St Kilda Library

We've been camping on a river bank upstate over Easter weekend, but then you already know that. You probably also know that mostly i took photos on film so it'll be a wee while till i get those back and can post them. So instead, and as it has been a while, I'll post a picture of the St Kilda library, just next door. I love this building, especially from the back.



It would fit in so many places - a tea plantation, on the set of out of Africa or deep in the outback. The garden is grey blue with local plants - gums and scrubs and a towering tree with combat striped bark. The wooden edged roof overhangs to keep the building cool and folk are often sitting in the shade with a computer (jumping on the free internet out front) or with a beer and there mates (out the back). In fact the concrete ledge often gives a passer through a place to sleep on, or under. A truly multi purpose community building (although I doubt that it was intended or is encouraged to be a sleeping place). And through the window you can get a view of the multi coloured glass lights which float inside like little space ships. Gorgeous. I'll get a photo of them next time.

Mobiloil

So okay, the naked giant man is freaking me out too, or at least seeing his picture front page is. Instead here is the very cool oil advertising sign that is painted on the brick outside our front door. This one's for you Flower!

Victoria Bitter

I could do a whole series of photos on the iconic advertising signs of Melbourne. It would be need a day driving around the city to tick off all the lovely old signs. And more like a week if the old industrial buildings and some of the graffiti was included too.
In the meantime, here's the Victoria Bitter sign taken from a moving car as we drove along Punt Road.

Bubble Dome

Is that what we are supposed to call it, the new footie stadium in Melbourne? Well regardless of whether that is it's name or a true representation of it's purpose - here is a picture of the almost completed structure.

Chapel Street, Melbourne

There have been complaints. Too much talking about food, apparently. So before I start talking about going out for 'modern Polish' food for Australia Day breakfast, here's a picture what I took yesterday walking up Chapel Street. World Famous in Australia for it's shopping. And when you can drag your eyes from the window shopping, some amazing buildings also.

Birdman Eating

Along the road from my work is a very cool cafe. Birdmen hang from the ceiling alongside little test tube vases of meadow flowers and a light sculpture made from old fashioned egg beaters. For breakfast there are eggs baked in terracotta dishes and later in the day a choice of big and little dishes. On the day Jo and I went for brunch the eggs came with either pancetta and sugo, creamed zucchini, beetroot, silverbeet and dukkah or roast cauliflower. We went with very good coffee and lunch rather than breakfast.

First there was smoked cod croquettes with a lemon aoili. Smooth smoky fishy filling in a crisp and crunch coating. Perfect.



And then a calamari, potato and chorizo salad with a side of roasted cauliflower. Some might say that the calamari was a little rubbery in that almost underdone squeaky way - but it was a good combination of flavours. The cauliflower was roasted to a sweet lush softness and came with some sliced almonds which gave it a nice bite. The only thing that let it down was too much oil in the balsamic dressing - maybe we should have had some bread to soak it up.

Flinders Street Station Arcade

It was my half day today and I wandered from the centre of the city through the lane ways to the station as I did my chores. There is an underground arcade leading from the lane ways to the station and I have meant to bring my camera any number of times. Today my camera was in my bag and I took a couple of quick shots, nothing fancy, and here they are...

The entrance from Desgraves Lane



Old lift and more graffiti



Hairdressers



Cafe

Izakaya

Once upon a time, and very jet lagged, in Japan we sat on the raised floor of an eating and drinking establishment (about which all i can remember is that it was dark, we were sleepy from the bath house and one of us fell asleep while we waited for our food) and ate small dishes of food with beer. Some of the food was japanese and there were some korean influenced dishes too. That is what Izakaya means to me in terms of food and that is also the name of a new place up our street which opened last year. Our local is rather brighter and fancier, the food is more specifically Japanese, but the option of choosing from a range of small dishes is the same. We've been a couple of times now and are very pleased to have another evening option on our street, which has a fabulous daytime cafe scene, but has little in the way of evening eating. Both times we've stuck quite highly to the specials menu, which last time looked like this...



We ordered a couple of glasses of prosecco, miso soup with tuna, the calamari, the crab omelette and from the regular menu sticky rice coated dumplings and the silver whiting. The miso wasn't anything special and the tuna pieces in it didn't really work as they had become dry, but everything else was gorgeous. I was so excited by the dishes that I don't think that I remembered to photo any dish before we had split them in two.

The calamari was soft and smoky, with a sweetness from it's sauce.



The omelette was filled with the soft flavour of the crab and the mushrooms and sat in a puddle of a light broth.



These sticky rice coated dumplings were filled with chicken, prawn and ginger and then steamed. They came with a hot yellow mustard (not so much hotter than a fiery wasabi) and a vinegar dipping sauce.



There is no picture of the silver whiting which was rolled with shiso and salted plum and then lightly tempura battered and fried. We've had this and the omelette both times and they are brilliant dishes. It's really nice to have a japanese restaurant that serves more than the standard sushi, rice and noodle dishes and that serves it so well. There is a precision, delicacy and balance in their cooking.

Crab omelette for breakfast anyone?

Guiseppe Arnaldo and Sons

We took Fouzia to GAS at the casino for a quick bowl of pasta the other week. That doesn't sound particularly extravagant until you see the place. The restaurant is part of the southbank complex in Melbourne and is an enormous space. I'm sure I saw Fouzia with her camera - so maybe there will be a photo to follow. If not, well imagine a long dark room which is painted black with a variety of spaces. Like a stage with a number of sets. There is a large glass cupboard which looks like it came from an anatomy museum, a tall scarlet meat slicing machine that also has the look of modern macabre and a ceiling high set of shelves with a cutting stand in front for the generous portions of bread. There are seats in front of the long window at the front (the windows are smokey - you can see out, but not in) which you can grab if you get there early, a long high table with bar stools for slightly more communal eating and a square eating area or two angled in between the back wall and the kitchen. There are simple Moroccan tiles cutting a swathe across the floor and up the walls to demarcate the different areas in the eatery and also in the bar. A fabulous experience in itself. And then there is the food.

Here's the menu (which comes as your paper place mat)...

http://www.idrb.com/giuseppe_main_flash.html

This was maybe our fourth or fifth trip to GAS. Our eating experiences there have ranged from the sophisticated to the brave. The raw scallops with olive oil, cress, capers and a touch of truffle. Oregano and lemon dusted prawns with aioli. Some extremely classy salami. A very very tender steak. The old school tripe in a tomatoey sauce - it beat us both with it's richness. A sausage stuffed pigs trotter - it looked very much like a pigs trotter and it beat me too. We kept things simple this time though, no offal, no feet.



You can see my calamari fritti with courgette and mint - lightly crumbed and quickly fried. Perhaps we didn't need the rosemary potatoes on the side, but they were also good. Craig had a risotto with marrow (that's bone marrow) with saffron and pork sausage - which he said was a little full on which is quite something from a trotter eating toughie. And this is Fouzia's flathead with tomato, basil and olive oil. Simply lovely.



The highlight of course was Craig tucking in to a chilli from the olive bowl, chewing momentarily, spitting the whole thing out and then the succession of pained expressions until the burning heat lessened. Not so tough now, eh?

Elwood Market

I'm beginning to wonder if I shouldn't simply post a photo and caption per day - as time gets away from me, the post ideas come and go and the photos accumulate. Not to mention the culture, art shows and odd things that we've been to in recent weeks - there is just too much explaining to go with the photos. Such as the obsessively knitting, frantically weaving american whose show was part historic building tour, part history of hair craft and knitting and part personal experience. See here...



Maybe there'll be time to come back to her and various others, but meantime here are a few market shots from recent weeks...

A month ago i had a wander around Elwood market with Queen Bee. Egg and bacon roll four dollars fifty, home made lemon cordial 1 dollar per glass, french bakery croissants, a commemorative Alice Springs tea spoon (sold to me for 2 dollars by a wee wifey from Paisley - she moved here over 40 years ago and still had the look and sound of the west of the scotland), some old french pharmacy card boxes for a dollar each amongst craft, art, tat, food and plants. Lovely market. Here is some of the local produce....



And her is some more again...



We were back there yesterday and scored egg and bacon rolls as before, coffees, portuguese custard tarts, chocolate cup cakes and some sunburn as we wandered. Maybe Fouzia got a photo of the bearded man with a cockatoo on his shoulder (they shared their bacon roll). I was too busy chomping on my roll at the time.

Aka Tombo

Tuesday half days are here again and with them even more opportunities for food. This week we went for japanese food at Aka Tombo on Greville Street. It's little, extremely friendly, nicely done out and the sets are good. The pictures are doing most of the talking today.



We had unidentified stalks/ greens/ beans in a clear stock to begin with. Then miso soup.



Followed by the sashimi set for me with the usual mix of salmon, tuna and a couple of white fishes (all meltingly fresh), an oyster with a tabasco vinegar sauce and some delicately cut radish. There was a little side dish of wee squares of dark seaweed that tasted like it had been sweetened in a treacle sauce. Plus a bowl of sticky rice and an endless supply of green tea.



And for him the Teriyaki Chicken set complete with sushi, sashimi and tempura.



And I almost forgot - to finish we had a red bean, tofu and fruit salad in syrup. All in all a winner!

Dinner and a play.

Last night we went to see When The Rain Stops Falling - Melbourne Theatre Company. It was raining on the stage and a huge fish fell from the sky. It landed with a thud and splashed all of us down near the front. There were alot of people called Gabriel and alot of things happened over and over again in different places and generations. There were alot of people who were unhappy and alone. And I thought that the loss, unhappiness and grief that we saw represented only a fraction of the possible repetitions. At the end we see a father and son, the grandson and great grandson of the story, meet and repeat the conversations of their predecessors. They eat said fish. They swap presents. They talk. They get on. Things go right. The dead look on with interest and approval. And the rain stops falling.
This was our last show of the season and it was nice that it ended on a hopeful, redemptive note.

Enough about culture though - there is food to feast upon.

Here is the restaurant, Journal Canteen, in the city...



It is open weekdays for lunch and friday nights for dinner. That's all. Rosa the chef is Sicilian and her place serves the simple home cooked food that she would serve at home.

Here is the antipasto plate we shared to begin with, with a glass of prosecco and a basket of italian white and sourdough...



We had 1 slice of salami, 2 black salty olives, 2 green, crunchy asparagus stems, a little pile of juicy aubergine, slices of courgette with a tomato sauce, puy lentils with tiny pieces of chopped red onion and others, a piece of what was somewhere between an omelette and a curd cheese, a potato cake with spring onions and a courgette and new potato stack.

Here is my main course - slow cooked veal chops with tomatos, capers and potatoes...



The meat fell from the bones and I had to ask for more bread to soak up the juices.

And here are Craig's marinaded sardines...



which were fresh, raw and a little vinegary scattered with a fresh green herb salsa.

There was a dressed iceberg lettuce and radish salad, a glass of red wine each and in place of dessert a couple of slice of a ewes milk pecorino cheese served with some thinly sliced olive oil dressed bread and some slices of ripe green pear.

I loved it for the friendly folk, the old school school decor, the green paint and the counter stools. Mostly I loved the fresh, summery produce. Gorgeous.

Before sunset.

Maybe all i'll have time for is quick posts if things stay so busy. I'm going to try to put out a couple back to back this morning.

It has been the hottest week on record for this time of year with temperatures forecast for the week as 31 32 32 34 34 30 36.
It has fortunately not been quite so hot and there have been some salty cool breezes coming up from the ocean on at least a couple of evenings - time to open some windows and let the hot air out.

We had a bayside picnic on tuesday night. Flat bread, green olive dip, roast chicken and beer. The sea was silvery and sparkly as we had our tea, and the sky bright red and deep blue as we headed home.

St Kilda Possum

A quickie.
Walking home last night we came across an old boy with a shopping trolley whistling too- too-too at this possum perched up on a fence chewing on his supper. He stayed nicely still for the photo and then trotted off, leaving the old boy too-too-too-ing to the fence.

Nuts

I had all things lemons in mind on the way home, but then I was distracted by dinner - a summery coleslaw salad - that was too good not to share. This is a Neil Perry recipe - Vietnamese Coleslaw with Prawns - although just a little simplified. He suggests to use it as a side dish to some fried fish and some boiled rice - but I threw in plenty of small prawns and served the dish on its own.

Neil called for home roasting of raw peanuts - I missed that bit out and bought some decent dry roasted peanuts from the healthy food section (as opposed to the beer nuts section). He also suggested a mandolin to julienne the carrot. The coarse end of a grater worked just fine for me. You can make the dressing vinegary, sweet or hot to taste - I've reduced the liquid in this recipe - there was too much.



Vietnamese Coleslaw with Prawns

1/2 cup dry roasted peanuts, coarsely crushed
300g chinese leaves, rolled tightly and thinly sliced
I carrot peeled and grated
1/2 spanish onion thinly sliced
8 large cherry tomatoes sliced
Couple of handfuls of prawns of your preference
1 cup mixed fresh herbs e.g. coriander, thai basil, basil mint, vietnamese mint

Dressing:
100ml rice wine vinegar
1 - 2 tablespoons caster sugar, to taste
1 tablespoon dried chilli flakes

What to do:
Put dressing ingredients in a saucepan and bring to the boil to dissolve the sugar. Remove from the heat and return to room temp.
Mix everything together, dress to taste and serve.

November 1st 2009

It's drizzling this morning, with the threat of sunshine. Last night we had another long electrical storm, mostly lightning and only some rolling thunder as the rain came on. And yesterday we had a hot hot day and me my first swim in the bay. Sparkling sunlight on the water and light, cool water. Gorgeous.

Since I ordered my new computer last month and it's arrival i've been keeping track of things to talk about and i am already weeks behind. Here's a snapshot...

Dinner at Arabesques in Elsternwick.

We had halloumi filo cigars and spicy lamb sausages with harissa potato salad to start. The filo was crinkly and crisp, the halloumi light and soft and the dish was sweet enough for pudding. It was an elegant looking starter too, where most of the other dishes had a more rustic charm. For mains we had a whole grilled barramundi with roast potatoes, chicken skewers with rice and the lamb koftas, which were full of juicy cinammon flavours.

Next stop mama ganoush, there more modern chapel street restaurant.

http://www.mamaganoush.com/menu.html

Korean set meal in Brisbane.

In Glasgow there is a korean restaurant and they do alot with kimchi and claypots, but I don't think I ever had Bibimbap before i came to Melbourne. There's a great korean restaurant near work and they make it really well in a sizzling claypot dish. I had something similar in Brisbane. The claypot comes straight from the oven and is filled with a layer of cooked white rice then a layer of neatly ordered vegetables (shitake mushrooms and thinly sliced carrots, courgettes & red cabbage). In the middle is a mound of beef and on top a raw (or sometimes, fried) egg. On the side you get a dish of chilli sauce that sometimes is close to a chilli and satay sauce and you tip this in stir the whole lot up and it carries on cooking in its very hot dish. By the time you get near to finishing the vegetables are soft, the rice is crunchy and there is a tasty caramelised egg/ chilli/ satay coating to be scraped off the bottom of the pot.

The rest of my set was made up of a dish of kimchi, cold roast potatoes with a syrup dressing and a tuna pasta salad that took me straight back to student days.

I ate the lot. And washed it down with a couple of korean beers.

At the state library in Queensland the next day I wolfed down a chorizo filo roll between lectures. It's a lovely part open air cafe with a great bookshop next door.

And the day after that I had a zucchini cous cous slice with a tamarind chutney at the main art gallery. My attention was more taken by the ibis wandering around (ignore them and they will walk right up to you, look them in the eye and they turn quickly away) and the lovely water sculpture.

Walking back to my hotel after class I came back to the weekly food market that had been setting up in the main square that morning. The stalls that caught my eye in the morning were the french baker's, a man selling homemade sand crab quiche and a range of gourmet cheeses. I thought that these were the foods of winter and the smells were rich in the hot and humid morning. When I had time to wander later there were kilos and kilos of strawberries, baskets of heritage tomatoes, fresh local seafood and huge bunches of bananas. My food photo skills are not up to scratch, but the tomatoes turned out nice.