during what was akin to an archaeological dig, i unearthed a small pink carton in the pantry the other day. i think i bought it in a supermarket in singapore at the start of the year, but really, your guess is as good as mine. it was only just past its use-by date so i boiled up the requisite litre of water, dissolved the pink powder and some refrigeration time later… guava pudding!
so light and tangy. so agreeably pink.
it’s good to have a plan, because then you can be quietly pleased when everything falls into place. in this case, tuesday, the nori rolls were a perfect balance of salty and sour and sweet and umami (there is no place for bitterness in my life), “donnie darko” (apart from the arty digi-montages) was still good, and the coco loco mocha freezer (while too damn watery and ice chippy in texture) was a powerful chocolatey force. for about ten minutes into the film, the number of people in the cinema was one — me, and then sadly four teenagers arrived and took out the back row, and giggled when cherita chen gets told “go back to china, bitch”, and received phone calls on their mobiles, and giggled some more.
teenagers. feh.
having a plan with a bit of leeway on either side is especially good, because then you can duck into kmart before for a pair of new underwear, and pop into harris farm after for beans and asparagus and a tub of raspberry yoghurt.
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completely unplanned was the sudden waking at 2.30 this morning, the lying awake for an hour before rolling out of bed and the resigned heading downstairs with a handful of pillows and “the new yorker” food issue. having over the last couple of days already read about the struggles to develop a superior ketchup and some guy’s obsession with pasta, 3am seemed a perfectly alright time to learn about the commercial production of salad greens.
here, look:
it took … until 1989 … to mass produce the first retail bagged salads. salad spinners were perfected, shredding knives sharpened, battalions of chemists subcontracted to create the perfect polymers. today’s bags are a triumph of practical ingenuity. their plastic is made up of five to ten layers, each with a different function. some are designed to make the package shiny or crinkly, others to carry print well. together, they have to be just permeable enough to keepthe bag’s artificial atmosphere in balance — the wrong ink alone can suffocate a salad. as the lettuce sits on the shelf, the gases in the bag are constantly consumed, released and replaced. oxygen, nitrogen and carbon-dioxide molecules bond with the polymers on one side of the plastic and are released on the other, diffusing from high concentrations to low. every type of salad requires a different type of bag, tailored to its respiration rate by gas chromatography and computer analysis. every bag is a miniature biosphere.
from salad days: how a lowly leaf became a high-end delicacy
by burkhard bilger
yesterday, at a luncheon in which everyone at the table turned out to be with child (way to go, my fertile friends!), what i ordered off the specials board was a grilled haloumi salad. it wasn’t just slabs of grilled salty cheese; there were lightly dressed baby rocket and mint leaves, cucumber ribbons, fresh beetroot, roasted eggplant, and on top, a dollop of herby yoghurt. there were also two bits of bread which in the end were used to wipe the plate clean.
oh cook + archie’s, i am privileged to be fed by you.
ok, shhhh, don’t tell anyone, but in two hours i’m gonna skive off werk, and walk out into the blue and sunshine down to broadway, where i will procure two nori rolls — one beef teriyaki (or maybe eel) and the other most likely some sort of vegetarian option (the one with the pickles and shredded inari tofu is pretty tasty) — and perhaps a raspberry mocha frappucino, and settle myself into the cool and dark of “donnie darko: the director’s cut”. yeah.
breakfast time, when you can’t be arsed doing mushrooms on toast (and there are no mushrooms in the house anyway), and when you haven’t the time to go up the street for pancakes, and when you’ve already had chocolate sprinkles on bread-and-butter twice this week already, and when the kitchen is devoid of sweet pastries, it is perfectly acceptable to open up a tin of beans. mmm… beans.
the first day of spring brought such bad things as:
1. the lovely and amazing cafe zoe up the road having black bean and spinach soup on the menu, but no longer in the kitchen, because although the winter menu had changed to the spring menu, they hadn’t printed them up yet. in truth, this was only a bit sad for a little while because the ensuing second breakfast of a spinach and poached egg english muffin with grilled-in-butter mushrooms and a mesclun salad more than redeemed the situation.
2. nellie flying back to new york, which was such a sad bad thing that we began saying “ok… well…” and “goodbye” yesterday afternoon so that we’d be used to it by the time today came around. in addition we had to have first breakfasts (actually the second course of first breakfast) of ice cream sundaes to cheer ourselves up.
the sundaes were composed of a perfunctory layer of tim tam ice cream, strawberries, vanilla ice cream, strawberries, more vanilla ice cream and strawberries, crushed lebanese date biscuits, vanilla ice cream, shaved chocolate and strawberries.
3. coming out of two and a half hours of birth class to discover that it is raining, and arriving home to find all the laundry that was oh so close to sundried is now close to sopping wet. at least now i know how to swaddle a baby.
4. my sister not being here.
oh nellie. stop this insane notion that you must leave tomorrow. what can we do but have a last hurrah.
a last hurrah at happy chef. a last hurrah with the fancy french pastries. a last hurrah folding up the sofabed, way too early in the morning. a last hurrah of a salty, vinegary potato scallop. a last hurrah singing call-and-answer showtunes. a last hurrah on a ferry, in the last (hurrah) winter sun.
after yoga, after a long walk up to the main road, after a slow ride on the 380, after a time spent deciding what fish would be best battered and fried, and how many potato scallops to get, we finally sat down at a picnic bench facing the sea. it was just short of 4pm, lunchtime this saturday. between us and the view of sparkling bondi, a hefty blue eyed cod and a pile of chips, and two potato scallops.
something happens when chips are served up with anything. the anything is momentarily forgotten as you try to cram fat, hot, salty potato into your mouth. will you be so lucky (or restrained) this time that the delicate skin behind your front teeth will not end up scalded and hanging in painful little ribbons from the roof of your mouth?
and what of the batter? what of that last piece of crunchy brown that fell off the fish sometime during the eating?
“what shall i do with this batter?” i asked.
“leave it,” said nellie.
“i know.” i said this only because i thought she’d said “eat it”.
i’m not sure how the misunderstanding was cleared up, but there were still chips on the greaseproof paper, and i knew what fate would befall me, and them, if i didn’t throw them to the gulls.
my overarm was unstoppable, hurling chips one after the other at the horrible, beady-eyed things. the air was filled with birds and squawking and chips, and finally, that last piece of batter. my eyes were still filled with fire. i never felt so alive.
following too much dimsum at kamfook in chatswood on friday, we waddled slowly and sleepily like fat little puppies (yet bouyantly and almost hysterically, what with the little bubbles of oxygen pumping through our veins — this always happens in the situation i’m about to type) down the aisles of the asian supermarket next door.
ah, jusco. such a trevor trove of japanese candy (including a broad selection of yoghurt and calpis flavoured treats) and instant noodles and exotic beverages. and this: a little cup of biscuit fingers with a pot of chocolate and sprinkles for dipping. based on my highschool level reading of the chinese print on the label, it seems to have come out of the indonesian branch of arnotts, specifically for the hong kong and taiwan market, and the packaging is ocha-ken.
gasp! who is tea dog?
via jascii.net: ocha-ken is a really short anime about tea. it’s about a little green puppy with tea-leaf ears named ryoku whose nose always tells him when there’s tea made just right to be had. he has a lot of different-coloured dog friends who also seem to love tea and coffee. the first episode, “have you been making tea lately?” is about how hard it is to make the perfect tea, not too hot, cold, thin, thick, but just right. when ryoku smells that perfect tea, he calls all his friends and they go over to hana, the purple dog’s place, where they see she’s being a great hostess. tea is the best, isn’t it? when you’re drinking it, maybe you, too, can see the cute little tea puppy!
who doesn’t like tea? and ok, i don’t want to be all weird about this, but look! you can get a plastic teapot toy, and it opens up into some sort of onsen situation where you and your different-coloured dog friends can drink tea and chat and have a dip in the hot spring:
um. management would like to apologise for the inordinate number of plugs in that post.
this week’s getting away from me again, but oh how good it feels to see the deadlines falling away. before the coming weekend tumbles unto me, i thought i’d just record for posterity the following facts about last weekend:
1. there was a drive beyond the blue mountains and up mount canobolas in orange, where capital W weather was experienced — water fell from the sky, simultaneously, in three states (liquid, solid and um, flakey with six points), whited out the view in a fourth, and there was a windchill factor that made my skin break out in a welty rash not ten minutes out of the car.
2. there was, from a bakery in oberon, a wagon wheel as big as nellie‘s head.
