Eat. @ Nora

156 Elgin St, Carlton 3053 ph (03) 9041 8644

I visited Nora on a "Me-Date" recently and had a lovely coffee, breakfast and of course, some of their famous charcoal tarts to go.  The team behind Nora had been supplying their distinctive tarts to a few select Melbourne cafes to rave reviews and I was really excited to try their Thai inspired interpretation of breakfast and lunch dishes.

I got there at 10am on a Thursday morning but the cafe was already full so I got to admire the display of their "tarts of the day" artistically set up with their ingredients.  

Once I was seated I ordered a coffee.  They don't serve mochas so I had one of my rare cappuccinos ($3.8).

I perused the menu, and each dish is named for one ingredient, which is then followed by a few other ingredients in the dish, in a similar vein to the menus at Estelle Bar and Kitchen.  I chose BACON, onion consomme, rice, pickles, corn ($18) and to be honest I had no idea what would be conjured with these ingredients.   Fortunately what arrived was a beautifully plated dish with surprising interpretation of the ingredients.  The bacon was more of a slowly cooked pork belly, the corn was in the form of young shoots, the onion were tender caramelised rings, and the rice was a finely ground sprinkle that gave the dish a grainy textural contrast. 

It came with a side serve of what looked like a popover, which provided some bready carbs to the dish. I appreciated the depth of thought and the chef's clever handling of the individual elements involved in the dish, and the experience was immensely enjoyable.

Of course I had to have some of the tarts ($5 each), and instead of having to choose one, I got one of each and took them home to share with the gang.  (Best Mum of after school treats I am!)  After I took a million photos first of course!

From the display, the first tart was made with dark chocolate, sesame, and I think this was topped with a sugary honeycomb.

The second tart had white chocolate, pistachio and cherries.

And last but not least a lemon ginger and lemongrass brulee tart.

We all enjoyed the tarts.  The charcoal, made from coconut husks, gave the tarts their distinctive and striking black colour, but was surprisingly mild in flavour and worked well with the lightness of the pastry.  The filling were interesting and the flavours were complementary.  If Nora had been around when I was still at Uni I can guarantee I would've spent a lot of time there getting fat eating tarts to my heart's content.  I envision many future visits, if only to grab some of those yummy tarts on the go if I can't get a table!

Eat. @ Hopetoun Tea Rooms

The Block Arcade, Melbourne CBD ph : (03) 9650 2777

I love having a wander through The Block Arcade and we've walked past The Hopetoun Tea Rooms countless number of times.  Mini Me and Macaron Monster both always ask to have a break here but we've always been discouraged by the long line of people queuing for a table out front.  On this slightly cooler summer morning I organised babysitting for Bubs and took the older 2 here for morning tea.

The line for a table starting to build

Before going inside to sit down, we checked out all the goodies in the window.  There are usually about 2-3 camera wielding  tourists people taking happy snaps of the gorgeous, traditional sweet goodies at any one time and it's often hard to even get near the window on busy weekends!

It was seriously baked-goods-heaven and as you can see, I couldn't stop taking pictures either!

I always imagined that Hopetoun Tea Rooms is the type of place to go when grandmothers caught up with their uni-attending grand-daughters for tea in the city (yes, table on our left), and for  ladies to meet up and chat over old fashioned delights (table behind us).  And yes, a generous helping of interstate and overseas visitors kept the tables filled.

We didn't bring Bubs as bringing a stroller into this popular, crowded tea room would be seriously pushing the friendship.  Fortunately we beat the crowds and got a little table for the 3 of us without a significant wait.

The menu offered savoury breakfast dishes as well as the goodies on display.  We all had our eye on the yummy sweet stuff so did not try the breakfast fare and went straight to the treats.  (I sound like such a bad Mummy!  They did have a normal cereal-breakfast earlier, this is morning tea after all!)   We admired the interior of the tea rooms while we waited, it was very Old-English, with draped ceilings, opulent lighting and floral wall papered walls.

The kids shared a big ice chocolate, old fashioned style, in a tall glass with plenty of cream and vanilla ice-cream.

I went for a traditional English Breakfast Tea for this occasion, of course.

The Pavlova was heavenly with fresh and tangy fruit offsetting a fantastically light meringue with a lovely slightly chewy centre.

The Portuguese Tart was a highlight for Mini Me.  I have to agree it's pretty good, as the pastry was light and crispy, which I don't always get with my recipe.

The low light was the macarons unfortunately.  They looked lovely piled high in the windows, but  on the plate they were dry, hard, powdery and crunchy.  Macaron Monster has been starved of macarons as we haven't made any recently, but even so could only manage to eat part of the strawberry one.  Even at $2.5 each I couldn't bring myself to finish the unappetising cookies, quite possibly the worst I've ever tasted.  

Eat.Play.Shop. says - Go for the gorgeous pavlova, take-away a Portuguese tart, and leave those macarons for display only.

Toilets - The arcade has some

Highchairs - No

Cook. @ Home - Portugese Egg Tarts

Just realised that Eat.Play.Shop. quietly turned one earlier on in December!  Time for a bit of a change,  so I've decided to launch a new part to the blog by starting some Cook. @ Home posts, to share the recipes of some of the stuff we've been whipping up here.  As the Little Ones are growing into Bigger Ones, cooking has become something that the kids all want to participate in, sometimes more successfully than others!  Their tastes in food have also become quite broad and varied.   It's pretty cool to watch them try to make and eat different foods, and learn to appreciate their discoveries!

For my first recipe I will post a recent favourite - The Portugese Tart.  I paid $4 for one at Market Lane Coffee the other day and it got me thinking about how difficult easy it will be to make these yummy and delightful little tarts, which are perfect for afternoon tea.  Research on the net yielded quite a few variations in cooking methods and I have taken these on board and added my own changes.  As most of you know I have a thermomix (love!) so the custard is prepared in the thermomix here, but there's no reason why it can't be made on a stove top with gentle heat and stirring.  I have never failed using this recipe (yet!) and it makes a big batch of 24 - because they are very more-ish and just disappear so quickly!


The recipe is inspired by Bill Granger's,  with thermomix adaptation inspired by Winosandfoodies.


Fail Safe (Thermomix) Portugese Egg Tarts (Pasteis de Nata)

2 sheets of puff pastry

6 egg yolks

150g caster sugar

2 tablespoons cornflour

250g double cream

330g milk

2 teaspoons vanilla bean paste

1) Blend egg yolks, caster sugar and cornflour in the thermomix bowl at speed 4 for 5 seconds
2) Add cream and milk and cook at 80 C, speed 4 for 10 minutes
3) Add vanilla bean paste and whiz at speed 8 for 8 seconds
4) Pour mixture into a bowl to cool to room temperature, with glad wrap on the surface of the custard to stop a skin from forming
5) Turn oven on to 200 C (fan force) and grease 2 x 12 muffin tins
6) Place the 2 sheets of puff pastry on top of each other.  When thawed, cut this down the middle to form 2 rectangles.  Roll each rectangle up from the short end to short end to form 2 rolls and cut each into 12 rounds
7) Roll each round out on a floured surface and place into the muffin tins
8) When the custard has cooled it will set somewhat.  Spoon the mixture evenly into the 24 puff pastry cases and pop them into the oven for 20 minutes
9) Remove from the oven and rest for 5 minutes.  Then pop the tarts on a wire rack to cool and eat them when they're just warm!

Egg, Caster Sugar and Corn Flour blended

Adding the vanilla bean paste after the custard is cooked

Waiting for the custard to cool

Cutting the Puff Pastry

Rolling out the rounds

Cases all done - Rustic is good!

Just out of the Oven

Cooling on the rack, and looking quite delicious I must say!

Tips - 

• you can pop the custard mixture into the fridge to cool if pressed for time
• the custard will rise and bubble quite high while in the oven and will collapse down to achieve the look you're used to once out of the oven
• I love vanilla so I use lots of vanilla bean paste, but you can substitute this with vanilla extract and reduce the quantity quite easily
• I am quite lazy with pastry making so I always use purchased puff pastry, but you can make your own, and if you have a thermomix there's a recipe for this in the Everyday Cookbook

Apart from enjoying eating these, the thrifty housewife part of me finds it quite satisfying that for under $10 of ingredients I've produced $96 worth of tarts with very little effort.  Enjoy!