ragingyoghurt » adventures in good eating etc.

so yeah, in case you thought i was still slumming it in london, i’m back at home, sinking slowly into a bunch of projects — none of them horrible, yay — and the mundanity of doing the dishes, and the absolute futility of vacuuming.

one thing i’m chuffed about though, is that any day now, well ok, maybe a month from now, and hopefully not two months from now, the inaugural issue of PAN magazine will hit the streets, and the food columnist will be me.

here’s how the magazine tells it:

PAN is a new independent magazine for makers, designers, writers, musicians, artists and thinkers. combining the best elements of a literary magazine with arts, culture, fashion, literature and music content PAN magazine aims to engage with culture in a way that’s meaningful, edgy and entertaining. we won’t be running features on how to pluck your eyebrows but we will be thinking about transhumanism, heteroflexibility, emerging artists, producers and musicians.

for now it’s out twice a year, and they’re currently seeking submissions of stories or essays or, yes, poetry for issue #2. interested?

maybe you might even pre-order a copy of issue #1.

it’s not quite like helen’s time out magazine coup, but you’ll get me telling you maudlin stories of my encounters with hot chips. and this drawing i made for it? it’s running so big that the chips are larger than life-sized. well, i’m excited.

meanwhile, a week and a half ago, the kid took out first prize in the school fete craft competition. nice job, kid!

posted by ragingyoghurt on 19 May 2010 at 11:15 am

permalink | filed under drawn, kid

it had become a habit towards the end. a couple of times a day, i’d summon the airline website, and click on the special link for updates on the volcano situation. wednesday, when we were due to fly, i clicked and read that airspace was gradually opening up but that our flight, already rebooked from the sunday past, was cancelled.

so i called the airline to change our flight once again, maybe for the coming weekend, and instead of the regular hold music, i heard a recorded announcement that the cancelled flight had in fact been reinstated. i was so stunned that i wasn’t even sure i’d heard right. i stayed on long enough to speak with a real person, who said that, yes, we’d be flying that night.

🙁

it was mid-morning, and my mother was out buying cuts of pork and chicken so that she could make dumplings and pies for the long days ahead. i sent her a txt. i also sent one to my sister, beavering away at her deskjob, and she wrote back shortly afterward: i see i do not deal well with change.

my mother showed up at the door a half hour later, with bags of meat. stoically, she began making a tray of chicken pies. i went downstairs and attempted to pack two weeks of accumulations and roughly four days of vague happy plans into my big black baggage.

the night before, we’d sat, the four of us exiles (and honorary exile) in volcanic ashland, at a not-too grimy laminate table at HK diner in chinatown. spread in front of us: a platter of peking duck, a saltfish and chicken hotpot, a large dish of noodles fried up with nothing but beansprouts. i gazed fondly at the expanse of shiny food, and said, “so this is what it feels like, to be a refugee”. oh how we laughed at our good fortune.

now, fate laughed at us. outside it was warm and sunny; inside, behind shutters, i wrapped jam jars in knits and nestled them tetris-like and fingers crossed in a cradle of folded tshirts.

but we still had to eat. a little past lunchtime, the kid and i left my mother rolling out puff pastry, and headed up the road towards euphorium bakery. it was late enough that most of the sandwich counter had been depleted — only a few lay forlorn amidst the crumbs of the empty cabinet. i was too sad to eat a regular sandwich, so i picked an alternative from the display: the whoopee.

back home, the others ate their sandwiches as i finished up my packing, while a disagreeable feeling gnawed at my stomach. when i was done, i made myself a cup of tea and ate half the whoopee. under different circumstances, i’m sure it would have been delicious: a couple of moist, cakey, dark chocolatey biscuits held together by a respectable amount of lightly sweetened cream. as it was, i ate it too quickly, all hungry and preoccupied, and it caught in my throat like a handful of dry crumbs.

the other half i left for my sister, and she ate it standing up in the kitchen when she returned that evening, while we waited for the taxi to show up to take us to the airport. i think she found it… bittersweet. the chicken pies were golden on the counter. the pork dumplings would just have to wait for another day.

posted by ragingyoghurt on 18 May 2010 at 10:40 am

permalink | filed under cake, chocolate, nellie, trip

for ten days, i’d had it in the back of my head that i had to make a visit to peyton and byrne. there are four locations within a small area of central london, but all of them were just a little too out of the way on any given day. so when we were given three extra days of london, i took it as a sign, and made a special stop at the kings cross tube station on day number two, so that we could walk over to the st pancras train station, and lunch at P&B.

it’s like walking back in time, entering this large room with all the cakes and slices in the window. against the gleaming white-tiled walls, the wooden shelves are filled with colourful cartons of store brand tea, and jars of jam. and chocolate bars wrapped in plain white paper, in flavours such as orange marmalade, or caramel.

there are artisanal potato crisps and fruit juices and ready-made sandwiches in the back, and hot pies and sausage rolls behind the counter; the choice was quite overwhelming. but i was mindful of my sister’s observation that we had barely eaten any british cuisine in our time in london, and ended up with a cold pork pie from the refrigerated shelves. the kid gamely picked a sausage roll as big as her head.

it was a very pleasant lunch, sitting in the wire chairs outside the shop, within the sunlit atrium of the train station. the solid puck of a pie was filled with great meaty chunks and a herby bouquet. the pickle was bright yellow and bitey, and full of still-crunchy vegetables. i wish there’d been more of it.

when we were done, we went back into the shop and stocked up on a few comestibles: chocolate bars, a jar of chocolate-pear spread, and a cupcake. (back in sydney, i would submit the receipt to the travel insurance company, to be compensated for meals during our volcano-related delay. they would graciously accept it, and categorise the expenditure as “snacks”.)

and then we went back underground, and resurfaced at covent garden, where we spent not quite four hours at the excellent transport museum. interactive displays of centuries of public transport. some quite lovely historic posters advertising tubes and trains. lovingly restored vintage buses! stuff you could sit in! they really don’t make stuff like they used to… but the life-sized model of the contemporary bus was quite the win.

posted by ragingyoghurt on 17 May 2010 at 11:11 am

permalink | filed under around town, kid, lunch, trip

one of the other things that commandeered my attention at the japan centre on regent street was a humble plastic takeaway container fastened with a length of curling ribbon. the cookies within were a most enchanting shade of green.

i know, i know. they are just a simple maccha sablé, and i could google a bunch of recipes and make my own. well, fine. maybe i will, now that these are gone. they were rather pleasing: a good crunch on impact, and then a mass of buttery crumbs on my tongue. they were mild in taste to begin with, but after eating four or five in a row, the verdant bitterness of the maccha kicked in. really, a smart regulatory measure to keep me from eating the whole pack in one go.

i was actually more intrigued by the other box that i pulled from the shelf: the buckwheat cookies. they were nutty in flavour, almost savoury, and surprised me with the most satisfying little crackly bits, courtesy of the grains of toasted buckwheat scattered through each biscuit.

there were also black sesame cookies on the shelf, but i thought it best to leave them. these were very persuasive biscuits. you may be lulled safe by their spare decoration and their homely good looks, but take them home and they’ll have their wicked way with you.

posted by ragingyoghurt on 16 May 2010 at 10:51 pm

permalink | filed under packaging, snacks, trip

ten days into our london holiday, i found myself on hold on the phone, cup of tea going cold, waiting to speak to the airline about possibly resheduling our flight home. we were due to leave that night, but the airports were still closed due to ashy skies. three hours and forty-two minutes of hold music later, i had five minutes of pleasant chat with a helpful man in india, and hung up with a numb and sweaty ear, and a new departure date three days away.

with a whoop, we pulled some clothes on and burst out into the sunshine. the columbia road flower market would still be on for a good three hours or so. though of course, we weren’t there for the flowers, oh no.

i still had fond memories of my cupcake at treacle from four, count ’em, four years ago. where does the time go, i ask you. such worrisome concerns dissipated as we moseyed about the shop, which seems to have doubled in size since our last visit. there were some very covetable bits of crockery on display, as well as candles in such flavours as cucumber sandwiches.

and there were the cupcakes, in two sizes and several variations of chocolate and vanilla, displayed in large drawers behind the glass counter at the front. the smiley shopgirl was dressed up like the technicolor 50s, and gamely encouraged us to choose exactly which cupcake we wanted. mine was perfectly nice — the cake itself had a light chocolate taste and a fine, crumbly texture, and there was just enough of the not-too-sweet frosting — although much of my enjoyment came from standing in a doorway, trying to keep out of the way of the flower market crowd, by a window display of novelty puppy dog mugs.

i had also been looking forward to visiting rob ryan‘s shop, ryantown, which did not disappoint, filled as it was with his wonderfully schmaltzy papercuts. even the plate glass window was not spared, nor a very desirable umbrella with £45 price tag.

resisting the urge to buy stuff makes me hungry, so i was pleased when we made it to the end of the road, and my sister pointed out campania gastronomia, where lunch could be had. ’twas a homely sort of place, with rickety old tables and chairs, yellowing snapshots tacked to the wall, and a clatter of mismatched cutlery and vintage china. every torta and pudding on show looked hopelessly homemade too, in a good way, mostly.

but we wanted savoury. to share, a very pleasing antipasto board with three sorts of cheese in different degrees of stinky saltiness, and as many kinds of cold meat including great pink circles of pistachio mortadella. there were slippery strips of marinated capsicum, and olives, and hunks of bread drizzled in oil, and even after that, i still thought that i’d be able to tackle the sausage risotto.

i was wrong. it was a veritable lake of salty, buttery rice, with nuggets of meaty sausage all the way through. it was delicious, and i wished i could’ve eaten more of it. as it was, i couldn’t eat more of anything, not even the fat chocolate biscuits i’d seen on the way in, sandwiched with ricotta, and then wrapped up in a twist of greaseproof paper.

we were all smiles though. we felt like we’d won the grand prize, not having to get on the plane that night. the possibilities were endless.

posted by ragingyoghurt on 14 May 2010 at 12:51 am

permalink | filed under cake, kid, lunch, trip

what is that? gliding by — whoosh — so sleek?

one afternoon, after spending rather a lot of time in the harrods toy department, we crossed bromptom road to forage a luncheon at harrods 102, a bustling foodhall with such offerings as roast meat sandwiches, gelato, krispy kreme doughnuts and a yo! sushi train.

but we perched ourselves on the high stools at the other conveyor belt, the one loaded with fattoush, and skewers of meats, and lurid neon pickles. yes, ESH: eat•simply•healthy is a mezze train! well, i was excited. there was a swarthy man behind the grill, ready to make us hot food from the menu, but we chose to dine off the train.

the kid wanted some lamb sambousek, so we picked a plate of mixed fried things first up. unfortunately these were colder than room temperature, and hard, so we turned our attention to the grilled chicken skewers. served on a bed of couscous, these went down much better. after i pulled the saucy stewed beans off the conveyor belt, my tastebuds really came alive.

is there more than novelty value to this? i must say, i would have kept grabbing stuff off the train if i wasn’t constantly keeping an eye on the coloured rims of the plates, and referring to the price list, and converting what sounded like a reasonable price into australian dollars. and — perhaps more pertinently — if it didn’t seem like i’d have to eat everything on the counter, when the kid finished her meal too soon after the beans were set down. apart from the unfortunate appetisers, the food we had was tasty and well-presented, and the portion sizes more than satisfying.

i was sad to miss out on the plates of hommous and baba ghanouj that went by, artful swirls with tantalising puddles of olive oil in the centre, crowned with fat chickpeas. there was also a good selection of revolving desserts: variations on the theme of baklava, as well as semolina pastries and milky puddings. all this passed us by.

but you see, we had to play wisely: the laduree concession was just across the road.

posted by ragingyoghurt on 11 May 2010 at 11:16 pm

permalink | filed under lunch, trip

one friday afternoon, a kindly frenchman took maeve to the zoo. thusly unfettered, the rest of us took the long, meandering route to the imperial war museum, to see “the ministry of food” — a very engaging exhibition about what the british public ate (and didn’t) during the second world war.

it was quite a compact exhibition, but excellently curated with very convincing plastic food (how did they make that mug of solid milky tea?), vintage propoganda posters and film clips, sobering ration cards, an entire walk-in shoppe packed with “goods” in packaging of the era, and a real shop at the end with such covetable war food-related merchandise as pencils screenprinted with the ministry of food logo, felt brooches of peas-in-a-pod or sweetcorn, rubber eggs — they bounced in unpredictable directions, CD compilations of jaunty wartime tunes to cook or tend a garden by, and yes, even a cookbook, “the ministry of food: thrifty wartime ways to feed your family today“, written specially for the exhibition by jane fearnley-whittingstall (mother of hugh).

downstairs the museum cafe had been converted into “the kitchen front”, serving, for the duration of the exhibition, meals cooked from wartime recipes. unfortunately, we were there quite late in the day, and hot food was no longer on offer. however, i did see a small selection of old-fashioned cakes, and you could choose to have your scones with mock cream, rather than regular, for the authentic wartime afternoon tea experience.

in any case, we were in no mood to fill ourselves with snackage, for we were due not too long after for dinner at fifteen.

and so it was that we reunited with the kid at a table in jamie oliver’s do-good restaurant. the frenchman was there nursing a coke, but handover complete, he left in protest because 6pm is apparently too early to eat. huh. shame then, because he did not get to partake of the handsome italian waiters with their charming banter, nor the the festive antipasto platter, a veritable bounty of cured meats, marinated vegetables, bread, cheese, and the plumpest, juiciest green olives you ever did see.

pleased, i sipped at my rhubarb and vanilla lemonade (that sounds entirely possible doesn’t it? it has been some weeks since i sipped it, and so it could well be entirely possible as well that i am actually misremembering). i became even happier when my main course was placed before me.

slow-roasted pork belly: three wonderful fat slices, all at once salty, oily, tender-soft, topped with a golden arc of crunchy crackling. piled onto a mound of sauteed chickpeas and chard, it was a generous mound of food. i think i may have left a chickpea or four, at the end.

because i thought i should have dessert, y’know, for research. even though the dessert menu was somewhat uninspiring. perhaps if we’d been eating fancy downstairs, rather than casual upstairs the choice would have been more agreeable. as it was, we had a choice between a couple of heavy-sounding cakes and a brownie.

i picked the lemon cake, dense with semolina and moist with syrup, served with a good amount of thick vanilla cream and a tangle of candied rind. i must admit, it was quite delicious, and would have been lovely for afternoon tea. ultimately, it was the wrong dessert at the end of a large meaty dinner, and i was sad to leave more on the plate than i normally would (that is, ahem, nothing at all, normally).

i still think of this luscious food, hungrily. i might just have to pop in at fifteen melbourne the next time i’m down that way.

posted by ragingyoghurt on 9 May 2010 at 10:50 am

permalink | filed under dinner, trip

i don’t know if you know, but i LOVE pizza. i do. i don’t love bad pizza, when the base is too bready, or the cheese too thick, gluggy, or yellow. and yet, i am by no means a pizza snob; i will happily eat ham and pineapple pizza, if the base and cheese don’t offend.

one monday evening, we sat up front on a double decker bus, and raced (like snails) through peak hour traffic, across town, to make it to dinner at pizza east. the restaurant was all unpolished floorboards and exposed beams, white subway wall tiles and wooden tables worn smooth. the windows were of the sort of glass that people don’t make anymore. the napkins were gingham.

there was a heightened sense of excitement, the anticipation of pizza that has come well recommended. we inhaled the ethereal sea bass carpaccio – pale and translucent slices with a a hint of fennel and chilli. we picked our way through a lovely salad of lettuce, with pancetta, hazelnuts and pear in a pleasingly mild gorgonzola dressing. and then the pizza arrived, and there were no other sounds at the table, besides, “mmmmmm…” and “slurp”.

you would not ordinarily think of “slurp”, but i should explain that it was a veal meatball pizza with prosciutto, sage, lemon, parsley and cream. you would not ordinarily think of “cream”, but there you go. it wasn’t a creamy pizza by any means; it just meant that everything was covered in a blanket of succulence under which all the flavours sang in sweet harmony. truly, it was like eating angels. the base was blistered and puffy, a little charred from being in the woodfire oven, perfection.

there was also a zucchini pizza with taleggio, and another one of spicy sausage — very spicy — with broccoli, and by the end of it we thought we might be so full that we might not be able to manage dessert.

and yet…

if we thought we had a winner in the meatball pizza, the salted chocolate caramel tart completely took out the grand champion trophy. it was made up of two distinct, yet barely perceptible layers. up top it was a smooth chocolate ganache, which would have been just fine on its own in a regular chocolate tart. and down below. rrraaarrrr.

down below was a dense, soft, sticky caramel, cooked dark. it was so salty that you almost might’ve thought something had gone wrong. but no, everything was completely all right. better, even, as the initial salty burst melted away into a rich, deep carameliciousness. in conjunction with the chocolate, it wreaked all manner of sweet-salty havoc in my mouth.

this is now the salted chocolate caramel tart against which all other salted caramel tarts will be judged. no wonder the dollop of thick cream stands so tall and proud in its company. even as the last brown skiddies were scraped off the plate, i was fantasising about getting a slice to take away.

lurking in the back you will see its worthy competitor: a maple pannacotta, whose delicate texture belied a bold maple flavour. a shard of sweet biscuit, and a dribble of macerated raisins were the perfect foil. this too, was gone in a whisper.

our stomachs, on the other hand, distended to their final, painful limits, demanded in no uncertain terms that we summon a taxi home. and so we did.

posted by ragingyoghurt on 6 May 2010 at 10:35 pm

permalink | filed under cake, chocolate, dinner, trip

we blinked as we re-entered the sunny sunday. we’d been hiding out in the dim cavern that is the london BMI IMAX cinema, wearing dark glasses, stretching our hands out towards the floating cheshire cat. “alice in wonderland”, in 3D, was a rollicking rollercoaster ride — in spite of the curious bit of freaky styley dancing at the end — but after a couple of contraband movie snacks, we were ready for the main event.

a short way across town, upstairs at fortnum and mason, there is a restaurant called, the parlour. it’s a decadent ice cream shoppe straight out of the 50s with a baroque (rococo?) sensibility. there they will serve you a sandwich, or a salad, and you will order one or the other — or both — and it will be a competent affair. however, you will know that it is only a little something to prepare your stomach for what is to follow.

what followed, for me, was a “lazy sundae afternoon”, which entailed

strawberries and 12 year old balsamic vinegar, vanilla bean and frosted strawberry and shortbread ice creams blended with strawberry coulis, crushed meringues, whipped cream and fresh strawberries.

it certainly made an impact as it arrived at the table, served in an enormous pink goblet of heavy cut glass. such fun! all those bits of crumbly meringue! multiple biscuits! a veritable cloud of whipped cream! the taste of strawberries through everything was quite lovely, but perhaps in the end, the overall impression was just that it was… nice.

which is not a bad thing, certainly, and i did not complain as i ate the lot. but i think the ice cream could have been better: more luscious, a little less frosty in parts.

more, in fact, like the coupe we had at afternoon tea not quite a week later and just a couple of blocks down, at the wolseley. i wish i had a picture to show you, but their no-photo policy is stark on the front page of their menu. you will just have to believe me when i tell you that the combination of crushed meringue, lemon curd and lemon yoghurt ice cream, whipped cream and flaked almonds makes for a very luscious sundae indeed. i think of it still, with a sigh, this pale yellow beauty in a frosty silver bowl.

aside from the lemon meringue coupe, we also had a perfunctory round of afternoon tea (a three-tiered tray to share between four) and a slice of treacle tart, which was light and lemony, and possessed none of the sickly sweetness that you might expect. the pastry was just perfect, and the filling, pleasantly sticky, well, that was perfect too. my mother — quite out of character — must have had four, if not five, mouthfuls of it, and i feared i might have to stab her with my fork to get her to stop.

such blissful eating amidst the bustle — a constant stream of tea-takers swarmed through the restaurant, but the waitress never hurried us along. for a moment, this little stretch of banquette seating under the high ceilings and marble pillars, it felt like home.

posted by ragingyoghurt on 5 May 2010 at 12:32 pm

permalink | filed under cake, ice cream, trip

i remember seeing coverage of skye gyngell’s pop-up cafe at the good food affare in sydney the other year. i remember being perplexed by the hay-strewn floor, and confounded by the collection of twee tchotkes on display. having now experienced petersham nurseries, it’s finally all become clear.

the running joke between my sister and her friend about the curation of old stuff piled just so around the nursery, is that someone goes around with a label gun, and randomly sticks price tags on everything. that tarnished mirror? £14,000. that rusty old hoe? £600.

but it was an intriguing wander through the various tents and sheds, admiring dusty antiques and the new things that just looked old. i especially liked the baskets (and baskets) of handy utilitarian brushes. a different one for every task imaginable.

the pastiche of skye’s cafe at the good food affare just pales in comparison. i believe all the stuff on display — the garden furniture with the perfect patina; the shabby chic chandeliers; the bottle green etched drinking glasses — could be purchased from the homewares giant who put on the show. it irritates me just thinking about it.