In my kitchen: August 2023

August has arrived with milder weather that is pleasant after cold days but fuels our worries about global warming delivering a scorching summer.  Despite - or perhaps because of - this we are a bit more hopeful in my house.  Our food is a little healthier with more cooking, more fruit and more vegies.  Lots of pasta, pizza, rice bowls and smoothies.  Sylvia has been doing some delicious meals.  Not a lot of natural light for photos but I am still finding more time for blogging than last year.  

We have been getting out and about a bit more.  In July I have enjoyed the Lightscape at the Melbourne Botanic Gardens, the ABC Southbank Studios: Open House, and Barbenheimer, though I saw the Barbie movie one day and Oppenheimer on the next rather then on the same day.  We have also been to quite a few cafes including a 60 minute wait at Calle Bakery for Bastille Day hot chocolate and croissant wheels.  I am quite tired and looking forward to more bike riding and energy as Spring approaches.  Meanwhile the news seems a little crazy with an inquiry into UFO coverups in the USA, refugees locked up on a barge in the UK and locally we have fatal deathcap mushroom poisonings,

The above dish combines Sylvia's love of pasta and mushrooms with my love of my cast iron frypan.  It was a simple creamy mushroom sauce over some truffle infused pasta.  So delicious.  I guess many people would have this regularly but cream and mushrooms are not really my sort of thing.  It surprised me just how good it was.  The creamy sauce was absorbed by the pasta so it wasn't as rich as I feared, and I was able to fry the mushrooms to golden brown on the cast iron.

I glory in colourful food, especially green and purple.  These packages sparked joy in me.  Unfortunately the processed Garden Veg crackers minis were dull coloured and tasted like grassy cardboard.  The purple potato chips were simply potato, oil, salt and a brilliant colour.  They were so good.

Some random groceries.  We've been nibbling on cereal lately.  Sylvia tried the Tiny Teddies cereal which was cute but too sweet.  I was tempted by the Choc Malt NutriGrain.  It was odd and not particularly better than the original NutriGrain but it was oddly edible!  Sylvia had to have a go at cooking the Buldok ramen noodles she had seen on TikTok cooked with gochujang, cream, bulkok carbonara seasoning, and cheese.  She really loved it, though went easy on the gochujang.  She was also very pleased with strawberry flavoured hello panda bikkies, Lays chips and brown sugar cinnamon pop tarts.

This curly spaghetti was bought at the Mediterranean Wholesalers near the corner of Sydney Rd and Victoria St.  It has such an amazing variety of pasta.  We call this the telephone cord pasta - for obvious reasons - and have enjoyed it very much in a few different dishes.

These two pizzas were made on a night where we had a matchbox size wedge of cheese.  Luckily we had some leftovers to jazz it up.  The pizza on the left has tomato sauce, a little cheese, mushrooms, olives, tofu bacon and vegan omelette.  It was so good.  The pizza on the right is the garlic, olive oil, salt and parsley pizza.  Again it was really good. 

This is a loaded baked potato that disappeared under all the toppings.  I made a mac and cheese to top it and then added salsa, refried beans, guacamole, spinach and yoghurt.  Every time I have baked potato I wonder why I don't have them more.  They are so good, especially on a cold winter's night.

I remember when if you wanted a bottle of hot sauce, you bought tabasco.  These days there are shelves and shelves of hot sauces so I get why tabasco brings out new versions of their classic.  I have used this smoky version a bit but in quite small amounts so far that I can't tell you if I made the right decision to buy it.

I wish I could say that I made this above meal.  It was actually from Saporito Bar and Grill (12-16 Kavanagh St, Southbank and becomes a Mexican restaurant in the evening) where I had lunch with my dad after visiting the ABC Southbank Studios a few weekends back.  The Poke Bowl ($24.50) had Sweet spicy tofu, rice, avocado, edamame, tomato, miso-slaw, and trail mix on carrot and chickpea puree.  I was fascinated by the purple powder but never found what it was.  The bowl was huge - bigger than my head - and I ended up taking some of it home for dinner.

While we have been making rice bowls quite a bit, this one was a noodle and dumpling bowl with tomatoes, spinach, miso roasted pumpkin, avocado and roasted cashews.  Most delicious.

As soon as Sylvia heard about Donut King cinnamon donut flavoured Twisties she was fascinated and finally was delighted to buy some.  This is one of the oddest products for a long time.  Twisties are a savoury corn snack that we usually buy cheese flavour.  These donut flavours mess with the mind as they are mostly savoury with some sweet cinnamon flavours.  I was surprised that they were edible but I think I just had to eat a few in the same way that you might pinch yourself to make sure it isn't a dream.

A few weeks back Sylvia and I had a cuppa and onigiri at Chooka's (1 Ballarat, St Brunswick).  We decided to go for dessert in the South East suburbs but luckily when we put the address into GPS, we were told the bakery was closed.  We looked for other bakeries nearer.  So the first place we went was Wild Life Bakery (90 Albert St, Brunswick).  I have heard great things about this place and bought the last loaf of bread from the shelf.  It was pleasingly substantial with airy holes, a chewy crust and a malty flavour.

There were a few pastries left and I bought a "bear claw" with sauerkraut and cheese.  It was lovely.  So crisp and flaky but I think it would have been nicer warm with melted cheese.

We also went to Babka Bakery Cafe (358 Brunswick Street, Fitzroy), where we also got a takeaway.  I had a piece of Chocolate Babka - of course - which was actually a huge slab that took me days to eat it.  Sylvia had a pain au chocolate which she said was the best she had ever had.

Lastly we did a bit of shopping at Wild Things Food (230 St Georges Road, North Fitzroy).  It is a fancy health food store that is a pleasure to visit.  We started with asking about microgreens and got some passionate advice from a staff member.  Then we expressed excitement at the White Truffle Chips and a woman beside us said that we were now tempting her and grabbed a packet for her son's visit.  They were delicious, as were the tofu and shitake dumplings.

Sylvia was interested to try Furikake seasoning.  It is a Japanese mix of sesame seeds, chilli, salt and seaweed flakes.  She has warned me not to be too generous with it because then the chilli kicks in a bit fiercely.  It is rather good sprinkled over a rice bowl.

We love garlic in our house and Sylvia was excited to discover elephant garlic.  I have photographed it above with some regular garlic so you can see just how huge the cloves are.

I remember going to Wild Things last year and seeing Sobah non-alcoholic beer but there were so many new products to take in that I forgot to buy the beer.  I had hoped to find it on this visit but there was none to be found.  Instead I found this Strawberry Sublime Gose.  In the many years since I had an alcoholic beer, there are many craft beers flooded the market and I feel quite lacking in beer vocab.  I had to look up 'gose' to find it is a salty and sour German beer.  It was quite tart, a little fruity thought not much strawberry flavours, and quite refreshing.

My parents recently returned home from Morocco, Portugal and Ireland.  These Percy Pigs lollies are a special party time version from Marks and Spencer in Dublin which were brought back for Sylvia.  These are yet to opened but we have Percy Pigs before so it will be nice to taste them again.

I was given a cool vegetable-themed pair of socks from Dublin (thanks Chris) and a beautiful chunky green plate from Morocco.

Finally our kitchen table has been seconded by Sylvia for putting together a Tiny Terrace Natural House DIY kit.  It was quite fiddly to work with such tiny items (the whole thing is about 30 cm wide) but she had a lot of patience and attention to detail.  It is so cute and made even cute with some cats from a previous kit.

I am sending this post to Sherry of Sherry's Pickings for the In My Kitchen event. If you would like to join in, send your post to Sherry by 13th of the month.  Or just head over to her blog to visit more kitchens and her gorgeous hand drawn header.