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.

Aunty Menas - Wellington, New Zealand

Greg's family are all in New Zealand & somehow I have never been over there so we decided to go over for 2 weeks for an NZ Christmas.  Firstly, let me just say that from the little I saw of New Zealand it is absolutely beautiful.  The food I ate was great, the wine I had was fantastic & the vintage clothes shopping is incredible!
We were mostly based in Wellington as we were staying with my mother in law who lives in a suburb of Wellington & although we didn't eat out heaps as we cooked for ourselves a lot I did have a few places that I wanted to eat at in NZ.
After reading this post by Carla I was pretty keen to check out Aunty Menas, so our first day checking out Wellington we headed to Aunty Menas for lunch.  Aunty Menas is based on Cuba Street which is a very vegan friendly part of town & I absolutely loved that part of Wellington.
It is a very unassuming restaurant but the sign out the front proclaiming it as a Vegetarian & Vegan Restaurant was a pretty happy sight to see.

We were greeted by a brusque, efficient man who advised us that must of the items on the menu are vegan.  We ordered, dumplings for Holly, Chow Mee for me & Dumpling Soup for Greg.

Dumplings $8.50

Holly's dumplings were really good.  Steamed & then lightly fried on the bottom & filled with vegetables.  Holly loved these!

Chow Mee $13

This was so delicious, I want to eat it again now!  It was a delicious, charry stir fry of noodles, mock chicken & vegetables.  The one vegetable that Holly flatly refuses to eat is broccoli & even she ate the broccoli out of this because it was so tasty!

Dumpling Soup $11.50

Greg is a big fan of dumpling soup & he really enjoyed this.  It looked quite bland when it came out but it was actually quite well flavoured & was filled with dumplings, cauliflower, broccoli & carrots.

I really enjoyed my meal at Aunty Menas & thought it was extremely well priced (especially when converted to AUD!)

Aunty Menas

167 Cuba Street

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.

Vegie Hut

We had a family dinner on a Monday night recently. The original plan had been to go to Enlightened Cuisine but they aren't open on Monday nights, so in the end it was decided to go to Vegie Hut as it is pretty much in the middle of the 3 locations that the 6 of us were coming from. 

There were a couple of issues - first of all, there was a big table with way too many people around it right behind us which made those of us on the side of the table next to them really squished in although there were quite a few empty tables. Secondly, the service was pretty much non existent, we had to flag down waitresses to order, to clear the table & to get the bill & no one was ever offered drinks. Thirdly, and maybe this is just because I love the Enlightened Cuisine banquet, but for the most part I found the food very meh. I am guessing that my family felt the same way because there were heaps of left overs & no one took any.

So, the food. We got a banquet which was pretty reasonable at $139 for 6 people with far more than we could eat.  Apologies for the awful photos.

Oriental Entrees Platter - in the middle were pickled vegetables which were really good, definitely the highlight of the platter

Shark Fin Soup - it was very gelatinous, but the flavour was gingery & quite nice

I think these were chilli prawns although they were not at all spicy - they were good though, deep fried prawniness

Lamb hot pot - quite nice with big pieces of mushrooms in it

This was some sort of fish, I wasn't a big fan of this at all

Black Pepper Steak - This was really good

Bamboo string on Chinese veggies - I don't even remember what this tasted like, but there was a lot left over

Dessert - this was delicious, my highlight of the meal!  It was like a lychee juice with jelly, sultanas, goji berries & lychees in it - I could have eaten a lot of this.  Note a crashed out Holly in the background getting cuddles from her Aunty

I think the meal would have been better of we chose our own food, I just think the banquet might have been a bad move.  I am still a huge fan of their Sunday yum cha.

Other Melb veg bloggers who have been to Vegie Hut are: Where's the Beef, Lisa & Vegan About Town.

Vegie Hut

984 Whitehorse Road

Box Hill

03 9898 2287

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.

Veganomicon Seitan Cutlets

I recently made the seitan cutlets from Veganomican for the first time.  Normally if I make seitan I use a recipe where you simmer them for about an hour then leave them to cool in the cooking liquid for about another hour so it is quite a long process.  This recipe us a lot quicker & I found them really tasty.  I am a big fan of the chickpea cutlets & these are quite similar so I will definitely make them again.

The recipe made six cutlets so we had them three different ways.  I make sandwiches for Greg to take to work everyday so two went into sandwiches for him.

I felt like eating roast potatoes so with two other cutlets we had them pan fried with roasted potatoes, steamed broccoli, steamed beans & VWAV punk rock chickpea gravy.  It was not so pretty, but we both really enjoyed this, a perfect cold weather meal!

For the last two cutlets I decided to make another recipe from Veganomicon which was the 'Seitan Piccata wtih Olives & Green Beans'.  I pretty much completely followed the recipe except it calls for shallots which I didn't have so I used thinly sliced red onion instead.  This meal was another winner - easy to make & really tasty.

Fry's Chicken Strips

Doing my grocery shopping recently I noticed Fry's chicken strips which I believe are a new product so decided to give them a go.

The first meal I made with them was Bibimbap which I made during a week of huge spicy food cravings - I loved this meal!  The chicken strips however, I had marinated for a couple of hours in soy sauce, garlic & ginger & they ended up almost inedibly salty.  Everything else was great though - marinated mushrooms, seaweed salad, kim chi & cucumber salad.

The next meal I made with them was a simple salad with a tahini dressing & I actually really liked them in this.  I wouldn't buy them all the time but they are quite tasty & a nice addition to salads.

Enlightened Cuisine

Anyone that knows me in real life knows that I have just done an epic 16 day, 10-15 hours per day stint at work due to an event my work was organising.  Because we were onsite at the Exhibition Centre last week my boss put us up in a hotel in Southbank, which I suspect is just so that we have no excuse not to work really long hours.  Anyway, after I finished up work one night I wandered down to Enlightened Cuisine to get some take away to eat in bed in my hotel room - if only I lived walking distance to there all the time!!

I ordered sesame prawn ($4.50 I think) which was so, so much like normal trashy Chinese restaurant prawn toast & quite delicious.

I also had the Beef Kway Teow ($11 I think) which I loved!  It was fillied with sliced mock beef & bean sprouts & was oily & smoky & tasted like beef kway teow from my omni days.  I am surprised I didn't eat this every night, it was delicious & cheap.

Greg also met me for dinner one night & we went there & ate 5 spice tofu & roast duck which were also really good - especially the duck, yum!


Enlightened Cuisine
113 Queensbridge St
Southbank

Bowl of Soul

Last weekend Greg & I had to go to Port Melbourne around lunch time to pick up a change table that I bought on ebay so decided to go to Bowl of Soul after reading so many good things about it.  I don't think that I have been to Port Melbourne for around 6 years when I used to live over that way & it really feels like a completely different world - but that might also have had to do with the fact that my change table was bought from a family that had a nanny.

Anyway, we found Bowl of Soul really easily & it is just a little place but really nice & the staff are so lovely & friendly.  Neither of us could decide between the Stake Out Sandwich & the Satay Chicken Burger so got both & shared.  It smelled so good when they were cooking & they were both really tasty.  Everyone raves about the stake out sandwich but whatever they use for their "chicken" is really delicious & the satay sauce wasn't too full on & rich so I preferred the satay chicken burger.  I think they were both under $12 which seemed liked pretty good value to me, especially since we were both so full after that we didn't eat dinner.

 

Stake Out Sandwich

Satay 'Chicken' Burger

Bowl of Soul

118 Bridge Street

Port Melbourne

9645 2470

Vegan Brunch Sausages

I have been doing a lot of cooking lately from Vegan Brunch & after reading all the hype about the sausages I decided to make the cherry & sage ones, but subbed dried cranberries for dried cherries. I liked these but I didn't love them but this may be based on two things.

1, The first time I made them there was a kids party across the road & lots of little girls all of about 8 years old singing that awful song "Sexy Bitch" starting throwing things at my car (fruit & dolls heads!) So being the cranky neighbour I am I went over to complain while the sausages were frying & I burnt them, so they were not so great.

2, I then froze the rest & I just don't think they froze well & were really rubbery. I did like them & thought they had good flavour but I think I am put off making them again, but I do want to try the chorizo sausages.

The second time I had them I served them with a lemony smashed potato & salad. I actually think the smashed potato was my favourite part of the meal, I used nicola potatos & they were delicious!