85 Dunning Ave, Rosebery

Kitchen by Mike is my newest food haunt and I love it. I’ve been taking everyone I can possibly grab as well, so have now been for weekday breakfast and lunch, weekend brunch, but not dinner.

The food: There’s no menu, just go up to the food counter and see what’s on. There’s always good bread, and I mean open crumb, moist, crusty sourdough with pepe saya butter. Usually a few interesting salads and some grilled or roast vegetables. A simple pizza with a delicious crust and quiche or tart, pastries and a cake or two for dessert. Everything is served room temperature and they just keep replenishing the food during service. It reminds me of Ottolenghi in London. Lunch is reasonable and normally works out to about $15 per person, depending on what you get.

The plate above has a globe artichoke, a luxury I learnt to appreciate from my stepmother. You peel off the layers one by one, dip them into the homemade mayonnaise and scrape the flesh between your teeth. When you finally get to the heart you discard the furry choke and eat the tender heart and stalk. Also on the plate, a lentil and brussels sprouts salad, a deeply caramelised roast pumpkin wedge with spiced yoghurt. I’ve also tried a wonderful mushroom soup, roast chicken, margherita pizza and coleslaw.

For breakfast I’ve had a bacon buttie and toast with jam, my friends have had the sourdough pancakes with lemon curd, the Boston baked beans with poached eggs and the bircher muesli, all of which are good. There is a limited menu for weekday breakfast; toasted muesli and yoghurt, Bircher, toast with jam and porridge.  The weekend breakfast is where they have the most options.

The space: is a canteen in a warehouse space, so as it’s getting chillier, bring something warm to wear. A colleague who came here first told me to leave time to walk around the homewares section before you eat, so that you’re not so distracted by the pretty things and end up ignoring your dinner date.

The coffee: is fantastic. I’m surrounded by Campos and Allpress, Sonoma and Bourke St Bakery all of whom do good coffee so this is stiff competition people! They also have smoothies, fresh juice, iced tea and homemade lemonade that come in cute glass bottles with barber striped paper straws. If you just want coffee and a pastry don’t line up in the big line, just go to the coffee counter and save yourself some time.

Candied lemon peel roses

Lemon and almond syrup cake with white chocolate buttercream

There was such a delicious feast at Iain and Jules’ engagement party that we didn’t get through all of the cake, what a shame, we had to divvy the rest up to scoff at home.

Jules, I need recipes for the adobo pork and chicken, and the vermicelli noodles, yum!

This recipe is from Rose Levy Beranbaum’s amazing book, ‘Rose’s Heavenly Cakes’. I picked up so many great tips from her perfectly tested and detailed recipes. Everyone loved the lemon peel roses. One small person was heard asking ‘can you eat them?’. Cute. Of course you could, but mine were a little on the firm side. Next time I would try to take a little less white pith with them as I peeled them as I think they were a little stiff.

Rosemary potatoes… We pulled up a rosemary plant as we accidentally planted the spreading ‘ground cover’ variety and not the nice upright straight-branched one, so it’s rosemary on everything this week.

I quite like 5 Seeds cloudy apple cider, and they are doing a lot of advertising at the moment. I’ve tried the pricey Rekordorlig Strawberry Lime and the Pear. I haven’t tried the Apple yet. I found both of the ones I’ve tried to be delicious but too sweet for my taste to drink a whole bottle. Also the price seems exorbitant for buying while out, $12 at our local, almost $6 a bottle at big name booze stores.

I don’t mind pear cider – I think the Monteith’s is less sweet than the apple, which can be nice to have a drier drink with food – but I prefer the apple if drinking it on its own. I’m looking forward to trying the apple and pear blend.

The newest kid on the block is Bilpin original cider, bought today at Marrickville markets. They were $4 each, and after chilling all afternoon in the fridge it’s going down beautifully while my spatchcock chicken marinates in Chris Manfield’s recipe for Spicy roast chicken. Freshly made garam masala, ground ginger, chilli, garlic, turmeric and yoghurt. Can’t wait to roast it up and eat it with some BBQ corn. Might do the corn Mexican style with a little chilli jam and grated parmesan to finish.

Where was I? Cider. Drink some. Is nice.

Another blissful Sunday morning at the Marrickville organic markets. Coffee first, to aid important decision making. The best coffee I’ve tried at the markets so far is from the building on your right as you enter the market from Addison Rd. Note the installation art on the side wall of the building of milk crates, took me a few visits to notice it and that it spelt out a word…

Next pick up Sicilian olives and hummus for casual pizza  dinner with friends, salami and soft French white mould cheese, a small Tuscan kale seedling for never ending batches of minestrone made with veal stock and thick lardons of pancetta.

The lovely Kate, who has moved back home to Orange whom I miss dearly as she’s so entertaining, has a new food blog http://piesandkates.com/

If you get sick of walking around, a cup of chai while sitting on woven mats in the sunshine is pretty nice… you can also get a $10 haircut at the stall next door. I haven’t been brave enough to try.

There are both conventional produce and organic stalls, the conventional ones are labelled as such. The advantage of having both is sometimes the organic range is limited and if you have your heart set on cooking a certain something you’re more likely to find it having both options.

The Common Ground bakery always smells good and they have a super juice with more good things in it than you could could think of. They usually sample it so you can try before you buy. They have lots of options for gluten and wheat free eaters. I bought a rice flour banana bread for my sister which she said was great. The also have spelt, rye, wholemeal, with and without nuts and seeds and all slow fermented sourdough (read maximum flavour development). They deal directly with a wheat grower too so their flour is really fresh. I just liked all the info they passed on, it shows how passionate they are about their product. They also had a rice flour lamington, the first of it’s kind I’ve come across, haven’t tried it yet though.

There’s also a Brasserie Bread stall where they try to lure you with delicious brownies and danish pastries. I’m sold on the sour cherry loaf and the quinoa and soy seed loaf if you like seeds. There is also a German bread stall with darker rye loaves, pretzels and tiny chocolate chip buns. I think the chocolate buns are best served toasted with butter, but they’re also good straight from the bag while browsing.

Char kway teow at Jackie M Malaysian

Shopping just about done (and cash nearly depleted) and I settle on nasi lemak and otak otak, D has a lamb wrap from another stall which is a more appropriate portion size than mine, which is enough for two hungry people, so we take the rest home for lunch.

I bought some coffee beans from the fair trade stall and had a delicious coffee at home made from PNG beans. Flavoursome and strong without being too acidic or bitter.

I’ll try and get a picture of the corn fritters next time, they’re my healthy option for when I’ve had an indulgent Saturday night!

http://www.mindil.com.au/

Friday:Palmerston http://www.palmerstonmarkets.org.au/

Saturday: Parap (food stalls, fruit and veg, clothing)

Sunday: Rapid Creek (fresh food and specialty fruit and vegetables) and Mindil

http://www.darwindiary.com.au/markets.php

Parap Markets

The queue for som tam (green papaya salad)

Iced coffee

A little French busking to set the mood…

The view from Il Lido, Darwin, down at the waterfront.

The French toast with poached pear, raspberry sauce and King Island yoghurt.

I would also recommend the PLT, thin crispy pancetta, lettuce and tomato on a toasted panini with a housemade aoili.

I had the chicken curry, fish curry with okra and dry beef curry with a little sambal oelek on the side. The dry beef curry is firm, chewy and moreish, almost in the style of beef jerky, and seems to be a local favourite as Jay from the coffee cart who gave me this recommendation insisted I try it.When I was eating my lunch at Sari Rasa a robust man came up to the counter and seemed very happy there was some dry beef curry left as he missed out the other day and was highly disappointed. I love to see people enjoying quality food made with love.

It’s $10 for a small plate, or $11 for a large and you can choose whichever three dishes you like. It was so good I brought some home for Phee, Joel and I to eat for dinner.

A weakness of mine is a trip to Haberfield for cheese, salami, prosciutto, olives, passata, Italian bread – that’s the official list; and then there’s those few items that always seem to make their way into my bag, sometimes for sharing, sometimes not. Custard filled doughnuts, amaretto-soaked cherry-filled almond biscotti from Sulfaro, cheesecake from Pasticceria Papa… but the doughnut has to be my favourite.

That’s why I was so excited to find a feature on doughnuts in my newly favourite magazine, Feast. Love the food features and the background stories. There’s so much info, it seems like a bargain. I had to try their version of custard doughnuts, Bola de Berlim, from Portugal, but I’ve twisted it slightly. The dough I’ve made the same as the recipe but for the creme patissiere I used Stephanie Alexander’s version which uses cornflour instead of plain flour, and I used tonka bean instead of vanilla bean for something different. Yum. You can buy tonka beans at Herbie’s Spices in Rozelle. Credit goes to Olivia Andrews and Jerrie Redman-Lloyd for a flawless recipe that’s easy to follow.

This seems dangerous, to be able to make doughnuts on a whim.

I’m off to Marrickville organic markets tomorrow to check them out. Maybe I can ease my conscience with some nice fresh produce.

While at the ‘vet’- Dibartoli coffee centre in Bondi Junction, we got to chatting about great cafes near St Peters and one of the guys there recommended Coffee Alchemy, a coffee house in Marrickville who roast their own beans. I went there the next day and had a delicious coffee and was determined to go back. I did read on their website that they close at 2pm but somehow in my caffeine deprived state the next day, I forgot. So I found myself coffee-less. Luckily I took a wrong turn on the way home and found the Petty Cash Cafe, whose coffee rivals that of Coffee Alchemy, or was that just to do with the sunshine on Enmore park and the balmy smell of summer in the air? Either way, I’ve found just two of what I’m sure are many more great local cafes to discover…

Oh yeah, and Sylvia is all better too