Baraka

285 – 287 High Street
Kew 3101, VIC
Phone: (03) 9852 7788

We’ve been seeking a hideaway dining spot on the way home for lazy cooking nights when even takeaway pizza is too hard work. Thanks to Melbourne Citysearch’s location finder we picked Baraka out of the hat.

It’s always a good sign when you open a restaurant door and you can smell dinner. So many restaurants have no smell to them – sterile, modern surroundings, you could be waiting for a train as much as waiting for a meal.

It was early and the restaurant was empty – a Tuesday night so we didn’t expect it to be thumping. It filled up as we ate though with a happy bubble. We were the youngest there by a good 20 years – a good sign?

Decor isn’t a focus here – there’s too much going on out back. A standard one pager menu was complimented by an extensive blackboard – the smudged board implies regular changes.

We shared an entree – bbq calamari ($18.50) with honey roasted walnuts and a crisp rocket salad. Soft strips of calamari with a smokey flavour and a tart vinegarette on the salad leaves.

My main came from the menu – Veal Baraka ($26) – a sure sign of speciality when the restaurant adds its name to a dish. Good portioning of veal coated in a rich mushroom and bacon wine sauce with potato gratin and fresh veges on the side, included not extra. Hubby went for the specials board – a lamb rack ($27) rolled in dukha with a yoghurt sauce and mashed potato.

Desert assulted us as the dining room filled with the smell of burnt sugar – who can resist an orange infused creme brulee ($10)? Especially when you can smell it coming. It arrived with pistachio and chocolate biscotti to dip into the velvet custard.

Hubby is such a blackboard baby, went for a fresh apple and berry crumble ($9.50). Again nice portioning – enough to satisfy, not so much that you’re eating your month’s quota of sugar. A scoop of icecream and vanilla infused runny cream (oh, heaven, there you are) on the side – he ceremoniously mixed the lot together.

The small winelist offers a nice selection of local and New Zealand whites and reds, some by the glass, but the best by the bottle. We washed our meal down with a Leeuwin Estate Siblings Savignon Blanc Semillon – crisp enough to cut through the rich veal main.

Info:

Entree: $7.50-$16
Mains: $19-$36
Dessert: $8.50-$11.50
Payment accepted: MasterCard, Visa, Diners Club, American Express, Bankcard and EFTPOS
Licensed. Wine is available by the glass. BYO $3.50 corkage per person.
Seats: 40
Outside dining area – will be great when Melbourne decides it’s summer.
Wheelchair access

smashed potatoes

We’re still on the sugar, butter, salt diet. It ends tomorrow. I’m looking forward to eating green things again, not sure my husband is so keen.

Tonight I’m smashing potatoes – it fills my parents need for salt and starch. It’s also kind of fun to see the look on Mum’s face when I start squashing perfectly good par-boiled potatoes into a casserole dish and spraying them with oil.

Ingredients

10 baby potatoes – par boiled in salted water
3 sprigs of rosemary – leaves stripped
salt
olive oil
Grab a casserole dish, grease it and then fill with the still hot potatoes. Get a fork and squash them all roughly. Sprinkle the rosemary leaves and salt over them, douse with oil and bang them into the oven at around 200 C for 40 minutes or until they go all brown and crispy on the edges.

There was some leftover sundried tomatoes, olives and a brownish looking 1/2 avocado in the fridge too, which made a great tepenade (ish) topping to go with the potatoes. Lashings of sour cream top it all off.

Sundried tomatoes (1/4 cup) – mould cut off
Black olives – cut stones out, or use a fancy pipper thingy – 5 or 6
1/2 avocado

Whizz it all together in a food processer until it resembles a reddish/brownish past with black bits. Sounds quite ordinary when I write it down, but actually it’s delicious.

Don’t tell hubby about the mould or the olives. He’s not hot on either.

butter & sugar generation

My mother is visiting us at the moment, which means our diets have changed considerably, along with our moods. Be warned.

My parents are of a generation that cooked with butter and sugar, and salt. Everything is doused in salt before cooking and sprinkled again which it hits the plate. And there’s a table set with salt that gets passed around laden with expectation. I can feel three splashings of the tasty crystals hitting my bloodstream. It feels good.

And butter. No meal exists without a sauce of some kind. Butter based. Don’t get me wrong – hollandaise sause is one of the highlights of my existence. However, it’s a highlight for the occassional weekend breakfast, not a staple.

And sugar. Sweet tea and biscuits. Mum’s been baking, which is really lovely of her. She was horrified at the lack of a cupboard of cake tins:

“What do you give visitors?” she asked.

“Alcohol mum,” I said. “It’s similar to sugar.”

She went out and bought me some  cake tins yesterday and cleared a cupboard for them. She needed something to put the results of two days baking into. So now I have a cupboard stacked with tins of sugar moulded into new forms of temptation.

I weighed myself yesterday. In a week my mother has gifted me a kilo in bodyweight. I fall asleep on the couch watching McLeod’s Daughters (my first time) and wake up groggy and angry.

I will miss her when she leaves. When the sugar tins empty, my husband will miss her too.