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V-Rating: VVV Not so long ago, Andy and I celebrated our first year wedding anniversary. We’d agreed to treat ourselves to a long Sunday lunch, but finding a nice restaurant that was a) open on a Sunday and b) served vegetarian food was harder than I expected. Luckily, a friend came to the rescue and recommended I try Pod.
Pod is set in the grounds of one of Pialligo’s many nurseries. The restaurant is in an old cottage, but the best seats are outside on the wooden deck and courtyard.
Pod serves Modern Australian food but it has an usually good range of vegetarian options. The menu immediately resonated with us because it included an entree of honey-baked figs with goats curd, apple balsamic and mustard seed oil. This was very similar to a grilled fig entree we had at our wedding (and this entree was so good it was the reason we chose the venue). The pod version didn’t disappoint - the fig was juicy and sweet and contrasted perfectly with the soft, tart cheese.
I thought I was being altruistic by insisting Andy started with the fig entree, but my roasted beetroot and feta tart was so nice I was reluctant to swap. The feta was incredibly smooth, the pastry was crisp and buttery, while the beetroot and balsamic dressing added just the right amount of sharpness.
There is only one vegetarian main, but the restaurant can get around this by upgrading a vegetarian pasta entree to a mains dish. I don’t know why this isn’t listed as a main in the first place because it seemed more suited to this part of the menu (although to leave room for dessert we stuck to the entree size). The sauceless penne pasta was served with liguarian olives, semi-dried tomato, pine nuts and parmesan. It had a lovely fresh, light taste, with just enough bite thanks to the olives.
The actual vegetarian main was pan seared, white truffle and lemon marinated field mushrooms topped with Persian feta mousse, roasted tomatoes, pine nuts, baby spinach and lemon salad. I’m sometimes wary of mushroom mains because they reek of carnivore panic at what to feed vegetarians. However, this dish was great and something I’d happily make at home (though probably not with such success!).
Sitting amongst such a beautiful nursery, it was hard to go past the simplicity of a summer stone fruit salad with vanilla gelati and berry coulis. It was as good as it looks - sweet with soft, melting fruit.
The creme brulee with biscotti and berries was also divine. The brulee crust was nicely carmelised and crunchy, while the filling was soft and smooth. As with all Pod dishes, it was beautifully presented. Pod’s food was some of the nicest I’ve eaten in Canberra. It was the perfect venue for an anniversary lunch, but being set in a garden it was also popular with casual Sunday lunchers. One of my criteria for a restaurant was that we could bring our own wine, as we had a special bottle we’d been given as a wedding present. Pod is BYO. Casual diners might baulk at the $8 corkage charge but scarily this is reasonable compared with other top notch restaurants. The Pialligo location is not super convenient as it’s only reachable by car. But if you’re not coming for a special occasion it’s a good excuse to linger and explore the great nurseries in the area. I couldn’t fault the service on the day we visited. We arrived late, and without the two guests we’d booked for, but the restaurant manager took it all in his stride despite the fact the restaurant was full. Pod was the perfect venue for our anniversary lunch, and it’s already top of my list for visiting family and friends to convince them that the nation’s capital is no slouch when it comes to great food. Growing up I loved most vegetarian foods, except salads. So far as I could tell, a salad was a bowl filled with iceberg lettuce - surely the most bland, watery ingredient on the planet. The lettuce du jour of 1980s Australia was also a salad hog, leaving little room for other ingredients, and forcing the few that did exist to the hidden depths of the salad bowl.
Thankfully, the comparatively urbane 1990s soon rolled around, bringing with them the exotic new lettuce substitutes like rocket and baby spinach. Suddenly salad greens became edible, dressings could be more adventurous, and there was room for a whole host of other tasty ingredients. Hurrah! These days, there are more and more lettuce and herb varieties available, meaning there’s just no excuse to revert to the bad old days of iceberg lettuce salads. One of my favourite new salad ingredients is shiso, or perilla. It has a rich, nutty taste and slightly rough texture, and is a great addition to salads and sandwiches.
Shiso noodle salad Ingredients For the dressing Method If you’re using store bought marinated tofu, chop it into small cubes. Otherwise, follow this recipe and then chop the tofu into small cubes once it’s cooked. Add the dressing ingredients and mix together. Throw all the salad ingredients into the bowl, making sure to tease out the noodles so they don’t cling together. Add the dressing and toss well. Serve. Notes on the recipe All about shiso This week’s weekend herb blogging is hosted by its founder, Kalyn from Kalyn’s Kitchen. Make sure to visit her site so you can see the full recap. V-Rating: VVVVV Not so long ago I was bemoaning the lack of good brunch venues in Canberra. Sure, cafes abound. But try finding a place that uses fresh, quality ingredients, has an interesting and tasty menu, and doesn’t have a price range in the double figures. After listening to my diatribe, a good friend recommended that I try Satis - a reasonably new cafe in the Watson shops.
One visit later I breathed a sigh of relief - Satis has all (or at least most of) the things I look for in a brunch spot: good coffee, a great, cheap menu, friendly staff, and a slightly alternative vibe. The fact it’s vegetarian is the icing on the cake. Satis clearly defines itself as a brunch spot - it doesn’t open before 8.30am and is closed by mid afternoon. The menu isn’t extensive or finicky, but everything on it is delicious and well-presented. The decor is friendly but funky - paintings and stencil art by local artists on the wall mixed with chunky, dark wood fittings. The breakfast menu has sweet and savoury options including banana bread with berries and baked ricotta, free range eggs on toast, and home made granola. Most of the standard items on the menu are not vegan but can easily be adapted - for example, Satis has one choice of vegan bread and can substitute scrambled tofu for eggs. The food is great value - of the nine choices, only one costs over $10.
One of my favourite choices is the big brekkie. It comes with an egg or scrambled tofu, toast, zucchini, tomatoes, mushrooms and spinach (basically, all the veggies I love in the morning). Yesterday ours came with mashed potato and feta as well. Yum!
Tempted as I was by the big brekkie, in the interests of this review I tried the wild rice porridge with compote and coconut milk.
I’ve never tried wild rice in porridge before, but it worked well. Andy said it reminded him of an Indonesian breakfast porridge of green beans and black rice porridge. I liked the slight crunchiness and savoury taste of the rice, and the coconut milk base was a nice, light accompaniement. The berry compote was the highlight of the dish - rich, a little sour and a little sweet and topped with toasted coconut. Satis also has a small menu of light meals and lunch foods, a very tasty looking selection of baked goods, and a good range of fair trade coffees and teas. The only real problem with Satis is its success. The cafe is squeezed into a narrow space better suited to a greasy fry takeaway joint. The tables jostle for space out the front and along the interior before spilliing out into a small, sunny courtyard. On my last visit at around 10am there were frequent lines to get in, although the wait was only 5 - 10 minutes. While the staff are very friendly and the service is quick when the cafe is not too busy, the service was slower and more haphazard on my last trip. We waited about twenty minutes for our coffees to come, and in the meantime watched bemused while people who arrived after us were served coffee and breakfast before any of our order arrived. Still, I’m always happy to see a vegetarian place thriving, and the occasional wait for service is a small price to pay for finally having a good brunch spot in Canberra. Umm, sorry about the delay in proceedings over the last few weeks. I started a new job this year and it’s been occupying a lot of my time, not to mention leaving me without the Internet for days at a time while I travel. But enough with the excuses. I’ll be shortly hopping back on the blogging bandwagon with some new reviews from Canberra. In the meantime, thank you to all the people who’ve emailed me to ask why the restaurant listings in the left hand navigation bar don’t work (i.e. search by restaurant type, suburb etc.) It’s all fixed now. Thanks for you patience. Cheers Kate V-Rating: VVV My biggest gripe about moving to Sydney was the lack of good Indian restaurants. But then I’d been spoiled by four years of living in Canberra. Ask a Canberran where to get Indian and 9 out of ten times they’ll suggest Rama’s, an Indian Fijian restaurant located in the sleepy local shops in the southern suburb of Pearce. For first time visitors the setting may seem incongruous, but don’t be fooled by first appearances: Rama’s is one of Canberra’s most beloved, and high quality, restaurants.
I had the good oil from a couple of locals and was prepped to order the vegetarian samosas and the potato and peas pan-fried roti wrap. Yum! The samosas had a crunchy, “I’ve been made in this here kitchen” taste, while the roti wrap was a creamy korma curry encased in a sandwich - why this is not a staple of more lunch menus beats me.
Like many Indian restaurants, Rama’s had a separate vegetarian section on the menu. We ordered the vegetarian dahl and and the palak paneer (again on some local recommendations).
The dahl was mild, but strongly flavoured with lemon and coriander, giving it a crisp, fresh taste.
The palak paneer was unlike any other I’ve tasted - maybe this was the Fijian influence. The sauce was creamy with flecks of shredded spinach mixed in, rather than regle de jeu pokerpoker en ligne argent virtueldes règles du jeu du pokertelecharger jeu poker gratuitespoker en argent virtuelmalette jeu de pokertexas holdem pocket pcpoker en ligne gratuitesonline poker roomjeu poker gratuites francaisworld tour pokerle poker onlinepoker online francevideo poker onlinejeux poker tourcasino poker en lignetelecharger poker 3djeux de poker gratuitementtélécharger gratuitement jeu de poker en lignepoker en ligne gratuitspoker 3d gratuitesstrip poker en lignepoker gratuites cadeaupoker tour regletournoi poker gratuitesparty pokerregles poker hold hemplay seven card studcasino poker texas holdemjeu poker texas holdem gratuitesjeu de poker online gratuitespoker le jeuune régle du jeu du pokersexy pokerjouer wam pokertournoi de pokertexas holdem 2007jouer au poker onlinepoker les regles du jeulogiciel de poker en lignepoker gratuites a telechargeroù jouer au poker en lignepoker texas holdemjouer poker texasjeu de poker gratuitesomaha poker règlesjeu tour de pokertelecharger poker gratuiteslogiciel de poker gratuitesles règles de jeu poker the spinach being the base of the dish. It felt indulgent, but tasted delicious. I gave two thumbs up to the paneer, which was thick and generously cut. Rama’s has more than just great food going for it. The service is warm and professional, you can BYO beer or wine, and the decor is modern and inviting. It’s hard to believe that a modest suburban shopping centre can offer such foodie goodness, but Rama’s is a Canberra institution that sets a high bar for Indian restaurants in other Australian capital cities. One of Canberra’s most noticeable design features is its disaggregation. The city fans out across former sheep paddocks, with thinly spread suburbs interspersed with patches of bushland, hills and a lake. As a consequence there is none of the main street buzz you find in most Australian cities because there are no main shopping streets. Instead, each suburb harbours a small block of shops, usually fitted out with one or two restaurants, a grocery store, newsagent and the occasional bar. While this may make it easier for people in each suburb to drive or walk to a set of local shops, it stops Canberra from achieving a sense of critical mass and means restaurants are rarely clustered together. It’s for this reason (among many others) that I love the annual food fair associated with Canberra’s Multicultural Festival. For one joyous day in February, the pavement of Gareema Place (Canberra’s main outdoor shopping mall) is crowded with stages, people and food stalls - 190 this year! The food comes from all over the world - there’s Vietnamese, Korean, Japanese, Indian, Sri Lankan, Tamil (placed next to a Sri Lankan stall, interestingly), Tongan, Chilean, Sudanese, Ethiopian, Russian, Spanish, Samoan and Polish, among many others. It’s one of the best food festivals I’ve been to, because unlike Sydney where festivals tend to split along ethnic lines, Canberra is small enough to need to get everyone together in the same place to make it work.
My friends and I began with the Vietnamese vegetarian stall. I chose the rice paper rolls, aware of the long day ahead of me and the need to pace myself.
However, I hankered after Andy’s Hoysin tofu curry and the perfectly rounded mung bean balls.
Next it was time for snack-sized food. My friend A. went for vegetarian spinach dumplings with chilli sauce from the Central Asian stall.
I lined up at the El Salvadorean stall, wishing that I had pupusas (corn meal pancakes filled with cheese and beans) but alas most of the crowd had the same idea.
Deciding that we hadn’t had our fill of dumplings, we headed to the Gyoza stall. The line there was long, but we went straight to the front as the only people looking for the vegetarian version. Unfortunately, the vegetarian version had meat in them. When we took them back the stall claimed it was tofu (!) then told us they don’t recommend that people with allergies or special dietary needs eat the gyozas. Would have been nice if they had mentioned this policy at the time of purchase, rather than leaving us with a plate of food we couldn’t eat.
But not to worry, because there was plenty more choice on offer at the food fair. We moved past a series of sausage based stalls until we hit one from Pakistan (specifically, Lahore). I tried a home-style curry, which was spicy and packed with vegetables and we shared samosas and some gorgeous, soft potato balls served with mint chutney.
For good measure we tried the food as well - a light vegetable curry and two lentil curries served on the foamy inerja bread. One of the interesting things about the food festival is the way the stalls have changed. When I first went eight years ago the stall were mostly Asian and European, but now there are quite a lot of African stalls reflecting the changing mix of Canberra’s community.
Vegetarians were well-served at the fair. There was a second vegetarian stall with Indian and Sri Lankan food which I’m reliably informed was very good, but by that point my mains stomach was full and it was time for dessert.
The Dutch pancakes are perennial favourites at the Food Fair, but one look at this line was enough to make us turn on our heel and go elsewhere.
One of the nicest things about the food fair is that most of the stalls are run by community groups or private citizens rather than restaurants, so you get a lovely home-cooked vibe to the food and service. This was absolutely in evidence at the Polish seniors association bakery stall - it was hard to choose but I didn’t regret my delicious slice of moist apricot cake.
I had a great day out at the food festival and loved the fact that I could try so many different types of food. It was encouraging to see that most stalls offered at least one vegetarian option, which combined with the two dedicated (and delicious) vegetarian stalls meant vegos were well-catered for. If I have any criticism it is that the festival has outgrown Gareema Place. There was a large crowd and too often people welled up at bottlenecks when the path between the stalls narrowed. With close to 200 stalls, the festival could also have benefited from maps for festival goers to make it easier to plan your day and arrange to meet friends. But these comments are minor gripes. If anything, my main complaint is that the food festival only happens once each year. I was flicking through the Sunday Age last weekend when I came across this article on the amount of food waste that Victorians send to landfill. The story claims that on average each household in Victoria throws out 25o kg of food matter each year, and that over 1 million tonnes of food waste is sent to landfill creating 1.6 million tonnes of greenhouse gases. The article attributes the large scale waste to affluence and a belief amongst householders that it’s better to have a full fridge and throw out unused, rotting food than go hungry. These claims got me thinking. Since moving from a tiny apartment with no garden to a full-blown house, we’ve invested in a worm farm and a compost bin. Separating out our food scraps and watching it pile up so quickly each week has made me very conscious of the amount of food materials that go unused. While I like to think that we use most of what we buy, if we weren’t composting the food or feeding it to our busy worms, food scraps would probably make up the biggest proportion of our household waste. On top of the issue of people buying more food than they need, I think another factor in the large amount of food waste is that people have lost the knack, time or desire to use up excess food. Composting and worm farms might not be for everyone, but there are some great recipes that allow you to make some use of leftovers. A good example of this is vegetable stock. Aside from using up older vegetables, you can you make a great base for soups and risottos that suits your tastes and you also get to control the amount of salt and oil that goes into it. So, inspired by the article, this is my weekend herb blogging entry for the week: vegetable stock flavoured with bay leaves.
Vegetable stock Ingredients 2 carrots or half a sweet potato Method Chop up all the vegetable ingredients into the same-sized pieces. The smaller the pieces the faster the water will absorb their flavours. You don’t need to peel the vegetables but you do need to wash them. Put the vegetables in a large, heavy-based saucepan with a lid (preferably a stockpot but a big saucepan will do). Throw in the bay leaves and rosemary leaves and mix them in so that they are spread throughout the stock pot. Add 2-3 teaspoons of salt. Cover the vegetables in water so the waterline is a few cm higher than the top vegetables. Bring to the boil, then simmer on a low heat for two hours with the lid on. Taste occasionally to test the flavour, adjusting the salt and pepper if necessary with half an hour to go. Remove the saucepan from the heat and strain the base from the vegetables. The stock will keep for a few days in the fridge, but if you make a decent quantity it’s best to freeze it in small containers where it will last for three months. Notes on the recipe
Bay leaves
If you want to find out more, check out wikipedia and about.com. This week’s weekend herb blogging is hosted by Ulrike at Kuchenlaten. |
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