ragingyoghurt » adventures in good eating etc.

i didn’t fritter our weekend away eating fried potatoes, no. to the kid’s chargrin, i spent rather a lot of time in this sturdy little brick of a building just around the corner from the chiltern chip shop. contrary to what you may gather from the looks of it, it is not a historic gaol.

in fact, it is a historic printery, the home of the federal standard, a newspaper founded way back in 1859. these days it lies dormant most of the time, as it has since the paper closed in 1969 following the death of its publisher. however on the second weekend of each month the wooden door swings open, and the old machines within clank to life.

under the auspices of the national trust, a pair of personable old gentlemen trained in the ancient, ink-stained art of printing will invite you in, and tell you that everything is more or less how it was when the presses stopped running all those decades ago.

and it’s true: here and there, surrounding two 100+ year old printing presses, quaint tools hang on rusty nails

and vintage office chairs rest tiredly on threadbare carpet.

there are ancient fliers attached to the wooden walls,

or tucked into forgotten secret spots,

stacks of yellowed newsprint

sitting on stacks of shallow drawers.

lots of drawers bearing mysterious marks,

divided up into many tidy little compartments

holding a wealth of precious metal —

printing blocks in the tiniest of sizes, all neatly organised.

there are larger blocks as well, artfully carved of wood in fancy typefaces, for setting handsome headlines.

and there are trays of etched metal panels, each a work of art advertising the fine products of yesteryear.

look! it’s the new holden!

the pride of the printery though, is what its guardians consider to be the last working linotype machine in australia.

the big city newspapers used to have scores of them, i was told, but the advent of phototypesetting and computers saw these machines unceremoniously thrown out.

thrown out! this beautiful thing — borne of a genius watchmaker — with its diabolically clever mechanics.

this typesetting machine is itself adorned with type — instructional and stern

and heartbreakingly, gorgeously industrial.

and yet, the keyboard is unashamedly no-nonsense, not a hint is given as to the magic that will ensue once each key is pressed.

metal tabs are released from a large cartridge (“magazine”) above the keyboard, each one bearing a corresponding character.

once a complete line has been composed, set to a fixed width, the row of letters forms a mould into which molten lead is pressed. yes, that thar’s a cauldron of molten lead:

it cools down fast, solidifies, and is ejected.

voila. a line o’ type.

unglaze your eyes. i’m sorry to go all fangirl on you, but at this point a great metal arm swoops down, retrieves the metal tags, and then — following some turning of gears and a good deal of clicking and whirring — returns each little key to its rightful slot in the magazine. it is amazing to watch, but perhaps not quite as rivetting to read a rambling retelling of.

(if you are interested though, you could read this.)

oh, federal standard printing works… how you warm the cockles of my heart.

posted by ragingyoghurt on 20 July 2011 at 1:06 pm

permalink | filed under misc, trip

look what i ate during the just-gone school holidays: a small harvest of potatoes, fried up two ways. i blame the kid. we’d ambled up to the local takeaway on the main street of a little town in a northeastern corner of victoria — it’s the sort of place where under the counter there are lollies in jars to be had for 5c a piece, and behind the counter there is a handwritten board boasting such delicacies as hamburgers with the lot, pineapple fritters, banana fritters, and fish and chips and salad (which we’d ordered the last time we were in town; the salad was composed of a couple slices of tomato, some shredded carrot, a couple more raw onion rings than necessary, and half a dozen slices of tinned beetroot). this time, though, we were just after the chips… until the kid sang out, “and potato cakes. two each.”

i’m sorry to say that they were still mostly uncooked on the inside, crunchy, rather than just short of al dente. but you can tell, can’t you: compared to the golden brown chips below, the batter on the rounds of spud looks pale and flabby (much like one might look after subsisting on a winter diet of fried potatoes). not to worry. there was such a bounty of chips that even divvied up three ways (the wafting aroma of hot fat and vinegar was enough to lure the boy out from retiling the bathroom of his country estate), they proved unconquerable.

another day, i orchestrated a detour to the resurrected myrtleford butter factory, housed in a handsome brick building dating back to 1930. just look at the lovely lettering! here they churn out batons of cultured butter, salted and un-, wrapped in printed foil in a most fetching olde time design.

they had sold out of butter that day (and i can’t seem to track it down in melbourne — the perils of artisanal production, i suppose) but fortunately, mid-afternoon, the kitchen was still open for lunch.

i was having trouble picking one thing off the menu — garlic prawns? blue cheese tart in a buttermilk pastry? — when the waitress came over with a litany of specials. after she spoke the words “corned” and “silverside”, i only pretended to dally for the smallest moment before picking that.

beneath the rather aggressive balsamic glaze — to me it bordered on caustic — the meat was tender and comforting, and all sorts of salty-sweet-smoky. i was most won over, though, by the generous tumble of winter vegetables on the side. behold happiness: carrots, beans, tiny beets, brussel sprouts, cauliflower, a roasted onion and two waxy little potatoes. once my tongue had been beaten into submission (or perhaps the sauce actually did mellow over the course of the meal), the balsamic glaze served as a most agreeable accompaniment to the vegetables as well.

i was too full for a sit-down dessert after that, but from the counter display, i picked a a wedge of chocolate truffle tart to come away with me. it was thoughtfully boxed with a small tub of thick cream and berry compote. i dipped into the rich sludgy slice at random moments over the rest of the day — just a spoonful at a time was enough for an intense chocolatey burst. right before bedtime, i gave in and finished it off, inordinately pleased.

posted by ragingyoghurt on 19 July 2011 at 12:42 pm

permalink | filed under cake, chocolate, lunch, trip

i have memories going back thirty years, of being in the upstairs sunroom of uncle rowan’s potts point flat, overlooking the majesty of elizabeth bay. when i say “flat”, i really mean palatial early 20th century apartment with lofty ceilings and windows to match, the window panes made of the kind of glass you don’t see anymore: spotted with little air bubbles and perfect imperfections. there was a formal bedroom, meticulously curated though never used, and a formal sitting room with big puffy couches and a shrine (not creepy: life-sized oil-painted portrait and fresh flowers) to a dear and long-ago departed wife.

there was a library with tidy — labelled — shelves. throughout my childhood, he presented me with compendiums of children’s verse, or volumes of australian literature populated with muddleheaded wombats or plump bush babies. i have them, still. there was an old piano. there was the kitchen, which until more recently than you might imagine, housed one of those old fridges whose door handle operates a latch that holds the door shut. there was the time, when i visited with my aunt, and she discovered a block of coon that had met its end in the pantry cupboard. it had turned a most unearthly shade of brackish blackish green, but rowan insisted that it was fine and refused to allow her to chuck it out.

there was the formal dining room, where over a few years, the meals served became subtly though increasingly rancid, so that eventually my mother firmly insisted that we would be taking rowan out for luncheon or dinner, and returning for tea and coffee after.

tea and coffee was always taken in the sunroom — a complete service, with an assortment of little dishes and cups. there was no television, in that room, or any other, and we sat surrounded by sunlight, books and papers, and the assorted tchotchkes of a lifetime of travel. in lesser hands it might have all been a big kitsch overload, but at rowan’s it was a fascinating trove of treasures.

what happens when you’ve been away for a while, say six months or so with a lapse in regular communications, is that you might be nattering away on an interstate skype with your aunt, and she will mention in passing that she’d been to the westfield food court in the city on the way to rowan’s funeral. a month ago. the email your cousin sent with the news was apparently lost in the ether.

rowan. the last time i saw him was at lunch in october last year, at sopra across the road, when it seemed like he had mostly forgotten who i was, or at best, thought that i may have been my sister. he was 97, after all. had lived through the war as a surgeon in the navy, and then through a series of unfortunate events in more recent years that progressed from driving the wrong way down one-way streets to falling off a seaside cliff, and stepping through a rotted bathroom floor and spending the long night with a leg poking through a hole in the downstairs neighbour’s ceiling. he was tough: he was one of those old folk who took a regular ocean swim in the wintertime.

much of his life he spent training and bequeathing scholarships to younger doctors from far-flung dusty lands. a lesser-known but no less significant legacy is the appreciation i now have of a well-considered afternoon tea served on mismatched china. thank you, uncle rowan. i raise my pinkie in a farewell salute.

posted by ragingyoghurt on 11 July 2011 at 7:38 pm

permalink | filed under misc

so it’s not just outside trendy cafes and mexican cantinas that you have to queue; friday afternoon at the olde time hopetoun tea rooms in the block arcade, we waited behind the red velvet ropes for 15 minutes or so before a table became available. nevermind — the bejeweled waitress was kind enough to give us frequent updates on the table situation (“there should be people leaving soon, but they are just sitting there sipping at their tea.”), and we had ample time to consider our choices from the two cake-laden shelves in the window. on top: fruit crumbles, tarts of lemon or lime or pecans, teacakes and, yes, macarons…

down below: a spectrum of technicolor cheesecakes, and a couple of sponges layered with cream and festooned with berries and flaked almonds. inside, perched atop the counter, above a display of antique silver and heavy crystal, sticky date puddings with a towering jug of toffee sauce, caramel slices, and chocolate and strawberry swiss rolls. it really was quite overwhelming.

i’d been working myself up to a simple afternoon tea of scones and cream and jam, but as we approached the front of the queue, the thought of two lumps of breadiness sitting in my belly so close to dinnertime saw me veer towards a slice of the sunny orb of passionfruit tart in the corner of the window.

at our cosy table in the small and tightly packed dining room, i found that the filling was, as i had hoped, bright and tangy, but the pastry, though a fetching shade of golden brown, was much less crisp than i would have liked. it had a lovely buttery taste, but its texture lacked any real distinction from that of the passionfruit curd.

both my tart and the slice of pavlova that the kid picked to celebrate the last day of term were thoughtfully plated up with artful puddles of passionfruit and/or raspberry coulis, dollops of thick cream and extra bits of fruit. but i must say that the attention to detail might have extended, if not to removing the skin from the kiwifruit, then at least to removing the stickers from the kiwifruit skin. gah!

the tea service, when it first arrived, looked promising despite the splodge of red jam on the strainer. alas, my dahl house tea — black, flavoured with ginger and peach — was served with a litter of leaves on the floor of the pot, so while the first cup was light and fragrant, by the third cup, it had brewed itself bitter.

i’d really like to like this place. i mean, i’d like to like it more. i mean, i think, i like it fine. the waitresses are friendly, and will not rush you on even though a queue is forming outside. the decor, with the marble table tops, emerald green wallpaper and swathes of stripy fabric hanging from the rafters, is not without its charm. when you look closely though, at the lingering produce stickers, and the just-short-of-soggy pastry, and the endlessly steeping tea, and the torn and peeling wallpaper, you get a sad little feeling that this is not so much the grande dame of tea rooms as it is the slightly doddery aunt.

(which is not to say i wouldn’t visit again. because after all, who doesn’t like a homely tea-and-cake sit down with a doddery aunt in her well-worn sitting room? it’s just a little bit of pomp and some tired splendour. perhaps next time, i will have the scones.)

posted by ragingyoghurt on 2 July 2011 at 8:53 am

permalink | filed under around town, cake, grumble

there was a brief and generally good-natured discussion as we stood in the kitchen the other evening, about my collection of little bowls and dishes. “they’re all behind cupboard doors,” i said unapologetically, “and i like them, and use them all.” my little vietnamese ceramic bowl, for example, holds the perfect portion of such things as japanese slaw: finely shred some wombok, then toss with a squirt of kewpie mayo and the tiniest dribble of mirin, a few salt flakes and a sprinkling of shichimi togarashi. you don’t need a lot of mayo; after a little sit, the cabbage juices run into the mayonnaise to create a light, milky dressing. this was a clean and crunchy accompaniment to the wintertime stodge of an oyakodon dinner.

the bowl is especially pleasing at breakfast, when the weather is agreeable and i get to sit in my sunny backyard with a big dollop of greek yoghurt drizzled with honey. walnuts, of course, are the go-to crunch factor, but i finally got around to making that granola i saw at orangette the other year. i dallied for the longest time over what i wanted to put in it (pistachios and dried cherries) but what went into the mix on the day was walnuts and black sesame seeds, and what happened to the cooled-down, out-of-the-oven mix is that i chopped up into it a whole bar of orange-infused dark chocolate. this chocolate, from cocolo, has quite a sharp break, and adds a compelling crunchy punctuation to the chewiness.

once, i also filled the bowl with blue jelly. it really is endlessly versatile…

posted by ragingyoghurt on 1 July 2011 at 2:00 pm

permalink | filed under breakfast, chocolate, dinner, kitchen

happy sunday!

yesterday, after the kid’s last chinese class of the term, i orchestrated the proceedings to the lunch counter at milkwood, where the kid, without hesitation, went for an encore of poached eggs on toast with avocado, and i ventured into baguette territory with a sandwich of thinly sliced pickled beetroot, creamy fetta, avocado and a generous thatch of rocket.

of course, the real reason we were at milkwood again was so that i could get one of those monster lamingtons i saw last week. this time there was also a sunny display of lemon meringue cupcakes to sway me, but my resolve was strong.

my reward, for breakfast this morning, was a hefty block of cake with a sturdy crumb. look at those fleshy chips of coconut! unlike so many lamingtons with their dusting of dessicated coconut and their dry spongy insides, the milkwood lamington gives a serious bite, through the thick chocolate-soaked layer all the way to its heart of tart raspberry jam.

perfect sustenance as we head out into the surprise sunshine in search of german sausages and gelato.

posted by ragingyoghurt on 26 June 2011 at 11:15 am

permalink | filed under breakfast, cake

you wander down to the cafe right by the very last stop on the 96 tramline. there is only one table left, on the footpath, separated from the saturday arvo hoonsters by nothing more than a flap of plastic sheeting. the table may be almost disastrously wobbly, and that guy with the hotted up engine snarling up nicholson street threatens to send the salt and pepper shakers vibrating onto the floor… and then the tea service arrives, and it’s all good.

here at milkwood, the pot of house-blended chai comes with all the trimmings: a strainer to catch the tea leaves and spices, and a little pot of pale runny honey. there is enough tea in the pot for three large gold-rimmed cupfuls. which gives you something to fill your mouth with as you wait (and wait) for your food to show up. but when it does…

well! i was quite unprepared for the mountain of mushrooms on my plate. they were plump and succulent, blushing with the faintest kiss of lemon thyme. the crunchy toast was buttered and then generously slathered in ricotta. it all made for a big plate of rude good health.

the kid, having embraced the wonder of googie eggs, ordered poached eggs on toast with a side of avocado, which came drizzled in lemon oil and whole peppercorns its own little dish. niiice! the eggs were pretty much perfect — pristine white globules that we broke open to release their molten golden yolks. the kid was polite enough to share.

mmm…

we sat and watched the trams roll in and out; we would not be moving for a while. but when we did finally make it to the counter to pay, i discovered a display cabinet filled with house-made treats. lamingtons, for example, covered in big chips of coconut… fat rounds of wholesome cakes, cut into generous slices… a tidy pile of very homely monte carlos, quite unlike the uniform incarnations out of an arnott’s packet. there was no room in my belly, but i bought one anyway.

later in the afternoon, i tossed it to the kid and her dad, and let them fight it out amongst themselves. (i did get a large enough crumb to let you know that the biscuits were cakey, and the jam seedy and tart. if i’d had a cup of tea handy, i might have kept the cookie for myself.)

i don’t know why it’s taken us this long to get to milkwood. ok, well, i do know: we’ve been past every saturday in the last couple of months, but we’re always coming from chinese class and jumping on the tram to the city, or the beach, or the museum or wherever. now we know better. there is no reason why we should not linger, and the lamington behind glass (the tea and mushrooms, the eggs, the love heart cinnamon toast, the grilled ham off the bone…) is clearly reason why we should.

posted by ragingyoghurt on 21 June 2011 at 11:32 am

permalink | filed under around town, breakfast, lunch

still working through my broccoli puree obsession…

put some pasta on to boil. add to the pot all that broccoli you have in the vegetable drawer (i had two medium heads). when the broccoli is just tender and still bright green, remove and refresh in cold water. puree to desired consistency in a food processor. continue cooking the pasta.

fry some chopped garlic in a bit of olive oil in a large pan. add the broccoli puree, salt to taste and a couple of ladles of pasta water. simmer. tear up a fillet of hot-smoked trout. add it to the broccoli to warm through. i had a tub of store-bought chunky spinach and cashew pesto in the fridge, so i put a couple of spoonfuls of that it as well. drain the pasta and toss into the sauce.

think about salsiccia and crema di broccoli pizza.

posted by ragingyoghurt on 20 June 2011 at 2:42 pm

permalink | filed under dinner, kitchen

speaking of porchetta…

it is with regret that i admit i was in rome over christmastime last year, and not a sliver of porchetta, which originated in that region a century ago, was eaten. that enormous log of rolled meat up there is not porchetta. it is a mortadella as big (bigger than, in this case) as a child. none of this was eaten either. look. in rome, i concentrated on gelato, ok?

what we did eat, in rome, once, and in other parts of italy, was pizza. in retrospect, not even enough pizza. but while we’re all thinking about pizza — well, i am anyway: delicious sausage and broccoli puree pizza — i thought it was about time i dug up those holiday snaps from last year.

when we were planning where to go in italy, i was really very interested in naples, for the reasons of pizza and industry. the reality turned out to be a chaotic melange of all-day-and-night police sirens (norrrrrr-ni-nor-ni-norrrrrr-ni-nor-ni-norrrrrrrr) and garbage piled high on every street corner, sometimes for the length of the entire block. also: possibly the worst pizza ever, which was adorned in spirited swirls of some kind of cheese product: a claggy, cloying, unholy amalgamation of three kinds of cheese, squeezed out of a tube, shudder. fortunately, though we never came across the best pizza ever, naples did deliver some tasty specimens.

I.
just off the overnight ferry from sicily (after waiting a couple of hours on board to disembark, an epic journey on foot from the port to our hotel, an hour or so of whooping in wonder at our hotel, and a long-awaited bath for the kid), we wandered somewhat aimlessly (aimless for some, apparently; i thought we were on a mission for lunch) along the narrow grubby streets until i was faint and grumpy enough to steer proceedings in the direction indicated by the arrow on a dubious-looking sign for pizza. we ended up at the counter of a steamy, spartan little room, with two women assembling pizza and a wizened man at the end of the line stirring a cauldron.

there were only a couple of options on the blackboard menu, though the counterwomen seemed open to customisation. you picked from a handful of ingredients, and they were placed on a small disc of dough, and then — here’s the thing — another circle of dough was placed on top, the whole thing sealed and handed to the man, who dropped it into his pot of boiling oil. it swelled up like a blimp, turned blistered and golden brown, was fished out and placed on a bit of butcher’s paper, and then handed over the counter. pizza fritta!

i had inadvertantly lucked into a curbside luncheon of famous neapolitan street food. my salsiccia and broccoli rabe pizza — marked with a little squiggle of an S — was utterly delicious: crunchy crust gave way to chewy bread, the steaming tangle of green on the inside just perfect for a cold grey day. the boy was somewhat less enamoured of his mozzerella and salami pizza, although the kid was quite happy to finish it off the gooey innards.

II.
i went the more traditional route another lunchtime, with a pizza marinara. the kid was flummoxed by the lack of cheese, but the light, classic topping of tomato passata, garlic, oregano and a drizzle of fruity olive oil meant there was plenty of room for gelato after.

III.
the day we went to pompeii, the road up to the volcano was closed due to bad weather, so we spent all our hours roaming the excavated ruins of the ancient town. this is the kind of thing that will make you increasingly hungry and slumpy. just short of “resentful”, the boy led us to a very modern cafeteria he had found at the end of a cobblestoned street. here the pizza is no better (though no worse) than the kind you find sitting behind glass at those takeaway places in kings cross: congealed cheese, assorted salted meats, but the bonus is the counter staff slice it to fit perfectly in the wedge-shaped trays.

IV.
another day we caught the funicular up vomero. we were looking for a particular fritteria, but instead stumbled upon what we thought was a political riot, and which turned out to be… i dunno… high school kids let out for lunch, or something. so we made a detour towards civilisation, which turned out to be the lunch bar on the corner.

from the very desirable array of prepared foods, i picked an almost-pizza. a bready pie filled with, yes, of course, sausage and broccoli (rabe). i tell you, i will never be sick of this magical combination. the countergirl cut a wedge as large as i wanted and then placed it on the counter, from whence it fell to the ground, seconds later, with a damp splat. i was very pleased that she cut me another slice.

now if you will excuse me, i must go assemble a meatball sandwich for lunch.

posted by ragingyoghurt on 15 June 2011 at 1:50 pm

permalink | filed under lunch, trip

there was talk of a mamak roti breakfast, but by the time we got round to it, it was lunch with another kind of flatbread: pizza at D.O.C.! i’d been wanting to come here for aaages — a couple of months, anyway — and beloved interstate friends with errands in carlton and a penchant for pizza were the perfect excuse. arriving at the tail end of conventional lunchtime, we were lucky to get the end of the long table by the big window, and i was lucky to have the winter sun streaming through said window, warming my back.

a compact, handsome italian man presented us with menus, typed up in a 90s typewriter font: it felt like coming home. we saw the antipasti at the next table, and smelt the truffle oil wafting from passing pizze. we took too long to decide; we wanted one of everything. what we ended up with was a fat plait of mozzarella with a small salad of shaved fennel and sweet, meaty mouthfuls of whole white anchovies…

a pizza of salsicce and pureed broccoli — which caused me to gasp in amazement when it was placed in front of us. it was like a platter of spring meadow, with the delicate green crema di broccoli and the rosy blossoms of sausage meat. i believe i may have clapped, and then when i actually did bite into it, the applause rang loud in my head. i find myself thinking about it a day later, and plotting my return.

and the pizza abruzzese — topped with paper thin slices of porchetta, mustard fruit and radicchio. how festive! if it is the intriguing premise of mustard fruit that compels you to order this pizza, be warned that an uneven distribution of the tiny cubes of candied fruit means that your slice might only be pork belly fatty crunchy. even though it will be delicious, you may be disappointed. fortunately, my slice had two bits of mustard fruit on it, and i can tell you that it made my experience a little bit like christmas. the combination of pork belly fatty crunchy and candy sweet fruity softness made my brain wobble with glee. (of course, the stern radicchio kept deliriousness in check.)

we also had a salad of rocket and pear dressed in pecorino and the tiniest hint of honey, and then we sat, sated, and considered the dessert menu: a tiramisu made with sweet goat cheese; a nutella calzoncino, before taking ourselves, after a detour at the spice shop round the corner, across the road to brunetti.

here is how you cap off a meal of gold standard pizza: behold the piemontese with its jaunty golden hazelnut crown, a crunchy profiterole filled with an almost unnecessarily tall column of hazelnut cream — that’s cream, flecked with ground-up hazelnuts — all the better to hide its central artery of sweet-savoury hazelnut praline. there will be waddling after, waddling to the corner to bid your farewells, and then waddling the three blocks to the homeward-bound tram… but absolutely no regrets.

posted by ragingyoghurt on 13 June 2011 at 11:06 pm

permalink | filed under around town, cake, lunch

Click

Search

Categories

Archives