Post-Christmas lunch

OK, so after just finishing a post about a great, excessive lunch only a few days after a period of time known for excessive consumption of food and drink, what would make sense to write about next? More food, of course.

I just spent the morning hitting up M-town for sales bargains (40% at Ben Sherman? Hello...) and was meeting J-star for lunch. Away from the major shops, the streets were rather quiet and we were feeling rather indecisive about our lunch venue. Feeling extravagant since my credit card had been slipping so easily out of my wallet all morning, I suggested we walk past one of the happiest places on earth... Becco. If you like classy, well-made Italian food in a stylish venue, there are few places around nicer than Becco.

A short review this time...
Main course - Tagliata; char-grilled rare porterhouse with capers, spanish onion and wild rocket (accompanied by a rocket, radicchio and cherry tomato side salad). A heavy duty red meat dish, with the porterhouse cooked to a nice rare to slightly medium rare consistency, with a nice charred, peppery crust.

Dessert - Vanilla pot with passsionfruit jelly. A small pot of vanilla bean-flavoured custard/pannacotta/mousse "stuff", covered with a layer of tangy, thick passionfruit jelly. Delicious.

I love food. I love holidays.

Christmas lunch

All this Christmas business over the last few days has diverted me from my intended task of posting about our Christmas lunch last week for work. Hmmm, doesn't sound too exciting, a work lunch, but there is a bit of history here. (Note: this isn't an "official" lunch, this is simply the exploits of me and a few culinarily enthusiastic work colleagues).

Two years ago, we had a shocking Christmas party for work, so a few of us compensated by having a extra long, boozy lunch at a South Melbourne pub the day after. Last year, we went to Tolarno. This year, we thought we'd celebrate in style... Christmas lunch at Circa. Oh yeah.

We started our sunny Wednesday afternoon with a round of cocktails, mine was a lovely cinnamon and pear number. We then got straight in to drooling over the menu. I went light for my entree, with a vegetarian dish - pressed tomato with grilled shallot, Italian buffalo mozzarella and white tomato cream. It was very fresh, very tasty and very colorful (almost festive); white for the cheese and cream, yellow and red for the tomatoes, green for the lettuce. In particular, the layers of pressed tomato and shallot was intense in flavour, while the mozzarella was quite delicate.

There was method to my entree selection... my main course was a grilled rib eye with bearnaise sauce - the other end of the food spectrum! Wow. The meat was cooked medium rare, so it was still just pink and juicy in the middle. And the taste, oh, the taste... melt-in-the-mouth juicy, fatty, delicious beef. All accompanied by a lovely shared bottle of red.

Since we were well and truly on the path of lunchtime extravagance, we shared a bottle of dessert wine with our dessert. I chose the lemon verbena pannacotta, a light and tangy way to finish the meal. This was accompanied by either peach or nectarine (can't remember) and yellow (!) raspberries. Delicious.

So what was the point of this post? Not sure, beyond reminiscing about more lovely food. And a great lead-in to my next post... my post-Christmas lunch! (Sense a theme...?)