Spatula, Spoon and Saturday

(November 2009 Cocktail Night menu – theme is Belvedere vodka)

Last week my baby girl KJ came to town. So where’s better than taking her to the most fabulous cocktail event in town?* Nowhere! The Cafe Vue** Cocktail Night is hosted weekly on a Friday. For $75 over the space of 3 hours, you get the most fabulous cocktails and matching degustation plates from Vue. Bargain, I say!

(scallop linguine with cucumber)

The night started at about 7.30pm when the first cocktail was served (yes, they ran a bit late) and concluded at around 11pm (we left at 10.30 because we were starving) when people cleared off. So you’ll understand, I’m sure, the degradation of the picture quality due to lack of lighting and sobriety.

(Cytrus Pegu)

Our very first cocktail was called Cytrus Pegu, which was Belvedere vodka with err… lots of citrusy, orangey things done to it. The lovely waitstaff did announce every course and explained the logic of each make up of each cocktail. Suffice to say, they thought about it a lot. And we drank a lot. So I’m really sorry I can’t tell you more. What I remembered though was the lemon curd that lined the glass. It was so yummy I attempted to lick it clean. This lovely this little cocktail was served with a perfect little scallop served with buttery linguine and cucumber. Yum. But then we were starving. A tip: get some food in you first. The 5 courses served there were just not sufficient.

(Apple & Chilli Martini)

Our second cocktail of the night was by far the winning horse – the apple and chilli martini. But it wasn’t a normal apple & chilli martini, no, no. They started with 50% alcohol vodka and steep all the yummy flavouring fruits: apple, pear and chilli. It was intensely apple. It was intensely pear. And it was intensely chilli. No, it wasn’t hot at all. But it did taste every bit chilli. No only that, they attempted to turn it into a frozen cocktail by freezing it with liquid nitrogen rather than blending in ice (cos that would be too easy and ‘we would lose too much alcohol concentration’) so as delicious sounding as that sounds, it was lethal at about 50% alcohol. But oh my god it was yummy. They also topped it with deseeded chilli and a slice of dehydrated apple. Read the rest of this entry »

I love farmers’ market – the quality of the fresh vegetables is just incomparable. Everything is lovely, green and fresh. And cheap. It’s awesome.

And some fresh pears. I got a bag of pears and lemons and apples. I couldn’t help myself.

These guys sell the nicest oranges. They are so sweet and juicy. I can’t rave enough about them.

These are actually navel oranges. I am told sweet navel oranges. Strangely enough, I read on Wikipedia that all navel oranges are grafted and came from the same original tree in California(?) so I wonder how these guys are so much sweeter than all the navel oranges I have tasted. Read the rest of this entry »

(Butterfly cupcakes – with strawberry cream)

We had a cupcake drive today to support breast cancer awareness so a few of us baked some cupcakes. The theme was pink. I tried to make mine pink but that kinda failed. Heather’s butterfly cupcakes were gorgeous with fluffy, buttery texture (I asked for recipe) with delicious strawberry cream in the middle.

(Vanilla cupcakes with butter cream icing)

I’m not too sure who made this – I was told it’s just packet cupcake but it was rather nice. The cake texture was good too (better than mine anyway!).

(cinnamon cupcake with cream cheese frosting)

Nicole made cinnamon cupcakes with pink cream cheese frosting. She also made another chocolatiest flourless cake with cream and strawberry. It was very rich and yummy.

(cardamon & lemon cupcake, saffron and rosewater frosting with pistachio)

I made cardamon and lemon cupcake with saffron- rosewater frosting and pistachio. It was based loosely on Persian Love Cake (from Epicurious) but I modified it so much that it looked nothing like the original. I did attempt to add a bit of pink colouring to it but it just wouldn’t turn pink. The cupcake tasted wonderful but the texture seemed all wrong and the frosting needed work. I need to modify this further.

(vanilla cupcake with butter cream frosting #2)

These was by far the most well done cupcakes. The cupcake was beautifully vanilla (I suspect real vanilla rather than extract) and the butter cream which was also perfectly executed. Sometimes something so simple could be so gorgeous. I have no idea who made it but I’m definitely finding out and getting recipe.

Umm. Yes. I did eat 5 cupcakes today. Why? Is that bad?

Not strictly food related post per se but these are nice colourful tulips damnit. I wish to write about them. If food, shoes and books are my three favourite things in the world, colourful, interesting flowers sure come fourth.

Tesselaar Tulip Festival happens once a year from mid September to mid October which is the Melburnian tulip season. It’s in Silvan which is up in the Mount Dandenongs area. It’s gorgeous up there this time of the year. Every house seems to be glowing with stacks of flowers.

We went there on the food, wine and jazz weekend (they have a different theme every weekend). There were quite a few food and wine stalls and each person was given tokens for wine tasting (or a free coffee) which we completely missed out on. Read the rest of this entry »

I have made a resolution to blog using the materials at are, shall we say a bit, more current. A blogger commented that there’s no fun writing about restaurant visits that were months old as you barely remember what happened. I agree. So here we are: last Tuesday with Chicago the Musical tickets clutched excitedly in my hot little hands, we landed at Grossi Florentino: The Grill for their pre-theatre dinner.

I made the booking for 6:15pm and naturally I was fashionably late but was relieved to see that the pre-theatre menu was available until 7pm. We arrived at 6.30pm and the restaurant was already half full! Damn Melburnians and their eating-out habits.

(Josh’s first course: spaghetti con vongole)

The restaurant was relatively dimly lit and I didn’t want to use flash on the photos so excuse the blurriness (I notice some blogs seem to see it as artistic – tee he he), I can’t imagine other patrons would appreciate having the flash go off every few minutes. Anyway, we were served bread and olive oil to dip and some olives as appetizers. This was the same bread and oil that would be served at The Cellar. They were good, of course. But go up to the restaurant, and you will notice the difference. Read the rest of this entry »