Side dishes

Tonight Michelle and I tried out a new dining venue at Bardon – Mundo Churrasco.

Self-served plate with sausage

Mundo promises a feast of Brazilian cuisine centred around South American style BBQ (the Churrasco), and they deliver in spades.   After we were seated, we were each presented with wooden cubes, painted red and green on opposing ends.  This was a signifier that things are done a little differently here.  Mundo is staffed by carver waiters, who continually emerge from the kitchen carrying racks of barbecued meat – beef, chicken or pork – vegetables and fruit.  Turning the green end of the cube up signifies that you would like to be offered a serving of whatever the waiter is carrying, and red signifies that, for the moment, you are satisfied.

The meal started with Brazilian-style cheese bread and then stepped up a notch as flavoursome side dishes were served in individual bowls – salads, rice, toasted manioc (Cassava) flour with spiced beef, and Cassava chips.  We turned our cubes green-side-up and waited, and within a minute or two we had some of the best tasting beef sausage I’ve ever experienced waiting on our plates, and things only got  better from there.

Papaya Creme with Cassis Liqueur

Coconut Creme Broule with Plum Sauce

The standard Churrasco at Mundo is all-you-can eat ($30 / head for dinner, a little less for lunch but there is less variety being served), and we ate a lot.  Barbecued joints of beef and pork, sausages of the same, barbecued pineapple dusted with cinnamon – all the while our side dishes and water being dutifully replenished by the friendly wait staff.

After we were sated with the Churrasco, we decided to treat ourselves to dessert, and this was another highlight in itself.  Mundo offers desserts I have never seen before.  I ordered Papaya Creme with Cassis Liqueur, and Michelle a Coconut Creme Broule with Plum Sauce.  Both were without fault and brought us from the point of satisfied to  bursting at the seams.

Definitely going again.

Recentish stuff …

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

Seen

• Micmacs – interesting, quirky
• Welcome – depressing, no punches pulled
• Agora – underrated and underexposed, a little loose in its historic portrayal
• Coco Chanel & Igor Stravinsky – intense, lavish and introspective
• 2012 – lol
• Iron Man 2 – hell yeah
• The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo – brutal, great cinematography, intriguing, too many endings?

Dined

• Thai Country, Holland Park – awesome food (pumpkin curry, thai green curry with king prawns), average service, food makes it all worthwhile
• Treacle, The Grange – always a pleasure
• Asian Fusion, Fortitude Valley – red curry, a bit salty
• Wah, City – great food (thin-sliced pork & kim chi, kim chi pancakes), a little stuffy, service is ok
• Hien Vuong, Sunnybank – hellz yea – crispy skin chicken in glass noodle soup, combination spring rolls, pork & chicken with rice vermicelli – can get a bit crowded, service without a smile

Cooked

• Signature Roast Pumpkin & Salad with baby spinach, green olives and fetta-stuffed peppers
• Some concoction with kim chi, chicken dumplings and rice vermicelli stir-fried in sesame oil.  Needs refinement.

While the weather’s been gloomy this weekend, I managed to have a great one anyway hanging out with Michelle and going to a few different places.

Saturday morning I popped into Photo Continental to have a 20×24 print made of Dove Lake and Cradle Peak, and investigate their range of pre-made frames.  I then caught up with Michelle at Garden City and we had some lunch, before heading into the city to take some photos at St. Andrew’s Uniting Church.  On the way, we popped into an alley in the CBD, where I shot the following 360 degree stiched panorama, which I call “Factory Fresh Coffee”!

We then made our way to St. Andrew’s, where a wedding had taken place and guests were clearing out.  We met Rev. Ray Hermann and got the okay to start photographing, but our time was a bit limited.  I managed to get 5 of the stained glass windows, and hope to head back for some more expressive architectural shots at a later point.

The following is a combined image portraying the 5 stained glass windows I shot.  Each of the stained glass windows was combined from 3 images, and each image was combined from 3 bracketed exposures.

After a bit of window shopping we were famished so made our way out to Underwood and had a steamboat dinner at Antarctic Circle. The service was fast, and the food was great.

Sunday we met up for lunch again, and went to Treacle, a favourite of mine.  One of the daily specials was Zucchini Flowers stuffed with seafood mousse, which I went for without hesitation.  We then went to Newstead House which neither of us had been to before.   It was quite interesting, especially the “Rum Warmer modeled after an early steam train”.  To cap off the day we had a quick browse at Wray Organic at Newmarket, where I picked up some chai tea, cacao powder and a Mangosteen, as I had never tried one!  I totally recommend them.

After I got home I managed to formulate a spiced chai mocha but combining 1.5 tsp of chai tea with my normal measure of ground coffee and pouring an espresso shot from that mix.  I combined that with 2 tsp cacao powder, 2 tsp demerara sugar and the stretched milk.  Awesome!

All in all, a really great weekend

Had a pretty good weekend.

• Saw Devin Townsend on Friday night.  By far the best concert I have been to yet.  The guy has an amazing voice.  Aurally challenged for a little while now however.
• Tried to find The Coffee Supplier on Saturday with Michelle.  We succeeded eventually, and also found a nice alley I want to photograph.  We went and had Japanese food for lunch, then went to GOMA to have a look at their current exhibition – APT6 – before seeing a film – What’s Going On? – very strange film about the goings-on in a novelist’s mind.
• Finally got my desktop back up and running on Sunday, reinstalling and configuring all my software.

Last night I went to Baguette in Ascot, for dinner with Michelle.  Baguette is an award winning restaurant / lounge bar with stellar service and pretty awesome food.  We went for a three course meal, as they have a $39 special running over January / February on mediterranean platters.

We had a French platter which consisted of

• Duck and Pork Terrine, Cornichons and Toast
• Crusted Loin of Veal with French Peas
• Pear and Almond Tart with Sauce Anglaise

The service was outstanding and the meals were excellent.  Definitely worthy of a few return visits.

Baguette is located at 150 Racecourse Road, Ascot.

My housemate Michael is Scottish, so he cooked a Haggis for Burns Supper day (January 25th).  We had a few guests over, he recited the (very funny) poem by Robert Burns, and we partook of Haggis and Tatties!

This is based on a recipe I snatched for Spinach and Mushroom Frittata, but modified a little to add extra vegetables.

Ingredients

• 4 Eggs
• 250g Ricotta Cheese
• 100g Frozen Spinach, thawed and broken up
• 125g grated Parmesan Cheese
• 70g chopped Portabella Mushrooms
• 50g finely chopped Shallots
• 1 sliced Zucchini
• 1 sliced Carrot
• 50g Pecans
• 1tsp Italian Herbs
• 1tsp Salt
• Spray Oil

Method

1. Preheat oven to 190° celsius
2. Microwave roast the pecans for about a minute
3. In a mixing bowl combine beaten eggs, ricotta, 1/2 of the parmesan cheese, herbs and salt
4. Combine spinach with the mix
5. Combine the rest of the vegetables and the pecans, folding in so that the egg / ricotta mix is mixed thoroughly
6. Spray oil a casserole dish or baking dish and carefully pour the mixture in
7. Scatter the remaining parmesan over the mix
8. Place in oven for 45 minutes to an hour, or until the frittata is set and the parmesan topping has browned
9. Cool for approximately 15 minutes

Spent the early hours of last night in a haze of rumination, not really achieving much.

Discovered (or more rightly, was pointed toward by jeze) an awesome mexican industrial group Hocico (Ugliness), and was enjoying a bit of them yesterday while running query after query after query. Been rediscovering some older loved music of late too, it’s funny the things you forget, and then look upon with renewed fondness, almost as if they are new, once you remember them and look them up again.

Checked out Jetts on Lang Parade (Milton), did a nice rounded half hour treadmill session and weights before taking the bus home in a sweaty mess. I forgot a towel – was all good though. Stopped at subway and chowed down.

Trivia tonight. Should be ok!

Day thus far: Waking up at an ungodly hour then rolling over and denying consciousness for an hour or so, then getting up, internetting on my eeepc til the bus was due, then bussing into the city and enjoying french toast with strawberries and a macchiato, then bussing again to Dave’s at Red Hill, before going to Virginia BCF to pick up a nice light tent, a sleeping bag rated to -5 degrees, and a camping chair.  Incidentally I’m now a member of the BCF club so I guess I’m really Australian now or something.  Then we stopped off at Treacle for lunch, where I had a rather nice chicken & vegetable pie with salad, and a decaf iced mocha.  Bloody lovely.  Finally home, attempting to bask in a breeze after a tepid shower.

Last weekend smigit, jeze and myself decided to try our hand at making some sushi rolls.  It went very well, all things considered!