2016 has arrived, and I’m frantically trying to catch up on my blog posts from 2015! December involved a lot of eating (A LOT), and quite a bit of it was done at restaurants, so I have a fair bit to write about.

The month started with a trip to Pomodoro Sardo. Rarely does my mum agree to go to a non Indian restaurant, so when she agreed to be my date to an Italian restaurant, I was excited! I think it’s an older generation Indian thing, they prefer to eat at places where they are familiar with the food, and rarely venture out of their comfort zone, but I was proud of my mum for giving Italian a try, other than the usual takeaway pizza, which can barely be classified as Italian food.

Located in the heart of the Melbourne CBD, Pomodoro Sardo was a little piece of Italy that I was surprised to have not seen or heard of before. Nevertheless, I went in with an open mind, and an empty stomach, ready to be impressed on both accounts.

The interior of the restaurant is decorated with Italian essentials, red wine glasses, bottles of red wine, and even can of tomatoes! Very practical indeed!

We decided to indulge, and opted for a five course degustation meal, with the only requirements being that we vegetarian and that my mum wanted one of the courses to include a vegetarian pizza. The staff were more than happy to cater to our request, and so the meal commenced.

As with any Italian meal, it began with some complementary focaccia bread. Unfortunately the bread was a little tough, but the olive oil provide for dipping was of a beautiful flavour. Nevertheless, the bread was a mere starter, and we were more interested in the actual menu items!

We started with a couple of small dishes to share. First was the burrata cheese, served with crumbled pistachios, confit cherry tomato, rocket, and dressed with balsamic and olive oil. The first time I had burrata was at Tipo 00 and it was amazing. Unfortunately this has probably set my benchmark for burrata way too high, and Pomodoro Sardo struggled to reach the lofty heights that I had etched in my memory. Don’t get me wrong, it was good, after all, all cheese is good, it was probably even very good, but it wasn't the amazing that I hoped for. The cherry tomatoes were not great, and I would probably prefer them roasted, rather than confit, but you could leave them to the side, and the dish would still be acceptable.

Our next entrée was Pecorino Guttiau. This was amazingly rich, warm cheese sauce, served with crisp flat bread. The bread was dipped into the cheese and the result was amazing. If the burrata from the previous course didn’t meet my expectations, this second course more than made up for it. It did feel very rich and heavy, and I was possibly edging closer to a heart attack with the amount of fat content in the cheese, but it didn’t matter because it was far too delicious to stop eating.

We then moved on to the Melanzana al Forno, otherwise known as eggplant parmigiana. But beware, this is not the humble eggplant parma that you may be expecting, instead it is a delicate dish, with lots of flavours that all work wonderfully together. At the base of the dish as beautiful pieces of eggplant, that have been cooked perfectly so that they melt in your mouth. With this is a rich, sweet tomato sauce and to top the dish a mix of garlicky breadcrumbs and some more delicious cheese. The dish is cooked in a wood fired oven, and that probably made all the difference. It was our favourite dish for the night.

We then moved onto the mains but unfortunately these started off a little lack lustre. Our first main was the Culurgiones. These were little Sardinian pasta parcels, in the same vain as ravioli, but shaped more like dumplings. They were filled with creamed potato and (more) cheese, and served with mint pesto and caramelised walnuts. Unfortunately the pasta was very dense and chewy and nothing like the pasta I would expect from an Italian restaurant. Both my mum and I are also not big fans of mint, and having the mint in the form of a pesto was just too strong. It also didn’t really work with the flavours of the caramelised walnuts. Overall the dish was very heavy and not very tasty, which was disappointing given I thought that pasta would have been one of their fortes.

We also had another pasta dish, this time made from a semolina pasta, the Malloreddus Caccio e Pepe. The dish was served with a plain sauce of pecorino cheese, egg yolk and pepper. Again, this dish was also very dense, and whilst I often appreciate a light sauce to bring out the best qualities of the pasta, if the pasta isn’t up to scratch, a plain sauce is really not going to work. Again, this was another disappointment.

We received our specially requested vegetarian pizza. The pizza was cooked in the wood fired oven, and it was a definite highlight! There was a thin crispy base, and the toppings were fresh and flavourful. We were glad that we had asked for this dish, because it boosted an otherwise substandard main course.

Next we were onto dessert. We were so full, but forced ourselves to activate our dessert stomachs, and indulge in some sweet treats.  Our first desert was a tiramisu. This tiramisu was amazing. Layers of chocolate, cream, coffee flavours and soft sponge cake filled each bite, and I was in heaven. The balance of flavours was perfect, and unlike other tiramisus that I have tasted, the coffee flavours didn’t overpower the palate.

We also had a selection of Sardinian sweets served with ice cream. The sweets were little parcels of pastry, filled with a variety or nuts or custards and they were all delicious. It was the perfect end to the meal.

The staff at Pomodoro Sardo were extremely attentive. I’m not sure if it was the big camera I was wielding, or whether that is just their normal practice, but I felt like I was getting special treatment! They always refilled our water glasses, came out to check that everything was OK, offered more bread on multiple occasions, and even came to apologise if a dish was slightly delayed. It definitely made us feel welcome, and we appreciated the attention.

Overall the food was a bit hit and miss. I think next time, I would order a selection of entrées and pizzas, and share them, rather than order any pasta dishes. And make sure you leave room for dessert, because that tiramisu is a necessity for any diner!

Disclaimer: I dined at Pomodoro Sardo as a guest of Zomato and Pomodoro Sardo, however all opinions are my own.

This is a recipe I stole from Sathya. She has an awesome blog which I often steal recipes from, plus I recently discovered she is a Gossip Girl fan, which I've decided makes her even more cool :-) Anyway, this was one of her recipes I had made numerous times before. This time, I had a few extra ingredients I needed to get rid, plus I was missing a few things, so I decided to do a little improvising, and it worked!


Ingredients (serves 4):

250g pasta (I usually use macaroni or elbows)
2 cloves of garlic, crushed or sliced
1 cup of sundried tomatoes, chopped and kept in their oil
1/2 cup sliced olives
2 tbs olive oil
1/2 tsp chilli flakes (I tend to go a bit overboard, coz i like it hot...)
1 can beans (Sathya recommends cannelini beans, but I replaced this with 4 bean mix)
1/4 tsp salt 1/2 tsp oregano
fresh pepper
1/2 cup grated parmesan

1. Cook the pasta according to directions.

2. At the same time, heat the olive oil together with the sundried tomato oil in a pot and add the garlic. Sautee for a minute and then add the chilli flakes.

3. Add the sundried tomatoes and make sure they are spread over the pan. Let them cook for a minute and then add the olives and ladle in a cup of the pasta water. Let this mixture cook until the liquid reduces by half.

4. Drain the can of beans and add it to the mixture, together with the salt and about 1 and a 1/2 more cups of pasta water. Mix well and let the sauce simmer for about 5 minutes.

5. Add a sprinkle of oregano to this mixture.

6. Once the pasta is done, combine it with the sauce mixture and mix throughly.

7. Remove from the heat, stir through the parmesan cheese and serve!

The apple crumble was a disaster; I needed to follow up strong, so I reverted back to my trusty pasta dishes. Generally when I make pasta dishes I tend to use whatever is left over in our fridge. Infact the whole exercise revolves around me trying to finish up various bits of items left over from other recipes. Last night was no exception.

We had a jar of sundried tomato pesto in the fridge which had been there for about a month. That needed to be used. We had tomatoes that we had bought in bulk from the market that were going soft. They too needed to be used. There was a piece of capsicum in the vegetable drawer of the fridge left over from a random curry my mum had made. There was a lonely zucchini and an eggplant. Funnily enough there was also half a bag of spiral pasta in the pantry, so I decided to put it all together.

Ingredients (serves 2):

• 250 grams of pasta (whatever sort you have handy)
• Enough water to cook the pasta

• 1 tbs olive oil
• ½ an onion, sliced finely
• About 3 tbs of sundried tomato pesto (I’m sure basil pesto would work just as well)
• 1 large, well ripe tomato, diced
• 1 side of capsicum, diced
• ½ of a large zucchini, diced
• 1/3 of a large eggplant, diced
• ½ cup milk
• Oregano to taste

Bring water to boil and cook your pasta according to directions. I have no idea how pasta is meant to be cooked properly, but I’ve heard that adding about 1 tsp salt and about 1 tbs oil to the boiling water prevents the pasta from sticking. It seems to work.

While your pasta is boiling away, heat the olive oil in a pan and lightly brown the onions. Once this is done add in tomatoes and sautee for a minute or two. Then add zucchini and eggplant and continue for another two minutes. Finally add in the capsicum. The tomatoes should have made the vegetable mixture go reasonably gluggy.

To this, add the pesto and stir a bit longer. Once everything is mixed nicely, add the milk and let it simmer for about 3 minutes. Before you think adding milk is a ridiculous idea, bear in mind I was exactly the same. But D convinced me otherwise. Apparently he thinks its normal to simmer everything in milk because it makes it more creamy, rather than water which will thin it down. It seems logical enough, so I do it.

Anyway, by this time the pasta should be about done, so add a few generous ladles of the pasta water and let it simmer some more until the consistency is nice. In the meantime drain the pasta also.

Add a sprinkle of oregano (and chilli flakes, which I totally forgot about, grrr), give it a quick stir and mix it into the pasta.

VOILA!