Seven Seeds: 02

Name: Seven Seeds
Location: 114 Berkeley St, Carlton 3053
Price range: Breakfast $4.50-$9.50, Lunch $10.50-$14.50, Drinks $4-7
Cost rating: 3/5
Taste rating: 5/5 (“It’s all good.”)

I’m back at Seven Seeds. The menu changes often so there always seems to be something different. Everything gives me food envy.

BIRCHER MUESLI, RUBY GRAPEFRUIT, PISTACHIOS, LABNA, HONEY ($9.50)
Overall rating: ?

Healthy and tasty/ A most excellent breakfast/ Good warm or cold

Bircher muesli is loose muesli (dry rolled oats, sometimes accompanied by flakes of dried fruit and nuts depending on which box you buy) soaked in fruit juice overnight to make a unusually delicious and nutritious breakfast. It’s also good with natural yoghurt for creaminess. The honey makes the otherwise tart natural yoghurt and pink grapefruit sweeter.

 

SEVEN SEEDS HOUSE-MADE BEANS & CORN BREAD, AVOCADO, SOUR CREAM, SALSA ($13.50)
Overall rating: ?

Beans in tomato/ Avocado and corn bread/ Mop up sauce with bread

“The problem with Seven Seeds that is the serving sizes are too small.” You can feasibly eat a main, and dessert for lunch and never feel too full. But beans and avocado do fill you up.

 

TASMANIAN COLD SMOKED SALMON, HERB SALAD, CAPER & DILL CREAM CHEESE WITH SOURDOUGH RYE ($13)
Overall rating: ?

Sweet oily salmon/ Piquant capers in cream cheese/ Peppery rocket

Cold smoked smoked salmon with cream cheese? I’m there! It’s just good flavours all round.

SOUTHERN STYLE BBQ PULLED PORK, COLESLAW, MAPLE SYRUP DRESSING & BRIOCHE BUN ($14.50)
Overall rating: ?

Lone knobbly gherkin/ The Hungry Caterpillar/ But no stomachache

Photo before eats/ Now with added cross sections/ Eat before it's cold

I don’t know much about this one, so I will add another photo so you can discern for yourself. There seems to be a Southern theme this round at Seven Seeds.

VIETNAMESE STYLE BAGUETTE, FRIED TOFU, CORIANDER, PICKLED CARROT & DAIKON, CUCUMBER & SPICY SRIRACHA MAYO ($13.50)
Overall rating: 8/10

Cuisine reversal/ Baguette mimicks Viet* bread/Love the mixed style

Initially I wasn’t so sure about tofu in a sandwich, but it’s not bad at all! It’s firm tofu and has a crumbly texture. The tofu is made tasty by the mayonnaise. Everything else is crunchy and zingy. If you ever get sick of having a ham, cheese, tomato baguette (even though Seven Seeds does do a good toasted sandwich), try a tofu baguette. My only qualm is that I wish I found some more pickled daikon.

*: Vietnamese. (But that doesn’t fit into the haiku.)

HOUSE-MADE PEANUT BUTTER & BANANA BREAD, FRENCH BUTTER ($7)
Overall rating: 10/10

Define 'delicious'/ Peanut butter banana/ toast with soft butter

Define 'happiness'/ Peanut butter banana/ toast with soft butter

Ripe bananas have one purpose, and that it to be in banana bread. If possible, in this banana bread.

Natural peanut butter (so delicious, so much better than Kraft peanut butter) and ripe bananas in bread form, studded with roasted peanuts throughout the loaf for additional crunch and roasty flavour. Then sliced into thick slices, then toasted for a crunchy browned exterior and warm fluffy interior. It was so delicious. I need to make this cake. Then perhaps eat a few slices with generous portions of room temperature butter before proclaiming a baking victory.
Only qualm here is that the butter is served while still being cold. It just makes it harder to spread, and there’s less buttery goodness soaked throughout your peanut butter banana toast.

Fruit infused vodka

This is not an instant noodle post, nor a places-for-eats post. It would almost be a recipe post, except for the fact there is no recipe. I wanted to share the colourful photos of fruit-infused vodka.
Vodka comes in many flavours nowadays. Most of time as alcopops, but sometimes as fruit-infused vodka. Unfortunately, many of these fruit-flavoured vodkas are simply that. Fruit- FLAVOURED vodka. So, we set out to infuse vodka with real fruit.

We made four different infusions:
1. Vanilla pod. The palest of them all, a pale yellowish colour.
2. An apple infusion with Pink Lady apples. A pale yellow colour, a warm tone.
3. Orange and lime. Another yellow, but tinted green.
4. Strawberry. Red. A bright pinkish red.

A rainbow line-up/ So, can you taste the rainbow?/ A Skittles reference

After 10 days or so, we took the fruit out and strained the vodka to remove any fruit bits. The question may have occured to you: what do you do with the fruit? The answer is: We ate them and enjoyed their sweet booziness in a drunken afternoon. (Only without the drunken afternoon part.)

Onwards to making a quick fruit relish/jam or making the vodka-filled fruit edible as a food item. The cream cheese pancake batter was made beforehand so that there may be eating as prompt as possible.

One, place your vodka-fruit dregs into a pan. Notice how washed out for colour these strawberries are. Some colour will return once they are heated and cooked through with sugar. Add however mush sugar you think it needs.

Strawberries are red/ There is no blue in the fruits/ It's still a poem

We also sliced up the apple into small chunks and cooked those with the strawberries. We started off with around 3 tablespoons of white sugar and added sugar as we went. While the fruit is slowly heated through with sugar to cook out some alcohol, we added some knobs of butter to another fry pan for pancakes.

Cooking out vodka/ A case of multitasking/ Cooking up pancakes

The cream cheese batter is lumpy, as you can see. But fear not! The lumps are from the cream cheese, and add an element of surprise to your pancakes. I like different textures. Homogeneny is good in supermarkets, but that can get boring.

A fluffy batter/ The thickness is deceiving/ Cream cheese makes it light

Back to the stewing strawberries and apples. See how the strawberries regain some colour? I have no idea how that happens, but I can put out a few theories. None of them involving aliens or magic. You can cook the strawberries and apple for as long as you like. We waited until a large portion of the alcohol cooked out for the ones who are light-weight drinkers. (Namely, myself. I can’t bring myself to drink anything that smells too strongly of something I use to wipe down benches in a science laboratory.)

So, back to the pancakes.

An observation/ Why do pancakes have a rim?/ A nearly-burnt rim

You can use vegetable oil to fry your pancakes if you don’t want to use butter. We’re fairly decadent when it comes to dessert. ;D

Speaking of decadence, we opted to use more of the vodka fruit. Meet our new contestants. Oranges and limes. Sprinkle some brown sugar over those and wait for it to caramelise.

Citrus caramel/ Candied vodka citrus rounds/ One can only dream

Pancakes onto a plate for sharing.

Plate up the pancakes/ Stewed fruit and buttery noms/ It's also boozy

Plated up for your viewing pleasure.

The side with stewed fruit/ How is the presentation?/ Stripey board as prop.

 

See the sliced pancake/ Soft, fluffy and cream cheese-y/ Much like buttermilk

My, oh my. Fluffy cream cheese pancakes are delicious! Buttermilk brings pancakes up to another level of fluffiness, but cream cheese is the level above that. The strawberries remind me of jam, but no surprises there. They are both basically fruit and sugar stewed together. Except this one has vodka in it. I suppose jam could also have vodka in it, but I’ve yet to see it. (But is it a good idea to start the day with boozy jam on toast?) The apples are even better than the strawberries, for they are still crunchy. The strawberries are just soft and pulpy.
With the oranges and limes, the pancakes take me back to primary school. Back in the good old days where we had pancakes with lemon juice and sugar. I enjoy pancakes with lemon and sugar, but this, this! This would be the adults-version. Save it for your next dinner party.