ragingyoghurt » adventures in good eating etc.

“this is the last thing i will cook for you,” said my mother, before bustling into the kitchen. it was lunchtime, her final day in melbourne after five weeks of maternal duty. she had come to cook confinement food, but the first half of her time here, there was no kitchen, and the second half saw her in delicate negotiation with the boy to see who would flex whose culinary muscle on any given night. in the end, i think she only managed sesame oil chicken with ginger, stewed pork, bak kut teh, and a couple rounds of turmeric salmon. the bottle of ginger wine she’d brought with her was only half gone, the additional two bottles i received as a gift, completely untouched. her mission to brew up vast quantities of tong sam and longan tea was aborted — the vile memories of this peculiar beverage from seven years ago still lingered in the back of my throat. while still in singapore she had discussed this tea, enthusiastically. “no,” i said. so she arrived with a kilo of the herb (and four bags of dried longans). “no,” i said. so she asked again and again over the next fortnight. “no,” i said, “but are you asking until i say yes?”

“no,” she said, “but i couldn’t remember what we had decided, and i wanted to make sure.” i wonder if the wonderherb tong sam is as beneficial to short term memory as it is to milk production.

this past saturday she had planned to celebrate harlan’s month on earth with a party (when i’d told her i didn’t really have anyone to invite, she volunteered a few of her family friends and distant cousins). there would be ang ku kueh, and red eggs, and curry chicken with nasi kunyit and roti jala.

in the end, there were just red eggs, and no guests. pinkish eggs, really, when the dye didn’t quite take. the recipe called for them to be boiled for 35 to 40 minutes and then immersed in a dye bath. somehow they ended up being cooked for a good hour or so — impressively rubbery things, with thick grey circles surrounding the yolk, and blotchy patches of pink in the whites where the dye had come through the cracks, and a mildly sulfurous aroma. i’d be eating rose-tinted egg salad wraps and cold, sliced boiled eggs with matching beetroot on toast all week.

saturday evening, party plans scuttled, i took my mother to cumulus inc. for dinner, where she paid. the next morning, after she arrived back in singapore, i received a txt informing me that she’d left the roti jala mould in my kitchen. perhaps i will have curry and roti jala in my future after all.

plus i may have to make this soup again — tasty and calming enough to eat beyond the period of confinement.

marinate minced pork with cornflour, sesame oil and salt. fry julienned ginger in sesame oil, then add chopped garlic and salt. add the pork and fry until not quite browned. add water and bring to the boil. simmer. add meesua. serve with baby cos leaves (or baby spinach, in this case), and… a spoonful of ginger wine.

happy full moon, sweet baby!

posted by ragingyoghurt on 7 December 2011 at 11:04 am

permalink | filed under kid, lunch

now here’s a bunch of vegetables that puts the aforementioned hospital veggies to shame.

the other tuesday saw me strapping on the baby and heading into the city for a wander. after stopping in at outré for a squizz at the tattoo art exhibition — which of the angelique houtkamp prints do i want the most? — it was still early enough that lunch at earl canteen seemed like a good idea.

turns out it was a great idea. in an effort to teach my eyes that they aren’t in fact bigger than my stomach, i turned a blind eye to the seductive salads in the counter display and only ordered the trout nicoise sandwich for luncheon, all fishy, oily goodness. it came as a sturdy plank of red-onion-flecked focaccia, filled with fat fillets of freshly seared fish, nestled warm in a ruffle of butter lettuce and mayonnaise. there were green beans and slices of tomato, though not nearly enough of them. perhaps it was just as well — any more and i would’ve had trouble eating it with one hand, as one must do, with a baby in the other. thanks, earl of sandwich!

when we left just before the lunch crowd, i must’ve still had a hankering for beans because the big green salad came with. later in the afternoon, sitting on the couch at home feeding the baby, i could not have been more pleased with the great pile of perfectly blanched green beans and asparagus spears, and strips of grilled zucchini, atop a bed of mixed leaves and herbs. the little tub of light, lemony dressing provided just enough of a glisten. i can’t say who enjoyed afternoon tea more that day, but i suspect it was probably me.

posted by ragingyoghurt on 3 December 2011 at 12:10 pm

permalink | filed under lunch

a few hours after harlan was born, while we slumped dazed and confused in our palatial birthing suite, an attendant brought a tray to the bedside — breakfast!

i lifted the lid on the plastic bowl and was rather pleased to discover a heap of rice bubbles. there was also a tub of peaches, and a tub of milk, a grainy roll, a pat of butter and a foil pack of strawberry jam. all in all a low-fibre, high-sugar meal befitting a world class healthcare provider, yes. i pretty much inhaled breakfast — it was all gone in a little over five minutes.

when lunchtime came round, i was excited to read “HONEY CHICKEN” on the sheet tucked beneath my tray. i had visions of golden, glistening, batter-coated chicken lumps. i lifted the lid to find this:

this sinewy looking mass of muscle, deathly pale against its bed of rice. despite its woefully unappetising appearance, the meat was actually moist and tender, and had the faintest taste of honey on its surface. alas, i cannot say the same for the vegetables. they just tasted of good health, in the blandest possible way.

it was around this time that i txted the boy — who had by this stage extricated himself from the miniature couch where he’d been reclining and gotten himself back home to install the recently procured baby capsule in the back of his truck — and begged him to bring me fruit and the packet of ülker chocolate biscuits lurking in the pantry.

that evening, the meal slip read “SWISS STEAK”, which promised a slab of tender meat covered in a rich mushroomy gravy, and fat slices of mushrooms. instead, it turned out to be a slab of meat, yes, held together with a fat vein of gristle, and doused in a bewildering sweet and sour sauce. i ate around the gristle and sauce, and then, having learnt my lesson from lunch, i turned the pat of butter for the dinner roll out onto the rice and vegetables, peppered and salted the whole thing, and rendered it palatable.

dessert was a tub of cold set custard — the highlight of the meal, really — and a red delicious apple, which is my very least favourite kind of apple on account of its complete, ironic undeliciousness.

i was pondering the random selection of meals that i’d been subjected to as i gazed out at my city sunset view, when an attendant came by and placed a sheet of paper on my bedside table. a menu! for the next day’s meals! it all became clear: up until now, someone else (a computer?) had been making the choices for me — here was my chance to see if these hospital meals could be more enjoyable if i got to pick what actually showed up.

so for lunch the next day, i chose irish stew, and for dinner, the hungarian goulash with mashed potatoes, followed up by that compelling custard on both counts. breakfast had already been decided for me, and i was greatly saddened to discover a pair of weetbix in my bowl the next morning, which is my very least favourite kind of cereal on account of its complete undeliciousness.

alas, i was cleared for discharge the day after that, so i will never know if the falafels in tomato sauce were any good. the irish stew was, and the goulash too, which was delivered while kid #1 was visiting, and met with her approval.

my last breakfast, on monday morning, i was back on the rice bubbles. they really do snap, crackle and pop!

and then we were off, me and harlan, back into the big wide world.

posted by ragingyoghurt on 25 November 2011 at 12:22 pm

permalink | filed under breakfast, dinner, lunch

exactly two weeks ago, i was exactly one week from my expected due date. my mum and i dropped the kid off at school, and then walked homeward, with purpose. i paused a moment to decline an kerbside invitation for morning coffee from one of the school mums. “i’m trying to fit in one last ikea excursion,” i said, “before the baby.”

two tram rides later, i filled two bags with kitchen-organisey stuff — acrylic boxes for sorting, little shelves for stacking — and ate a three course meal at the ikea cafeteria: garlicky prawn skewers on a bed of barley; a greekish salad; a tub of yoghurt.

missions accomplished, we picked the kid up from school, my mum and i, and then, when he returned from work, the boy drove us all in his spankin’ new truck to pick up the baby capsule from the rental place. we had reservations for dinner after, at a greek place in moonee ponds; the seafood platter was better than i remembered.

and then we were home, and we took ourselves to bed, and just before i fell asleep, at 11.30, i felt the slightest twinge in my belly. i gave it little thought — i’d been having braxton hickss for weeks, and i was a whole week away from the official due date, and seven years ago the kid took three days coming; i was hanging curtains on day 2. i didn’t even have a bag packed. a couple of hours later though, i realised that these contractions actually hurt! plus they seemed to be coming, and then going, with a rollicking regularity. i got out of bed, and paced. “i’m feeling contractiony,” i told the boy. i bustled about then, making my way through the checklist in the pink book i’d gotten from the hospital some months before but hadn’t really read, putting stuff in a bag. around 2, things were hurty enough that i called the hospital. i was asked questions about how far apart the contractions were, and how long they were lasting. “maybe five minutes apart?” i said, “and lasting, i dunno, like, 20, 30 seconds?” the nurse on duty replied good naturedly, “you should come in when the contractions last 60 to 90 seconds. and they will be toe-curlingly painful. we would not be having a conversation like this, if you were ready to come in.” so then i thought to time the darned things, and wouldn’t you know, they were 60 seconds long, some even 70 or 80 — i’d just been counting them out too slowly in my head. i kept packing my bag, and counting out contractions, whimpering a little, breathing deep, and then i called the hospital back. it’s true: it’s harder to speak when you’re ready to come in. i checked to see if my toes were curled. it’s undecided, though my back was in spasm. my mum was asleep on the sofabed in the lounge as we snuck out the door. “we should tell your mum we’re going,” said the boy. “hmmyesss,” i replied, “but then it will take you 20 minutes to explain to her what’s going on.” “ok, then let’s go,” he said. and we were off, me, in the back seat on all fours, on a bed of towels to keep any waters breaking over the spankin’ new upholstery, though they did not. we got to the hospital, and i paused to have a contraction against the plate glass window. the triage nurse had my file on her desk, waiting for me. out back, a midwife checked my cervix, and suddenly sprang into action, ushering me into a wheelchair and walking us efficiently — ok, let’s call it running — to catch a lift upstairs. “don’t push!” she said. she tag-team-transferred me to another midwife in another room, who said, “push, except when i tell you to stop.” and so i did. and then there was a head, and later i would be told that the head was still in its bag — the waters didn’t break until the head was out, in this sac, with amniotic fluid swirling around it like a scene from science fiction. (“it’s very good luck!” said the midwife.) i wish i could’ve seen it. but i was standing braced against the bed, one foot on the ground, the other on the mattress, pushing, and then stopping, and then waiting for another contraction to push the body out. and another. and then there he was, kid #2.

harlan. 5 november 2011, 3.41am.

posted by ragingyoghurt on 18 November 2011 at 12:51 pm

permalink | filed under kid

mm. i don’t much like it, the speedy passing of months. five months ago, a kindly reader told me i might like hardware societe — it really seems like it was just weeks ago (which i suppose it was, technically, just a lot of ’em), but it wasn’t until last week that i made it there.

singapore girl was in town for a short spell, and running behind about five, ten minutes in the rain when i showed up. a friendly waitress with fetching sailor tattoos granted me the last marble-topped table, and then brought water and took an order for a hot chocolate. the amazing and forgiving thing about gestational diabetes is the unexpected mercies that it grants — hot chocolates have proven to have no ill effect on blood sugar levels. even this one:

it came, a generous jug of hot, frothed, chocolate-flecked milk and a cup, empty but for the knob of softened chocolate dribbled with cream. perched on a spoon was a tiny chewy doughnut. all up, i poured two cups of hot chocolate from the jug, and it wasn’t until late in the game that i discovered there was a sizeable mass of chocolate hidden in the bottom of that as well. it made for a particularly rich chocolatey beverage by the end (i’m not complaining).

midway through the first and second helping of hot chocolate, singapore girl arrived, twenty minutes late after all, and ten minutes away from the point when the lunch menu clocks in. i’d had ample time to study the breakfast menu, and had already decided… but it wouldn’t have been so terrible to start all over. as it was, the waitress urged us to put our breakfast orders through, and before too long, two fat omelettes arrived at the table.

i am wary of cafe omelettes: too often they arrive overcooked and spongy. this one was pretty much perfect — brown in spots, but soft and moist on the inside, with an edge of butter, stuffed with well-cooked asparagus spears, slabs of soft cheese — brie, or brie-like, i can’t recall — and leafy herbs. it was gone much sooner than i would’ve preferred, much like the last five months since the cafe recommendation.

posted by ragingyoghurt on 1 November 2011 at 9:02 pm

permalink | filed under chocolate, lunch

the kid turned seven during the week. se7en! i’d thought i might have a new kitchen in by today, or at least new kitchen cabinets, but no. in fact, i had no kitchen, and no cabinets — just a big empty room with an assortment of wires and pipes sticking out of the walls, and several large holes in said walls where the previous beige tiles and their grey grout — and occasional blue and yellow chequerboard accents — had been gouged out.

still, it was a good day for a party.

it is important when one has no kitchen, to plan a party with minimal cooking. actually, no cooking whatsoever. my party prep in the morning involved emptying bags into bowls, and the cursoriest bit of cutting up fruit. probably should have emptied a couple more bags; the gummy lollies — two bowls by this stage — were the first to go.

fun activities of the night before, after removing the last vestiges of debris from the ex-kitchen, included making pizza bunting for the backyard clothesline. you see, it was a pizza party!

the kids were herded out back for a spot of pizza craft — a free flow of red paint in lieu of passata, a stack of sticky circles and origami paper, some tubes of glitter and a bowl of spangles, and six rounds of cardboard. there were crayons too, but they melted in the late morning sun.

i ordered three of domino’s finest over the phone, and then i joined in the crafty mayhem. here is my neat and tidy sausage and mushroom pizza:

and here is the freeform expression of a wild-and-spirited guest, who started off with a pretty conventional pizza, and then painted over the lot with red, and then most of a bottle of craft glue, and then stuck to it as many sheets of coloured paper and circle stickers as she could:

it’s all in the process, innit? amazing.

and then i scrubbed the thick circle of gluey paint and fairy dust off the table, just in time for the pizza delivery.

there was cake after, of course, after the aforementioned wild-and-spirited guest scaled the cubby house and then the fence, and danced provocatively upon the neighbour’s shed. a rainbow ice cream cake which made another girl sad because she doesn’t like ice cream, and whose candles were prematurely blown out by the wild-and-spirited guest and had to be relit…

nonetheless, i think it probably worked out in the end. happy birthday, kid!

posted by ragingyoghurt on 23 October 2011 at 9:57 pm

permalink | filed under ice cream, kid

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

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

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

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

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

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

permalink | filed under around town, lunch

but guess what! i totally made it to sopra too.

i’d been offered a ride to the airport, and i thought, hmm… sopra’s on the way, and suggested that maybe a farewell luncheon would be in order. for research purposes, of course: would it be the same now that the original chef had gone? before i knew it, there were eight of us — cousins, aunt, visiting mother and random blow-in neighbour — waiting for a table to make itself available.

we waited upwards of 40 minutes, ample time to peruse the famed chalkboard menu over and over and weigh up whether to have the salad of wagyu bresaola, or of smoked trout, or of white anchovies, or…

in the end, i picked the soft poached duck egg, with asparagus, spinach, oyster mushrooms and pangrattato. oh, it was luscious. i had not had a duck egg before — are they all like this? velvety rich and creamy? stabbing the egg open resulted in a luxurious spill that coated the winsome vegetables. the fried breadcrumbs were impossibly crunchy, and very moreish.

the whole thing, really: i wanted more. it was all over before i was ready for it to end. but i suppose it meant i had some room for a taste of the rather splendid tiramisu from across the table, and a single spoonful of the kid’s eton mess — i’m sure it used to come with more than three strawberries mixed in, and this with strawberries right now in season! pah. this one was mainly a mound of whipped cream, though admittedly quite a delicious mound of whipped cream nonetheless, punctuated with shards of meringue, and generously drizzled in strawberry sauce.

so there you have it: sopra, still excellent. needs a little more fruit.

posted by ragingyoghurt on 7 October 2011 at 2:25 pm

permalink | filed under lunch, trip

so we snuck back to sydney for a few days last week, the kid and i. we made the spur-of-the-moment trip ostensibly to visit family, though in actual fact, there was a large flashing billboard in my head, and writ large upon it was the word “messina”. still, for much of the week we played happily north of the bridge, walking through the hills and vales of cherrybrook, and the malls of the greater northern suburbs.

and then on friday, after a bus ride into the city and a ferry ride across the twinkly harbour and a walk down the memory lane that is oxford street, we met up with one d rodrigo for lunch at honeycomb. i’d only read about this new cafe a few days before, and while you’re in another city, it may register as merely a blip, but when you find yourself suddenly within — well, who knows how many hours, given public transport from the hills district — when you find yourself contemplating luncheon at sopra because it was probably your favourite place in sydney, then it seems the only logical conclusion that you end up at honeycomb, new home of old sopra chef andy bunn.

the waitstaff were all smiles and welcomes when we showed up just past 2.30, and gave us our pick of the empty dining room; the kitchen closes at 3! from the all-day breakfast menu the kid picked waffles with mascarpone, honey, and that rarest of fruits — the banana. d and i went an altogether more grown-up route.

off the main menu, we shared a generous dish of orecchiette with prawns, salty little nubblets tasting of the sea. the pasta was perfectly cooked, the riotous confetti of chilli and herbs as festive on the tongue as it was on the plate.

after a brief discussion about whether a lamb ragu would be too much for 3pm on a sunny day, we also picked the kingfish served with boiled fennel and salsa verde. under its golden crust the simply seasoned fish was meaty, a suitable canvas for a smear of the salty, tangy green sauce (though i expect i would’ve been perfectly happy to eat the salsa straight from the spoon). the cucumber ribbons and sprigs of watercress made the whole package a gift of springtime.

ambitiously, we split a salad off the specials list: oyster mushrooms with ricotta and potatoes in a tumble of leaves. it didn’t offer too much of a photo opportunity, but the salty slippery mushrooms, fried a little bit crisp around the edges, and the little daubs of creamy cheese, and the tantalising shards of witlof, more than made up for it in the mouth.

and then we were done! happy and satiated.

and we wondered, could we still do dessert? we waddled up the hill for a bit, and found our way to the cool, dim oasis that is gelato messina, where the gelato is always piled high, and there are always more flavours than you can safely consume in one sitting, even on the end of a tasting stick.

i did sample the cucumber sorbet, an impossibly smooth and slightly tangy whisper of cool speckled green, but gave in to a single scoop of almond croissant gelato. the subtly fragrant almond milk base was most agreeable, as were the pockets of almond frangipane from the housemade almond croissants. the bits of croissant pastry, however, had become chewy from the moisture, and were not a joy to eat. alas.

still, it was with a golden glow in my heart (and belly) as we wandered off into the sunset. somehow it has come to be that messina is the thing i pine for most when i think of sydney. i’d like to think it’s the really good thing that represents an amalgamation of harbour ferry rides, and good friends, and favourite aunts… not just the really good thing that might send your blood sugar just beyond desirable limits for the afternoon.

posted by ragingyoghurt on 4 October 2011 at 8:55 am

permalink | filed under ice cream, lunch, trip

so i made it back to mr close for the halloumi sandwich last week. the original plan of course, had been to brown bag it and pair it with a chai frappucino from the starbucks across the way. but it was not quite lunchtime and the cafe area only held a handful of suits in business meetings, so i showed myself to a table in the corner, and breathed the springtime scent of the jonquils before me. in no time at all, a smartly aproned waitress brought water and a menu. lovely.

now. see the charming little clutter of flowers, peppermill and stripy postcards — it no doubt makes for a welcoming tableau at the table, but once the food got to the table, i found the flowers just too much on the nose. why would you not want to smell your freshly toasted sandwich instead?

this one, which came as a piadina served on a board, had a nice crunch which gave way to a great salty mouthful of cheese, capsicum, eggplant and rocket. the generousity with the halloumi may be applauded, yes, but it also reinforced my reservations about halloumi sandwiches in general: the saltiness just overpowers everything else in its vicinity, and in this case the supporting cast was well worthy of their place in the spotlight. fortunately my tastebuds were saved from complete erosion by…

it’s time for your close-up, amazing side salad. it costs $2 more to have your sandwich on the premises, and it does say on the menu that eat-in sandos come with a small side salad. i was expecting nothing more than a little pile of dressed leaves, so this perfect, elegantly disheveled portion of rocket with slices of in-season corella pear, walnuts — toasted, even — and musty little lumps of gorgonzola ended up being the highlight of my lunch. and i don’t even really like blue cheese.

my artfully poured hot chocolate was pleasing too. it had arrived first up, a promising shade of rich brown, and proved itself to be intensely chocolatey without any glugginess or cloy. a much nicer beverage overall, than my bottle of gluco-scan earlier that morning.

yes, the old glucose tolerance test. it would appear that one of the side effects of pregnancy, at least this time round, is gestational diabetes. i suppose i had a lot running against me: sitting way the heck over this side of 30, being chinese and tubby, having a family history (on both sides!) of type 2 diabetes… and well, fine, i expect the preceding years of pancreas-punishing cake consumption can’t have helped.

i’d like to think the salty cheese sandwich might have done some good towards lowering my blood glucose that day.

posted by ragingyoghurt on 16 September 2011 at 8:42 am

permalink | filed under lunch

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