saturday morning church fete
dog show: check
coits: check*
cake stall, outside: check**
cake judging: check
cake stall, inside: check***
sausage sandwich: check
* $1 for 6, 7, 8 throws, winning nothing, but i’m sure the church will do good work with that dollar
** orange butter cake
*** gingerbread biscuits
until noon today, it had been more than a week since i last went to zumbo. i thought it was necessary to cut down the visits because… well, it wasn’t so much that my clothes were feeling tight, but my skin certainly was. is that worse?
but we popped in today, just to see if the macaron were hanging out in their acrylic tubs, and it was like a display of precious jewels: red, purple and orange. two of them i had not encountered before — raspberry and blackcurrant — and the third i just got for good measure because it’s in my top three favourites.
the raspberry macaron, from the bite and a half i managed to wheedle out of maeve, had a smooth and mild candy-like flavour. by which i mean candy that has been flavoured with real raspberry juice, rather than like, whatever they put in frangos, by which i mean, if you eschew fresh raspberries because they are sometimes tart and intense, then this macaron could be good for you, because it tastes of raspberries that are not tart and intense.
the blackcurrant macaron is still in its cellophane baggie in my backpack, but i’m sort of hoping it tastes like ribena. i’ll let you know.
the mandarin macaron also survived the mid-afternoon sugar slump, but i know it well and i love it.
before the early lunchtime crowd forced us back out onto the street, i managed to find out that zumbo is now also a purveyor of sonoma breads. indeed, i looked up at the bread shelf high above my head, and in the corner was my favourite and my best soy and linseed sourdough loaf, with the whole soybeans. this is great news because it means i will no longer have to make a special detour in glebe for it. yay.
and also, because my attempts to eat less cake by making fewer trips to zumbo didn’t quite work out, because, well, if you’ve been reading, you’ll see that i’ve been to a bunch of other pastryshops in the inner city instead… because of that, another reason to stop at zumbo every day or so will not be such a terrible thing.
haberfield is a bus and then another bus away from me, and even though the trip surprised me by being much quicker than i’d expected, in the last couple of years, i have been, let me see, oh, just the once.
this is a pity because the main street goes something like this: chocolate, cheese, pizza, deli, cake, pasta, cake, supermarket where two or three aisles are filled with more shapes of pasta than you have ever seen, and then, on the corner, pasticceria papa.
it was raining monday morning, and though i had mostly psyched myself up to take on the temperamental bus schedule, i was very pleased when ana said she’d swing by and pick us up. so we arrived mostly dry, in great time, and ready to eat, which we did.
this is what two big girls, two little girls, and a one-week-of-gestation-remaining baby can put away, in just under two hours:
veal arancino
prosciutto pizza
custard tart with mixed fruit
cassata gelato
mixed berry and cream tart
mini ricotta cannoli
large ricotta cannoli
almond biscuit
three lattes
three babycinos
the gelato was especially good, a festive riot of hazelnuts, candied fruit, chocolate shavings and dramatic swirls of pistachio paste. good thing they were out of pink for the day; the kid was easily swayed.
still, it was the superlush ricotta cannoli that came home with me, four in a shiny brown box, along with a chocolate custard horn and a napoli biscuit and a fat schnitzel roll.
this is not your regular breaded cutlet on fluffy white buttered bread. behold: schnitzel, yes, and then roasted cherry tomatoes, eggplant, fontina, mozzarella, artichoke, rocket and prosciutto (though you could choose one with salami), in a chewy-soft roll.
i ate it, with a cup of darjeeling tea, for a late lunch, and it sat in my stomach well into the evening, when plans were already afoot for a return visit.
ah! what is this thing? with its topping of dark crumbs?
after a fun 20 minutes at kinko’s, i cut across oncoming (pedestrian) traffic along the footpath, to peer into the window of the bourke street bakery’s broadway satellite, just to see. and here was something new! because the labels were all a-hither, i had to step inside to ask what it was. and then because i was already inside, i had to buy it.
behold: the chocolate mousse and raspberry tart. the gritty innercity cousin (with the milky soft heart) of the zumbo and lumiere chocolate-raspberry tarts, previously documented.
raspberry chocolate and me go way back. it was the summer of nellicent’s graduation from northwestern, and we spent the days with the backs of our knees slick with sweat, hanging around downtown chicago. the tourist brochure from our hotel had a coupon in it for a welcome gift from marshall field’s, the historic chicago department store, and we took advantage, really we did. day after day we would show up at the visitors’ center, coupons in hand, and be like, “oh! what a lovely surprise, to be getting this giftbag with a little box of chocolates inside.”
the chocolates were frangos, and commonly mint, but one day, there was a red box which held a raspberry variety. these were small blocks of chocolate that just melted away on our tongues. the raspberry flavour was bewitching.
and of course, it is “flavour”. a distinctively un-raspberry taste that you know to be “raspberry” because the package is red, and says r-a-s-p-b-e-r-r-y. and you crave it anyway, and years later, you discover that the raspberry syrup they use in starbucks is a pretty good approximation of a raspberry frango, when squirted into a hot chocolate.
this is not like a frango. beneath the dark chocolate crumbs is a lush chocolate mousse. beneath the mousse is a layer of squishy, tart raspberries. the pastry shell is flaky, rather than biscuity, and the whole thing — this tiny bouquet of contrasting textures — is so extremely delicious that i keep nudging it with my fork, eating it one small piece at a time, until it is all gone. it certainly makes a night of saving print-ready PDFs infinitely more pleasant. those crumbs… ingenious.
you feel a little uncomfortable, don’t you? like you need to cross your legs, or check to see if i moo, or something? i can assure you, i continue to be simultaneously enamoured and repulsed.
so, i guess they are more socks than sneakers: japanese socks with rubber soles. apparently, in japan, construction workers and miners wear them? i wonder if pickaxe-through-the-toes incidents are much higher in japan than over here in the land of steel-toecap boots.
of course, i have no need to worry about pickaxe accidents as i whisk deftly up the street in my new cloven-toed sneakers! or, as deftly as i can move while keeping pace with a small person whose legs are just over a foot in length.
when i returned to the store last friday afternoon, the shopgirl asked in greeting, “so, shall i pack these up for you?” she pointed at the ones i’d tried on that morning, black soles, black fabric, chunky white numbers. i looked around the room, trying to buy time, and out the corner of my eye, i saw the flash of red. and i asked to try them on. and i don’t know why i do this to myself, because now i had another thing to wrestle with.
[ red shoes on, red shoes off; black shoes on, black shoes off; repeat ad infinitum… ]
by the end of it, i was squinting into the mirror with a red shoe on my left foot and a black one on my right, and the shopgirl was pretty convinced that i wasn’t a black shoe kinda girl.
so yeah, i got the red ones, and they have a lovely pink lining which matches my pink cloven-toed socks, with the chunky white numbers. they are so light to wear, and the thing i thought would bug me — that wedge inbetween my toes — my feet got used to pretty quickly. in fact, my toes are spread out most comfortably, and there is none of the crippling pain that comes after a day of having them wedged into my allstars, or that pinchy twinge on the side of my little toe from the slightly more comfy jack purcells. the only thing that concerns me is that such whispery light and thin soles are not cushioning my heels as i pound around my concrete environment, and i’m going to pay for this fashion moment with years of chronic knee problems.
(the only other thing that concerns me is that i may have to go back and get the black ones after all.)
but, y’know, fashion! it affects us all at some time. like, the kid has been seeing the new bonds ad on teev. the one where a ring of nubile underwear-clad girls cavort joyously to an infectious brazilian tune? the second time it came on, she said, “give me a little bra and panties, so that i can dance like that.” so yeah, advertising, your work here is done. clearly she is on track to wanting a harem of hideous bratz dolls by the time she’s four. meh.
farewell, my battered jack purcells, you have served me well.
bagel house, right after it finally opened on darling street, was strangely empty. for weeks, it seemed as though the only people i could see through the clouds of steam emanating from the back room, were the people behind the counter. these days, there are queues at the counter, and the historic mirror-topped tables are usually occupied. it could be just because i’ve been going in on the weekends… clearly i will have to make more mid-week visits, just to see.
when we arrived today, after walking through the summertime, it was bustling. we bustled ourselves a table. the kid, having learnt from the last time that cream cheese, capers and chopped onions are not her friend, customised her smoked salmon bagelwich to contain just the smoked salmon, and some sliced tomato. on a cheese bagel. it was a great success. have you seen how they make the cheese bagels? through the glass window of the operation’s nerve center, you can see neat rows of already-boiled, not-yet-baked bagels, each one with a uniformly square slice of cheese perched on top; it bakes down into a bubbly, crunchy, cheesy crust. and the bit that has melted into the hole? huf!
fearing that i was stuck in the rut of reuben on dill bagel (pastrami, sauerkraut, pickles and swiss cheese — the greatest of ruts to be stuck in), i ordered the portobello mushroom melt, on an onion bagel. in my head, i envisaged a great big field mushroom, as wide in diameter — if not wider — as the bagel, meaty and dark, grilled with garlic and fruity olive oil. instead, it was a modest scattering of regular button mushrooms, finely sliced. they had been grilled, and were tasty, but they lacked that satisfying bite of a monster mushie. still, it was in itself pretty monstrous, and eaten in large mouthfuls, with the pesto, red onion, grilled capsicum and swiss cheese, it was a delicious lunch.
afterwards i walked to the supermarket to stock up on nappies and tinned tomatoes, and popped my head (the body followed unquestioningly) into adriano zumbo patissier to see if the pink biscuits were on today. they were not, and saturday afternoon is crazy, so i spun on my heel for a quick retreat. even quicker though, charlie counterboy brandished an acrylic-framed label at me. i knew from the small print that it was for the gorgeous glass of sticky-rice-coffee-lemon-orange which i had encountered earlier in the week. back then it hadn’t yet been christened, and now it had. in boldface, they had named it after me!
!!!
remember when santos made the raging yoghurt cupcake? i felt all strange and tingly. it was like that all over again; almost brought a tear to my eye. “are you happy?” asked charlie.
darn tootin’.
the sydney design trail continues. today, singapore girl met me, half and hour late, because that’s how long it took for her bus to inch its way forward between the broadway shopping center and the queen victoria building. apparently it was following a slow-moving dumptruck traveling in the bus lane all the way. why did the bus driver not overtake? why did the girl not get off the bus? and walk??? it certainly would’ve been quicker. but these are questions which will forever remain unanswered. upstairs at the QVB, workshopped awaited us.
this showcase of emerging australian designers included all manner of curvy plywood chairs, whimsical pendant lamps, and chocolate-covered cheese. yes! bizarro! under a plexiglass case were sculptural hemispheres of gorgonzola, goat cheese and a washed rind cheese, covered in dark, milk or white chocolate. you could even buy them at the chocolate shop downstairs, which i did not, because, um, weird, and also, i was far more interested in the shop’s selection of teja — peruvian milk caramel enrobed in chocolate — that i’d recently read about in “good living“.
i never go upstairs at the QVB, but because we happened to be there, we stumbled upon the amazing, well-stocked boutique of sydney fashion designer, alistair trung. it was the neat row of colourful cloven-toed sneakers stretching all the way to the back of the shop that initially caught my eye, but once we were inside, we were mesmerised by the collection of dramatic necklaces and scarves, each of which, according to singapore girl, was equivalent to two weeks’ rent. the shoes, though, were a hundred bucks, and what can you get for $100 these days? ok, so my current pair of sneakers — pink plimsoles — were $6 from the sportsgirl bargain bin, and my other current pair — navy blue jack purcells — were $50, but both have holes worn through their soles, and they let the rain in, and so i need new sneakers now, dammit.
but did i need these $100 sneakers? with their grungy print of chunky misshappen numbers, white on black? oh how i miss grunge! oh how i loved these shoes! and their inventive fastening mechanism of thick thread and metal tabs. and their secret inner lining of soft khaki cotton. and the specialised cloven-toe socks with the same numeric print, except white on pink, for an extra $15.
what i needed was to leave the shop. we walked through the park and partway up the horrible bit of oxford street to object gallery for a strange little show of contemporary craft — multi-eyed monster potato heads shaped in glass; plastic plates covered in cheery fabric and stuck to a wall; a vast expanse of lace curtain cut from black rubber; ceramic rope… and then we had to break for a light lunch.
we are not girls who know restraint, necessarily, but we knew we must save room for afternoon tea at patisserie lumiere, just tripping distance from object, and something else i had come across in “good living” — the most useful of newspaper supplements, no?
faced with a multi-level case of choux this and danish that, and a kaleidoscope of pretty tarts, it was like being in zumbo! we were poised to order at the counter, but were shooed to a table for proper service.
eschewing the plump and seductive paris brest (filled with hazelnut creme, and i think you know how i like a creme filling), i picked the chocolate tart, handsomely goldleafed. it was crisp chocolate-biscuity shell, meltaway chocolate filling, and a secret layer of squishy raspberries hidden within. truly, it was the gilt-edged eastern suburbs cousin of zumbo’s envie tart, and very delicious too. singapore girl couldn’t decide between the pristine meringues sandwiched with chocolate and the glistening raspberry tart, so she had both. it was our plan to discuss the issue of $100 japanese sneakers over tea, but by the end of it, nothing had been resolved (because we discussed anything but), and i was now concerned that buying cloven-toed shoes would mean i would need to invest in a whole new supply of appropriate hoisery. also, my head was having issues with the sudden burst of chocolate into my bloodstream.
we caught the express bus back to the city, so that she could go back to studying for her PhD in speech pathology, and so that i could go look at those shoes — my shoes — again.
it was way past naptime by the time we emerged from the powerhouse museum yesterday afternoon. we had spent a good slab of time waiting for our turn at schmuck quickies — a sydney design festival event in which the performance jeweller yuka oyama crafts you a piece of jewellery from recycled materials, on the spot. today, the spot was a long line.
we got there about 11.30 to find the musical robot bears switched off and the adjacent schmuck quickie salon brightly lit and full of cameraman and sound recordist and abc tv producers. our 15 minute wait swelled to just short of 40 minutes (without the musical robot bears!), when the organisers came around to say that everything was running slower because of the recording, and it was now lunchtime and could we come back at 1?
so we did. we scooted out for a picnic of hotdog with tomato sauce and pie floater, and returned to the deserted atrium and waited some more. at quarter past one, yuka was back in action, most personable, asking if there was anything out of her bags of stuff that i liked, or if there was anything i liked in general. “i like fabric, ” i said, “and acrylic. and pink!” and then she was rummaging in her trolley and pulling out great handfuls of bright pink ribbon and thin plastic tubes. she worked nimbly, fashioning a necklace from the material, with a scribbly little highlight safetypinned to my collar at the very end. she even made a matching one for the kid.
“it is simple” said yuka, “but it is pretty.” and it was, but here’s the thing: as soon as we were done, the camera crew who’d been lurking in the shadows turned their machines and lights back on, and prepared to document the next participants. the ones who’d been filmed earlier in the day had quite elaborate pieces made; the girl from the tv station, in particular, had a resplendent brooch — an alien botanical specimen, really — attached to her jacket, spirited up from squirty nozzles from detergent containers and a cluster of colourful randomness.
would it be so wrong to imagine that the artist had rushed through ours so that she could make something more involved for the tv people? or had she really seen right into me, and discerned the correct flamboyant vs. low key ratio which makes up my personality, and worked accordingly? ultimately, i was pleased with my pink ribbon (and would have worn it out again today, but i couldn’t attach it to my shirt in as lovely a way as it had been yesterday, argh!), but maeve was rightfully disgruntled: she had wanted to be a bunny. we had barely made it to the exit when she began tugging it off. so we decided that we should go have pink ice cream.
if you are in chinatown, as we were, you might assume an obligation to have your ice cream at passionflower, or maybe the seven-years-out-of-date Y2K cafe. maybe you’d just pop into gelatissimo for a takeaway cone. but across from the entertainment center sits the inconspicuous shopfront of the cold rock ice creamery. i’d been wanting to try this for years: where they smoosh stuff into your ice cream on a cold marble counter. today was the perfect opportunity: it was the closest ice cream store out of all available options, and i was developing an uncomfortable chaffing from carrying the heavy, wilting child.
they had two kinds of pink ice cream for us, and one of them was turkish delight! at an adjacent counter were a great many things you could choose to have mixed into your ice cream for 80c a pop — famous chocolate bars, unlikely candy, frozen fruit, cookie dough, tim tams… and because of the company, i deferred to the unlikely candy option. surrounded by pigeons, gulls and their shit, we shared a cup of rose-flavoured ice cream with gummy bears. the ice cream was lovely and creamy, the gummy bears extra springy from being cold.
next time, perhaps in the company of myself, i shall have it with smooshed-in raspberries, and maybe, if i’m in the mood, smooshed-in chocolate fudge brownies.
and then on sunday, i met deborah and her boy at the powerhouse, ostensibly to immerse ourselves in a bunch of design festival exhibits, but as soon as they showed up, a matching pair in chocolate brown, a simultaneous rummaging through our bags occurred.
“i’ve brought you something,” she said, “but it’s not very exciting.”
“i’ve brought you something too!”
and the simultaneous rummaging through our bags brought out bags, and bags in bags. i was relieved of a couple of zumbo macaron, and was very pleased by the package she handed me: a compact lump in a bakers delight paper bag. i knew what it was before she announced, “a chocolate mud scone”. whee! but she was still pulling stuff out of her tote: a bottle of sri lankan kithul treacle in a bright pink plastic bag. wah! so she lied — this was very exciting! exotic sugar!
but at this point we were still pretending that we were there to feed our minds and our eyes, so we dutifully worked our way through a couple floors of smart works and bollywood, until our eyes lost focus and our minds started wandering. in fact, they wandered right out of the building, and across the road, to hannah’s pies.
this, folks, is the real reason we had converged on this corner in ultimo: the tiger. a meat pie (there’s real meat in here) topped with a scoop of peppery mashed potato, topped with a scoop of mushy peas, into which has been set a pool of gravy. the countergirl presses a hollow into the mound of green with the base of her gravy ladle, then with a deft gesture, tips the gravy in. genius. genius under $5. we carried our wobbling towers of pie back across to the museum forecourt for our pie picnic. people pointed and stared, double-took, thrice.
oh it was lovely, eating this with the sun on my back.
[ photo © deborah rodrigo ]
thus fortified, we headed back for another two hours of looking at stuff — swedish stuff and woollen clothes, and now i think i’m all designed out, but look: if you visit the powerhouse museum any time during the design festival, you get a pass for unlimited free entry over the next fortnight.
i know the kid will be getting at least two excursions to the robot bears on the ground floor in the coming weeks. you press these buttons, and they play teddy bear’s picnic on their little brass instruments.
the first thing counterboy said to me as i stepped into zumbo this morning was, “why haven’t you been blogging?”. to which i might have mumbled something about being busy. i dunno.
i don’t remember so much of last week. i know there was a crazy deadline that had lurched and hiccupped over the weekend, and then into the week itself, where corrections and adjustments were still being made an hour before it was due wherever it was going. and then a large bunch of flowers showed up on my doorstep the following evening. and then, um…
i met my aunt for a devonshire tea in a foodhall in chatswood, where the scones were warmed in the microwave before being plonked on a plate with two little squirts of cream-in-a-can and two tiny foil-sealed packs of kraft strawberry jam. that’ll learn us to get scones at a muffin place, although really, the scones were the best thing on the tray. she paid for morning tea, as she is wont to, and then she paid for dimsum as well. and right at the end, she handed me a box of home-made yam cake. good value, my aunt.
i met a friend (really, my sister’s friend) for brunch in newtown, and although i couldn’t persuade her to have tacos at 10am (plus, they weren’t actually open yet), we didn’t do too badly at the cafe across from the cinema, with buckwheat pancakes, coconut-infused mascarpone, maple syrup, and half the fruit in a small greengrocer. oh, and a side of bacon. she is from singapore; we spoke singlish. it was great.
i became addicted to the pre-packed exotic mushrooms at harris farm. shiitake, enoki, shimeji, and oyster mushrooms, quickly sauteed in sesame oil with rather a lot of chopped garlic and whatever asian greens are handy, poured over jasmin rice — what a dinner it made… twice! i had it first with flowering choi sum one night, and then addressed my addiction head on by buying more mushrooms to have with broccoli and baby buk choy soon after). you don’t need any more seasoning than a spoon of sea salt: the mushrooms flavour everything.
i went to the organic markets and bought just short of half a kilo of salty french-churned butter.
i found myself stepping, too casually, too often, into the jewelbox that is adriano zumbo: a mandarin macaron one day, a brioche stuffed with custard and mixed berries the next. or was it both on the same day? and another the next? i lose count.
oh! also, my sister got married, not that you’d know, since she hasn’t been blogging either.
