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according to the internet, uludag is the highest mountain in western anatolia. its name translates as “big mountain”, and from its peaks is where the gods watched the trojan war. we didn’t make it as far (or as high) as uludag last saturday; instead we went to auburn.

i had checked the street directory before i set out that morning, and so it was with only slightly wavering conviction that i pointed helen, sue and sarah in the direction of the RT Delight factory. [nellie, it will please you no end to discover that the RT on the logo stands for Real Turkish] as it turns out, getting off the train and walking down the station stairs had confused me such that we found ourselves in the exact polar opposite location from where we were meant to be. fortunately, deb arrived not long after and saved us from…

well. there was the first lebanese bakehouse, full of baklava and biscuits and a quite fierce baker who ordered us out as soon as he saw the cameras. (he was easily placated by some of us buying biscuits. yummy sugar-dusted, lemon-iced biscuits filled with crushed pistachios or walnuts.) there was the second lebanese bakehouse, next door, where helen sensibly thought to buy real food in the form of a za’atar pizza. there was a grocery shop, and this is where deb showed up and turned us around in the right direction.

there was a vietnamese bakery, and suddenly every one else had real food too: pork banh mi with chillies, not too shabby for almost eleven on a saturday morning.

’round the other side of the station, we found ourselves finally in the turkish delight factory, which is less a hot and heaving kitchen with vats of sugary paste and rosewater being stirred by sweaty turks, than a gleaming white showroom manned by a stern woman overlooking trays of chocolate truffles in glass cases. but where? the turkish delight? it is all pre-wrapped, sealed in plastic bags, or cardboard boxes or foil packaging, or combinations thereof. ch.

the chocolate was mediocre: my chocolate indulgence truffle tasted like an uneasy union of milo and nutella, coated in a hard shell of milk chocolate, dusted with cocoa powder. the turkish delight — with almonds, and covered in milk chocolate — was no better than any other turkish delight i’ve had here, and certainly no match for those individual little cakes of the stuff dipped in thick dark or white chocolate, studded with a single pistachio or almond and retailing at nigh on $80/kilo (just over $4 a piece!). mmm… but that’s another story.

deb led the way to arzum market on rawson street, which truly was the aladdin’s cave of shiny treasures. just look at this:

– smiling strawberry jelly biscuit, from eti

– multi-coloured, sprinkled, marshmallow biscuits, also eti

[ when i was in turkey a few years ago, i bought a packet of oreo-like biscuits, called “negro”, which is one of the eti stable. i considered bringing it to my sister in new york, but i thought maybe the customs officials at JFK would be somewhat less amused. ]

– a tube of special hazelnut cocoa cream from ülker… ah ülker, we share fond memories, don’t we? i know it’s just nutella, but a tube!

– bananko! from the croatian confectioner, kras. i haven’t tried it yet (or any of the others actually), but the company website assures me that “a fluffy banana-flavored filling and rich chocolate coating make bananko a delicious treat.”

– also from kras, a somewhat familiar trapezoid-shaped milk chocolate bar with hazelnuts and honey.

– a roll of turkish cherry candy

– the beautiful bottle of turkish fizzy you see at the top of this post

– and in case you think i just blew my budget on candy, a jar of honey.

if you read deb’s account of the adventure, you will see that we were both torn between the honey with whole nuts, or this one with the intricate pattern of crushed nuts (and cumin and coconut and raisins and apricot stones). when we asked the jolly shopkeeper if he recommended the honey, he opened up a jar of his favourite — the plain one, put it down on the counter with a fresh loaf of turkish bread, and invited us to try. it tasted of flowers. mine tastes of peanuts. i think they reversed the order of the ingredients on the label, so that groundnut, which appears last after pistachio, almond, hazelnut, and walnut, is actually the predominent nut. in fact the impressive tiling you see here, it is only a couple of millimetres thick. the rest of the bottle is a sludge of indistinguishable chopped nuts. nuts. i think you got the better honey, deborah.

back on auburn road, we stopped outside mado, where we only briefly considered what flavours of ice creams to get… before we found ourselves at a handsomely appointed table in the depths of the restaurant (not quite the inner sanctum though; that was a child’s birthday party waiting to happen, with a pointy paper hat on every plate). it is warm and glowing in mado. the walls are festooned with brass treasures and leather booties and satin turbans. the booths are plush and comfortable. the waitress is patient.

if you were silly earlier and ate a whole pork roll, forcing you to choose something light off the menu because of course you have to leave room for dessert, what you will have is a bowl of hot soup. a surprisingly light and creamy red lentil soup served with a lemon wedge and chilli sprinkles and two great slabs of bread. and then as the others feast on the salad with walnuts and (allegedly) pomegranate syrup, and beans in tomato sauce, and charred lamb cubes, you will sink into the plush and comfortable seat, under the warm, golden lights, and feel sleep come upon you. only the promise of dondurma will keep you in the realm of the awake.

but just dondurma? it’s just that, on the way in, helen and i had spied platters of oozy puddings on the dessert counter. it was labelled “caramelised pudding” in the display, and “charred pudding” on the menu, but what had really attracted me was the pale, plump pudding innards, oozing from beneath the golden brown crust. there was a half-hearted dicsussion on whether or not dessert would be a takeaway affair, but then cups of turkish tea and salep milk were ordered, as well as ice cream and pudding. we were in for the long haul.

the raspberry dondurma was bright red with an intense, tart flavour. the date was mellow with datey bits all the way through. the plain white salep was extra chewy and quite comforting. but the pudding! soft, oozy pudding, with the caramelly crust, with the sprinkle of cinnamon, with a lingering aftertaste of toasted marshmallows. you could sit around eating bowls of this pudding, and then one day your belly would peek out from your waistband, looking like pale oozy pudding too.

posted by ragingyoghurt on 27 June 2006 at 8:53 pm

permalink | filed under around town, cake, ice cream, lunch, packaging, shoping, snacks

you think this is crazy? how ’bout if i told you i paid just over $5 for three bananas this morning?

because on sunday afternoon, as we stood just clear of chinatown pedestrian traffic, enjoying a post-yumcha gelato (of course), i grumbled a little about the price of bananas.

the friend up from hobart mentioned that her organic grocer was still selling them for $4.95/kilo, quite a bit below the $12/kilo all around town, even if you did expect that the standard of living in tasmania would be more affordable than in glamorous sydney. the kid and i were sharing a cup of banana and mango gelato, because since the banana supply dried up, maeve has been banana-less. well, maybe just one banana every couple of weeks, as a treat. one $1.48 banana.

but then i got to thinkin’, that that $1.48 was actually less than the $2.48 or so that i’d just handed over for the scoop of banana gelato. what crazy economic theories had i been prey to, depriving the kid of one of her eight favourite fruits? and really, have i not paid like, $4 for a fancy, but tiny, chocolate bar?

so this morning, after the library, we marched into the fruitshop, and plonked the three bananas down on the counter, and there you have it. she was already waving her arms and keening “na-naaaa. NA-NAAAA.” as we walked back in the front door.

but what of this psychedelic purple bread? on the way home on sunday, we stopped for takeaway meats in the belly of world square, and i decided that i would finally buy something at breadtop.

my relationship with breadtop has been somewhat uneasy. of course, i’d been wanting and wanting to go since i saw someone walking about town carrying a filmy bag embellished with the voluptuous chinese calligraphy that said “bun shop”. but were they affiliated with, or “paying tribute to”, the singaporean breadtalk?

[ does a cursory google; no one out there seems to know either ]

aside from the similar, somewhat meaningless asian-english names, the two brands also share the same grey-orange-white aesthetic. they both have a wide variety of meat floss-covered bun products, and green tea-red bean cakes. and as i write this now, and try to specify what my misgivings are, i have nothing beyond: well, they may be a rip-off of breadtalk. and i mean, just look at this:

sigh, beautiful. on previous wistful visits, i always thought i would get some sort of green tea bun — the green tea or taro swiss roll really requires some sort of special occasion — but then on sunday i saw the shiny little loaf on the end of the exotic bread shelf, the last of its kind: purple sticky rice loaf!

you open the bag and inhale: it smells of sweet, yeasty chinese bread. you take a bite: it is soft and sweet and has a creamy, nutty flavour from ground up sticky rice (no whole chewy rice grains in it like passionflower’s sticky rice ice cream). in fact, it would make a terrific ice cream sandwich.

omigod! i have ice cream in the freezer!

posted by ragingyoghurt on 7 June 2006 at 2:08 pm

permalink | filed under around town, kid, shoping, snacks

anytime now, though i’m not sure in which order, my child will awake from her nap, and my mother and my aunt will arrive on my doorstep. this will be the cue to bundle everyone off to bar italia for a late sunday lunch. who knows what treats and surprises will be in store: a tiramisu-affogato? a great big sugo stain down the front of my shirt? in fact, while getting dressed earlier, i took the child’s grubby paws into consideration, and put on a black tshirt.

there is a bar italia in london too; you’ve probably been reading about it at stellou for several months now… “the boys at bar italia this… the boys at bar italia that…”

the first time nellie took me there was about 10.30 on a tuesday night, post-drizzle, and more importantly, post-“fame, the musical” at the aldych. we were still gobsmacked by what passes for musical theatre these days (and outraged at the lack of the song, “fame”), and felt we had to sit down to something sweet to recover our sense of balance. while the hot chocolate and tiramisu were ultimately forgettable (and really, i can’t even remember if that’s what i actually had), the street theatre that unfolded before us — drunken, dischevelled yobbo taunts dapper black bouncer — was an enjoyable few minutes.

but we were back for lunch a week later, and a pizza was ordered. what a pizza!

all thin, crunchy crust with a modest amount of melty cheese. and on top, just left to wilt at their own sweet pace, several handfuls of rocket and great sheets of prosciutto. a large bottle of chili oil had preceded the pizza, and was put to good use. one of the best pizze ever, oh yes.

addendum: no saucy stains on anyone, not even the baby! a ricotta cannoli split five ways was our reward.

posted by ragingyoghurt on 21 May 2006 at 1:16 pm

permalink | filed under kid, lunch, nellie, snacks, trip

i bought a bacon hock today, for the purpose of making a bean soup, and i was somewhat taken aback by how much the hocks looked like a pile of feet, lying all higgledy-piggledy in the glass-fronted trough of the supermarket deli. tasty, though.

for dessert, i finally ate one of the macaron that my mother was given, gratis, by the head counter girl at yauatcha on the afternoon of our departure from london, because — “eh, kakilang!” — they were both from malaysia. lucky for me, my mother does not really like sweet things. when we got back to singapore, i left the bag on the kitchen counter overnight, under the misimpression that it was hermetically sealed. hey, i checked! but in the morning, i discovered that it was fastened only with a pretty pink ribbon, and that the cluster of brightly coloured macaron were quite imploding from the tropical humidity. let me explain: if i so much as nudged one, it gave. i was so alarmed, i whisked them into the fridge, and refrigerated they have remained, all the way back to sydney.

while we admired the macaron, back in london, my sister said that yauatcha didn’t make just any plain old flavoured macaron, and that these would be raspberry –something or lemon-something or green tea-something. i couldn’t tell what the something was in the bright pink one i had tonight, but even in its slightly squishy, slightly crumbled, slightly jetlagged form, it was um, really good. maybe even better than one of the ones i had a laduree. maybe.

the laduree story is, one drizzly sunday afternoon, after a slightly fraught luncheon (in which the child discovered how to undo the fancy birdcage-style highchair in which she was perched, and refused to sit in it any longer, and had to be walked around the harrod’s food hall, which calmed us both down immeasurably) of roasted scallops on parmesan risotto with vanilla-infused oil, my sister and i had two macaron and a cup of laduree-blend tea. each. for the information, i think hers were lime-chocolate and caramel. mine were rose and chocolate. the tea was floral. my mother, being neither a fan of sweet things nor tea, sat back and nursed the sleeping baby. as we made our way through the macaron, we offered bites to our mother. she was very obliging, even as she nodded then grimaced after each one. “i don’t really like sweet things,” she intoned, and we offered her sips of tea to wash them down.

when it was all over, it was duly noted that our mother, who refuses sweet things and cups of tea, had had one whole macaron and a cup of tea.

i have been coughing for a month. i am very tired.

posted by ragingyoghurt on 10 May 2006 at 9:31 pm

permalink | filed under cake, kid, nellie, snacks, trip

another day, another truffle.

what with the late morning spent meeping at squirrels, and then chasing first ducks, and then the royal horses, up and down the length of st james park, and then giving up on the non-event that was the changing of the guard, we were quite ready for lunch… when the baby gave up fighting the pram straps, and fell asleep.

in such a situation it is best to keep moving, so we found ourselves trundling up piccadilly just as the london drizzle kicked in. fortuitously we were right by fortnum and mason.

one of my favourite touristy things to do is to go to supermarkets in new cities, and gawk at packaging, and fondle bags of exotic potato chips, and buy interesting-flavoured yoghurts. i had been feeling quite slack, because it had taken me a whole week (and a day) before setting foot in the sainsbury’s down the road and round the corner from the apartment. true, i had already been to the food hall of the local marks and spencer, but we were in a rush to get somewhere else, and there was only enough time for a cursory supermarket sweep of the aisles, a pathetic exercise that yielded just a bottle of orange juice with crushed raspberries.

note to self: go back to M&S food hall.

note to self: and, um, waitrose?

but here we were, stepping through the heavy doors of fortnum and mason, and finding outselves sandwiched between tea on the left and chocolate on the right. i was immediately troubled because i wanted to buy it all. the fancy honey; the ten drinks coaster-sized tablets of single origin chocolate (from ten places of origin), individually wrapped in coloured tissue and bound in twine; the majorcan sea salt with crushed hibiscus petals… you see? it’s crazyfood, and i was slightly crazed, quite addled, as i stood before the truffle counter (chocolate truffles, although the pig-digging sort is also available, in little glass bottles, in a locked glass cabinet, for a rather large sum of money) trying to figure out which ones i really wanted.

four hours later (an exaggeration, you think?) i handed over the equivalent of $36, for two dozen pieces of chocolate, which doesn’t sound too bad, innit? i also bought a canister of convivial yorkshire crisps — “luxury hand made crisps” in the almost exotic flavour of sourcream, dill and mustard. and some promising biscuits: clotted cream shortbread and marmalade oatmeal, with no hydrogenated vegetable oils, and instead, about one quarter butter!

my question now is, which truffle shall i have with my cup of tea? after which the question will be, when shall i make a return trip to fortnum and mason to buy all that tea which i managed not to today?

posted by ragingyoghurt on 25 April 2006 at 8:29 pm

permalink | filed under around town, shoping, snacks, 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

after a couple of months of watching heidi klum flog yoghurt gummies on tv, i finally tracked down a bag in kmart. the ad is tantalising: a supermodel looking all soft, pink and bendy, as though she could be a yoghurt gummy herself, swanning around her living room, falling into comfy chairs, eating candy. apparently, it’s healthy.

the bag says: yogurt gums. soft yogurt confectionery. with real fruit juice. no artificial colours. 99% fat free. less kilojoules than many other treats.

still, the first ingredient listed is sugar, followed closely (in second place) by glucose syrup. and because i’m sitting here (dressed rather fetchingly in the singlet and boxer shorts i slept in, and with my hair in a messy pony tail — oh yes, i feel exactly like heidi klum in the ad) eating them from the bag, my throat has that tight gaggy feeling from eating too much sweet all at once, and my stomach feels raw and empty.

i shall stop eating them now. for now. the yoghurty tang is most compelling, and the pear-flavoured gummy tastes just like a real pear.

[ i also found, in kmart, peach yoghurt chupachups, but perhaps that is a story for another day. ]

but the yoghurt bounty continues. trawling the aisles of another supermarket on sunday, i found biore with yoghurt extract. i’m not sure exactly what the yoghurt does in the facewash, and the packaging blurb doesn’t go into such detail; maybe they don’t know either. maybe it is just a cunning plan to sell facewash.

the thing is, a girl needs to wash her face when she’s in singapore, all hot and sticky. yes! here i am!

posted by ragingyoghurt on 11 April 2006 at 12:16 pm

permalink | filed under candy, shoping, snacks, something new, trip

i was ready to leave at 11, but due to dawdling on everyone’s part — though least of all, mine — it wasn’t until after noon that i left the house, and when i reached the top of the street, i saw the bus pull up at the stop, and then pull away. this turned out to be a good thing, because i walked a few more blocks, to starbucks.

it’s been a few weeks since the new promotional banner appeared on the footpath: for “coffee with a taste of the tradewinds”, the banana caramel frappucino. i was sceptical at first; i mean, banana and coffee! and also, i had sworn off coffee (again) a couple months ago after a raspberry mocha knocked me out for half the day. but then five minutes later the jaunty yellow banner won me over. i had just been biding my time. today was it!

the chalkboard behind the counter said “we’ve gone bananas!”, and in case you doubted the conviction, there was also a drawing of two bunches of bananas. so, apart from the banana caramel frappucino, there was banana caramel cream, banana caramel bread, banana cake and banana chocolate chip biscuit slice. do not think that there would be no customer so obsessive as to tailor a complete banana-themed meal; just before xmas i snuck in there and had a gingerbread frappucino and a slice of gingerbread loaf — a dense brick frosted in thick cream cheese and bright orange candied ginger.

it wasn’t until i was mid-way through ordering that i looked up at the menu board to check the prices and discovered that there is also banana mocha frappucino, which immediately cancelled out the banana caramel frappucino. sitting in the corner, reading annie proulx, i was pleased to find that it tastes like chocolate and banana paddle pops.

such are the little pleasures to be had in a child-free afternoon. there was also: a fantasy about buying a new teacup; a slow trawl through the borders magazine aisles; the following conversation:
“oh, and may i also have a brownie please?”
“would you like a big one or a small one?”

posted by ragingyoghurt on 19 March 2006 at 6:22 pm

permalink | filed under around town, drink, snacks

two weeks ago… or was it three? either way. a recent weekend, and it was hot. the boy’s family thought it might be a nice outing to have a picnic at the botanic gardens in auburn. the plan was we’d all meet on the main street in auburn, pick up picnic supplies, and then head over to the gardens where we would sprawl on the grass and eat ourselves silly.

i seized this opportunity to make a tart, because who doesn’t want a slice of tart, all sticky summer fruit, while lying in the sun on a saturday afternoon? amalgamating two… (or was it three?) recipes from an old donna hay magazine, armed with a kilo of just right plums and a scant-used food processor, i spent friday night and saturday morning at the kitchen counter. minutes before it was time to head out west, i had this: a ricotta and plum tart in a hazelnutty crust. it was still warm — actually, hot — from the oven, radiant on my lap with two folded up tea towels in between.

we got to auburn road early, and inside of twenty minutes we’d bought fresh baclava and custard eclairs and little buns filled with salty white cheese and chopped herbs, and had finally come to a halt outside mado. i’d been wanting to come here for years, for the turkish ice cream.

late summer in 2000, the boy and i caught a ferry up the bosphorus to the edge of the black sea. we thought it was a boat trip there and back, but the steward ushered us off and told us not to return for two (or three) hours. we bought grilled fish sandwiches in an alleyway, climbed a grassy hill to a fort and ate our delicious sandwiches in the presence of hilltop cows. when we climbed back down to the town on the ground, our boat was ready and waiting. we had just enough time to get ourselves ice cream cones from a nearby café. what strange and gummy ice cream, full of fruity bits; gleeful, we chewed on them as the ferry puttered towards istanbul.

and now here on the main street in auburn, dondurma, waiting in tubs out front, for us. these were some of the labelled flavours: date, pistachio, mulberry, mango, turkish coffee, and cherry. there were also two unlabelled flavours, yellow with bits, and white, which the counter girl revealed to be apricot, and “… special turkish ice cream”. the price list only went up to three flavours, but i wanted four or maybe even five. but also, i wanted tart later, so i made do with cherry, apricot and special turkish.

it is fun, this stretchy ice cream. but we have to eat it quickly, so quickly, because not only is it very hot and melty sitting by the road, but if we do not shovel it into our mouths fast enough, the child will devour it all. as it is she has great red rivulets running down her chin and onto her AB/CD tshirt, so she looks like she’s on the losing end of a pub brawl.

but here comes the boy’s family now, and there we go to the big kebab shop on the corner.

to be continued…

posted by ragingyoghurt on 15 March 2006 at 2:39 pm

permalink | filed under around town, boy, cake, ice cream, kid, kitchen, snacks, trip

things to blog about:
plum tart
dondurma
custard eclair
lemon buttermilk ice cream,
with blueberries

posted by ragingyoghurt on 5 March 2006 at 8:32 pm

permalink | filed under blog, snacks

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