In my kitchen: November 2025

So autumn becomes summer at the end of November!  A time for stone fruit and festive food.  We have enjoyed Dubai chocolate products, peaches and nectarines and a soap that smells of marzipan and makes me think of Christmas and stollen waiting in the pantry for a special occasion.   I hope you are enjoying this crazy time of festivities and holidays.  Read on to find out more about our experimenting with vegan food, buying interesting groceries and making some new recipes.  (I will soon post My Monthly Chronicles for more about November's outings and wider world.)

Above is one of a box of Dubai inspired Chocolate and Pistachio Tarts.  The filling was pretty good with  thick soft chocolate ganache over with crispy kataifi mixed with creamy pistachio spread in fairly ordinary shortcrust cases and topped with pistachios.  At $12 for 6 tarts at Woolworths supermarket, I expected a bit more than a thin tough shell of pastry but the filling was so good that I might just go back for more.  The packaging is festive like quite a lot of sweet offerings there, but only a few of them are traditional Christmas treats.
 

Dubai chocolate was a bit of thing this month.  I am sure I am seeing it more about me but also have developed quite a taste for it.  So much so that for our special birthday lunch at the start of November ,I made a adult Dubai Chocolate caterpillar cake.,  It was delicious but the chocolate brownie cupcakes were a bit of a challenge.  So much so that I made another batch a week or so later.  

They don't look very impressive in the pans but the texture was much softer than my first two goes.  When they cook, they must be watched carefully as they get dry quickly but are amazing when less dry.  I had also hoped another batch would use up the pistachio cream frosting but we still have some left in the fridge, with the hope that we might be inspired enough to use it up.

I found some energy to make a Sourdough antipasto focaccia.  This time I packed it with olives, cheese and chopped pickled red onion.  I also used mostly wholemeal flour.  It did not rise fantastically but was soft and tasty.  I blame the lack of rise on the cold weather that continues to alternate with sunny warm days and make the weeds grow like crazy. 

I dropped into Mr Dad Asian Supermarket on the corner of Victoria Street and Bouverie to check out their furikake.  I was waylaid by small chocolate slabs with a pleasing green criss cross of matcha.  The I discovered the rows of furikaka.  I chose a Marumiya furikake whose ingredients included matcha and pleased Sylvia.  I also bought a Korean Seasoned Seaweed by Surasang that looked similar to furikake.  It worked well in Tofucado.

Aldi is well known for it's Christmas items in the middle row.  We checked it out and there was a tyranny of choice: fudge, nougat, nuts etc.  The Christmas liquorice is an old favourite.  We love lebkuchen: covering it with chocolate and filling it with apricot jam took it to another level!  The European spice cookies (speculaas) were excellent.  The mini-stollen is waiting for the right moment.

These all butter cheese biscuits from Aldi are so cute with their star and Christmas tree shapes.  They are being saved for a Christmas platter!

The Mushroom Bao Buns from Aldi are so cute with their green ribbon and red bow.  They are still in our freezer.

I enjoyed converting a carnivorous sausage and broken lasagna recipe into a vegetarian one.  I have written a post on Stovetop lasagna two ways which includes the (vegetarian) sausage ragu lasagne.  It was so good we made it twice in the month.
 

Sylvia found a recipe on social media for a Dumpling bake based on a viral recipe.  I used a recipe from Cooking with Ayeh.  We loved the crispy topped dumplings in the (coconut) creamy Thai curry sauce that was filled with bok choy, bean sprouts, edamame, enoki mushrooms.  Next time we will buy a bigger bag of dumplings.

Another winning new recipe by Sylvia was a vegan Cheezy broccoli orzo.  The pasta and orzo were cooked separately and then mix together with peas and a vegan cashew cheese sauce.  It was an easy meal with oodles of comfort.  

We made a lot more than the recipe said by adding a 250g packet of orzo, 2 cups of frozen peas, an additional 1/2 cup each of cashews and water for the sauce plus a bit of maple syrup and smoked papika to tame the sharp lemony flavour.  Next time I might add a little less lemon juice.  We are very keen to make it again!

It is the time of year when Sylvia begins to plan her Christmas dinner with her dad.  I always have the same meal with my extended family but she likes to explore different ideas.  She has tried cooking some pigs in blankets with vegan sausages wrapped in vegan bacon (secured with a toothpick) for 18-20 min  at 200 C in the air fryer.  She tried a cranberry maple marinade on some which was very nice.

We have been buying more vegan products lately.  Here are a few from the local supermarkets: Sheese shredded cheese (good when melted), Plantein plant based schnitzels (ok but not as good as Sylvia's favourite Fry's schnitzels), Bio cream cheese (ok but a bit oily), Yay plant based feta (nice but a bit oily) and Vitasoy oat yoghurt (not great).  

I am less keen on the commercial processed plant based products, especially the cheeses.  The vegan cheeses seem to be predominately coconut oil which I don't like much.  It is heavy and has less nutritious value than dairy cheese.  I have found that home made vegan cheeses and cheese sauce much better nutritionally because we often add nuts and nooch plus is less processes.  However the market for vegan cheeses seems to continue to grow so there must be people who like it better than me.

We also went to the Brunswick IGA which had a greater range of plant based foods.  Sylvia loved the Otherly chocolate.  The Green Vic "parmesan" and Laud's smoked oat cheese were good in a mac and cheese sauce but not as good by themselves, though Sylvia had some "parmesan" sprinkled on meals.  The Laud's had split peas, oats and cashews so I liked the ingredients list more but it was not great cold.  I was really pleased to find smoked tofu as I have been looking for it and wondering if anyone makes it any more.  Also pictured are tofu nuggets (which had minimal flavouring so weren't so different to firm tofu) and Community co dairy free buttery taste spread which tasted nice but I still have a soft spot for Nuttalex margarine.

Here is a closer look at the Otherly Salted Caramel Oatmilk Chocolate.  It is creamy and smooth with wonderful notes of caramel but is not too sweet or salty.  The chocoate is worth buying for its whimsical illustrations on the packaging.

Another product that we have tried and enjoyed is a jar of pickled red onions.  We added these and the Yay plant based feta to a Pearl couscous, cucumber and feta salad recently.  I had some of the leftovers for lunch when there wasn't much left and also added red cabbage and red capsicum.  It was an excellent lunch.  I am not usually a fan of raw onions but have been enjoying these.

Another way we have been vegan cheese and pickled onions is on pizza using my regular fast track sourdough pizza base.  In the above photo half the pizza is from my dairy cheese pizza with tomato sauce, mushrooms, capsicum, olives, pineapple, pickled onions and a mozzarella melty mix of grated cheese.  Sylvia's pizza had tomato sauce, olives, pickled onions and kale.  Half of hers had Sheesh tasty cheeze and half had Yay plant based feta.  I enjoyed them all.  Sylvia loved her feta versions with none of the adverse effects of eating lactose.

When riding home past Calle Bakery I decided to drop in.  We love their wonderful baking.  I could not resist the amazing pistachio croissant with an oozy creamy crunchy Dubai chocolate filling and a generous blob of melted chocolate that cooled hard.  Sylvia had a cinnamon scroll that was messy with lots of frosting but deliciious.

I also tried the Wallaby Dubai style chocolate squares with a pistachio cream filling and crispy gluten free filo.  It wasn't as impressive and crispy as the Calle croissant filling but was pretty good.  It was interesting to see because it had a gluten free filling because Dubai chocolate is usually uses wheat pastry.  

  

Sylvia had a trip to Lune Bakery, Rose Street Market and Red Sparrow vegan pizzeria.  They returned to our place with a Strawberry matcha croissant (with matcha coconut frangpani, strawberry jam, whipped matcha ganache, freeze dried strawberries, white chocolate shards) and the Turtle ("A pain au chocolat twice-baked with chocolate frangipane, roasted pecans, and salted caramel. Dusted with chocolate powder then finished with dark chocolate ganache, salted caramel sauce, and candied pecans").  I tasted both and they were superb but I am a chocolate lover so I was most impressed with the Turtle.  (And the leftovers lasted well.)

I have written about a lovely afternoon with my family involving gluten free miso grubs (truffles) and a birthday tea for my twin nieces' 21st birthday.  I took this photo later in the evening when I got home.  I brought home some Marks and Spencer Percy Pigs and chocolate wrapped as fruit that my sister had given my mum for me on her visit to Dublin.  I had bought home some birthday cake, grubs, hedgehog and fruit.  Sylvia had made gorgeous collages that we printed up as birthday cards.  Meanwhile she was out with her dad and brought home a goodie bag from the Lara Buchanan gig and jewellery and a cute little house from op shopping. The day was as busy as that photo!

November ended with a crazy day.  We had planned to drop in at a local community market before meeting up with a friend for lunch in the south east of Melbourne.  But she cancelled because she was sick.  The market had such heavy rain it turned to hail.  I was planning to go to look at the new Metro tunnel with Sylvia but it got complicated because she was also keen to have brunch out, it was raining too much to get around without the car but driving the car meant a parking nightmare.  Then she got a last minute message from a FaceBook Marketplace seller to pick up a tiffany lamp in a far suburb of Melbourne.  I finally decided we do the metro tunnel or stay home.  She stayed home and I rode the 5 new metro tunnel stations that opened that day.  (I plan to write more about it.)  I got home and prepared to go grocery shopping but the car battery was flat so instead we wanted for roadside assistance to fix it and went shopping late.  

The photo is of a Metro tunnel celebration newspaper, a celebration lollypop, a string of fabric "tinsel" bought at the market from my friend Kerin of Remaki, the bag of a cookie I had to keep me going in all the walking and stairs and tunnels on the metro line, a tiny mouse and felt pumpkin that Sylvia had bought in Fitzroy the previous day.  So much fun and wonderful stuff!

 
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's url to Sherry by 13th of the month.  Or just head over to her blog to visit more kitchens and her gorgeous hand drawn festive header.  Thanks to Sherry for continuing to host this even that brings together some wonderful bloggers who share glimpses into their kitchens.