In honour of Australia Day, I will share with you my Ultimate Lamington Recipe.

The cake part

Easy as anything. You just bung all these ingredients in your mixing bowl and mix. It works best if you have a stand mixer with a mixing paddle (dont overbeat though – 1-2 minutes is plenty) but a wooden spoon works fine. Ideally youd make the cake the day before so its less crumbly, but eh, I never do.

1 1/2 cups SR flour (I never sift so give you permission not to)
1 cup caster sugar
2 eggs
1/2 cup milk
125g melted butter

Beat all together for a couple of minutes, then throw it into a greased 20cm square cake pan. I like the Anolon loose-bottomed non stick pans as you don’t have to line them, but if you don’t have one then I’d line the pan with baking paper. Bake at 180 degrees C (160 fan forced) for 40 minutes, until the cake is golden brown on top and a skewer comes out clean. Turn out on a rack to cool completely.

While you’ve got the oven on still, cover a baking tray with shredded coconut (I’ve never measured how much, but usually use most of a 250g packet) and put it in the oven for about 5-7 minutes to toast the coconut. Keep an eye on it as it will cook pretty quickly. You want it to be a mix of white and toasty honey-coloured shreds. Take it out once it’s done and tip it into a large bowl.
(Toasted shredded coconut makes your lamingtons look a bit trendy, like Donna Hay made them instead of your nanna. You can use desiccated coconut if you like the nanna look, but then don’t toast it.)

Ok, back to the cake. Once it’s cold you can cut it up into squares. But first, do you want jam filling? If so, you can split it in half (I find this easier if I cut the cake into two halves first, and then split each half through the centre) and spread jam on one half, then sandwich it back together. You need to use enough jam so that the cake halves stick back together. And don’t be using any fancy-arse expensive jam with lots of chunky fruit in it. Cheap jam is better here.
Cut your cake up into 16 squares.

And now for the fiddly icing part

In a large metal or glass bowl, mix 320g icing sugar, 25g cocoa powder, a generous teaspoon of butter or marg, and about 1/2 cup milk. Sit it on top of a saucepan with some simmering water in the bottom, and use a whisk to get the lumps out. Add a bit more milk if you need to – you want it runny enough to thinly coat the back of a metal spoon.

Once your icing is nice and smooth, set the bowl next to your big bowl of coconut. Dip each square of cake into the icing first, then let the excess icing drip off for a couple of seconds before rolling each square in the coconut. I use two forks to dip the cake in the icing, then two spoons to roll the dipped cake in the coconut. Sit each completed lamington on your cooling rack to dry.

For a baking junkie, this is a very distressing state of affairs.

I’ve been on a bread bender of late, and was on quite a roll (ZING!) with some very successful white loaves. Knowing that I would be sans oven for a week, I couldn’t bring myself to put the bread adventures on pause… So I decided to have a crack at baking in our solid-fuel Weber.

The Weber does give a great flavour to roasted meats and veggies, but the heat beads make it very difficult to control the temperature. We don’t even have a suitable thermometer, so it was going to have to be a case of taking a punt and hoping for success.

I didn’t put the bread in till after J had cooked our dinner (awesome garlicky leg of lamb), hoping to get the heat beads at a stage when they were giving off a more even and settled heat. I had, however, put in a pizza stone on top of the grill from the start so that I could put the bread straight on top.

The bread recipe:
500g plain flour
280ml water, mixed with 1T instant mashed potato (this is a Nigella Lawson tip for fluffier bread)
1 heaped teaspoon salt
1/2 t powdered vitamin C (this is my improvised bread improver!)
7g sachet yeast

I cheat and use a bread machine to mix and knead the dough – easier than doing it by hand, and it seems to work better than my stand mixer with the dough hook. (I don’t like the way the bread machine cooks the bread though, you just don’t get a nice crust.)

I proved the dough for an hour first, then punched it down and gave it another quick knead by hand for a minute or two, before shaping it into a loaf, scoring it with a knife, sprinkling with sesame seeds and then letting it rise again for another hour.

Once the lamb was out of the Weber, I sprinkled the pizza stone with a bit of flour and put the dough straight on top, having sprinkled the dough with a bit of water first. I gave it about 35 minutes with the lid on, then checked it by knocking the bottom on the loaf till it made a hollow sound.

The result: WIN.

I discovered that the dining/cafe scene at this time offers pretty slim pickings. Everything’s frickin’ closed!!
I was sharply reminded that we are drawing very near to Tumbleweed Time again when I went to visit Mixed Business in Clifton Hill for brekky this morning, and discovered that they’re closed ALREADY.

SO. For those of us stuck here again these holidays – let us put our collective brains together and list any decent places to eat that are actually open. Post away in the comments, people!

(Feel free to also post any places that you know are going to be closed.)

We came to settle the bill;  I automatically went to include extra for a tip, she argued that surely tipping is not mandatory or expected in Australia, and especially not at breakfast.

Obviously in countries like the USA, any guide book will tell you that tipping is expected, and depended on by hospitality staff to supplement their meagre minimum wage; but what about here?  Is tipping still optional, or is it expected?

When do you tip, and how much?  When do you not tip?

Do you decide whether or not to tip (or how much to tip), based on the service you receive?

Gratuitous photo of the baked beans I had for breakfast:

Parisian Patisserie, 19 Keilor Road, North Essendon. (03) 9379 3815

On a frosty Saturday morning, J and I took his mum out for breakfast. She lives in Strathmore, so we decided to visit the new(ish) patisserie on Keilor Rd that my friend Andrea had been telling us about recently.

Parisian Patisserie is owned by Le Cordon Bleu-trained pastry chef Neil McKenzie and his wife Majella, who spent some time living in Paris; they previously owned a couple of other Melbourne patisseries, St Germain in Essendon and French Quarter in North Melbourne.

Apparently the McKenzies’ plan was to “create a portal to Paris in the suburbs” – and sure enough, it does look très Francais. It’s all white decor with black chairs, a counter laden with pretty pastries, lots of petit round tables pour deux lined up along the wall with a banquette on one side.

Looks gorgeous – but you’ll find it hard to get a seat for a party of more than two. The tables are small and close together, so not much space for moving chairs around. There’s a bit more seating out the back down the hallway, but it’s not exactly atmospheric.

Anyway, the food. I had an almond croissant, which I think may well be the best one I’ve ever had. Sooo rich though! Struggled to get through it!

J had a toasted ham and cheese croissant, and his mum had an escargot. Both were very nice, but not quite in the same rock-your-world league as the almond croissant.

Coffee was average. Drinkable, but not great. My latte came in a cup instead of a glass. I’m pretty sure that makes it a flat white, but whatever.

I’d be keen to come back here and try more of the other pastries; the beignets looked good, as did the pains-au-chocolat.

Who am I kidding, I’ll probably just get the almond croissant again. But next time I think I’ll take away rather than eat in.

Footy finals are approaching, so I thought perhaps “Best Meat Pie” might be a handy thing to know before your Grand Final party.

Suggestions, please, as to which pies ought to be included in the tasting? I’m thinking we’d better stick with the basic meat pie, for consistency’s sake.

I had two weeks over there, including Barcelona, Seville, Granada and San Sebastian. I ate my bodyweight in jamon, and drank so much Rioja that my liver threatened a walkout.  I managed to get by with my three beginner’s-classes-worth of Spanish, plus my trusty Lonely Planet phrasebook (although still managed some spectacular faux-pas, such as ordering toast with “donkey” instead of butter).

How was the food? Well, pretty good, and VERY cheap compared to Melbourne. But not mind-blowing. Mostly it was pretty rustic, and actually that was when it was at its best – a simple plate of the best jamon, some crusty bread, and a big bowl of hot pimientos de Padrón.

Enough talking. LET’S GET TO THE FOOD PORN.

Barcelona:

Where I saw some markets that crap all over the Queen Vic; spent 20 euro on a “famous” roast chicken dish that turned out to be pretty much the same as the hot chicken place in Clifton Hill; and discovered that pig’s trotters, for all their nose-to-tail foodie chic, are pretty much just fat and skin. Oh, and ate a lot of fried little fishies.

Seville & Granada:

Seville: where we managed to eat three meals a day, despite nobody speaking any English (which is fair enough, it is Spain after all) and there being no menu in half the tapas bars. There was a lot of pointing at other people’s food. Oh, and there are chips with EVERYTHING. I also ate caracoles (snails), which are far more disturbing-looking than the French escargot. They had little faces and antennae. I kept waiting for one of them to yell “UNFAIR TO SNAILS!!” like Gus from Mr Squiggle.

Granada: where they have free tapas. Yep, you order a beer, they bring you food. Our favourite place was Bodega Castaneda.

San Sebastian:

Where I found my happy place. It’s like Paris, only smaller and cuter, and by the sea. Oh, and cheaper. We ate pintxos (Basque for tapas) pretty much every night; everyone recommended me to go to La Cuchara de San Telmo, which I liked but wasn’t blown away by. We had an amazing three-course lunch at Kaskazuri – spectacular food, wine and coffee included, for 24 euro a head. Unbelievable.

Does anyone have a recipe for tarta de queso? I don’t like cheesecake, but I loooooved the light gooey Spanish version – particularly at La Viña.

Jorg, 203 St Georges Rd, Fitzroy North. www.jorgrestaurant.com.au

I’ve just realised that I didn’t have a suburb tag for Fitzroy North yet! Which just goes to show: there really hasn’t been much in the way of restaurants there until now. (Except for the Moroccan Soup Kitchen, which I can’t stand, but that’s another story.)

Fitzroyals have been eagerly awaiting the opening of new restaurant Jorg, which is on St Georges Road, just before Scotchmer St (it used to be a Video Busters and then was a greengrocers for a while).  And no wonder they’re excited – the chefs behind Jorg are Michael Smith, ex head chef at Jacques Reymond, and Bryce Bernhardt, ex sous chef at Church St Enoteca.

Mick and Maria live just across the road on Best St, and called me last night to tell me it was finally open. J and I met them there, to discover that we were the very first table of punters!

This is not going to be a proper review post, as I think it’s poor form to review a place on their opening night; but from our meal last night, I think it all looks really promising.  I like the space, it’s minimal without being cavernous. Apparently there is a function space out the back for up to 100 people!

The food is loosely “European” – little bit Italian, little bit Spanish. The menu offers sharing-style entrees; the mains are less geared towards sharing, although we did anyway. I’d had a long and foul day at work and was not in the mood for decision making, so our lovely waitress suggested that perhaps the kitchen could just organise a menu for us. FABULOUS – I love not having to choose!

Among the starters, we particularly liked the chicken ribs; and for mains, the pork cutlet was DIVINE. We probably had a bit too much food, and with two bottles of wine it ended up being $320 for 4 people. Which is quite spendy for a impulsive Friday night, but we did have a good time.

I’m off to Spain on Monday (BOOYAH!!), but will do a proper review of Jorg when I get back. In the meantime, let me know if you go, and what you think of it!

I’ve been travelling quite a bit this year, mostly for work; and inevitably the odd flight delay here and cancellation there have resulted in me having to spend a bit of time at Tullamarine. (Time that unfortunately I’ll never get back.)

I’ve tried eating just about everywhere here, and it’s all spectacularly depressing. Even the food chains (McDonalds, Hudsons etc) have been squaloriffic, when usually you could at least count on them to be clean.

Does airport dining have to be hideous? Sydney International now boasts some actual foodie cred, with outposts of city establishments Bambini Wine Bar and Danks Street Depot. Terminal 5 at JFK in New York boasts all sorts of proper gourmet eateries.

I’d like to see Melbourne Airport lift its game. Have you come across any other airports that have decent food options for the food-loving traveller?

Joe Green, 2A Mitchell St, Northcote. Ph (03) 9481 5554

New cafes seem to be spawning like tadpoles in the primal hipster ooze of Northcote. One of the newest is Joe Green. I visited for lunch on a radiantly sunny autumn day with Dan and J.

I really liked the decor; it’s quirky, without looking like it’s trying too hard to be quirky.

Unfortunately that’s where the love ended for me, on this visit.

We ordered whitebait to come out first as a starter – but they weren’t as hot as they should have been if they were cooked to order, and the little fishies weren’t very crispy.

There was nothing to dip them in. Usually fried whitebait will come with aioli or mayonnaise or something. “Oh well, that’s weird,” we thought, and ate a few of the lukewarm fishies anyway. (Well, I was hungry.)  And then a creamy tartare turned up five minutes later, after we’d given up on the whitebait.

The rest of the food turned up reasonably promptly; we ordered the Siciliana pizza, the pasta with lamb ragu, and the radicchio and cos salad.

I probably would have liked the pizza if it didn’t have quite so many capers on it.  Capers are salty little buggers, and in my opinion ought to be used sparingly, like anchovies.

None of us liked the pasta, and we didn’t finish it. To me, the sauce tasted like bottled tomato sauce.

The radicchio and cos salad consisted of about eleven pieces of lettuce in a bowl. It was $6.50 and I felt ripped off. I guess it’s not like it was false advertising – it was, indeed, radicchio and cos – but seriously, $6.50 for that?

Service was friendly, but very patchy, and they weren’t busy.

Apparently the coffee is good here, according to Dan; they use Coffee Supreme. We didn’t stick around to try it.

I hope they can improve the food and service here, it’s a great location and space.