Out for Lunch - Pepper Lounge, Jindalee

We had a family lunch at Pepper Lounge, Jindalee. This post has been a little while in coming, We actually went there for Fathers Day, so almost a month ago now!



We started with this Garlic Bread, which was a little disappointing. In that the bread itself was cold. It had nice melted garlicy butter on te top, but there was no crispness or warmth to the bread. I suppose it wasn't called garlic toast, so maybe this is the way its meant to be.


Mum had this prawn pizza. The base was nice and crispy!


Dad had this pasta - fettucine in a creamy carbonara sauce with mushrooms.


I had this open vegie sandwich, which was absolutely delicious! There was zuccini, eggplant, capsicum and feta on toasted turkish bread! YUM!!


My brother had this chicken burger and chips. The chips were calling out to be sampled, so how could I resist. Great chips! Chicken burger was reportedly good also


Janet had the bacon eggs and toast! Looks like a Janet meal doesn't it!

We all enjoyed our meals, and whilst there was a little confusion over whether we were given the correct menu's, the service was good - there seemed to be several new staff, so they were being carefully supervised.

I'd love to go back and try something else from the menu!

Cooking Class - Dessert - Chocolate Ravioli with Honey Marscapone

Now I do not have the actual recipe for this one, but to the regular pasta dough, some of the flour was substituted wit cocoa powder and some icing sugar. I do not know the ratio sorry (the recipe wasn't on the cd we recieved!)

After rolling out the pasta dough, we cut it into circles, and then filled it with a mixture of melted chocolate and cream. THese ravioli's were assembled in the same way as the wonton ravioli - each circle was brushed with egg wash, filled and then folded into a semicircle.  The ravioli was then cooked briefly in boiling water, and served with a mixture of Marscapone & honey





now after eating pasta for entree and pasta for main course, this was a little much for dessert, however, the oozy chocolate filling was absolutely delicious, and ravioli for dessert was a bit of a novelty.

This "Perfect Pasta" cooking class was really enjoyable, and a great way to spend an afternoon - cooking and eating!!

Main Course - Fettucine with Cauliflower, Chilli, Olive & Parsley

For this recipe we made our own pasta! I hae a pasta machine at home, but hardly ever use it. And when I do, I usually end up making lasagne sheets because I can't be bothered with the last step of cutting into strips. But its not even difficult, so will have to do better in the future!!







Fresh Noodle/Pasta Dough Recipe


Ingredients – serves 4:

250gm plain flour

3 eggs (55gm)

10ml oil

pinch of salt

Method 1:

1. Sift the flour into a bowl and form a bay in the middle

2. Whisk the eggs and pour into the bay

3. Add the oil and salt

4. Gradually incorporate the flour into the egg

5. Knead the dough until its smooth and doesn’t stick to your hand

6. Wrap and refrigerate for ½ hour

7. Roll as desired

Method 2:

1. Alternatively sift flour into a food processor, add the egg, oil and

salt and process until smooth

2. Wrap and refrigerate for ½ hour


The sauce we did for the Fettucine was simple, different and delicious!!

¼ cup olive oil


300gm fettucinne

½ head cauliflower

½ red chilli

40 gm kalamatta olives (pitted)

½ Bunch continental parsley

1 x sprig rosemary

1 teaspoon mini capers (preserved in salt)

1 teaspoon anchovies

60gm Pecorino cheese

2 cloves garlic

salt and pepper

I didt let my partner put the anchovy into our sauce because I wanted to keep it vegetarian!

Cut cauliflower into small 2cm florets


1. 2. Pick rosemary leaves

3. In deep frypan, fry florets with ½ cup olive oil until golden brown

4. Rinse capers, and leave to dry on paper towel

5. Slice garlic and chilli, add to cauliflower

6. Cook for 3 minutes or until soft

7. Add dried capers, chopped anchovies, olives and rosemary

8. Stir on medium heat until anchovies dissolve

9. Meanwhile, chop parsley, grate cheese

10. Boil a medium pot of salted water and cook fettucine until pasta is al dente

11. Drain off excess water

12. Add half of grated pecorino and the half of the parsley

13. Stir with metal spoon off bottom of pan until mix to begins to

stick

14. Add remaining cheese and parsley

15. Toss through pasta and serve




IT was really delicious!!!

Recipe for Ravioli

Ravioli filled with Roast Pumpkin, Persian Fetta, Garlic and


Lemon Thyme, with a Sage Burnt Butter Sauce

Ingredients – serves 2:

¼ pkt fresh wonton sheets

100g butternut pumpkin

1 brown onion

¼ bunch fresh basil

¼ bunch fresh sage

¼ bunch lemon thyme

1 clove garlic

35g Persian fetta

75g grated parmesan cheese

100g butter

1 egg

olive oil

salt and pepper
 
1. Pre-heat oven to 200°C


2. Cut pumpkin into small pieces place on roasting tray, splash a bit of

olive oil and lemon thyme over it and roast until soft

3. Meanwhile, dice the onion and garlic finely

4. Fry onion, garlic in the pan on a low heat until soft, add pumpkin

5. Chop basil and add to mix (save some leaves for garnish)

6. Add fetta to the mix. Season to taste, take off heat

7. Put large pot of water on the boil

8. Brush outside edges of wonton wrappers with egg

9. Place filling in centre of each ravioli, and fold circle in half to form

pasta parcels, press edges together to seal, then trim edges

10. Cook ravioli in boiling water till

pasta is soft and rises to the surface. This should take about

two minutes

11. Grate parmesan with microplane while you wait

12. In a frying pan, melt butter and add chopped sage

13. Cook on medium heat until butter just begins to brown, and

sage leaves go crisp

14. Season to taste

15. Immerse cooked ravioli in sauce briefly to take up sauce

16. Plate the ravioli, and sprinkle with parmesan cheese and top

with saved basil leaves

17. Serve hot and immediately

Cooking Class - Perfect Pasta @ Focus by James part 1 - entree!

For my birthday, Janet gave me this cooking class!! It was held at the Focus by James restaurant @ Springwood, and led by their chef! The cooking stations were all set up in the restaurant - with a gas burner for each pair of students.  A lot of the participants seemed to come with someone else, but there were a few of us who came on our own.


For each dish we cooked, the ingredients were brought to us all measured out in little containers!


For entree, we made Pumpkin & Persian Feta Ravioli with Sage Butter.  This dish was made using wonton wrappers, rather than fresh pasta, a good shortcut to know if you don't want to mess around making the pasta dough yourself!.  The filling was simple to make, we simply mixed together roasted pumpkin, sauted onion, garlic & thyme, and some persian feta.  The key to making neat ravioli was to not try and put too much filling in!


mmmmmm butery goodness! The ravioli was cooked briefly in boiling water, then tossed in the sage and butter.


the finished dish!! After we created each course, we sat down in the restaurant and ate our creation. and little fairies appeared to clear up our used pots and pans!

stay tuned for part 2 - the main course!

Pizza!! - Dominoes.

a takeaway dinner from quite a while ago, but one that may well be repeated rather soon as we are moving house tomorrow......


A Meatasaurus for Janet


and a Vegorama for me - minus mushrooms, plus pineapple. YUM!!!!

Malteaser Birthday Cake

Here is a birthday cake I made some time in the not tooooo distant past... its a basic chocolate sponge, with chocolate icing and Malteasers! Quite tasty it was too.

Big Weekend!! - how to buy and sell some houses!

Its been a while between updates, and I have photos on my camera of several meals that I havent gotten around to uploading yet. ooops! However, things are about to get a little busy very soon! We had a HUGE Saturday -

10am - looked at a house. we LOVED it.
11am - looked at another house - didnt like it
12pm - signed up to put our house on the market
1pm - Lunch at foodcourt :-)
1.05pm - Real Estate agent calls to say he has a couple to bring through house at 3pm
1.10 pm - quickly grabbed the shopping we needed
1.30pm - home to tidy up house and pull special rose out of garden and into pot
1.45 pm - Hands bleeding thanks to rose bush extraction.  Real Estate calls again - another agent will bring people through at 2.30, and 2 other agents will come to have a look at 2
2-3.30pm - people coming and going.
3.30 - take puppy for walk to get out of house
4.00pm - Real estate calls - have an offer and will bring contract round (yay!!)
5.00pm - we accept offer. contract signed with 28 day settlement (panic!!).
5.15 - off to look at first house again
5.30 - make offer on house
5.45 - off to a 40th birthday party!!
8pm - Call from agent - our offer is accepted!

Crazy Crazy day!!

Melbourne!!! Day 4 - home time

Our last day in Melbourne was a bit of a rush, since we were being picked up to go to the airport at 11am!

So we started the day with a delicious breakfast at Edelweiss Cafe



Janet had bacon and eggs, with lovely thick toast


and I had the Vegetarian Breakfast - which had mushrooms, hash brown, baked beans, tomato and toast!

Then we went for a walk around town - We stopped to take some photos of all of the grafitti in Union Lane -






And then we headed back to the hotel to wait for the shuttle bus.  and headed for the airport.  We had to wait in a long line to check in, and then we had to wait for a long time at the gate - we used up some time by removing some of the 27 layers of clothes we had been wearing so that our carry on luggage was correct weight :-) Since we knew there would be no food to buy on the plane (except pringles) we grabbed some lunch from the airport.

this vegie pizza was the only vegetarian thing I could find. Even the sandwiches all contained meat.


and Janet had a chicken sandwich.


and then it was up up and away, back home!!

Melbourne!!! Day 3 - Great Ocean Road Tour

breakfast was a couple of croissants from "Pie Face" which we had purchased the night before.  I tried to heat them up by snuggling them close to the boiling kettle in our hotel room. fail. Still, yummy enough croissants! We were being picked up by Wild Life Tours Australia for a one day tour of the Great Ocean Road!


first stop was the famous Bells Beach






I saw my first ever "wild" Koala. In that we saw Koalas that were in trees, not in zoos!





We had lunch (included in the tour) at Apollo Bay. Hanet had the Roast Chicken, Chips and I ate her salad :-)




I had a Vegie Burger.


We had about half an hour after lunch to have a wander around. We found ourselves at this ice cream shop :-)






It was delicious icecream! Janet had honeycomb, I had Dulce de Leche Gelato. mmmmmmmmm



We ate our ice cream whilst walking out to see the view of Apollo Bay.Then it was back onto our little bus.




next stop was Maits Rest Rainforest Walk


Then on to the twelve apostles.....


......Loch Ard Gorge


........London Bridge. All amazing sights to see (and a million more of my photos can be found here!!




on the way back to the city, we stopped at the Noodle Canteen at Colac for dinner

lemongrass & chilli vegie noodles



sweet chilli chicken noodles

Melbourne!!! Day 2 - busy busy!!

We started our day with a bit of breakfast from McDonalds.

mmmmm pancakes!


Janet had a bacon & egg roll


Then we caught a tram to the Melbourne Zoo. We were a bit early, so we had to wander around aimessly for a while waiting for it to open!  The zoo was the place I really wanted to go to while we were in Melbourne. And I took about a million photos, so will share just a few here...


Meer Cat


Gorilla! - We stood and wached the gorillas for ages - they were enjoying a feed of spinach!


We also got to see the baby elephant!!

And of course, my favourite - Giraffes! Janet told me that they didn't have giraffes at this zoo, so I was very excited to see that they actually did!!





Lion


Brown Bear

After the zoo, we hopped back on the tram, and jumped off at the Queen Victoria Markets for a quick look around.

we managed to squeeze in time for some lunch

yes, we ate churros for lunch. We shared a bag of 7. for $6. delicious! Although I did get rather covered in icing sugar!


We then headed for Federation Square, because we had tickets for a very important event.



This is the whole reason we were in Melbourne!!

The Abba World exhibition was really good! They had heaps of the actual costumes, instuments and other ABBA memorabillia, as well as interactive sections where you got to sing with ABBA, dance in a video clip etc etc. We had a great time!







Of course, all that ABBA-ing makes you hungry, so we went over the road to "Lord of the Fries" for some dinner!!



how exciting! a vegetarian burger place!!! I want one in Brisbane!! please!!!

JAnet had the French-Canadian Fries, or Poutine, which was fries with cheese and gravy


I went for an original burger, which was fantastic! loved it!! the burger patty was delicious, the sauces, the pickle, everything was just as a burger should be!

And after all that healthy eating (just as well we also did A LOT of walking) it was back to our hotel for some sleep!