Carrot cake muffins

I like the humble carrot. I wouldn't say that it's my favourite vegetable, but it's certainly one of the most useful. I put it in almost everything – pasta sauces, soups, stews, stir fry, sandwiches, roasts and salads as well as eating it raw by itself or with dips.

Carrot juice is probably my favourite juice, although I don't drink it often due to the amount of carrots needed to make a cup (plus I don't have a juicer). And carrot cake? Carrot cake has got to be one of the best cakes ever. Foodtimeline says that carrot cake was most likely descended from Medieval carrot puddings, where they were used due to the natural sweetness (because sweetners were expensive). Carrot cake was around here and there since that time, and recipes for cakes with a cream cheese icing started to appear in the 1960s.

This recipe was adapted from Stephanie Alexander's The Cook's Companion. The original recipe called for plain white flour and walnuts. I used wholemeal flour instead, because one of my favourite things about carrot cake is the nuttiness. Because I don't like walnuts and therefore never have any in the pantry, I substituted pepitas.

I made muffins instead of a big cake and ate them over a few days - they were a great mid-morning snack.



Simple carrot cake

Adapted from Stephanie Alexander's The Cook's Companion

125 g self-raising wholemeal flour
3/4 cup brown sugar
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg
2/3 cup olive oil
2 eggs, lightly beaten
2 cups finely grated carrot
60 g roughly chopped walnuts or pepitas

Preheat oven to 180 degree C and grese an 18 cm springform tin or 6 cup muffin tin. Mix flour, sugar and spices. Add oil and eggs and beat in a food processor or an electric mixer for 1 minute. Stir in carrot and walnuts/pepitas. Spoon into prepared tin and bake for about 1 hour (less if making muffins). Cool in tin before turning out.

When cold, dust with icing sugar mixed with ground cinnamon or ice with cream cheese mixed with a touch of icing sugar and lemon juice.

Hien Vuong Pasteur

Whenever we have visitors, we mostly let them sort out their own sightseeing. I love this city, but I find it hard to think of interesting "touristy" things to do. Unlike other cities that have several must-see sights, Melbourne has charms that grow on you over time.

While we're not good with the sightseeing agenda, we do have a food agenda. This is a list of must-eat items that our visitors need to experience. On the list are things like: dumplings at Camy, a hot chocolate at Koko Black, perhaps a claypot at EC pot (I need to go back and write a post on this place!), a parma, and a big bowl of pho.

On a recent visit to Footscray, we decided to try a different pho restaurant. We walked past one that was packed with customers, always a good sign, so we took our chances and went in. The restaurant was decked out in the usual style – brightly lit with mirrored walls, menu written on the wall, and inexpensive tables and chairs. There's also two large plasma TVs mounted on the walls, providing something else to focus on apart from your reflection (which was a tad distracting).



The bowls of pho come in three different sizes – small for $6.50, medium for $7.50 and large for $8.50. The rice noodles and meat come swimming in a beef soup that has so much flavour, this is now our pho restaurant of choice. The one pictured here is a large - the Boys were hungry that night!



Apart from the 20 different styles of noodle soup, there's also the usual spring rolls and pork chops on rice and vermicelli. I believe this bowl of vermicelli was $8 (the price isn't written on the walls). It was a huge bowl of noodle, and while the sauce wasn't as tasty as in other places, it wasn't bad. I had actually ordered it because I had a hankering for some crunchy spring rolls – and didn't spot the springs rolls on the menu until after I ordered. I was a tad envious of the Boys with their bowls of pho.



The one disappointment is the tea tastes a bit strange. It may be due what they use to clean the thermoses. Both times we visited, the tea had an overwhelming taste and smell of detergent. But with three colour drinks cheaply priced at $2, and a big bowl of soup to drink after you've finished scavenging every last meat and noodle scrap from the bowl, who needs tea?

Update: they seem to have fixed the strange tasting tea! It has been fine in subsequent visits.



Hien Vuong Pasteur
144 Hopkins Street
Melbourne , VIC 3011
Phone: 03 9687 9698

Harvest picnic at Hanging Rock

Last Sunday we went out to Hanging Rock for the annual Harvest Picnic. I had given the Boys a leaving time before we went to bed, but unfortunately my Bro was a touch hungover and needed a bit of prodding. It was a slower start than I wanted, but eventually we climbed into the car and headed off.

45 minutes later we had arrived and parked (in a paddock). All around us were people pulling chairs, baskets and eskies out of their cars. It was our first time to the Harvest Picnic, and we felt very under prepared carrying a single picnic blanket!

We had a wander around before deciding on what we were going to buy/eat. Typical of these type of events, there were lots of stalls offering samples/tastes of wine, cheese, spices, preserves and oils. There were also quite a few stalls where you could buy different things to eat.

The Boys had a buffalo sausage. I sampled some buffalo cheese, which was rather good. I didn't buy any though.



They also had a caffeine fix. I'm told it was average coffee, but then what can you expect from a portable stand?



I had a lamb, cheese and spinach gozleme. There was a big queue by the time I got to the stand but I entertained myself by watching them being made.



The gozleme was a tad salty, but got scoffed down pretty quickly.



Bro had a chicken pie. It looked awesome but I'm told it was just okay.



We also had a calamari skewer and a sweet chilli prawn skewer. I'm not a fan of sweet chilli, but the prawns were actually really good. They tasted more garlicky than the usual sickly sweetness that sweet chilli has. The calamari wasn't so great though – by the time I walked them back to where our picnic blanket was located they were cold and a tad tough.



And last I also bought a smoked salmon plate to share. A couple of pieces of pide, a fair amount of smoked salmon, pickled onions, gherkins and some tartare sauce. I somehow managed to inhale the vinegar fumes when I was eating the pickled onions and it gave me a big coughing fit!

To finish off, I had a nice piece of Turkish delight that I neglected to take a photo of. It was rather nice, but not the best Turkish delight I've ever eaten. I'm not a huge fan of Turkish delight, but I once ate a piece that was super smooth and silky. I'm still trying to relive that moment.

We also went home with a few items - some fresh mushrooms, 3 blocks of cheese (two cheddar and one blue), and some spices and dukkah. I've been eating little pieces of cheese every day since we got back. Now I remember why I don't buy nice cheese unless there's an occasion. I eat too much of it!

Café Plum: 4

We eat out a lot during the weekend. Often we'll go out for brunch on Saturdays and Sundays, and normally at least one evening meal is eaten out as well. I try not to let us eat out too much because it gets expensive. In addition, when faced with an unhealthy option versus a healthy option, unhealthy will win out 99% of the time (if I cook, it's easier for me to choose to make something healthy). But on the other hand, it's something that we enjoy, so I'm not too strict about it.

Speaking of things that we enjoy, we recently went to Café Plum. I was happy that we didn't have to settle for Café Bland again!

I had an omelette, filled with goats cheese, spinach and caramelised onion ($13). I haven't quite acquired the taste for goat's cheese yet but I'm close. You know how it has that "goaty" flavour that seems to work it's way into your nasal passages? I keep trying it and I have no doubt that I will love it eventually, just like I've learnt to love blue cheese and very dark, bitter chocolate. I found that the sweetness of the onions helped counteract some of that strong "goatiness" in the cheese, and I really enjoyed this omelette. I was also happy to see that it was a proper omelette – I'm not a fan of the open omelette as they tend to be dry and rubbery.



Alastair had the corn fritters, with smoked salmon, crème fraiche and avocado ($15.90). He said that it was good, but not as good as the ones I make (he has been trained well!). It was rather large and filling though, and he couldn't quite fit it all in.

Previous visits can be read here, here and here.

Cafe Plum
193 Flemington Rd, North Melbourne 3051
Ph: (03) 9329 8867

Hainanese Chicken Rice

Has anyone been watching Food Safari on SBS? I'm really enjoying the series, and have found most episodes fascinating, with the exception of at least one cuisine that didn't seem very exciting – schnitzel. I love the run down of the common ingredients used in each cuisine, and the segments with the home cooks.

The episode on Singaporean cuisine inspired me to make Hainanese chicken rice. If you've never had the pleasure, Hainanese chicken rice is a dish that originated in Hainan, China. An entire chicken is poached, and served with rice that has been fried with garlic and ginger (and chicken fat if you want to be really unhealthy), and then cooked in chicken stock. Alongside the rice and chicken are a couple of dipping sauces – normally a ginger and garlic sauce and a chilli one. Often there'll also be a bowl of soup. It's nothing fancy, but oh so good.

I have seen recipes where the chicken is simmered in the water, and I liked this one from Food Safari because you just leave the chicken in the hot water for an hour without simmering. For the rice, it's important to have a well flavoured chicken stock, otherwise it's just normal rice! The cooking liquid from the chicken doesn't have enough flavour, unless you want to add more bones after cooking the chicken and simmer for a couple of hours. I had made a big pot of stock in the weekend, so I used that, but of course you could just buy some liquid stock. I wouldn't bother with powdered stock though.

I made the ginger and garlic sauce, but didn't like the result, so I've taken that off the recipe (check out the link to the Food Safari recipe below if you're interested). I wanted to make the chilli sauce too, but I ran out of steam. I'm kind of glad though, because looking at the recipe I'm not sure about it. I ended up simply eating the chicken with some extra soy sauce and sesame oil.

So the result – was it good? It was great! The chicken was moist and full of flavour, and the rice was super tasty without being too oily. And another bonus, because I had made it myself, there was no MSG thirst afterwards, which seems to plague bought versions.

Writing this post is making me want chicken rice. Perhaps it'll be an outside kitchen night!



Hainanese chicken rice

From Food Safari

Chicken
1 fresh, free range chicken (mine was 1.3kg, which should serve 3-4 people)
1 tbsp Chinese rice wine
1 tbsp light soy sauce
6 slices fresh ginger
1 clove garlic, slightly bruised
2 shallots, chopped in a few pieces
1 tsp sesame oil
1 tbsp light soy sauce
½ tsp salt

Chicken Rice
3 cups long grain rice
2 tbsp chicken or pork fat (this tastes great, but peanut oil can be used instead)
2-3cm ginger, grated
3-4 cloves garlic, chopped very finely or grated
1-2 tsp salt (to taste)
3 ½ cups chicken stock
2 pandan leaves (optional)

For the chicken:
1. Bring a pot (large enough to fit the whole chicken) of water to the boil. While the water is heating, rub chicken inside with rice wine and soy sauce. Roughly chop three pieces of ginger, garlic and one shallot and then blend in a food processor. Place mixture inside chicken.
2. When the water boils, turn heat off and place the chicken, and the remaining three pieces of ginger and shallot in the water. Stand for five minutes, then lift up the chicken, draining the water from the stomach cavity. After the water has drained, put the chicken back in the water and cover with the lid. Repeat this process two or three times during the cooking period to make sure the chicken cooks inside as well as outside. The chicken will stand in the water for a total of one hour.
3. After 30 minutes, turn on the heat to bring the water back to almost boiling point, then turn the heat off (don't let the water boil so the chicken stays tender and juicy). At the end of the hour, remove the chicken and brush the surface with the remaining soy sauce combined with sesame oil and salt. Cut the chicken into bite-sized pieces with a sharp cleaver.

For the rice:
5. Wash the rice and drain well. In a wok, fry chicken fat (or peanut oil) until oil is released and then add the ginger and garlic and fry well.
6. Remove from heat and discard the chicken fat and skin. Add the rice and salt and stir fry briskly for about 1-2 minutes. Transfer rice into an electric rice cooker or pot and add the chicken stock and pandan leaves. Follow normal instructions for cooking rice. If you're using a pot, put the rice on a high heat until it comes to the boil. Then lower the heat until it becomes a gentle simmer. Let it cook until all the water has been absorbed, and you can see steam holes in the rice. Take it off the heat and let the rice sit for 10 minutes to finish absorbing the rest of the liquid before eating.