Cooking with the boys

Sunday afternoon bake time! Decided to spend some quality time with my two adorable cousins playing soccer and wii. My aunty pulled out boxes of white wing cake mixes, asking me how to make them, so I decided to put my baking hat. Teaching little Kevan how to cook is heaps of fun, he is so eager to do everything. Pouring the dry the mix into the bowl, pouring the milk in the bowl, getting chocolate all over himself hehe. First thing we made was chocolate mousse. That was super easy, all we did was mix the chocolate mixture with milk and let it set in the fridge and ta da! Chocolate mousse!

Next we made banana cupcakes. Super duper easy, pretty much Kevan just poured the dry mix into the bowl, poured the milk in, put in blocks of butter then mixed it all up. Of course I had to do some of the mixing because his little arms couldn't support the electric mixer for so long. I thought him how to scoop the mixture from the bowl into the cake moulds and make sure he doesn't put too much in so that it overflows or that there isn't enough so it doesn't look pretty. He got pretty good at it. Check out the pics!

Kevan and his cupcakes

K

Kevan icing his cupcakes

C

Cup cake smiles :)

Chocolate Mousse

Yumo!

Perfect Poached Eggs

This might be a big claim to make considering cafe vue and cummulus are making 65/65 eggs (not that I know what that is like, because I'm always missing out on the breakfast menu). But I reckon I've got it down pat.

See how the egg white just peels off the yolk?  Leaving behind *perfect* yolks still in their sacks ready to be popped and have the yolk flow all over the toast. This sea of yolk gets soaked up by the toast and when you eat it the toast is still crunchy but its full of the awesome flavours of the yolk. So creamy and buttery. There you go perfect nom nom nom

Best Poached Eggs

 Booyah!

Have you met Barney?

Have you met my beloved teddy bear Barney? He is so comfortable to lie on and he hugs. Sometimes we just like to chill out together with some beers (yes beer, cos he is my bear).

 Barney watching Dylan play PS3

Barney gets bored

Dinner @ The Brasserie by Philippe Mouchel

After successfully finding Jeff an apartment we decided to celebrate with some food and wine! Yum we have so much in common :)

We made a booking at The Brasserie as its so close to the apartment and we don't have to drive... therefore we could drink :)

Our booking was quite late and we had to do a brisk walk to make sure we get there before the kitchen closed.
Their wine menu is extensive and intimidating. Hello $5000 bottle of wine?! Wine from every region and type, we decided the easier way to pick a bottle was from price. Haha. The bottle we picked was amazing! So smooth we could drink it forever. I wrote it down so I can get myself another bottle at hopefully a non *choke* price. Curly Flat 2005 Pinot Nior. Must try!

There was no time to think about what to order! The kitchen is closing! I had the Barramundi.

Pan-fried barramundi fillet $39.00 boulangère potatoes, red wine sauce matelote

Peter was intrigued by the ox cheek and ordered the Beef tenderloin.

Beef tenderloin (200gr) 41.00 with braised wagyu ox cheek, mashed potatoes

And Jeff ordered a steak.

Rib eye (400gr) $42.50 pan-roasted, boulangère potatoes

I know this is quite a popular spot to dine at. Its a very nice restaurant, very impressive for a date or a special meal, but I wouldn't say the food is amazing. The food is good, but not out standingly good.
Me thinks the lunch specials are way better value. More on that on the next post.

The Brasserie by Philippe Mouchel

Riverside at Crown

03 92927808

Esposito

I've received some feedback from my lovely readers, hopefully this makes for better reading :)

I'm always happy when restaurants bring out bread, even though I'm not a big fan of bread, its always exciting to try it and maybe stumble upon some really good bread. Plus I really love some good olive oil :)

 They said it came out fresh from the oven. But if felt too hard and not warm enough for us to believe that. The bread was only ok, nothing special.

 

I haven't been to many restaurants that offer complimentary starters, so its a nice surprise when it does happen :)

 Seaweed salad with a mint twist. Nice and refreshing and not as sweet as the ones at sushi sushi

The menu was mouthwatering! Everything sounded so good, especially the entrees :) The menu isn't very long (I think there is 5 mains), which is good, to know they focus on their food and don't just make everything.

We both love calamari and prawns, and when we saw it we figured we'll give it a try. A bit fancier than the normal fried calamari we normally have :p

Calamari ‘Cannelloni’ of Prawns, dolcetto glaze, herb salad and horseradish $19

It had very delicate flavours, and everything on the plate seemed to go well with the dish. The greens made the dish fresh and there just wasn't enough of that tasty sauce :D

Since it this is a seafood restaurant of course we had to try the seafood! The wild barramundi on the menu sounded really good (and I looove barramundi), but they didn't have any fresh so it was replaced with the red emperor. Still good!

Wild Barramundi
with cauliflower purée, anchovy and prosciutto fritter; herb sauce, $42

This dish is to die for!!! The skin was perfectly crisp and not too salty. The flesh just fell off and melted in your mouth. And it was perfectly cooked, rare! YUM. I was in fish heaven.

This was the salmon (can't seem to find it on their online menu...) I didn't have this but I did have a try and it was reallllly good, I love it when they cook salmon and its still pink and not too cooked, actually I like all fish this way. I would loved to be able to say something about the rest of the stuff on the dish, Dylan ate it all before I had the chance :( So it must of been good

For the first time ever... we ordered a cheese platter for dessert!

Surprise! And I don't even like cheese that much! Or maybe I'm getting older as my cheese liking list has grown, from brie to include blue cheese. I normally don't like quince (as its associated with cheese) but it went really well with the almond and fruit slices. That was some nice slices :) The crackers on the side was sooo hard, I couldn't eat them. I had to ask a waiter to bring me some non teeth breaking crackers, and he totally understood me.
Um the cheeses were ok, it was just an interesting experience to have a cheese platter for dessert, never had quince, and the dried fig and the nuts with cheese like that.

Loved the food and I'll definately go back. I had the entertainment booklet which gave me a 2 for 1 main meals, and they didn't scratch it off! Said to come back and use it again :) aww so nice. And I will!

162 Elgin Street Carlton Victoria 3053
Corner Elgin Street & Drummond Street
Phone 03 9347 9838 Fax 03 9347 5615

The John Curtin Hotel

 I've been working on something special for all my readers. So far its in spreadsheet form, but its a list of bars/pubs/cafes/anywhere that serves food and their food specials. It's pretty impressive so far, I've got 34 places and their weekly specials :)

Without further ado I present to you Super Wednesdays! $12 Grain fed Black Angus Porterhouse with chips or mash and a salad and your choice of sauce.

Yummmy! We all had mushroom sauce, and what impressed me the most about it is the fact there are large pieces of mushrooms in it! Normally at other places its some brown sauce they call mushroom, but this you can see the mushroom! The sauce was very tasty, much like gravy, and they gave you heaps of it! My chips was soaked in the sauce :) The meat was very good. I felt like I could taste the black angus grain fedness. It didn't taste like normal steak. Must be the grain :)

Another good thing about this meal was the portion control. The meat wasn't some huge slab on the plate, but it was a good size so it fills you up but doesn't give you food coma.

We had our doubts at first, and Jeff wasn't getting good feelings about the place when we first got there.

Its very dark in there and it is definately a grungy uni bar.

Heres what the back of the bar looks like. It doesn't look dark here but we had crazy flash going. Jeff said the toilets are the scariest he has ever been to, I did notice a lot of graffiti on the wall...

Anyway if you haven't gotten the overall feel of the place, heres another one. While having dinner the movie that was playing was called "Dead Snow", its a German nazi zombie movie.Uni students love zombie movies.

Our food rating: 

John Curtin Hotel  www.johncurtinhotel.com 29 Lygon St Carlton VIC 3053 (03) 9663 6350

Butchers Grill - Bourke Street

Butchers Grill, 141 Bourke St, Melbourne

Like most nights I sit at home starving and waiting for my beloved to finish work so we can have dinner.
This particular night was a Tuesday night and no one wants to pay full price on a Tuesday.


On the web I went and found a whole bunch of restaurants (mostly in Docklands ><) that do a 50% off food bill on Tuesdays (when each person purchases a main and dessert).


By the time Dylan was done with work and have dropped off our colleagues in the city, it was already 9 o'clock. A race, a race to find the restaurant before they tell us the kitchens closed. Fortunately it was pretty easy to find the place and before long we were walking up to the joint. From outside the place was packed! People are out there taking advantage of this Tuesday deal :)


There isn't enough staff for the Tuesday rush, so instead of getting seated we were escorted to what felt like the naughty corner, a small and narrow outside terrace (I really wish I took a photo of the place). From outside, on metals chairs we watched as people happily ate their meals. By this time of the night we were watching people enjoying dessert, and they looked pretty nice too :)


After awhile we wondered if they had forgotten about us, as we were tucked away in a corner and easily forgotten. Luckily one of the waiters walking by noticed us and lead us inside. We were seated at a small table that was free when we first entered the restaurant. Why didn't they just let us sit there to begin with??


Anyway, they had some cocktail specials, all cocktails are $9.90. I ordered my drink, the amaretto sour and Dylan ordered his mojito. It was the worst amaretto sour I've ever had in my life. So sugary sweet it tasted like cough medicine. The mojito was very sweet as well, I actually thought it was better than the amaretto, maybe because it didn't taste like cough meds. Cocktails FAIL.


For 9 o'clock at night we sure ordered a lot. For starters we had the "Salt & pepper calamari served in a lettuce cup with lime aioli $17". It came out pretty quickly, and the serving was quite large. Very good calamari :) It was soft and not stringy, just the right amount of salt and pepper. For some reason there was some tomato sauce of some kind on the side where a few of the calamaris were resting on. They were gonners, the tomato didn't match the flavour and Dylan fought to not have the ones contaminated with the tomato.
We were bought quite full after the calamaris and I was contemplating calling it a night. I was done. But we had already ordered our mains, so we continued on.


I should mention they did give us some very nice complementary bread (Turkish bread), which Dylan chowed up pretty quickly. This probably caused us to feel full by now.


For mains I had the Eye fillet (200g, $32) with hot mustard and seeded mustard served on crisp onion garlic mash.
The steak was average... ok slightly above average, but nothing to rave about. The crisp onion was odd, the garlic mash had a nice flavour but they didn't mash it enough so it was a bit lumpy. 


Dylan had the "Mediterranean style chicken parmigiana with prosciutto, ham, kasseri cheese & ratatouille $25". The waitress said it was a very big serving and she was right! Still nothing much to say about it, its just a parma with Mediterranean style *shrug* I've had better parma's before. They tried to make it fancy, which is nice, but I don't think it was appreciated.


By this stage we were sooooo stuffed we thought about not continuing on, but this meant to getting the 50% off! We thought about just ordering dessert and leaving... sure.. lets say we'll do that...


By the time dessert rolled around all the things I wanted was sold out :(


We settled for the "Home made crepes with chocolate sauce & berry compote $14" and
"Baked clingstone peach cheesecake with macerated fruit and sesame wafer $14". The crepe was the worst crepe ever! It was cold, and hard and chewy. Just not nice at all. The sauce wasn't very tasty nor chocolaty.


The baked cheesecake was great though :) So great I didn't get to eat most of it. I just played around with my crepe and gave up on dessert. 


The bill came to $70 for two mains, two desserts, two cocktails and a starter
I reckon thats a pretty good price for the huge amount of food we shouldn't have eaten.


The venue is nice and so is the food. I'll definitely come back again or suggest it to some friends... only on a Tuesday.


Sorry for the lack of photos, forgot my camera that night. Here is a token image I pilfered off their website :P