ragingyoghurt

Category Archives: art

back in sydney, i wasted no time in recapturing a little bit of european je ne sais quoi. a week after touching down i talked singapore girl into a spot of luncheon at le grand cafe. we have figured out by now, that the best time for lunch at le grande cafe is “early”. just before noon, there are no queues, several empty tables, and a glass case full of options.

all morning, i’d been thinking of the terrine and cornichons that i’d enjoyed on a previous occasion. i considered maybe branching out and trying the duck liver parfait with brioche. however, once i discovered that the baguette on offer that day was filled with duck confit, my choice was made.

they showed up at the table a little while later, one for each of us. the sandwich had been freshly toasted, and there was a satisfying crunch to the baguette before it gave way to succulence: i was pleased to find that the bread was generously buttered, and the filling dressed with mayonnaise, and of course, to start with, there was a good amount of naturally occurring duck fat. it all made for a very moist and tasty mouthful. the slices of crisp, sweet onion provided a good foil to the fat, as did a little dimpled bottle of orangina.

we had planned ahead and picked our desserts when we ordered our sandwiches at the counter, to save us from rejoining the queue when the lunch crowd eventually swept into the cafe around 1. the attentive waitstaff brought them to the table as soon as we were done with the baguettes.

for me: the caramel tart, which turned out to be more of a very nice pastry shell filled with a sort-of creme brulee. the surface of it lacked the crackly, sugary shell of a proper creme brulee, but the mild caramel flavour and light custardy texture was pleasing all the same. the jaunty little beret of a biscuit bore a striking resemblance to a cookie from famous amos.

singapore girl had the petit pot au chocolat, which turned out to be too much chocolat for a girl who had just eaten a baguette filled with three kinds of fat. beneath the nutty crumble topping was a deep expanse of rich, dark, chocolate. at the bottom of that, was a puddle of thick caramel. perhaps she should not have also ordered a hot chocolate as a postprandial bevvie; there was still a good amount of pudding left when the waitress came to clear the table. (by contrast, the caramel tart was completely gone.)

we rolled out the door then, and had barely gone ten metres when we came across gaffa, three floors of art space / shop / cafe housed in a handsome pink heritage building. downstairs it’s little rooms of covetable and affordable contemporary jewelry and objet d’art; upstairs it’s galleries (and studios) around a central sunlit airwell.

one of the exhibitions we perused most appreciatively was food&company, an unprecious curation of food-related stuff: photographs, drawings, tiny interactive installations, and some lovely crockery. here’s the flourishing, by gemma o’brien.

ahh… so nice to see the flourishing of unstuffy, inspiring art space in the heart of this grimy city.

posted by ragingyoghurt on 22 May 2010 at 12:21 am

permalink | filed under around town, art, cake, lunch

the official birthday celebrations kicked off the night before, with the drama of a thunderstorm beating against the plate glass windows of ocean room. two cousins, the kid and i, presided over by my good father, sat down and ate some really good sashimi, some anchovies topped with tomato sorbet, some soft-shelled crab tacos (not quite enough soft-shelled crab tacos, if you ask me), some shoe-string fries topped with a tantalising sprinkle of shichimi pepper — and here’s the thing, you think japanese, and you think delicate little bits of food, but we also had a whole wing of of a yellow fin tuna, so large that it came with a map to guide us.

there were three zones marked out, and the meat — slow roasted over 40 minutes — tasted different from each part. milder white meat up top, slightly dry, and more intensely fishy flavour, from the moist and dark underside. all even more delicious with the crushed cucumber ponzu dipping sauce.

friday morning, i marked the turning of 37 with a tall paper cup of rich hot chocolate, and a short plastic one of central baking depot‘s house granola. it’s oats and sesame seeds, and sunflower seeds, and whole hazelnuts, and dried dates, and a bunch of other stuff too i’m sure, baked golden brown, broken into crunchy chunks, and topped in plain yoghurt and tart stewed fruit.

is it healthy? i don’t know, but it was packed with enough hidden oils and sugar to keep me fortified for a terrible hour-long busride out to bondi for sculptures by the sea.

it’s true, what all those bondi locals have been grumbling about. the coastal walk slowed down to a coastal crawl, as every body stopped to look. and look. and look. even funner than seeing the sculptures was watching the hardcore joggers trying their best to run around the punters, the school kids, the old ladies, the dogs, the sculptures, and then looking irritated to find their path blocked, again. again. dear bondi locals: stop grumbling! find an alternative jogging route for a couple of weeks! do you see me spleening about the queues out of zumbo, keeping me from cake?

the funnest thing of all though, was the magical dream house on top of the hill, a life-sized cubby house completely covered by one jane gillings in an armour of found toys and plastic bottle caps.

oh how we wanted to buy it and take it home with us! instead we opted for hot chips and potato cakes down by the beach.

we had gelato then, once the spuds had settled, not by the sea, but tucked away in the cool and dark of messina. the mythical gingerbread gelato eluded me, so i made do with a triple chocolate extravaganza. chocolate fondant — rich and creamy with a hazelnutty edge; chocolate sorbet — smooth and light and intensely cocoa-y; and chocolate yoghurt — milky with a pleasant tang, my pick of the pack.

and you might think a birthday would end there, what with the kid falling asleep in the car on the way back to my dad’s hotel suite in the city and all…

but she performed that trick of bouncing out of bed about two minutes after she was tucked in, so we trekked into BBQ king and they brought us soup, all porky and ribby with a single chunk of carrot.

then they brought us a great bowl of roast duck congee, infused with delicious ducky flavour and a wonderful surprise of ginger slivers hidden deep in its heart.

and then a platter of fat, fried you tiao. the rice grains in the porridge had broken down into lush creaminess, just perfect for dipping.

now that’s how you end a birthday. lips glistening with oil, a starchy rice mass expanding slowly in your belly.

posted by ragingyoghurt on 18 November 2009 at 9:03 pm

permalink | filed under around town, art, breakfast, chocolate, dinner, ice cream

somehow, my mother being in town led to me immersed elbow deep in hot, soapy water on a hot, soupy morning, handwashing three days worth of dishes retrieved from my cockroach den of a dishwasher, covered in bits of eviscerated cockroaches. thanks, mum!

let us think back to happier times — last monday, say — when we sat in the shady courtyard of la renaissance patisserie at the rocks, eating a brie baguette and drinking perrier with peach syrup. afterwards i bought a handful of macaron to go:

one each of chocolate, chocolate-passionfruit, jasmin, and two of rose because i knew i wouldn’t want to share.

they were all five plonked unceremoniously into a paper bag, and after a sweltering afternoon walk through the botanic gardens, they were not quite the fine, plump specimens they had been, sitting pretty in their plastic display cases back at the cafe. the fresh cream filling of the rose ones had surely come within millimetres of turning into butter.

but look! even with the beating they’d taken, they are still plump, their shells still crisp. the biscuits are moist and chewy on the inside, and the fillings generous. the rose macaron, despite losing half its height in transit, was delicate and wonderful — i always prefer a cream filling rather than a flavoured white chocolate ganache — and heady with perfume.

the chocolate one was impossibly rich and dark. the chocolate-passionfruit one was tangy and intensely fruity up front, before relaxing into a smooth and comforting milk chocolatey finish.

the jasmin one was… somewhat disappointing. it had a familiar clean and airy taste, but i imagine it could’ve had THIS MUCH more jasmin flavour. engh. three out of four ain’t bad.

in fact, they were great!

– – –

we also battled the gale force coastal winds at sculpture by the sea.

– – –

and — thursday afternoon, with the kid safely ensconced in playschool — we dallied with hot chillis at spice i am. moving between the brutal som tum — you can’t see the chillis in this green papaya salad, but they are there, oh yes, alongside crunchy dried prawns and many roasted peanuts, and green beans, cherry tomatoes and a wedge of raw cabbage (unwashed, my mother pointed out) — and the unrelenting kaeng som pla, a watery curry of fried river fish and watercress, it was like dousing our tongues in fire water. hot, sour, fire, water.

sweet respite came only from a tall glass of iced tea which tasted of candy.

you would not think it, but this particular meal from this particular restaurant, is perhaps the one that i pine for most often, in those long months between finding a suitable dining companion on a day that the kid is otherwise occupied. sigh.

posted by ragingyoghurt on 27 October 2008 at 11:22 pm

permalink | filed under around town, art, cake, lunch

we are flying south for winter, just for a week, to melbourne.

these birds, on the other hand, have journeyed halfway across the world to rest on my walls. i was only recently introduced to geninne’s art blog, and by chance, right as she finished the last of a series of 20 birds in watercolour and collage.

i am thrilled to own a couple of the limited edition prints she sells in her etsy shop. one greets me each time i enter my green bedroom. and the other, because house-painting is so addictive and compelling, farewells me when i leave the apartment through my freshly painted scarlet vestibule.

see you in a bit.

posted by ragingyoghurt on 7 July 2008 at 7:55 am

permalink | filed under art, trip

i’d been wanting to go to cockatoo island for ages. i live a way across the water from it, this island with its history of convicts and wayward girls and shipbuilding. from our balcony, we can see the big old sunwashed sheds, and the towering cranes. we can hear — and see — the cockatoo gulls: sometimes they squawk as one, and rise into the air and dive at the water with great force like a gust of microscopic white specks. some days we hear the industrial sounds of heavy metal grinding on heavy metal. most mornings we see a barge go past loaded up with trucks and other such large, wheeled vehicles. so intriguing!

this year, cockatoo island is one of the venues of the biennale of sydney, and a free ferry service will shuttle you between circular quay and the island. it is a very, very cute little ferry, crafted of wood a long time ago, and painted a fetching combo of milky coffee and raspberry jam. you see where this is going?

yes! we went to cockatoo island! me, and the kid, and two of my cousins, to see art! well, ok, i actually wanted to see the island, but what better way to lure some long-lost cousins, with at least one ex-arts-journalist among them, than with the promise of some world class contemporary art?

so under the bright blue sky, we caught the cutest, and slowest, ferry in the world to cockatoo island. us and a big, fat chorizo baguette, and a tub of marinated mushroom salad, and a tub of bacon fried rice (fried in butter! it was proclaimed as the tub hit the picnic table), and a cereal bar. but i am getting ahead of myself.

we got off the ferry, and it was like we had arrived at the land where time stood still (except for the understated but exceedingly modern cafe right next to the wharf)… in the middle of a wind storm. sand and dust whipped around us at a terrific speed, and we walked backwards into the wind to keep the dust from our eyes. truly, it seemed like we were elements in an enormous installation. we gamely explored a few buildings, each of which housed a single artist’s grand statement: one of the statements was racist graffiti scrawled all over the walls of a historical toilet block. another, banks of tv monitors screening footage of… well, i didn’t pay too much attention, but i’m guessing it was something to do with the weather, given the name of the collective responsible. there was a lot of video art.

after we succeeded in fighting our way to the end of the second wind tunnel (not the one in which a dramatic soundscape had been installed, oh no.) and discovered a shiny new sheltered structure with picnic benches (and BBQ hot plates and a microwave and fridge, if you’re interested), we claimed this little sliver of the island, and sat there for as long as we could, until the wind had died down, and we no longer felt like cousins who had not really seen much of one another in twenty years.

[ nothing like a dose of painfully didactic modern art to make us go all breakfast club. ]

and yet, after our windswept luncheon, faced with the choice of catching the next ferry back to civilisation, or venturing out to the higher ground, we picked: more art. because, y’know, i thought we might feel a sense of regret about what might have been, had we jumped (on the) ship. and behold, in one of the charmingly scruffy buildings up on the hill, i came across this amazing, perforated cork-tiled wall in a kitchen corridor leading into yet another video installation.

but look at it, look! so great.

possibly the best thing i saw on the island.

that hour to the next boat passed surprisingly quickly. we stumbled upon the education centre, channelling scandinavia with its glorious natural light, and wide open space, and neat modern furniture (and banks of video screens). and before we knew it, there was just enough time to scramble down the hill right as the ferry pulled up.

around the wharf, the air was rich with the greasy smell of fat, fried chips. and — whether it was placed serendipitously or by design — that sticker in the window of the vandalised toilet block? pretty much summed up this portion of the biennale, for me.

the island though, that was great.

posted by ragingyoghurt on 3 July 2008 at 10:28 pm

permalink | filed under around town, art, grumble

ah friday, the day i throw off the fluffy pink shackles of parentdom and walk the city streets as quickly and carefree as i once did. this past friday, i walked the arts of islam exhibition at the art gallery, which closes next sunday, so quick! go! if you haven’t already.

i had been warned by a friend that one might be brought to tears by the beauty of some of the works on display, and it’s true, walking through the middle rooms filled with four-hundred-year-old qurans and illuminated manuscripts, one gets an idea of how insignificant it is to be moving text boxes around on a computer screen, when such amazing feats of publishing could be achieved with a very small paintbrush and a tub of gold paint. i didn’t cry, but i may have stifled such sacrilegious utterances as “holy fffffff” a half dozen times.

if you like drawing, as i do (or more accurately, if you like looking at drawings and getting that knot in your stomach from guilt that you are not drawing, as i do) then you might also like to see the dobell prize for drawing, where amongst other scribbly things you will see a rather arresting portrait of a boxer, a sympathetic rendering of a bull, and a luscious red still life of a pomegranate.

and then you might feel a bit peckish, and think to avail yourself of the tasty treats at the cafe downstairs. it is bordering on overpriced, but it is mostly good and fresh, and if you beat the lunchtime crowd, you can sit in a booth looking towards the room, with the deep red carpet and the gleaming white chairs, eating a well-dressed greek salad, and another with potatoes and slices of chorizo (though only two slices of chorizo for your $9.50, ch.).

posted by ragingyoghurt on 16 September 2007 at 4:18 pm

permalink | filed under around town, art, lunch

so, the second kid-free friday went according to plan. dropped her off at playschool just in time for morning tea. in the midst of quiet munching children, there was a place set at the table for her, a bowl containing a slice of apple and a slice of orange. she was hesitant and shy and nervous, but the magnetic pull of the fruit was too strong.

i walked into the city, and on to surry hills, to the ray hughes gallery, where the most amazing show by lucy culliton, “domestic science“, is on for another week or so, so hurry! hurry over to see it.

it’s a hundred and sixty-five paintings and drawings of the best cakes, preserves, decorated arrowroot biscuits, knitted dolls, coat hanger covers, stuff at a regional show, all painted with love and gusto, candy colours, dabs of paint so high off the board you want to lick it. well, i did anyway. i mean, i did want to. lucy culliton is probably my favourite contemporary australian painter, and not just because she paints glorious buckets of hot chips and sauce, or trays of fairy cakes; her series of cactuses is as gorgeous as the rest. i had come to the gallery with a secret mission: i wanted to buy one of the paintings for myself.

because how much higher will her star rise? and how affordable will a painting be at the next show? and how much do her paintings fill me with joy?

plenty. i walked through the exhibition once, and again, and i saw how many red spots were on the main wall already: the lamingtons had been sold, and the festive iced cake covered in sprinkles. i tried to imagine that one of the remaining cakes could be mine: a second-prize orange cake; a doily covered in pink-iced cupcakes; a cream-and-jam-filled victoria sponge (truly the most lickable of the lot). i paced the wall for half an hour. i had to leave, and i walked down the street to the bourke street bakery, where i sat on an orange milk crate on the sidewalk, and meditated over a pork and fennel sausage roll and a belgian hot chocolate. it fortified me.

when i returned to the ray hughes gallery, ray hughes — who had earlier seen me with my nose mere centimetres away from a chocolate cake — smiled and gestured at the woman in bluejeans and cowboy shirt sitting opposite him, beneath the wall of plenty. “this is lucy,” he said.

and what i said was, “i think that one of these paintings is mine, but i don’t know which one yet.” and then, because she looked quite mystified, i said, “i think that i am going to buy one; i just haven’t worked out which one.”

because she does not know me, she asked, “cake or knitting?”, and she was friendly and kind and above all, unprecious, and told me about the names she had written on the winners’ certificates — emmylou harris had won for the pink-iced cupcakes, and how she had visited a dozen or so regional shows and distilled the best into this fictional, best-of-the-best lithgow agricultural society show, (and how lithgow wasn’t actually the hotbed of homecraft that she’d conjured up), and how she’d been a graphic designer a long time ago and gotten tired of the routine and gone to art school and would never go back to moving type about a page…

and i paced back and forth some more, and at times she would take this piece or the other off the wall and bring it into the sunlight, so that i could see just how luminous the cream filling in the victoria sponge really was, and how supple the red jam. and i wandered into the back room for respite, this little room filled with lively and understanding portraits of barnyard animals and exotic parrots; lucy’s friend rachel fairfax had accompanied her to all the country shows, and had documented the animals as lucy studied the food and craft.

and when i slunk back to the wall for maybe the fourth or fifth time, she laughed, not unkindly. i told her i’d narrowed it down to two: the pink cupcakes on the doily, and the resplendant packet butter cake, which showed me something more to love every time i came back to it. she put them side-by-side on a bench, and then it was clear.

we shook on it, and she placed a red dot next to #81. my first piece of art! i felt pretty great.

and then i got home, and minutes later my print rep called to let me know that the proofs of the book were online for approval. we signed off on them just after 4pm. and then i felt extremely great.

i think though, that i will have to go back to the show, to see it all again without that spectre of needing to buy something gnawing a hole in my belly. bring on kid-free day the third!

posted by ragingyoghurt on 28 April 2007 at 10:28 pm

permalink | filed under around town, art, cake, shoping

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