Bo De Trai

Last weekend Greg & I found ourselves over the west side of town around lunchtime so luring Greg with the promise of wonton soup, we decided to make our way to Bo De Trai.  I love Vietnamese food & it is something that I have not gone out to eat much of since being vegan so I have been wanting to go to Bo De Trai for awhile.

I was planning on having a wonton soup but it was a warm day & I ended up getting the spring rolls on rice vermicelli.  This ended up being exactly what I wanted, not too heavy or spicy but with good flavours.  It was plain vermicelli noodles with lettuce, mint, chopped spring rolls & it came with a sauce on the side.

Greg went with the wonton soup which he enjoyed.  I tried some & it was nice, but featured coriander which I am not a fan of.  I am planning on going back soon & getting it without coriander which I think will be really good.

It is cheap & cheerful with fast efficient service - what more could you want from lunch?

Other bloggers who have been to Bo De Trai are Where's the beef, This is Vegan Melbourne, Footscray Food Blog & Aduki

Bo De Trai
94 Hopkins St
Footscray
9689 9909

Vegan MoFo - Yakisoba

Happy second last day of Vegan MoFo!  I think I have now officially lost my mofo mojo & will be happy to have a few days off blogging coming up.

Yakisoba is essentially a soba noodle stir fry & the sauce that I used was 1/4 cup soy sauce, 1/4 cup rice wine vinegar & 1 tsp sugar.  I used tofu, zucchini, carrot, cabbage & ginger in with the noodles.  I didn't like this at first but as I kept eating it grew on me & I quite liked the vinegary flavour.

Vegan MoFo - Vermicelli Salad & Vegan Croissants!

Today's MoFo post for V was just supposed to be about my vermicelli salad but then I discovered something very, very exciting today. 

La Panella now sell vegan croissants!!! 

Even more excitingly they have plain & chocolate!!!  I haven't visited La Panella for awhile so I am unsure how long they have had them, but I did of course have to buy one to try it.  I went for a plain one & I tried a bit & I didn't love it, but then I heated it up & added some jam & I did love it.  I now think that I must go back & try a chocolate one.

My vermicelli salad was a bit boring in comparison, I prepare my noodles & then toss in a mixture of sweet chilli sauce & rice wine vinegar & then top with lots of vegies.  I used lettuce, carrot, snow peas, blanched broccoli & peanuts.

Vegn MoFo - Soba Noodle Sushi (and Sweet Potato for Holly)

I saw this on Courtney's blog awhile ago & immediately wanted to make it since I love both soba noodles & sushi.  This is super easy & really good & it is an amazingly fast meal from starting to eating was only about 15 minutes.  My sushi contained tofu which had been marinated in soy sauce & hoisin, red capsicum & avocado.  The recipe is here.  Courtney is also doing an A-Z for Vegan MoFo so check out her blog to see what she is doing for the month.

And, while we are on food starting with S, we gave Holly some sweet potato yesterday for her first foray into the world of solid food!  She was not super interested & I think she might still be a bit too young but it was very, very cute.

Vegan MoFo - Noodle Soup

I have mentioned before that I don't often make the same thing twice, but this soup is an exception.  This is on regular rotation in our house, we usually have it once every week to two weeks.  It is delicious & best of all it makes hardly any dishes unlike pretty much everything else I cook!

Ingredients (makes 2 big servings)

• 5 cups stock (I use massel chicken stock)
• 2/3 cups dried shitake mushrooms
• 90 gms dried soba noodles
• 2 tbsp soy sauce
• 1 tbsp miso paste
• 12 dumplings (I use frozen bought ones)
• 1 bunch pak choy

Method

1. Heat the stock in a large saucepan & add the shitake mushrooms
2. Simmer until the mushrooms have softened, about 10 minutes
3. Add the soy sauce & miso paste
4. Add the dumplings which take about 15 minutes to cook from frozen
5. Add the noodles & the pak choy& cook for about 4 minutes further until the noodles are cooked
6. Serve & top with a couple of drops of sesame oil if desired or some chilli sauce

Where's The Beef Week - Day 5 - Vegetarian Hor Fun

This was originally a recipe by Pip, which I found on Where's the Beef here.  I normally have issues with making stir fry type dishes because they just don't work that well for me but this was great.  I halved the amount of stock & increased the amount of cornflour & my sauce thickened up beautifully.  I also just used extra firm tofu rather than the fried tofu puffs & added in some chopped almonds before serving.  I always have the ingredients for this on hand & it is quick, easy & tasty so this is another meal that is now going on regular rotation.

Soba noodles and salt & pepper tofu

I recently stumbled across the blog eat me, delicious & decided to make a couple of recipes from there for dinner which I thought would go together nicely.

The recipe for the noodles was right down my alley since soba noodles & edamame are two of my favourite foods.  This was really easy to make & the flavours were quite light & subtle & I really enjoyed it.

I really liked the salt & pepper tofu recipe & even though I had no garlic, chilli or spring onion it was still really good (if not the most photogenic meal) & I plan on making it again & again.

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

Weekend lunch - warm soba noodle salad

A couple of months ago I had a meeting at the Como in South Yarra & for my lunch they made me a soba noodle salad. It was so, so delicious & I have tried to recreate it a couple of times but just can't quite get it right. This, however, was really tasty & a great weekend lunch. I didn't measure the ingredients so the measurements are very approximate, I pretty much just keep tasting the dressing as I am going & when stop adding more when it is tasting good.

* Soba noodles (I used those organic ones that have 3 portions in a pack & I used 1.5 portions for the 2 of us)
* Broccoli florets from about 1/2 a broccoli
* 1 carrot sliced
* 1/2 red capsicum sliced
* Handful of baby spinach leaves
* Peanuts

Dressing
* 1 tsp garlic
* 1 tsp ginger
* 4 tbsp soy sauce
* 2 tbsp sweet chilli sauce
* 2 tbsp rice wine vinegar
* 1 tsp sesame oil
* 2 tsp sweet soy sauce

Mix all the dresing ingredients in a large bowl
Boil the noodles according to the directions on the packet (mine took 4 minutes)
Add the carrot the boiling water after 1 minute, then add the broccoli when there is only about a minute to go
Drain vegies & noodles
Add the drained noodles & vegies to the dressing, along with the raw red capsicum & mix thoroughly
Place the baby spinach in the bottom of 2 serving bowls
Top with the noodle mix
Top the noodle mix with chopped peanuts (I also topped with veg seaweed/sesame floss because I had some in the cupboard & it is really yummy)