ragingyoghurt » around town

Category Archives: around town

i was in the kitchen the other night when a wobble-board kind of noise, and maybe the tiniest wobble, came from behind the wall. “what kind of home improvement is the neighbour up to at this time of night?” i wondered. then i finished making my cup of tea and thought nothing more of it. turns out it was the biggest earthquake to hit victoria in 109 years, and then before i even knew it, it was over. it feels less bleak these days. i expect it’s only cosmetic though, but if i don’t try too hard, it is easy to ignore the darkness. possible to embrace it, even, in the form of black cake. ah, the shadowy spectre of holidays past…

my habitual first stop in singapore, muji, yielded a two-pack of black muffins. the little dessicant packet and the goodness of humectant created the perfect sealed-in-plastic micro-climate for a perfect, moist cakelet. i seem to remember that one of the ingredients listed was “carbon”, although it was mostly black sesame. also: soft and spongy, sticky and sweet, and a little bit otherworldly. i did become quite obsessed with black sesame cakes while we were away. it was easy: in singapore, they are everywhere.

from mushiya steamers in the ion foodcourt, a kurogoma mochi kintoki steamer. doesn’t it just look like a package of good fortune? inauspiciously, as the shopgirl tonged the cake into a plastic bag, she sneezed. all over it. “um.” i said incredulously. “you just sneezed all over it.” she was nice enough to fetch me a fresh one (i had to ask), although it didn’t taste particularly fresh. it turned out to be much like a local huat kueh — steamed spongey bready cake made with a variety of leavening agents; my grandmother favoured a can of creaming soda — just drier around the edges. the cake was somewhat bland with the gentlest hint of black sesame flavour; the embedded jewels — assorted beans and a fat chewy mochi artfully arranged over the top– were slightly more compelling.

another food court, another steamed bun. from food republic at vivocity, a pair of black sesame buns. these were fresh out of the steamer — lovely, pillowy soft dough wrapped around a rich, sweet filling of black sesame paste. it’s the kind of thing where after you eat it, you must check your teeth to make sure that there are not pockets of black tucked into the crevices. once in new york i snacked on black sesame crackers on my way to meeting my sister at her supercool lower manhattan publishing house. i met all her supercool colleagues. i smiled and chatted. and then after we’d left, she caught a glimspe at the side of my smile and exclaimed, horrified, “what is that!?”

masticated black sesame seeds, nyup nyup.

on to more pleasant memories. the black sesame society, from bread society at ion. soft, slightly sweet bun studded with sesame seeds. a fat ribbon of black sesame buttercream. a dusting of fine sugar. it was probably the best in show (the easter holiday black sesame show), but then i am particularly partial to a cream bun. regretfully, i never made it back for another. the end of our holiday came upon us far too soon.

even so, there had been enough time for five or six trips to muji. on my last, wistful jaunt, i finally gave in to a large bag of individually packaged black bean and barley biscuits, which i packed into my luggage along with a dour pile of stripey shirts-socks-dresses in sombre shades of grey and greyish blue. somewhat sympathetically, these bite-sized biscuits are barely sweet, decidedly savoury, and taste of healthfood. they are a sturdy crunch which gives way to a sandy mouthful. the blackbeans do not crumble of course. they resist, challenging your molars. they are by no means horrible, but i can’t have more than one at a go. no doubt they will last through this cold, cruel winter, giving me sustenance at my desk, one humourless bite at a time.

and finally, yes, the black baumkuchen. the muji incarnation is not a charming ring of cake carved from a log on a spit. instead, it is a black slab (cut from said ring) industrial enough that it was mistaken for a newfangled cleaning product by another member of the household (like, i would buy a cleaning product! ha!). do not fear. i rescued it just in time, and so can tell you that, even two months past its best-before date, it only needs a few seconds in the microwave to freshen up, forming part of a demure sunday morning breakfast, with a side of gingery daufufa and a crackle cup of genmaicha.

it wasn’t quite as moist as the aforementioned black muffin, due, i suppose, to its cooking method of being roasted one thin layer at a time. the flavour was black sesame with a slight smoky edge. truly a post-apocalyptic cake appropriate for this time in which i live.

posted by ragingyoghurt on 26 June 2012 at 1:46 pm

permalink | filed under around town, cake, snacks

sometimes you just gotta.

case in point: late sunday morning, we popped into the breadtop in the mall (post-chinatown-roast-meat-shopping and en route to brown rice nori rolls) for a bun or two. we ended up with four, and one of them was this golden brown spring roll bun.

a filling of peppery minced pork with carrots and bamboo shoots encased in a soft white bun, wrapped in spring roll skin, then deep fried. you couldn’t have resisted either, could you?

the wrapper was still crunchy, the bun a little chewy from its time in the deep frier. the filling was five-spicy, and almost like that of an old skool australian-chinese spring roll. could’ve done with a bit of shredded cabbage though.

i kind of wished i had another one, once this was gone… but the fact is i did have a taro bun to attend to.

posted by ragingyoghurt on 3 June 2012 at 3:03 pm

permalink | filed under around town, snacks

and so the strange summer — now it’s hot! now it’s not! — eddies to a close. inbetween breastfeeding sessions on the couch, there were a few big city excursions over the school holidays: a bookmaking workshop at the library; an afternoon of getting tangled in ribbon at the forecourt of the arts centre; a few hours with the upside down sea jellies at the aquarium… however it did seem like we spent a lot of time at the mall, and not just for cupcakes.

(but look at it! the drumstick, from cupcake central — a rather splendiferous concoction of chocolate-filled vanilla cake topped with an immense swirl of frosting, a drizzle of chocolate and butterscotch, chopped peanuts, and a wafer. much less messy than an ice cream on the train home.)

no, melbourne central, we found, contained a secret oasis in the middle of the hot, bustley city. we’d been to the parents’ room at myer a couple of times; it was nice and all — wall decals, comfy though inefficiently arranged seating — but it was always crowded with queues for the two nappy-changing stations, and for some strange reason, all toilets but one were kept locked. we’d been to the one in david jones all of once. you’d think it would be fancy, but in fact it was a rather depressing, drab, beige room. with perfunctory chairs, wedged into a corner, surrounded by a bank of reeking nappy bins.

so the melbourne central parents’ retreat was a bit of a revelation. yes, more than just a room. it’s a spacious haven divided into zones:

a nappy-changing area, with a sink with boiling water tap and microwave for food preparation.

a lounge area with cosy (spinning!) chairs.

roomy curtained cubicles in blue, green and red for privacy — each one containing a stylish and comfortable armchair, adorable table, and an abridged and woefully (un)subedited version of little red riding hood as wallpaper.

a little nook with booth seating where you can bring in your food from the nearby dining hall (my pick is the impossibly tasty brown rice sushi rolls filled with spicy salmon, or spinach and sesame).

…and yes, climbing racks, amongst other play equipment.

the kid was most impressed with the little peepholes and cubbies, for quiet time…

and the amazing suspended ropes for rambunctious swinging fun.

there are gates to keep small people contained, and an automatic air freshener dispenses a puff of inoffensive fragrance every now and then. a cleaner comes through often. yes, harlan will grow up happy here… the weather of late is conducive to sushi and cupcakes, and i think i might like a browse at the gap.

posted by ragingyoghurt on 22 February 2012 at 8:10 pm

permalink | filed under around town, cake, misc

it was my birthday a couple of weeks ago, except now that i write this, i see that it was actually five weeks ago, gah.

my olds were in town, as were the boy’s, and an aunt of his, and a cousin, and we thought we might wander into carlton for a catch up and celebratory luncheon. pizza and gelato were on the horizon (essentially, a replay of the kid’s birthday do some weeks back, but without the paint), but i knew that we would never get into D.O.C. at peak lunch hour. so we tried the aunt-recommended place, and when that proved to be a heaving mass of lunch crowd, we crossed the road to the place previously vetted by the boy’s parents: cafe trevi.

what it had going for it was that it was empty. where it fell short — way, waaayyy short — was the food. the boy and i shared a couple of pizzas, and they were so awful we couldn’t bring ourselves to finish them (and you know, just for perspective, on the occasions that i’ve had say, domino’s, i eat until it’s gone). the bases were sturdy, bland dough trays on which some nasty plastic cheese was melted, and toppings — some strips of leather masquerading as prosciutto for instance — artfully arranged. the others seemed to be enjoying their food, so perhaps we just ordered the wrong things.

however, everybody agreed that the mixed salads were dismal: some roughly chopped pallid iceberg, a couple slices of cucumber and a wedge or two of anaemic tomato, carrot sticks, and — here’s the kicker — dressing perched precariously atop the lot in disposable plastic tubs, one of balsamic vinegar and another of commercial salad cream. low fat mayonnaise, even.

i must say i took a perverse pleasure in dipping carrot sticks in the salad cream. maybe i even enjoyed it, far more than i did the pizza anyway.

dessert down the street at casa del gelato almost made up for it. but not really, i was so grumpy.

last sunday, the boy proposed a carlton excursion, which began with an expedition through the melbourne cemetery. i love a good cemetery: that old one in the middle of athens, where the boy and i wandered 11 years ago; paris’s pere la chaise, in which my sister and i became lost, and cold, and hungry one wintery afternoon in 2007; waverly cemetery in sydney, the site of a fine twilight picnic overlooking a chinatown cream cake and the crashing waves of the tasman sea… good times!

melbourne general cemetery is a world class cemetery. the internet tells me it was established in the 1850s, and that it houses around half a million. what i can tell you is that it is a wonderful collection of gilded script in slabs of marble…

it’s a place where all the branches of christiandom exist peacefully…

there is a chinese section,

and a jewish section.

many angels, some beheaded.

it was shortly after we discovered the amazing shrine to elvis presley — a grotto covered in succulents and engraved marble plaques that looked like velvet elvis paintings — that we realised we were hungry. we meandered through the historic gravestones…

…to the exit, and found ourselves on lygon street just before three. and then after some discussion, we found ourselves at D.O.C. negotiating pizza.

sadly, the special from the other time — porchetta with mustard fruit — wasn’t on the menu, however there was a most agreeable offering of parma ham with buffalo mozzarella, fresh figs and a pungent undercurrent of gorgonzola. we were similarly smitten by the porcini pizza, which included a melange of mushrooms, all cooked to perfect succulence on a white base. the kid had her own margherita, because some things are just too delicious for her. case in point: unsatisfied even with this plainest pizza on the menu, she removed every basil leaf before it was deemed acceptable. by the end, we were so satiated we couldn’t even manage gelato. still, it was the birthday pizza luncheon that was meant to be.

four months ago, i got an email of just two sentences: “…just been diagnosed to have possibly lung cancer with metastases to the spine. i feel so bad we did not take her back pain seriously, attributing it to the hard physical housework she’s been doing.”

during the week just past, an update: “…sadly not responding to her treatment. yesterday’s scans show that the cancer has spread to her brain, liver and more bones, and fluid has collected around her heart and in her lung. she remains brave and is taking whatever comes.”

at what point does living with cancer tip over into dying from it? i am not convinced it is all just a state of mind.

posted by ragingyoghurt on 18 December 2011 at 12:28 pm

permalink | filed under around town, lunch, misc

so yes, i’m afraid i wasn’t so good at being confined. (and that’s only 4 weeks according to chinese tradition. we were chided by some lebanese ladies at the kid’s school for bringing harlan out to the twilight picnic a couple of weeks ago — “we don’t let the babies out until after 40 days!” they said, and, “put a hat on him — he is cold!”). the monday after the saturday birth, i was trawling the aisles of bas foods with my mother, in search of treats (peach nectar, pistachios, and ülker chocolate biscuits). in the couple of weeks that followed, i turned down my mother’s numerous offers of sesame-oil-ginger-chicken — instead, we did the rounds: mr close, lux foundry, arcadia…

surely this is as nourishing (and heaty!) as anything soused in ginger wine? behold the baked eggs at arcadia, on gertrude, which come with a 25-minute-wait warning. i picked the option with the lentils, and there must’ve been almost two cups in there, buried under the eggs, all salty and herby and crusty-topped. (the surface was all salty and stinky, from a layer of melty taleggio.) it tasted so deliciously of hearty good health that the sheer volume of lentils never got boring (the intermittent pieces of juicy celery helped).

this dish proved easy to eat with one hand, as the other hand occupied itself with the intricacies of breastfeeding. i ate every last pulse, and every last herby leaf from the sprig, and then rolled up the street to bask in the friday sunshine.

posted by ragingyoghurt on 14 December 2011 at 1:34 pm

permalink | filed under around town, lunch

i zoomed past slowpoke back in the depth of wintertime, but i was on my way to lunch further up brunswick street and couldn’t do much more than peep into the window and take note of the long room lined in rough hewn timber. it was brightly lit and airy, and there was a glass case of baked goods midway down. fitzroy-cute, rather than mountain-manly. i made a mental note to return. newly into spring — the first day of school holidays — after a jaunt through the carlton gardens playground, the kid was hungry for eggs. so we strolled up gertrude — coming distracted and somewhat unstuck only by the papier mache skulls at amor y locura — and rounded the corner. “i think we can get eggs here,” i told maeve as we stood on the threshold. “let’s go here,” she said.

we perched ourselves at the counter fronting the window, overlooking an open bowl of sugar, an open cup of pink salt, and a host of bicycles chained up outside. we ordered a pot of chai and watched the trendy kids wander down the road with too-big hair and too-small jeans.

from the tidy chalkboard menu, the kid picked the boiled eggs with toast soldiers, just about as eggy as you can get. they arrived, twins in matching cups, with a platoon of very liberally buttered sourdough fingers. after her tentative attempts, i cracked the top of the first egg sharply, and elicited a horrified gasp from the kid: a massacre! but once she’d picked away enough of the shell with her itchy little fingers, the translucent white came into view, and the googy yolk poured forth, and all was forgiven.

i had a hard time choosing — from the short and sweet menu of simple sandwiches and smashed avocado, everything appealed — but eventually settled on the lentil soup. oh my. the veritable swamp of light and colour puddled at the bottom of a large bowl was not what i was expecting, but gee, it was good. far from a gluggy mass of pureed lentils, this was a rich brothy thing with clearly identifiable pulses. the fresh tomatoes and baby spinach leaves brightened up a long slow chilli burn. the scattering of chilli flakes, of course, added to it. i ate it all, mopped up the dredges with bread. the smear of softened butter was most welcome.

the amazing expanding powers of lentil soup meant it was impossible right then to consider the tiny slivers of caramel slice and other homemade fancies from the cake counter, but that was ok. our feet were itching to get back to the street. it’s a world of fun and toys and vintage kokeshi dolls and shoo-fly buns out there in fitzroy, and it was ours for the taking.

posted by ragingyoghurt on 17 October 2011 at 6:55 am

permalink | filed under around town, lunch

but of course, i did eat that day. after the inkpad and gloves (ok, and crocheted necklace and teatowel), and the vintage letterheads and comics, i found myself in need of sustenance. i’d been reading about the cafe, mister close, for a little while, but couldn’t really figure out where in the city it was. turns out, it’s in a shopping arcade i walk through sometimes, my shortcut to chinatown. my chinatown dash usually happens around dinnertime though, and after hours, a clever sliding wall device makes quite a vanishing act of the mysterious mister close.

but here i was, right at the tail end of the what appeared to be a busy lunch crush — the eat-in area was still packed. behind the expansive front counter, the staff in sharp aprons were bustling. within the glass display, the salads and casseroles, somewhat depleted in large bowls, looked a little tired. however, the wall of readymade sandwiches was still going strong, offering such cheek-tingling combinations as grilled pumpkin – salsa agresto – buffalo mozerella – oven roasted tomato, and haloumi – roasted capsicum – eggplant – rocket – dukkah. i felt lucky to snaffle the last thyme buttered mushroom – zucchini – goats cheese.

after some minutes in the sandwich press, it was presented to me in a brown paper bag stamped with the cafe’s dapper logo. now, what to do? where in the city could i sit quietly to eat my toasted sandwich? would i find an empty bench in front of the library? could i wait the walk to the train station? would i be so unglamourous as to eat it on the train?

in the end, i took my sandwich just a few steps across the corridor to starbucks, ordered a green tea frappucino (i had seen them oh so small and innocent on the internet a few days before and had not been able to get them out of my mind) and sat at a quiet table round the back. it was a delicious frappuccino, sweet and mildly green with a lovely cloud of whipped cream on top, and i wondered why i had not had one in at least a couple of years.

the secret smuggled sandwich was delicious too — from the grilled buttery crunch of the seedy, nutty bread, to the succulent marinated mushrooms mingling saucily with the musty goats cheese, to the bitter green foil of salad leaves. mmm… salty, slippery goodness.

i thought my beverage choice made the perfect accompaniment to my perfect sandwich, however a reading of mister close’s blog revealed (with unnecessary glee, i thought) that the starbucks would be moving out. when — i do not know. clearly, an incentive for me to return sooner rather than later for the haloumi sandwich, which i’m sure it will pair just beautifully with the delicate spices of a chai frappuccino.

posted by ragingyoghurt on 13 August 2011 at 5:57 am

permalink | filed under around town, lunch

what the hell — let’s go for three in a row. i don’t expect people come this way anymore looking to read about food anyway, so here’s another post about printed paper.

on my way down to the comics last friday, i made a detour into city gallery — a little room at the melbourne town hall — for “paper city“, an exhibition of historical melbourne letterheads. yeah!

featuring an assortment of letters sent to the town hall since the mid-1800s, this collection showcases the evolution of design, print technology, language, industry, society and culture all in one fell swoop. even if you just go for the pretty pictures, you will witness how the overwrought charm of the victorian-era specimens eventually gave way to the unfortunate clunk of the 1980s. inbetween, there is a great mix of striking and quirky.

each piece of correspondence was worded most eloquently. each missive received was stamped and dated by the office, with an annotation by the clerk of what action was to be carried out. of course, there are some samples of lovely handwriting. ah… i used to have handwriting.

posted by ragingyoghurt on 8 August 2011 at 9:52 am

permalink | filed under around town, art

the grey threat that winter’s summery turn was about to end forced me out onto the streets today. that and the fact that i hadn’t really left the house in a week, and i thought i might chew my own arm off in protest. i’d been feeling blue, it’s true, and i wondered if buying myself treats would cheer me up. i tested this theory with an ink pad of sky blue, and then fingerless gloves crafted in navy wool, with white anchors handknitted into them. it totally worked!

my meandering eventually led me to “inherent vice” at the ngv studio at federation square, in which eight local comic artists have been holed up for some weeks, drawing. here you may walk freely amongst this elusive species in their (somewhat augmented) natural habitat. observe them at work. quiz them about their craft. look at their stuff.

and there was much stuff to look at: every last skerrick of wall space was covered in pictures…

every desktop a fascinating curation of bits and pieces…

(i must admit, there was more fruit than i’d expected to see on the desktops of comic artists…

…in comic-drawing mode, i’m sure it was chocolate i had within easy reach.)

this beautiful and inspiring installation is on for another week. after a couple of visits, i still gape at the walls in wonder. any minute now i might give in to the urge to draw something. good thing i didn’t gnaw off my arm after all.

posted by ragingyoghurt on 5 August 2011 at 11:34 pm

permalink | filed under around town, art

so it’s not just outside trendy cafes and mexican cantinas that you have to queue; friday afternoon at the olde time hopetoun tea rooms in the block arcade, we waited behind the red velvet ropes for 15 minutes or so before a table became available. nevermind — the bejeweled waitress was kind enough to give us frequent updates on the table situation (“there should be people leaving soon, but they are just sitting there sipping at their tea.”), and we had ample time to consider our choices from the two cake-laden shelves in the window. on top: fruit crumbles, tarts of lemon or lime or pecans, teacakes and, yes, macarons…

down below: a spectrum of technicolor cheesecakes, and a couple of sponges layered with cream and festooned with berries and flaked almonds. inside, perched atop the counter, above a display of antique silver and heavy crystal, sticky date puddings with a towering jug of toffee sauce, caramel slices, and chocolate and strawberry swiss rolls. it really was quite overwhelming.

i’d been working myself up to a simple afternoon tea of scones and cream and jam, but as we approached the front of the queue, the thought of two lumps of breadiness sitting in my belly so close to dinnertime saw me veer towards a slice of the sunny orb of passionfruit tart in the corner of the window.

at our cosy table in the small and tightly packed dining room, i found that the filling was, as i had hoped, bright and tangy, but the pastry, though a fetching shade of golden brown, was much less crisp than i would have liked. it had a lovely buttery taste, but its texture lacked any real distinction from that of the passionfruit curd.

both my tart and the slice of pavlova that the kid picked to celebrate the last day of term were thoughtfully plated up with artful puddles of passionfruit and/or raspberry coulis, dollops of thick cream and extra bits of fruit. but i must say that the attention to detail might have extended, if not to removing the skin from the kiwifruit, then at least to removing the stickers from the kiwifruit skin. gah!

the tea service, when it first arrived, looked promising despite the splodge of red jam on the strainer. alas, my dahl house tea — black, flavoured with ginger and peach — was served with a litter of leaves on the floor of the pot, so while the first cup was light and fragrant, by the third cup, it had brewed itself bitter.

i’d really like to like this place. i mean, i’d like to like it more. i mean, i think, i like it fine. the waitresses are friendly, and will not rush you on even though a queue is forming outside. the decor, with the marble table tops, emerald green wallpaper and swathes of stripy fabric hanging from the rafters, is not without its charm. when you look closely though, at the lingering produce stickers, and the just-short-of-soggy pastry, and the endlessly steeping tea, and the torn and peeling wallpaper, you get a sad little feeling that this is not so much the grande dame of tea rooms as it is the slightly doddery aunt.

(which is not to say i wouldn’t visit again. because after all, who doesn’t like a homely tea-and-cake sit down with a doddery aunt in her well-worn sitting room? it’s just a little bit of pomp and some tired splendour. perhaps next time, i will have the scones.)

posted by ragingyoghurt on 2 July 2011 at 8:53 am

permalink | filed under around town, cake, grumble

Category Archives: around town

Click

Search

Categories

Archives