Snakebean is a funky little diner on Oxford Street in Darlinghurst. right in my hood, and one of our favourite places to eat. It’s reasonably priced, healthy “fast food” churned out of a teeny little kitchen by Nhut Huynh and his team. Formerly of RQ on Crown Street, Huynh and partner Jeremy McNamara closed RQ to focus on the book Huynh was writing, Little Vietnam. Being a local favourite, when the book was released I just had to buy it.
Excuse me while I tidy up around here….ooh, look at that! A Melbourne post!
One of the dates I was most looking forward to on my recent jaunt down south, was my dinner catch up with the delightful @InjeraRufus and Co. We had met when @InjeraRufus had come to visit Sydney where we bonded over Plan B Wagyu burgers.
There were so many restaurants I wanted to visit while in Melbourne but couldn’t make them all in the limited time we had. On the list and universally suggested was French Dining Room, Libertine in North Melbourne.
This gorgeous, very old school bolthole, was beautifully warm and cosy on this slightly chilly evening…
Gnocchi = Clag? Pasty? Yuck? In my opinion gnocchi has been all this and more. From pre-prepared pellets of bleuurgh from the supermarket to old nuggets of yuck in your local Italian Trattoria, gnocchi has never been high on my “To Eat” list, until now.
Recently, my friend @flavourfirst went on a little weekend sojourn through rural Victoria on his way to the Royal Mail Hotel in Dunkeld. Along the way he picked up some spuds. Some super serious spuds, and shared them round. My neighbour and friend Tim @urbanfoodmarket suggested we make gnocchi, so we set to work.
Such were the size of the spuds that Tim could only fit two into the pot to boil, but this worked out fine and was enough for 4.5 of us. The spuds that @flavourfirst picked up were nice dry, perfect for gnocchi making.
Once boiled, Tim put them through the potato ricer…
Do you know figs are my favourite fruit? This wasn’t always the case. In the past I would have said mango, or maybe when I was a child, watermelon. But as a grown up? Figs. Notice, they’re up on my banner…
Anyway, myself and @flavourfirst were lucky enough to receive 4 kgs of jamming figs, a mix of White (Adriatic), Black (Genoa) and Brown (Turkish) from our friends Katie and Beau of Farmgate, just outside Orange (you can catch them at Marrickville Markets on a Sunday, and other locations, check at the bottom of this post)…and our mission, should we choose to accept it, was to make jam…masses of fig jam!!!!
