The Vanilla Slice, aka the Snot block. As Aussie as the lamington or the pav.
People blog about them.
People compete about them.
People make travesties out of them. **Warning.. viewing the recipe in this link may cause some of you to vom**
People do television stories on them.
They are so iconic, people even do this to them.
There are more recipes online for Snot Blocks, that I've had... well... Snot Blocks.
Not for me, the rubberized, gelatinous mass sandwiched between two Sao Biscuits. I want the real deal. Flaky puff pastry, custard that's been whipped until it's fluffy. I am not a fan of VS's with cream between the custard and the top pastry. Makes 'em too hard to chow down on. I like my custard almost cheese cake-like.
Since I've been blogging, I haven't managed to get down to The Conti in Sorrento which, in my humble opinion, has the best VS's I've ever had. Vastly superior to the ones next door at Just Fine Foods, a Sorrento Bakery that proclaims itself to be the home of "The Best Vanilla Slice".
A few weekends ago, Furry and I ate a VS at Flash Duck, in Rosebud (for the full story, click here.)
And here, in glorious Technicolour, are their Vanilla Slices.
They're big. The pretty much fill the salad plate on which they're served.
I got mine nude (no cream or icecream)
The ratio of icing sugar was good. We all know what happens when you open your mouth to cram in a piece of VS and accidentally inhale some of the icing sugar on top. The coughing fit can last up to 2 hours. Believe me, I have seen icing sugar come out of people's noses after doing this. This is NOT GOOD, and can justifiable be called a Vanilla Thriller Killer.
The custard was lighter than the Conti version, a white wine custard whipped with cream, I suspect. This was a good thing, given the amount of food I'd already ingested. I didn't need any further artery-hardening, cheesecake rich dairy produce!!
According to the staff, they're made exclusively for the restaurant by a retired pastry chef in Red Hill.
Peakie allows me to take a photo of her "squish test",
Not the best VS I've ever had.. not the worst.
Get thee down to the Flash Duck and give one a go...
Tuesday, 27 November 2007
Snot Block review.
Thursday, 22 November 2007
Proud Peacock.
Last night, fellow blogger and all round funny guy, Thanh, from "I Eat Therefore I Am", popped up to Proud Peacock Vietnamese restaurant in GW for a quick bite.
I told Thanh that I new a lovely young SINGLE Vietnamese girl who ran a resto, so what male, single foodie WOULDN"T jump at the chance to hang out with Furry and I, and also check out some luuuurve ack-shawn???
Proud Peacock
Ph: (03) 9560 6661; shop 6, 53 Kingsway, Glen Waverley 3150I freely admit I am an inveterate match maker. It's the wog in me. Along with telling Thank he was **insert elderly Greek lady accent** "too skinny", I also told him he was about to meet the mother of his children.
Well, imagine Thanh's suprise when we walked into the resto, and this delightful young woman walks up to him and says "Hi!! apparently we're getting married and making pg and Furry lots of babies".
Ummmm, yeah.. we'd kinda... maybe mentioned Thanh to her. Maybe.
Ahem.
To the food.
I apologise for the quality of the photo's, but Thanh and I had shared a bottle of THIS before we headed up to the resto, so most of the photos were a bit dodgy.
The Proud Peacock (the restaurant, not Thanh!), is a little hole in the wall, in The Kingsway, GW. Formica tables, concrete floor, a few posters of Vietnam on the walls. In short, MY kinda place. The food is hearty, simple, made by Mum and Dad out the back, and the portions are huge. And it's cheap. Under $50 for the three of us.
We ordered a plate of bai cuon, spring rolls and goi cuon, and everything came out with a huge plate of various dipping sauces and condiments.
goi cuon (shrimp rolls)
dipping sauces:
My pho:
I didn't manage to get a decent shot of what Furry and Thanh ordered, as hunger overrode my command not to eat until I'd taken a pic, and all the photos were blurry action shots.
A complimentary fruit platter, complete with warm gulag jalmuns completed our meal!
Thanh won't be blogging much over the next few months, as he'll be off awoo-ing and making Auntie PG and Uncle Furry lots of beautiful Vietnamese/Chinese babies to play with.
I'm wearing purple to the wedding.
What about you??
Tuesday, 20 November 2007
Sticking it to Golden Arches!
Incase you don't know about this, here is the background story. Ian MacDonald runs The Flash Duck. Named so, because, well... he likes ducks, and because McDisgusting Corp. made his change it. Can't have people thinking a resto, with green and black as the predominant colour theme, and a menu that includes vegan burgers and haggis burgers might be confoozed with the tasteless boiled pap that extrudes from the servery windows of Golden Arches, now, can we??
More info on his David and Goliath battle is here at Ian's Blog.
I eat there because a) I'm an old hippie, and any time I can stick it to the Corporation, I take it and also b) because the food is bloody good. The produce is sourced locally and the burgers are hand ground from local scotch fillet.
See??
We went down to FD, with our friends, Peakie and Dr Trevorkian, and had a most pleasant arvo.
A bottle of wine:
I ordered the Thai chicken burger. T'was fragrant with Vietnamese mint, coriander and sweet chili sauce.
Furry and Dr Trevorkian ordered the cleverly named UNOHOOZ burger.. basically, one with the lot.
Peakie, after much deliberation, ordered the haggis burger.
Now. Peakie is a haggis eating FOOL!! This woman knows her haggis. After the Great Gleneagles Haggis and Whisky Creme debacle of 2001, I was not keen to sample it, but after much coaxing and nurturing, I did.
Can't se the point, myself, but Peakie was coo-ing over it. I'll take her word that it was great.
Apparently Ian sources his haggis from a local Scottish butcher in Dandenong,
Check out the resto's site: The Flash Duck. and go there. And eat REAL hamburgers.
Oh, and another reason to go.... the support these guys:
Land Of Smiles Foundation.
Monday, 19 November 2007
A Seasonal guide to the Mornington Peninsula.
More from the Market.
AS we wandered around the market, we discovered a stall selling jams and chutneys. My dislike of all things fruity when combined with meat has been well documented here, but Furry canna pass up a free sample. And there are plenty of delights to sample here. The company is Elfred's of the Peninsula, and they are doin' some seriously funky stuff...
We first sampled the chilli jam. A smoothsweet taste of damson plums gives way to a chilli hot of moderate magnitude. I was expecting something akin to dodgy sweet chilli sauce, but this is more complex and rounder than that. It IS chilli jam. Being the gastronut that I am, I immediately began designing recipes around it. Mix it with chocolate and pour it over wine-simmered pears, thin with balsamic vinegar and use over a blue cheese tart. Stuff figs with it.
It was really REALLY good!!
We also picked up some:
But what really REALLy got my juices flowing was their Mumbai chutney. I am all good for some green mango pickle with meat, but I have never been a fan of meat and chutney since the great Keens Curry Powder on Mince with Sultana's and Sliced Banana debacle of 1972.
But I am happy to say, I am now a proud convert. It's sweet. The way a good curry is sweet. Sweet with complex spices and slow cooking. Sweet with nuts and cinnamon and fenugreek and ginger. A really, really complex and smokey flavour.
I marinated a couple of Lilydale free-range chook breasts in it for about 4 hours, oven baked and served it on coconut and lime basmati rice.
And it was so heavenly, I forgot to take a photo!!
BUT, I did find this:
Tootgarook
VIC 3941
Tel: 03 5985 3103
email: elfreds@elfreds.com.au
Website: www.elfreds.com.auElfreds of the Peninsula is the creation of Fred Johnson and Michele Flack. Fred is an European Chef who has been living and working on the Mornington Peninsula for the last ten years. He has cooked in various restaurants, hotels and catering establishments from Portsea to Melbourne and all over Australia. Michele is an Art Teacher who has swapped her paintbrushes and palette for a different form of art. Her flair adds to the colour and vibrancy of Elfreds. Elfreds are keen to promote local produce and are proud to be part of the Mornington Peninsula wine and culinary region of Australia. Elfreds' products which are a range of chutneys, relishes, sauces, pickles, preserves, spices, jams and marmalades are recipes that have been gathered over the last 20 years by Fred working as a chef in various parts of the world. Products vary with the seasons and Fred and Michele select the best produce when it is at its prime, as seasonal changes allow. Elfreds are currently trading at Red Hill, Mornington Racecourse, Flemington Racecourse, Werribee Racecourse, Dingley, Balnarring Racecourse, Mornington Main Street, Queen Victoria Gaslight Market and various wine and gourmet shows. You can also find their products in various shops and deli's.
Get thee some of their produce ASAP!!!
And the above article lead me here, to an online Mornington Peninsula Gourmet guide!!
For those of you who know how passionate I am about my beloved MP, this may hep you understand WHY!!!
A face like a half-eaten pie!
Man, did I take one for the team this weekend. First, let me present the latest chapter in the hunt for the great Aussie meat pie.
Further to our trip to the Peninsula Farmers Market, last week, we tracked down this roving circus of goodness in Boneo Road, this weekend. And we specifically attended to try the Gourmet Meat Pie stand.
Furry and I have been trying pies all over Australia for many years and we have a certain criteria. There must be a definite difference between the pastry on the top and the pastry underneath. The filling needs to have a good meat:gravy ratio. It has to taste like it sounds (All Aussie Chunky Beef pie cannot contain mince and vegies, for example) and it must pass the sog-test.
The sog test is simple.
Before you bite into it, you hold the pie aloft in your cupped hand.
The perfect pie has no "give". The bottom doesn't sag and the sides don't flex.
So, off we go and hunt down our quarry:
Their range is astonishing!! (pity they only had about 1/2 their advertised line actually hot!)
Furry went the Shepherd's pie.:
Which was made with mince, not lamb. Strike out!!.
Although he said it was very nice, it didn't pass the sog test. The bottom was not cooked enough, and it became very VERY messy to eat, whilst walking around.
I went the Chunky Roast Pork pie, and as you can see from the first photo, it had great potential.
The crust pastry was perfect. Flaky, buttery goodness!!
It certainly lived up to its name:
Now, THAT'S a chunky pie!!!
The gravy was a little sweet for me, and it also didn't pass the sog test (but it didn't get nearly as messy as Furry's). I put it down to it only being 9.30 am. Maybe if we'd tried on later, they would have had time to crisp up.
No matter though.. I can always tell a pie that hasn't been baked blind ;)
Stand by for the great Aussie Burger challenge.
Thursday, 15 November 2007
What's my craving?
I am spoiled for choices, working in Springvale. Ethiopian, Thai, Viet, Mc Donalds.. I can get pretty much anything I want within a 5 minute drive.
But today, as I was shopping down at Springy South, I had an overpowering urge to eat......
A spring roll.
Not just any spring roll, but a Chien Wah one. One of those ubiquitous spring rolls that closely resembles a Chicko roll, but is different. Same, same but different, ya know?
Not for me, the fine, glass-like structure of spring roll pastry. I want the Chien Wah stuff... the thick, crispy but doughy stuff that takes WORK to bite through!! Not quite the CHIKO pastry, but close.. kinda all lump and nodule-y.. like spring roll pastry with acne. Or Lupus. Or Scurvy.
And the filling!!! I want mass boiled cabbage held together with a cornflour glaze. I want it tasteless and hot..I want to KNOW that it's cabbage, but not be able to identify one single, solitary piece of glassy vegetable-like structure. I want my glaze eerily ejaculation grey-white.
And I want it deep fried and then left in a baine marie for a couple of hours. Cos otherwise you get the crispy ends and the soggy middle. And god forfend that you get a cold bit of filling in the middle.
An hour or two in the baine marie ensures the filling is uniformly hot throughout the roll.
And I want it to ooze fat. I want the Chien Wah bag to be opaque by the time I'm half way thru it. I want it to dribble down my chin. I want to spend all afternoon tonguing a coating of grease off my teeth.
I want to be able to solve the world energy shortage with the oil in my roll!!!
And why?|
Why do I want this??
Is it a reaction to the divine-ness of the bounty the other night at the Bloggers Banquet???
NO!!!
It's for two reasons.
The first bite... and the last.
In a perfectly cooked Chien Wah Spring Roll, the way the pastry is folded, gives you a perfect crispy bite at both ends.
Unlike a Chicko which cannot be said to be perfect unless the hot **ahem** "vegetable" filling has oozed out thru the bottom.
I googled madly for an image, but alas, all I could find were "nice" spring rolls. Obviously us connoisseurs of the darker side of life keep their addictions secret. I mean, in the whole WWW I couldn't find one single picture of one.
If you are of a certain age, and live in Melbourne, OZ you know of what I speak.
And I bet you're craving one right now.....
Le Sigh.
I settled for a 99% fat free soup from the IGA.
Tuesday, 13 November 2007
Bloggers Banquet. The photos...
Bloggers Banquet 031
Originally uploaded by divinepurplegoddess
You've seen the before.
Now check out...
THE AFTER....
And some more yummy morsels that I dined on last night...
Silk Worm Pupae, anyone??
Food Bloggers message board...
After talking to several peeps last night, there was some discussion about having a central place to post "stuff".. rather than going to 63 different blogs, leaving 67 different messages....
I run a phpBB message board, and.. IF there is any interest, I'd be able to set up a message board (similar in style to Taste.com or Chowhound), and prolly do it for free.
We could have different rooms for different discussions... or just one big ole kitchen, where we hang out.
That way, we eliminate the need to keep email lists of each other, or spend hours jumping from blog to blog to leave messages.
I am happy to give it a red hot go, IF anyone thinks it's a good idea.
But I am not going to ferret around for 40 hours, making a board no one will use.
So, IF you think this is a good idea, let me know in da comments. Hell.. let me know if you think it's crap.
I can prolly get an ad-free space from phpBB, but I'll need to investigate further.
Ideas on "rooms" or names for the site are welcome too...
wot say y'all??
Monday, 12 November 2007
Bloggers Banquet!!!
It's tonight!!! And I've just finished reading what people are planning to bring!!!
Oh my giddy aunt!!!
Anyhoo, check out what's waiting in MY fridge!!!
Sorry about the dodgy dishwashing powder in the background!!
Yup, as promised, prosciutto-wrapped 'sparowgrass and organic, vine-ripened tommies stuffed with a green olive, garlic and roast capsicum "pesto"
AND, some Mornington Peninsula strawb's, ready to be drizzled with my very own, home-made balsamic reduction!!!
So, what are YOU having for dinner tonight??
A trip to the Farmer's Market
On a delicious Saturday morning, Furry and I head to the Rosebud Farmer's Market. You'd be mad to buy your fruit and veg from anywhere else. The produce was glisteningly fresh and the prices were so unbelievably good!!!
I got all my ingredients for tonight's Bloggers Banquet (except for the cheese) for about 10 bucks!!!
Unfortunately, Furry had made us breakkie, so we didn't feel like sampling the pies (as out commitment to finding the perfect Aussie Pie) but I assure you, we'll be back and will report in!
We also got some herbs for the new garden, 5 pots for $10!!!
Make a note. Go there!!
Thursday, 8 November 2007
Got a lazy $1000 US for lunch???
NEW YORK (Reuters Life!) - A New York chef has come up with a luxury version of one of the city's staple foods -- the $1,000 bagel.
The pricey bagel, that is topped with white truffle cream cheese and goji berry infused Riesling jelly with golden leaves, joins a list of $1,000 delicacies in Manhattan that includes an ice-cream sundae topped with a 23-karat edible gold leaf and a pizza topped with six kinds of caviar and lobster.
The bagel is the creation of chef Frank Tujague of The Westin New York hotel at Times Square and was designed in part to help raise funds for Les Amis d'Escoffier Scholarship which provides scholarships to students of the culinary arts.
"I wanted to create something that speaks to New York, and is also a reflection of my culinary passion for seasonality and fine ingredients," said Tujague in a statement.
He said by weight, white truffles -- also known as "white gold" and "kings of the table" -- are the second most expensive food in the world next to caviar.
Like mushrooms, truffles are the fruiting bodies of fungi, except that they grow underground instead of popping up on the surface. They grow in a symbiotic relationship with trees, taking sugar from the roots and giving back minerals.
Truffles are said to be an aphrodisiac because their aroma is similar to that of pheromones, which are irresistible to some mammals and can be picked up by dogs and female pigs used to sniff out the precious tubers.
With a limited seasonal window from now until the end of the year, the $1,000 bagel is only available until December 14.
"Bagels are a New York food landmark, which is where the base for this dish came from. White truffles are a simple, quality ingredient that takes the meal, or the bagel in this case, to the next level," said Tujague.
Does this qualify as "sell-your-soul" food??
And how many do I need to bring for the Bloggers Banquet??
Where's the eye-rolling icon when you need it??
See more photos HERE.
Sunday, 4 November 2007
Lunch for one.
Sigh.. someone had to come home to feed the puppies, Mrs Peaches and Stella-Bella-Bottom-Smeller. so while the rest of the fam continue to celebrate Furry's birthday, I am up her, in GW on a miserable, wet, cold day.
So what more do I need to cheer me up and warm my cockles, than MORE PIZZA!!!
A trip down to Kerrie Road IGA reveals a new product, pre-baked, vegan friendly tomato pizza base. 100% Aussie made. They come from Pizzeria Perfecto and at $7.95, they are NOT going to be a staple on the family menu, but for one, it's not too bad. The come from Balmain, NSW, so they've got some food miles on 'em, but much better than using imported khobz or nasty nasty pre-fab bases from Woolies.
Inspired by my chevre recipe from yesterday, I decided to grab another variety. Cos I left the other jar down at CFdM, and I am guessing that it won't come home!This time (because my organic shop isn't open) I choose Meredith Dairy marinated goats cheese. It's Winner of six Gold medals including Champion Royal Melbourne Dairy Show 2003 & 2004.
The web site: Meredith Dairy.
I grab a chunk of prosciuto.. the one I rejected yesterday.
Now I have a mostly SOLE meal for one.
Cost: $25 even.
Much more expensive that yesterday. I certainly couldn't do this for the whole fam, but I will get more than one pizza out of the cheese and the prociutto. It's a lot cheaper than Maccas or a meal out, but when you can get imported khobz for 99c for 6 on special at Coles, it better taste like truffle-infused foie gras!!
But, the point is, that I have a mostly-SOLE meal, bought at an IGA in the 'burbs. It CAN BE DONE!!!
Will bake it off in a few mins and post an update.
Chow!!