Aunty Menas (again) - Wellington - New Zealand

We found ourselves in Wellington during the day on New Years Eve when it was freezing cold & bucketing down rain.  After we had enjoyed our first visit to Aunty Menas, we decided to go back for a bowl of laksa to warm ourselves up which ended up being the perfect idea.

We were pretty hungry by the time we got there so ordered vegetarian nuggets to start with.

Vegetarian Nuggets $7.50

These were trashtastic mock chicken nuggets that tasted very similar to their non vegan counterparts (from what I remember of them.)

Dumpling laksa $11.50

I ordered the dumpling laksa.  Oh my goodness this was so good.  It was absolutely the perfect thing to sit down to while it poured rain outside.  It was creamy & mildly spicy & filled with dumplings, tofu & vegies.

Chicken laksa $12.50

Greg ordered the mock chicken laksa which was the same as mine but with mock chicken instead of dumplings.  He very much enjoyed his laksa as well.

We chatted to one of the owners before we left who was very friendly & coincidentally a former Melbournite.  I really liked Aunty Menas & will definitely be heading there next time I find myself in Wellington.

Vegan MoFo - Xacuti 'chicken'

There are not many meals starting with X so I was pretty limited for choices for today.  Xacuti is a Goan curry & is extremely delicious.  This is possibly my favourite meal of the month & it is the first time I have ever made a curry  from scratch & it was nowhere near as difficult as I thought it would be.

I used this recipe for the xacuti chicken & subbed canola oil for ghee & mock chicken & potatoes for the actual chicken & I didn't garnish with coriander because it is foul.  I served my curry with this rice which I also subbed canola oil for ghee & which was also super delicious.  I am always making my rice this way from now on when we are eating Indian food.

Vegan MoFo - Korma

I kept changing my mind on what to make for K and in the end I went with a korma.  I used this recipe from food.com but used light coconut milk instead of soaking the coconut & used broccoli & beans as my vegetables.  I just found this quite boring & wouldn't make it again, it is also pretty ugly looking! 

However, the star of the meal was the sweet potato naan which I had on the side.  I used this recipe & it was just as delicious as it sounds.

Where's The Beef Week - Day 7 - Curried Eggplant Soup

The final night of my Where's The Beef week!  It has been ages since I have had a week where every meal has been a winner taste-wise & that us exactly what has happened this week.  I am actually keen to try more recipes from Cindy & Michael's blog now since I have had such good results.

I love eggplant & I love soup so I was pretty excited to make Curried Eggplant Soup (which was via Yeah that vegan shit via Fatfree vegan kitchen), but it was probably my least favourite meal of the week.  My curry powder is kind of old though so I think that might have been an issue.  That being said, I did have leftovers for lunch the next week & I did like it a lot more & I did like the soft chunks of eggplant in it.

Slower Cooker Curry

It has been a very long time since I used my slow cooker, in fact the last time I used it was August 2008 when I cooked my last omni meal.  I remember that I made a beef red curry in it & ate it & felt so sick afterwards that I went vegan the next day, I had been planning on going vegan at some stage but thought that I might ease my way into it but this meal pushed me over the edge & I went vegan straight away.

So, somewhat ironically when I decided to dust off the slow cooker again I chose to make a mock beef red curry with some 'beef' chunks that I had bought at Minh Phat.  This was yum.  Even though I am not working at the moment & it is nice to have food prepared of an evening & not have to do to much besides cook some rice in the rice cooker (which Greg did anyway so all I had to do was serve).

My very simple & not very authentic curry recipe

• 2 tbsp red curry paste ( I bought mine from Aldi)
• Can light coconut milk
• Mock beef chunks
• Cauliflower florets
• Green beans topped & tailed
• Peeled potatoes cut into chunks
• Half a huge eggplant diced
• 1 onion sliced

Put it all in the slow cooker & cook for around 7 hours & then serve over rice - easy!

Next time I make it I won't use cauliflower though because it went really mushy, all the other vegies came out beautifully though, especially the eggplant so I am now looking at other eggplant slow cooker recipes.

Bala's

I lived in St Kilda for a few years quite awhile ago & lived around the corner from Bala's. I was omni back then & think I would have got take away from there at least once a week & loved it. Recently I decided to stop in for lunch because I was around St Kilda. It is quick, cheap bain marie food. It is really well labelled & there were only 2 vegan options, red curry pumpkin & yellow curry with tofu, sadly, most of the stir fries which looked veg*n had oyster sauce in them, including the black bean tofu which I used to eat every week. I had the red curry pumpkin, it was ok & really creamy with little peanutty bits, but I think that I wanted more vegies, it was just cubes of pumpkin with a couple of strips of red capsicum & a teeny bit of spinach.

I did take a dodgy pic on my phone, but have lost the cable to connect it to my computer.

Bala's
1d Shakespeare Gr
St Kilda 3182 VIC