, with a bit of Yabby mixed in.
I did manage to find a couple of interesting things though. One of tells me them was Chilli wine. I didnt taste it myself - as I don't drink alcohol. Rachel tasted it though and she said it was actually quite nice and was pretty strong with heat - however she didn't think she would have been able to drink much more than a sip of it. Lucky it's considered a liquer then.
We also really fancied the Babycakes stall, which made mini cupcakes. These were pretty similar to the cupcakes you would find at the Crabapple Bakery in Tecoma or at Prahran Market - just smaller. However the flavours were a little more interesting here. I had the Mexican Chilli Chocolate Mudcake. It was a perfect chocolate cake with thick chocolate icing. Unfortunately, there was only a tiny hint of chilli to it - the cake could have done with a bit more of a kick! Rachel had the Spiced Chai cupcake, which was really tasty. Quite like a Chai Tea (as you'd expect.


But in all honesty, I didn't come for the food as such. I came for the cooking demo's which were being held in the Miele tent. At last year's Harvest event, I found myself sitting next to Tobie Puttock, which watching Stefano De Pieri do a demo. This year I managed to catch 3 demo's; David Moyle and Matthew Wilkinson from Circa, Geoff Lindsay from Pearl and Alla Wolf-Tasker from the Lake House.
The guys from the Lake House came out with what appeared to be some interesting recipes, but had obviously not done many cooking demo's before or just didn't take it very seriously. Half the ingredients were missing from a salad they made and they managed to stuff up the bread that went with it. However they did make a Raspberry Tart, that did end up looking fantastic.


Geoff Lindsay on the other hand, was the complete opposite to these guys. This guy is a professional! He was informative, funny and a pleasure to watch. He made a couple of dishes from his restaurant - which is always interesting to watch. One of them was Watermelon, marinated Fetta and Sunflower shoot salad with a clear Tomato jelly.



The finished product looked fantastic! He did 2 versions of this salad - one was the restaurant version and the other was a make at home version - much more slap dash... quite funny really. The other dish he made was Raw Hiramasa Yellowtail Kingfish.
While demonstrating how to open a coconut, Geoff managed to shower me with his (Coconut) Juices (is it wrong to feel privileged?) This dish was another looker! I so wanted to taste it, I'll have to order it when I go to Pearl in a few weeks.


I also managed to catch the end of Alla's demo, where she made a Tomato salad, topped with Fried Green Tomatoes and Buffalini Cheese, garnished with a Grissini stick and drizzled with herb oil and with Chillied Gazpacho on the side. What a gorgeous dish.

The best bit is, none of these dishes were all that complicated (although the Circa guys sure did manage to make their dishes look complicated, even if they weren't).
If you want to taste some mostly average tasting samples and see some mostly fantastic cooking demo's, a Harvest picnic is a great place to visit. Apparently they have good Souvlaki too?

Sea Bounty Mussels, Williamstown.

An afternoon drive down to Williamstown on Sunday afternoon and a wander down the local pier, led us to the freshest and cheapest Mussels in town!
On Gem pier at Nelson Place every Sunday is the 'Sea Bounty' mussel boat. From 10:30 every Sunday this boat sells Mussels which are grown locally in Port Phillip and Westernport bays.
We bought a kilo of the freshest Mussels for $4kg! Usually they're about $7 a kg at the Vic Market. The boat also sells freshly shucked Oysters (I think they were a dollar each) and prawns (can't remember the price).

We took the Mussels home, which were packed with ice, to keep them fresh and decided to cook up some Chilli Mussels with some lovely Italiano pasta from Piedemonte's in Fitzroy. Usually when I cook Mussels, you have to pick through them and throw out the open ones prior to cooking. I had none that were opened! Once we had cooked the Mussels, we were amazed to find that every single Mussel had opened! I've cooked a lot of Mussels before and have never had 100% strike rate. How's that for freshness? The Mussels were big and they tasted great - like the ocean, as you'd expect!

If you're around Williamstown on a Sunday or feel like a drive - make sure you drop by this fantastic little boat and pick up some of the freshest seafood I've tasted. These guys are there until sold out, so you might like to get there early. You can call them directly on the boat on a Sunday if you like to make sure they're still there - I got their number: 0438 520 842.

Gourmet Larder, Daylesford

Gourmet Larder Delicatessen 57a Vincent St Daylesford

A bright blue sky and the sun shining through my bedroom window, was all that it took to inspire me to take the day off work. A day of self indulgence was in order and a drive to Hepburn Springs Spa Resort was just the medicine.
After a few hours, of relaxing, lying in the sun, swimming in mineral enriched water and being massaged, one can work up quite an appetite. As there isn't all that much in the way of food in Hepburn Springs, we drove back a few minutes down the road to Dayleford - a decent sized country town with lots of restaurants, retail shops and pubs.
We chose to feed our hunger at the Gourmet Larder Delicatessen. It was such a nice day we chose to sit outside. The menu was based on things that required minimal cooking and tended to feature some local produce. As it's a deli, as expected, there are lots of meats, cheeses and antipasto types dishes.
I went with the Ploughman's lunch ($14.95), which was a huge chunk of Watsonia Cheddar, which was wonderfully creamy, rolled seasoned ham, which reminded me of Christmas time, little pickles, crusty bread, rocket and some feta stuffed peppers. I loved putting together my own sandwiches with all the bits and pieces, the only problem was that I didnt get enough bread! I ran out pretty quickly, with still lots of ingredients left on the plate.

Rachel got the Tuki Lamb chipolata salad ($14.95), which was a warm salad, with very tasty pieces of Lamb sausage and golden slices of potato. A nice match with the Lamb Chipolatas was the addition of mint leaves in the salad, not too many, but just enough. The staff here are lovely and are most welcoming. Being a deli, if you like what you have for lunch, you can of course take home some of the ingredients for yourself to enjoy later. I wish I had of bought some of that cheese! This was the perfect country meal to end our perfect day in Spa Country.