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it’s all about time management innit? if you get it into your head that you might make something for a sunday picnic? the monday plan to meet up for a hot chocolate on sunday morning quickly snowballed, and suddenly, a sandwich and dessert picnic was only a handful of days away. not even a freak hailstorm could put us off. by friday, the sun was shining again.

friday morning
playground excursion, followed by supermarket excursion, to buy such exciting things as almond meal, cocoa and icing sugar. i’ve spent days convincing myself that i can make macarons, though i haven’t quite decided from which recipe.

friday afternoon
naptime for some, half an hour spent pushing almond meal through a sieve for others. have i made a horrible mistake? it’s not too late to just buy a packet of bisuits from the deli up the street. still, small circles are dutifully drawn on sheets of baking paper. when maeve awakens, the electric mixer goes on; the batter does not “flow like magma”. in fact, it’s a real bitch trying to pipe it through the unwieldy cookie press into 80 or so small discs.

when the boy gets home from work, i am still brandishing the cookie extruder like a pistol. a cup of tea later, boy takes kid to the park, i do some “real” work, the biscuit dough sits for a couple of hours to develop a skin.

friday evening
while the biscuits bake, i make a quick salmon congee for the kid. after the biscuits bake, i realise i can’t be bothered making a “real” dinner, so it’s salmon congee all ‘round, supplemented with a plate of frozen dimsims, steamed, for the boy. the biscuits look nothing like what they’re supposed to.

saturday morning
awake too early. playground excursion involves two parks — at the second one, a charming boy steps on maeve’s head as he asserts himself on a climbing thing. supermarket excursion for…

saturday afternoon
back home, i make lemon curd with the egg yolks left over from friday’s biscuit recipe. the boy goes out to watch a football game. make maeve a sandwich and sterilise a jar while she eats. activate some yeast in warm milk. sift flour and cocoa. let maeve pretend to mix the dough… pretend to let maeve mix the dough? knead the dough. the dough feels nothing like it’s supposed to. dough rests, maeve naps, i make chocolate ganache.

maeve wakes. dough is punched down. biscuits are sandwiched with ganache. they really do not look anything like what they’re supposed to. an apple does not appease maeve, so it’s off to park #3.

saturday evening
boy not home from football. just the two of us for dinner: panfried salmon with capers, mashed potatoes, steamed beans and corn. bread goes in the oven, bread comes out of the oven. it looks… only somewhat like how it’s supposed to, but it smells deep and chocolatey. whisk ricotta with a dusting of icing sugar, vanilla and lemon juice. for dessert we each lick one whisk bit clean.

boy not home from football. wash the kid. read to the kid. kid goes to bed. boy txts to say that he’s out drinking and will be home tomorrow. put some frozen raspberries in the fridge, to defrost.

sunday morning
while maeve breaks fast, i fold raspberries into ricotta. slice chocolate bread — why is it so dense? why is it so wet-doughy in the middle?? it’s not too late to dash up the street to buy a loaf of white bread for emergency plan B lemon curd sandwiches, is it? passable bits of chocolate bread are sandwiched with ricotta mixture. a jasmin tea bag is chucked into a bottle of iced water. we scrub up, we are out the door! the bus is coming! keep walking, maeve!

halfway to the bus, meet the boy driving home. he does the right thing and offers to drive us to the park.

a glorious time is had by all: after a civilised start across the road at toby’s estate, we traipse back to the park: helen, deborah, the kid and i, to find a shady sunny spot close to the playground. we unpack a picnic of sandwiches to find that everyone’s had cheese on their minds, and chocolate. helen’s sister arrives with husband, babies, and more cheese in the form of a whole greek ricotta cake.

this sort of fun, it could go on forever, except it’s way past naptime, and there’s a bus due, and a funky brown something wafting out of maeve’s nappy. we bid our farewells amongst hurried gifting of chocolate and cheesecake, and then it all collapses into a three-hour nap for the kid, and me? i eat my rare and precious mountain pepper truffle, from deb, (and i cunningly leave the single origin lindt, from helen, for later) and then collapse too, on the couch, to watch “the incredibles” supplementary behind-the-scenes dvd.

this behind-the-scenes stuff; always fascinating. like the way you get to see how half the recipes went a little bit awry, and somehow at the end — through the magic of springtime and cheese sandwiches — it all tasted just fine.

posted by ragingyoghurt on 20 August 2006 at 5:18 pm

permalink | filed under around town, boy, chocolate, kid, lunch, snacks

you know how it is: step out to buy a butter dish, and suddenly you have a butter dish, and two little glass tubs for storage, and a pretty pink mixing bowl, and some ocean trout for dinner.

i recently found a recipe for lemon curd sponge pudding in a magazine, and it became clear to me that i would have to acquire a pudding bowl. (you see how it is? if you have already read the previous entry, you will shake you head sadly and agree: it’s an affliction!)

but it was half price!

monday lunchtime, the bowl was sitting clean and fresh on the drying rack as my bucatini came to a boil, and before i realised what was happening, i had grabbed it and filled it with a tangle of spicy coriander pesto noodles with peas and broccoli.

ah lovely and versatile pink mixing/pudding/pasta bowl.

maeve was ambling down the street the other day in a pair of pink trousers and her black and white stripy t-shirt. she looked like a giant licorice allsort. we went to starbucks, and the girl behind the counter said, “is that your, um, sister?”

“UM… no, my, um, daughter.”

“it’s just,” she said, “you look so young… and my sister and i, we have eight years between us, so…”

“ah,” i said, “there are 32 years between us.”

and then she offered maeve a chocolate muffin sample and a baby-cino. note: starbucks balmain does baby-cini for free. me, i had noticed the scrawl on the blackboard that said, “hot white chocolate”, and instantly i had to have some, with raspberry syrup.

i had some, and it was way too sweet, and thick, and white. i mean, of course, but i was surprised. like that time in sainsburys, nellie, when we gazed up in awe at the shelf of brown-bagged gourmet chocolate chip cookies, and picked the one labelled “white chocolate and raspberry” because you said they were amazing, and we took the bag home and broke it open and ate a cookie and thought, hmmm. because it was a regular chocolate chip cookie, and standing flummoxed in the kitchen we could even see through the cellophane window in the bag that they were clearly brown chocolate chips, and how had we not made the connection, standing at the end of that aisle in sainsburys, that the “white chocolate” label did not compute with the brown chocolate within? we did not compute.

posted by ragingyoghurt on 21 June 2006 at 4:02 pm

permalink | filed under around town, chocolate, drink, kid, nellie, shoping

here are two hot chocolates i had in london.

the first one — doesn’t it look enticing? — was from carluccio’s, the special florentine chocolate, which turned out to not be made to order. instead, it was dispensed from a constantly churning little tub perched atop a shelf high above the espresso machine. it has to be constantly churned, because, as i found out, if left to sit for any period of time, a skin quickly forms. the drink itself is like a runny pudding, and tastes a bit of cornstarch. whuh?

the second one was from the tate modern. you can get a plain hot chocolate, or one with cream and marsmallows. they skimp on neither.

well folks, i’m on to my third variant of cold in about five weeks, horrible squishy bouts of spongyhead and phlegm in hues spanning the spectrum from clear to bright green to murky brown. in between each cold are endless spasms of residual asthmatic coughing.

tonight i washed down an antihistamine, a couple of puffs from a purple inhaler, and a vitamin c pill with a glass of tea. i’m not sure if this renders the medication useless. at least, i mean, it can’t be bad; not like washing down valium with bourbon, for example. we shall see.

the tea is from a can that i’ve had in and out of the fridge for the last year or so (though i wouldn’t be surprised if it actually turned out to be two years old). what happens is, i put it in the fridge, planning to drink it, and then in the meantime an influx of new groceries makes me take it out again to make room. but so tonight, it is finally over, this in-and-out tea saga.

this is what the can says:
“It’s time to Pure. Pure life,
pure time, with pure mind.
Pure taste, with heart.
Little sugar, just black,
pure tea. In Famouse House.”

you see why i had to get it.

posted by ragingyoghurt on 16 May 2006 at 8:47 pm

permalink | filed under chocolate, drink, packaging, trip

[ this post is to be accompanied by such pictures as:
– a dumpling shaped like a goldfish
– a bowl of minted horseradish and turnip
– a pie swimming (or drowning) in custard
– a cream tea ]

the house is finally quiet. my mother and my sister, dressed in their flowery spring finery, are off at the opera, the child is asleep, and i have before me a cup of almond-scented tea from the neal street tea house in covent garden and an apple cider and cinnamon chocolate truffle from the borough market, south of the thames. you might realise that these are not typical singaporean pasttimes, and that would be because we are living it up in london.

but, hello. i have just reached into the truffle bag, and discovered that in fact, the apple cider truffle is off at the opera with my sister, and i have been left the cardamom and orange truffle. or maybe it is the extra bitter plain chocolate. it does not matter, because they are all divine.

i don’t know where the time goes. well, i do know that the first half of it disappeared into a haze of antibiotics; that tightness in my throat? from the last post? it evolved (quickly) into a demon bug that knocked me over on the train one morning, in singapore, before conjuring up a thick green phlegm and a fever of 38.7. a little over a week later, i’m weaning myself off the cough syrup, still coughing a residual cough.

in the meantime, i flew fourteen hours with a wriggly, sleepless little person strapped to my lap, and then spent three days waking up at one or three in the morning while this little person adjusted to a strange new timezone. fortunately, preparing yoghurt and strawberry breakfast at 2a.m. was only the first of many food adventures to come my way.

so. chocolate truffles at the markets, and little glass pots of fruity french yoghurt and pear and semolina pudding. salmon green curry made at home. dumplings, noodles and bubble tea in a chinatown café. a lamb burger (with a do-it-yourself condiment table) at a streetfair in greenwich. fruit pies, crumbles and lumpy custard from a greenwich pieshop. regional cuisine on the isle of wight, including a really good indian takeaway and not nearly enough clotted cream teas. chinese takeaway back in london. amazing grilled squid at the river cafe(!). a rose petal macaron at laduree(!!).

you have to walk the length and breadth of harrods to get to laduree, and in the hundred metres of sidewalk before the grand, gilt-edged entrance, the air is achingly infused with the scent of sugary donuts. turns out the door to krispy kreme, within the harrods foodhall, is just before the door to fancy french pastries.

but you have already realised, this is not blogging, merely listing. putting a sentence together requires more sleep, and tonight, all cool and drizzly, seems promising. maybe tomorrow (or next week), i shall be able to tell you more.

posted by ragingyoghurt on 23 April 2006 at 9:00 pm

permalink | filed under around town, cake, chocolate, dinner, kid, lunch, snacks, trip

there is a vague queue to get on the bus. having secured my window seat, i only hope that i do not get:
– that musty, musky old chain smoker who sucked his cheeks hollow on his cigarette waiting to get on board, exhaling downwind on everyone
– that obese woman
– any of that quartet of skanky boys, in their big shorts and thin singlets and baseball caps and dirty face scruff

in the end i get a slim, clean asian girl who eats what smells like a salty toasted cheese sandwich, and then spends the first hour of the drive drawing clothes in a sketchbook.

i’m going to canberra to renew an expired passport. a couple of months ago, on the verge of applying for australian citizenship, i called the immigration department helpline, received no help at all from cantankerous old beryl, and so i’m staying malaysian for a little while longer. i know this means that if things went awry, i would be deported to malaysia, despite having not lived there since i was six, but what the hell. it’s mercenary isn’t it, choosing citizenship on the basis of convenience?

this is my first trip away without the child, and without the boy, in forever. in my own bubble of a hotel room, i sprawl across the bed to watch “the amazing race”, and wake up at five the next morning purely on my own volition. stupid volition.

it takes about an hour to walk from the city centre to the malaysian high commission, and from there, about 40 minutes to walk along the foreshore to the national library for an exhibition of ephemera. by this time, you will feel like breakfast, even with that 6.30 cup of tea and sydney brownie under your belt. bookplate, the “not exactly a café and not quite a restaurant” at the library, serves up mushrooms on toast until 11.

see those crunchy brown bits? you have never had mushrooms on toast like these. buttery and salty, yes, but the burnt edges are a bonus. the toast — is it helga’s? — is so buttery you might contemplate not eating both slices, but do so anyway. the magazines on the rack are either australian gourmet traveller or waitrose food illustrated, and you can read them in the mozaic light of the stained glass windows. you can flip through waitrose, while eating mushrooms on toast and drinking a “chai latte” (why does it roll off my tongue to say “raspberry white chocolate frappucino”, but only wince and curdle up inside when i have to order a “chai latte”?), and then be so surprised and pleased to come across an illustration by a girl you used to know.

in the national art gallery bookshop, i bought a book on the fundamentals of illustration, because during the week i drew a horse for money, and things like this could happen more often. but when i picked up my passport later that afternoon, it turned out that the clerk had been too lazy to type in “illustrator” in the profession box, after “graphic designer”. tchk.

in that last canberra hour, i stepped into a chocolate shop in a mall and found the mother lode of desirable chocolate, emerging some time later with $19 of truffle –marzipan–marzipan–chocolate in a white paper bag. “you’ve chosen all french chocolate today,” said the counter woman, “top of the line.”

“my mother gave me a box of valrhona once,” i said, “and now i can’t go back.” counter woman didn’t need to know about the milk chocolate bar with M&Ms minis peanut butter chocolate candies at the bottom of my backpack.

posted by ragingyoghurt on 12 March 2006 at 9:53 am

permalink | filed under bookshelf, chocolate, lunch, trip

the boy brought home a fundraiser box of maltesers this afternoon. i generally won’t eat cheap and nasty chocolate, but the maltesers? they have undone me. you know them. they are the marble-sized crunchy malty centers in a polished chocolate coat. who’da thought — all that crunchy malt center, and still, according to the ingredients list, the chocolate makes up 75%. the nutritional information below said list informed me that a serve of maltesers would be me consuming just over 10g of fat. there were four servings in the box, and i’m afraid i could quite easily have eaten them all. so i stopped, and put the box back in the fridge, and while i was there i made a simple sundae of vanilla ice cream, chocolate sauce and a topping of a crumbled up pistachio biscotti, a bright green chewy almond pastey biscuit coated in whole pistachios. hey, i feel good about not getting 42g of fat all from the one source.

i feel bad about not blogging though. it’s not that i haven’t been eating delicious things almost every day…

a couple weeks ago, delirious with hunger on a thursday night shoping expedition, i stumbled into the australian homemade store in the city mall. such a naff name for a shop selling premium chocolate and ice cream, and such a blah logo, but lordy! the chocolate! i bought three squares: dark chocolate with cranberry, earl grey milk chocolate with nuts, and a fig bonzer.

“oh, that is my favourite,” said the chocolate boy. it is a slim layer of soft chocolate and then a fat layer of seedy, figgy bits in caramel, all walled up in milk chocolate. in fact, it was so good it is now my favourite too, and i went back the next week and bought three more.

so, delicious things. the boy made a delicious risotto a few nights ago, with zucchini, peas, parsley and a can of shitake mushrooms. no wine, and no extra-dry vermouth, as counseled by well-wishers on my messageboard, but it was salty and buttery and lacking in nothing. he made it with a whole bag of arborio, so i also had risotto for lunch the next day, and dinner again, and then lunch the day after that.

we also had some delicious pizza one night, from zesti's, up the road, where you can look into the big windows off the street and see chinese people making your pizza.

an ad for some delivery place came on tv as we sat eating.

“argh! look! now they’re making pizza on puff pastry!”
“that looks bloody awful.”
“but is it worse than that three-cheeses-sandwiched-between-three-layers-of-bases thing they did before?”
“that looked awful too.”
“but what about the one where there’s a ring of little cheese-filled rolls around the edge of the pizza, so you can pull them off and eat them one by one?”
“that was revolting!”

our pizza had lovely thin bases, with crusty polenta bottoms. one was topped with: baby octopus, prawns and scallops, none of which were rubbery. the other was topped with: green — pesto and minced-up spinach, and many little cubes of fetta.

so, delicious things a-plenty. but i’ve also been working, and reading a really good book — “the language of baklava“, and coming to terms with the fact that the child may no longer take a second nap in the day, and well, i’ve been trying to not watch so much primetime tv (daytime kid’s programming chews up enough hours), although in my post-malteser-sundae stupor i found myself slumped in front of the men’s olympic ice-figure-skating coverage…

and of course, there’s been “carnivàle“. monday morning i woke at 5.30, and couldn’t get back to sleep. a combination of anticipating the child grunting herself out of slumber, and also the memory of brother justin crashing through the cornfield with a sickle and sophie with her eyes gone black. mainly brother justin though, and as it was, maeve slept in until seven. tchk.

um, what was i saying?

posted by ragingyoghurt on 17 February 2006 at 9:49 pm

permalink | filed under bookshelf, boy, chocolate, dinner, kid, tv

what is it with the hoarding? surely not because my grandmother lived through the war? these boxes of cardboard and cardboard boxes, the magazines — you know those stories, the jams, the teas… right now it’s chocolate bars. i go up to the shops knowing that i cannot buy another bottle of jam or packet of tea or bar of chocolate, but despite my best intentions…

despite the valrhona bar (from my kind mother), the pack of haigh’s chocolate-covered marzipan (from my kind father), the scharfen-berger block (from my kind sister, and it’s really cooking chocolate, so it doesn’t count), the slab of italian chocolate nougat (from xmas(s) past… oh dear) all stashed away in a shoe box, i left the supermarket the other day with a lindt intense lemon bar: 47% cocoa with bits of lemon and almond slivers (and oh! apple pulp and pineapple), and then a day later, all giddy like a schoolgirl from being in the wonderland that is about life, i bought (raspberries-blueberries-half-a-pineapple-and) a grizzly bar.

the grizzly bar is one in the managerie of the endangered species chocolate company. the display at checkout was row upon row of chocolate bars with wildlife photographs on the labels: zebras, giraffes, koalas, snow leopards, marine iguanas… the kid started making monkey noises at the chimpanzee bar (72% dark chocolate), but because she is also partial to bears, i managed to get away with the grizzly (70% with raspberries).

you get more chocolate for less money compared to the dagoba roseberry bar and, bonus, it feels creamier on the tongue. later, sitting at the computer, i was going to have a square, and suddenly the entire top row was gone. the thing is, the squares on this bar aren’t even all that clearly delineated; there are suggestive mounds where you can break around if you are so inclined.

at the store, i turned the bar over to see where it was made: unsurprisingly, oregon. 10% of profits are donated to protect endangered species, and the inside of the label contains conservation tips such as:

“Don’t Feed the Bears
Bears that obtain human food, birdseed, pet food, or garbage quickly lose their natural fear of humans. This poses a risk for both human and bear safety. If you visit or live in bear country, learn ways to secure your food and trash.
Protect Our Planet…
It’s the Only One with Chocolate.”

speaking of bears… we have been watching a really good cartoon in the mornings: eddy and the bear. or at least, i have been watching while the kid does her rounds of the living room. nellie, i must insist that you click on the trailer link.

posted by ragingyoghurt on 12 January 2006 at 11:40 am

permalink | filed under chocolate, kid, tv

lessons i have learnt this week:

if you make banana buttermilk pancakes on sunday, and then save the rest of the buttermilk for an opportune moment when you can make a chocolate cake, even if it’s just two days later, when it comes to the part in the recipe where you add the buttermilk, you will find that you now have half a carton of thick, tangy yoghurt.

if you substitute normal milk for the buttermilk, the cake turns out fine, in as much as a cake can when you’re still experimenting with the hidden hotspots in a still-unfamiiliar fan-forced oven.

if the top of the cake rises way too quickly, and cracks a big, gaping smile all the way around one side, you can shave off the extra high upper lip, and then use pieces of it to fill in the sludgy hole in the middle of the cake where it hasn’t quite cooked through, which you discovered when you sliced the cake in two.

if you sandwich the cake back together with the pink grapefruit preserve that nellie gave you the last time she was in town, it will be a subtle and unexpected citrusy edge to the dark chocolate cake.

if you hide the scarred surface of the cake with a simple but decadent icing made of dark chocolate melted down with a bit of butter and a bit of milk, and if the chocolate you use is scharffen berger, which also came by way of nellie, it will be all glossy good.

it is a most agreeable thing eating chocolate cake for afternoon tea on the balcony, sharing alternate mouthfuls with the child, watching the planes go past.

if you leave chocolate cake on the kitchen bench in the moist, warm summertime, on the fifth day it will develop an intricate lace of tiny bubbles across its glossy chocolate icing, and make you wonder what will happen should you have another slice tomorrow.

posted by ragingyoghurt on 18 December 2005 at 8:27 pm

permalink | filed under cake, chocolate, kid, kitchen

i don’t know how these things happen.

saturday morning i left the house, leaving a speech bubble trailing behind me: “im just going to the apple shop up the street. and then maybe i’ll go into the city. i’m not buying a computer today. i’m just going to have a look. i’m not buying a computer today. i’m just researching. i’m not buying…”

going to the apple shop is like going to a cake shop, all those things i want to lick and touch, behind glass display cases. the cake shop is generally more fun, because i usually come away with something, and in the process i haven’t had to think of smart-sounding questions to ask the salesperson so he doesn’t think i’m a bimbo.

so, saturday, i think i asked about RAM and processors, and running classic, and so they knew i was a savvy consumer, i also asked if they give discounts for cash sales. (“yes, but not much,” was the reply.)

and then the bus to the city, and a bowl of hae mee (which, due to the two halves of a prawn and the 27 strips of chicken gracing the noodles, should be renamed “kae mee”), and a lift up to electronics where i asked about RAM and processors and classic, and “what do you mean, i won’t be able to start up in OS9 unless i have a hardware-specific version of the installation software and where do i get this from and are you serious? my friends or ebay?”

at one point, one of the questions i asked was, “what’s the difference between this model and this model?”, identical but for 10% off the one hidden in the shadows.

“oh. this one,” said the salesperson, pointing to the slightly more expensive one gleaming in the spotlights, “has a faster graphics card…”
“um. uh huh?”
“but also, if you take this one we will throw in microsoft office and a bag.”
“oh. um.” i said. “what colour is the bag?”

shortly after that i had to take the lift back downstairs. besides telling me that the bag was available in black and red or black and green, the salesperson also told me that the promotion ended today, no, actually, tomorrow. i had decisions to make. i needed strength. i had a weak latte and a tiny chocolate-raspberry brownie. i read the product brochures over and over. i sent out two SOS SMSs. one reply came immediately: “do it”. the other, much later: “i was asleep”.

procrastinating, i got off the elevator at christmas foods and finally surrendered to the pink and silver-foiled wonder that is lindt’s new petites merveilles, that i had stalked twice previously while prowling the twinkly aisles. that gnawing feeling in my stomach intensified as i rode the escalator up a floor, but i couldn’t tell if it was the coffee or the impending purchase.

“ah! you’re back,” said the salesperson. “you went for a walk to think about it?”
“i had some chocolate and thought about it,” i said, and, “i’m a little bit stressed out right now.”

and so. it sits gleaming on my desk right now, this magnificent silver beast. stone cold. i haven’t really used it yet, because the battery doesn’t charge. two calls to the tech support boffins, and still the battery sits at 0% full — the optimist in me would say 100% empty — and the time needed to fully charge fluctuates between 144 and 200 minutes, even though it’s been plugged in for three days.

posted by ragingyoghurt on 30 November 2005 at 5:12 pm

permalink | filed under around town, chocolate, grumble, shoping

having recently read that the girl who ate everything eats 100g chocolate each day, and then having somehow drawn myself into a handbag reveal exercise, and then having suddenly looked up and seen the carnage of confectionery on my desk, i thought i should catalogue it, because i don’t normally eat like this. no, really.

what we have here are:
– a bag of lindt christmas chocolate almonds (2 remaining, see previous entry)
– a cherry ripe wrapper (i actually only ate a third of this, after handing over the bigger half to the boy)
– an unopened bar of valrhona dark chocolate with candied orange peel (a present from my mother)
– a jacques torres box containing:
— an unopened ritter sport marzipan bar
— the last square of a ritter sport yogurt bar
— a handful of addictive little japanese chocolates
– coincidentally, a package of poofy badges, from robyn, who started all this.

posted by ragingyoghurt on 13 November 2005 at 10:41 am

permalink | filed under chocolate

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