when you have ingredients left over from a pizza party…

…you make pizza toasts!

I had a pizza party type evening on Sunday with a few of my friends to break in my new floors. This had left me with a lot of leftover pizza toppings – but no left over dough! Not feeling like kneading out some more dough for the rest of the week – and inspired by pizza toasts that I had a few months ago at my sister and her boyfriend’s house, I constructed this surprisingly tasty alternative.

I pre-toasted the bread, and then layered the toppings – and finished it off with a few minutes under the grill – couldn’t be simpler. I paired it with a rocket, parmesan and balsamic salad – a tasty dinner indeed!

movida aqui

On Monday night I was lucky enough to catch up with my dad, who was only in town for a day, and my sister for dinner. We headed to MoVida Aqui in the city for drinks, dinner and a catch up.

We had a little trouble finding the place as their address is listed on Bourke St, but you need to enter via little Bourke, but we got there eventually and were treated to an amazing on the terrace spot where we could enjoy the beautiful, albeit rare, sunny Melbourne weather.

We were greeted with a delightful server who explained how their food worked as it was a mix of tapas and full servings.

I loved their menu! And by this I don’t mean the food on it (although that was delicious and I’ll get to this in a second) but actually the design of it. The typography and layout really appealed to me.

Any who – whilst we were working our way through the menu and trying to narrow down our choices we were served with some delicious bread, I think it had some sort of herbs on top, I am guessing fennel, but can’t be 100%:

We then ordered a couple of the single serve tapas arrangements:

Now I can’t speak for the first tapas dish, as this was solely consumed by my dad, neither my sister or I are sardines fans – but the second dish, a calamari sandwich was amazingly tasty, perhaps more so as it was miniature.

We then ordered a few of the larger share dishes:

Going from the top we had prawns, pork sausages with chorizo and chickpeas and lastly smoked asparagus. All three dishes went down a treat, the asparagus especially, the smoky flavours were amazing and it has got be longing to be bbq-ing again.

We then ended the night on some tasty desserts:

Homemade icecreams with figbread and churros with drinking chocolate to dip. We left the fig bread to dad as he loves anything with figs, but we demolished the icecreams (the strawberry sorbet was to die for) and my sister polished off most of the churros, although I did have quite a few spoonfuls of the chocolate.

All in all I’d give top marks to MoVida Aqui for service, food and atmosphere – a perfect dinner for a great family get together.

Vietnamese and Harry Potter

Last night I headed out to Victoria St in Richmond for Vietnamese and then the movies – Harry Potter in particular.

myer blazer, asos necklace, portmans khaki top, cheap monday jeans, shoe show boots – maybelline are you red-dy lipstick

I was slightly more dressed up than required as I was meeting some work friends out for drinks afterwards. We headed for dinner at Thanh Phong - one of the many vietnamese restaurants on Victoria St – however it was in cheap eats, so that helped narrow down our choices. We ended up eating:

Vegetarian spring rolls

Beef and black bean

Chicken with chilli and lemongrass

(and also Satay vegetables – I didn’t grab a shot before we started eating this one!)

All the dishes were absolutely delicious – and the service at the restaurant was prompt and polite – I would highly recommend popping in if you are on Victoria St.

We then headed out to see Harry Potter – with the mandatory choc top – it was probably the best movie out of the eight – however I think I need to reread the books, there was so much I had forgotten!

Hope you all had good weekends!

weekend!

Hi all! Hope you weekend has gotten onto a good start. I don’t have too much planned for this weekend – and I am quite excited about it!

Today is going to be a laze about day getting the chores out the way before heading out for dinner and harry potter with my sis and some of my friends. (photos will follow)

Tomorrow is also more lazing about – I am also going to try to head to federation square to view the Lego exhibition that is on at the moment – I am probably too excited about this for a 23 year old – but who doesn’t love lego!!

Hope you all have exciting plans for the weekend (or are excited about the lack of plans)!

a sister visits

My lovely sister came to visit me last night. We don’t see each other as often as we should, being at two separate ends of Melbourne makes it hard to get the time to brave the Melbourne traffic between us.

In honour of the occasion I cooked a meal out of my new Jamie Oliver book – 30 minute meals. I prepared most of the meal the day before, and just did the last minute things before she arrived. I choose the Chicken Satay recipe – however realising I didn’t have satay skewers, it was ended up just being chicken pieces. It didn’t come out looking the prettiest – hence no photos – but it certainly was tasty, I am a sucker for the peanut butter satay sauce. It was my first meal that I had cooked out of this book, and I am still uncertain if I like his new format – he gathers a meal together (so a main, salad and dessert) and the directions are intermingled for all of them together. This will be great if I am planning a dinner party and wanted the three courses, but making just one of the three dishes a bit confusing. But it all went down well, so can’t complain too much.

Unfortunately Bailey wasn’t very hospitable – he was in a funny mood, wanting to play/attack my sister whenever she tried to give him a cuddle. He usually is a very placid cat, and wasn’t actually hurting my sister, but he certainly got his growl on (a playful growl, not a ‘I am going to attack you’ growl). Hopefully he will be nicer to her next time – or I might not be able to convince her to babysit.

Overall though it was so good to see her again – we really should catch up more often.

+39 pizzeria again

Before heading out to Friday night drinks yesterday we headed out to dinner. The place we planned on heading to dinner was no longer open for dinners (outdated Cheap Eats app let me down!) so we headed to the closest other option, +39 desgustation bar and pizzeria, a restaurant I had previously been to and thoroughly enjoyed – this time around however it was a lot busier, with many patrons just lining up in the restaurant waiting for a seat. It did make the place a lot noisier and crowded, but the food was good none the less.

The best thing was potentially the dessert – a lemon soaked sponge with custard – delish!

400 gradi

On Friday I headed out to dinner with some friends to 400 gradi in Brunswick, and it was delicious! The menu was very extensive and had a very upmarket atmosphere for a restaurant featured in the Cheap Eats. We ended up sharing a few pizzas between us, which worked out perfectly because I got to taste more than one.

I definitely recommend popping in if you get the chance.

chickpea burger…

A new healthy meal for dinner tonight, I was pleasantly surprised with how tasty these chick pea burgers were:

If you like the look of the burger you can find the recipe here at taste.

fresh summer salad

When the temperature gets high there is nothing nicer than a light salad for dinner. Tonight’s healthy meal was thai beef salad:

Yum! Delicious flavours!

a weekend of food

I love weekends that are filled with new food adventures.

On Saturday I went to visit my sister down in St Kilda and we had lunch at the vegetarian Soul Mama. Unfortunately the weather had taken a turn for the worse so we weren’t able to dine on the veranda - however the tastiness of the food definitely made up for the storm brewing outside.

vegetarian quesdillas

buffet selections

Then, last night, Phil and I headed out to Japanese in Moonee Ponds at Chiba. The serving sizes were massive! So we over-ordered slightly – however everything was delicious.

okonomayaki

japanese croquettes

my tonkatsu

phil’s bento box

and the uber delicious banana tempura!

The stomach is certainly getting a warm-up for Christmas!