Dinner at 25 Toorak Road Restaurant

For my birthday, Tim took me to dinner at 25 Toorak Road Restaurant, South Yarra.  The atmosphere and food at 25 Toorak Road are inspired by a French Bistro.  It is truly lovely inside, with a black and white theme.

Our waiter was amused because he had spotted me taking a photo of the interior of the restaurant from the street.  He said he'd tried to pose.  And there I was thinking I had been very discreet.

For entrée, Tim ordered the beetroot salad with orange, goats cheese and candied walnuts ($21):

 
while I could not go past the scallops with cauliflower puree ($24):

 
Both dishes were superb.  I resisted the temptation to try the old fashioned prawn cocktail, which was ordered by two gents on the next table.  I also considered the escargot, but decided to leave that experience for another day.

For main, I figured while in France, go French, so I ordered the confit duck with lentils, cabbage and pancetta ($38):

 
This was a rich but delicious dish, with the duck having crispy skin and not at all oily, like duck can sometimes be.

Tim went for the eye fillet done medium rare ($41):

 
On the side, we ordered steamed greens ($10):

 

and fries ($10):

 
The fries were especially good.

Despite feeling quite satisfied already, we both had dessert stomachs, and ordered a dessert each.  Tim went for the apple and raspberry crumble with raspberry icecream ($14):

while I could not go past the lemon soufflé with lemon curd icecream ($15):

Look at all of that fluffy, lemony goodness:

My dessert was exquisite, and I know that Tim enjoyed his too.  These desserts were both very popular - at the table behind us, there were no less than four crumbles.

The wait staff were friendly and funny, and the service was also very efficient.

We had a wonderful night at 25 Toorak Road, and I'd definitely go there again.

25 Toorak Road Restaurant

25 Toorak Road

South Yarra VIC

Ph: 03 9821 4425 

WIAFK (CB) - Vegetable Couscous

Life is full of compromises.  Despite your best efforts, sometimes you just have to compromise to get anywhere at all.

And so it was for Weekend in a French Kitchen (Café Boulud) this week, where I compromised quite a bit to get the finished product due to a lack of time.  Our recipe was Vegetable Couscous.  the recipe required us to make harissa and vegetable broth from scratch before making the couscous.  I had been away for the weekend, so this was never going to happen.  I used harissa out of a jar and vegetable broth out of a tetrapak, but I was still happy with my jewelled couscous.

To see what the others thought of this dish, and to see if they made all of the components, visit the LYL section of the WIAFK website.

Golden Gaytime Cake

For my birthday this year, I was short on time, so I didn't want to make anything too complicated.  I struck gold when I saw a Golden Gaytime Cake pop up on Facebook.  This cake has gone viral, but I am a little behind the times, because I had never heard of it until a couple of weeks ago.  For the uninitiated, the Golden Gaytime is a popular icecream on a stick readily available here in Australia, which has been around for as long as I can remember.  It consists of vanilla icecream encased in toffee icecream, then covered in a thin coating of chocolate and malt biscuit crumbs.  The slogan used to market this icecream is, "It's so hard to have a Gaytime on  your own", a pun meaning that you'll attract crowds wanting to share your icecream when you eat a Gaytime.

I made the Golden Gaytime Cake exactly as per the recipe, which can be found here at Tinman's Treats.  My malt biscuits were Paradise Malt biscuits as my supermarket didn't sell the Arnotts Malt O' Milk, but it is basically the same thing, just a different brand.  To make my chocolate butter cream, I went with the cocoa powder suggestion rather than the chocolate suggestion. 

I used a rolling pin to break up the biscuits rather than chopping them with a knife - much easier and quicker.

I think the cake looked pretty good and close to the original.

Here's a peek inside:

and here's the first slice:

I actually enjoyed it a lot.  One of my colleagues said it was very sweet, but I did not find it overly so.  Does it taste like a Gaytime icecream?  I don't think my imagination can take it that far, but it certainly has the right flavours.

I received plenty of compliments on the Golden Gaytime Cake, so I proclaim it a winner.

EwE - Loaded Hummus Plate

For Eating with Ellie this week, Sarah chose Ellie's Loaded Hummus Plate.

I was a bit worried about this, as it didn't sound like me at all - chopped up lettuce, radishes and cucumber with homemade hummus and a boiled egg.  This did not sound appealing at all! 

However, I made a single serve, using store bought hummus (sorry Ellie) to say that I had tried it.  And I was pleasantly surprised - it really tasted quite good.  I think the egg was supposed to be hard boiled and sliced into pieces, but hey, I like runny eggs so I was happy with the way mine turned out.

To see what the others thought of this dish, visit the LYL section of EwE website.

WWDH - Chicken in White Wine with Lemon Potatoes

Chaya's pick for this week's Wednesday with Donna Hay is Chicken in White Wine with Lemon Potatoes.

What a beautiful dish this was - chicken served with a lovely artichoke, garlic and white wine sauce and lemony baby potatoes on the side. 

My photograph does not do this light, fresh dish justice.  I served my chicken and potatoes with steamed broccoli and sliced tomato.

To see what the others thought of this dish, visit the LYL section of the WWDH website.

WIAFK (CB) - Gazpacho with Anchovy Toast

Our dish for Weekend in a French Kitchen (Café Boulud) this week was Gazpacho with Anchovy Toast.  This is of course a classic cold soup that needs no further explanation.

I am not sure why I needed three colours of peppers  when the whole lot gets blended up to give a red coloured soup, but nonetheless I complied with the recipe.  I didn't put the extra raw vegetables on top as that is not my kind of thing, but I did make the anchovy butter for the toast.  

Overall, I liked this dish, but not enough to make again.

To see what the others thought of this dish, visit the LYL section of the Weekend in a French Kitchen website.

Black Bean Chocoate Cake for Melbourne Cake Club - Mystery Ingredient

 

 

Last Thursday night, the Melbourne Cake Club had a meeting at Groove Train in South Yarra.  The theme for this month's meeting was "Mystery Ingredient".  After some extensive Internet searching, I decided to make a black bean chocolate cake, with black bean as my secret ingredient.  The recipe is online here.  It is a gluten free cake.

 

For Cake Club, I dressed up the cake with chocolate water icing rather than the sugar free buttercream accompanying the recipe:

 

 

 

I had never made a black bean cake before, and the first thing that struck me was how funky those canned black beans smelled.  Yuk!  It did not inspire confidence in what the cake would be like.

Another worrying thing when I was making this cake is that the batter was very liquid - it was so runny that I had doubts that it would set.

However, the end result was astonishing.  The cake was dense, moist and chocolatey, and most definitely did not smell funky - in fact, it smelled just like chocolate cake should.  The crumb of the cake was very smooth - all round, this cake was a winner, even if I didn't make it look very pretty: 

Other cakes at the Melbourne Cake Club Mystery Ingredient event were Sue's gluten free tomato soup spice cake: 

 
Abi's Vegemite caramel chocolate cake: 

 
and Dalya's tomato soup spice cake with raisins:

Here are my spoils from the evening all arranged neatly on the cake board:

It was another fun night with the Melbourne Cake Club.