Let's go there: The Earth Kitchen (Part 2)

Another delightful lunch at The Earth Kitchen

I enjoyed my first lunch at The Earth Kitchen so much that I went back again soon after. This pop up kitchen in Neutral Bay, Sydney, Australia is always full of lovely surprises.

This time, the tables were set around the kitchen like a counter so that you can interact with Yuki-san and Yuka-san and admire their jars of homemade goodies on display.

various jars of homemade goodies

All these jars are homemade and made by Yuki-san. I wish I'm as talented as him. There's also homemade soy sauce (not pictured). Like a good red wine, it was in the process of aging. Yuki-san said that it takes at least 6 months to make and after that you can age it for a further 6 months for a full bodied flavour. I hope I will be able to taste this soy sauce!

So on to the lunch. The menu is completely different from last time except for the miso soup which is the same. Again, I opted for the vegan version made with shitaki mushrooms.

Vegan miso soup made with shitaiki mushrooms

After the soup, what came next on the square wooden plate is すごいです！Amazing! There was a subtle Indian theme as lentil, dosa (like crepe) and curries were heavily featured. I think Yuki-san is an absolutely brilliant chef as he was able to sneak in a little bit of Indian taste into a Japanese lunch. The very first photo in this article is the photo of the lunch.

I ate: lentil dosa (yum); broccoli curry sauce (yum); chestnut curry sauce (yum); grilled veggies (yum); salad with parsley dressing (yum); zucchini, fennel and radish pickles (yum) and the star of the dish was homemade tempeh!!

Tempeh is fermented soy beans and it is super healthy. I have only eaten commercial ones and have never tasted homemade tempeh until this lunch at The Earth Kitchen. After eating the homemade tempeh, I really don't want to go back eating commercial ones! The taste is completely different: it is earthy, almost a smokey flavour and the soy bean taste is much more prominent. I absolutely loved it!

I polished my plate and didn't leave a single drop of sauce behind, it was that good. I was already full but Yuki-san asked me if I would like dessert.

Yes please, of course!!

The dessert consisted of watermelon sorbet (yum); diary free banana ice cream (yum); dried banana (yum) and okara cookie (yum).

Dessert: watermelon sorbet, banana ice cream, okara cookie, dried banana

I wasn't surprised to see banana featured as dessert because we've been getting nice bananas from NSW state. Usually Australian bananas come from Queensland where the weather is warmer and more tropical, but there are bananas grown in NSW too. The bananas from NSW are grown in a cooler climate than Queensland and so they take a little longer to mature. The NSW bananas are generally sweeter and I think more nutritious. No wonder the banana ice cream was super sweet- both Yuki-san and Yuka-san told me that they didn't add any sugar in the ice cream.

Now this pop up kitchen is Japanese but as I said before, there was a slight Indian theme in this lunch and that theme continued well into the dessert course: the cookie was made with okara (pulp of soy milk), cardamon, turmeric, matcha and cacao (absolutely yum).

At the Earth Kitchen, the food is so tasty and sumptuous, we cannot help but to ask about the food that we were eating: what is each dish made from, how was it made, where did it come from and discuss it with the fellow diner sitting next to us. This is exactly what The Earth Kitchen is about, bringing awareness to what we eat, forming community and reconnecting with nature.

Read The Earth Kitchen Part 1

or

Read The Earth Kitchen Part 3