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this year i got over my... well it's not a phobia, not even distaste really, but you know that icky feeling you get from handling library books? your fingertips seem dusty or grimy or... that sensation i just can't describe, when there's stuff in that gap between your nail and the top of your finger, and in the webbing of your fingers. you know? the way my hands feel right now even as i'm merely typing about it.
argh!!
um. so i've been taking the kid to the library. sometimes to get picture books, and sometimes for organised storytime. some days i find the latest issue of a glossy magazine on the rack, with a bit less dust or grime to get in-between my fingers.
recently, i borrowed an only slightly dogeared copy of "delicious.", from june of last year. in the first few pages, there was a half page on max brenner and his 'chef's own' recipe for hot chocolate, which pretty much amounted to: 1 tablespoon of max brenner hot chocolate mix, 1 cup of milk, marshmallows. dissolve chocolate powder into hot milk. if you want a richer drink, add more chocolate.
really.
but i got past it without too much derisive snorting, and came upon a recipe for sticky lemon pudding. in the photograph was a vintage enamel bowl on a waffle-weave tea towel. in the bowl was a spongey yellow cake with a golden brown top and a puddle of lemon curd at the bottom. for almost two weeks i thought about making this pudding. and then for almost one week after that, things kept happening to postpone the making of pudding. but reading of santos's lemony l.a. adventures only galvanised my intentions. yesterday afternoon, with the magazine's due date fast approaching, i thought i should just do it.
it turned out to be one of those recipes where the end result looks exactly like the picture, except that because my pudding bowls are smaller than the prescribed size, i had two! it even tasted like its name: the cakey bit had a slightly chewy, slightly sticky mouth feel, and the tart lemon flavour (i cut down the sugar in the recipe) went all the way through the cake to the curdy bit below. YUM.
howzzat? an uppercase YUM in a lowercase blog. the recipe is from jill dupleix, and goes a little something like this.
Served on Friday, June 30, 2006 at 11:58 p.m.
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do you eat chicken? do you watch sunrise? i do, quite a bit, and i, um, do... only sometimes, and in small amounts, honest. this morning they had a lady from the chicken board on, to set the record straight on the state of today's poultry.
and now that i've googled "australian poulty association", i see that that the board are actually called the australian chicken meat federation, and three days ago revealed in a press release that "almost 80% of australians believe that something is added to the australian chicken to make it grow artificially larger, with a staggering 66% of australians believing added hormones are a contributing factor making chickens larger". ok.
well, i mean, that's what i thought! have you seen the size of those chicken breasts in the supermarket deli counter? monstrous! sometimes, from my old supermarket at least, they even tasted like chickens of death. but in fact, what the chicken board woman said was that modern chickens are a different breed from the dainty specimens of the past, and comparing the two was like comparing a shetland pony with a workhorse. (and also that any antibiotics given to the birds are no longer in the meat by the time it reaches the consumer, and that organic chicken is no better for you than the other kind is.)
so. you'd believe it wouldn't you? this chicken lady on a tv show where businesses and tourist attractions pay money to be included in the lineup?
it's just, having read "my year of meats" (ruth ozeki) a couple of times, and sort of wanting to read "the way we eat: why our food choices matter" (peter singer) -- but being sort of afraid to -- and to be honest, the size of those chicken breasts is still a little disconcerting...
it's just, the kid really likes chicken.
hormones and antibiotics aside, organic may not necessarily be better for us, but it probably is a bit better for the chickens. but then after the playground we went to the supermarket to buy a roast chicken for lunch, and the woman behind the counter asked if i wanted the regular $8.48 chicken, or the reduced-for-quick-sale $6 one.
"why's it reduced for quick sale?" i asked.
"because it's been out here for more than four hours," she said, almost like a challenge.
the unspoken question, i suppose, was, how much longer than four hours had it been out here? (and also, did the chicken have a good life?)
but i took it. it fell apart in the woman's tongs as she wrestled it into a bag. it made a tasty sandwich, on soy and linseed, with avocado, tomato and cheese for the kid, and avocado, sesame seed furikake and chili pepper sprinkles for me.
i still don't know how i feel about the chicken debate. i want to read the book, even though i know it will make me (more) uneasy about the food i choose to eat. i mean, we can't all be fruitarians, can we?
Served on Friday, June 30, 2006 at 09:45 p.m.
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eat more soup! this week, armed with most of a head of broccoli, half a carton of chicken stock, all of one large red rascal potato, some onion and quite a bit of garlic, i made a pot of broccoli soup so full of greeny goodness that the kid had two helpings. they were small helpings (that pink bowl is actually a 125ml measuring cup), but still. hurray for broccoli-eating babies.
that day, the boy came home from school, hungry of course, and fossicked about the fridge for a snack.
"i made broccoli soup today!"
"uh-huh."
"broccoli soup!"
"i was looking for a snack."
"broccoli soup!"
"hmm." and so on...
more for me.
Served on Friday, June 30, 2006 at 02:30 p.m.
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meanwhile in the western suburbs, someone goes healthy.
Served on Wednesday, June 28, 2006 at 03:26 p.m.
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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.
Served on Tuesday, June 27, 2006 at 08:53 p.m.
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you know how it is: step out to buy a butter dish, and suddenly you have a butter dish, and two little glass tubs for storage, and a pretty pink mixing bowl, and some ocean trout for dinner.
i recently found a recipe for lemon curd sponge pudding in a magazine, and it became clear to me that i would have to acquire a pudding bowl. (you see how it is? if you have already read the previous entry, you will shake you head sadly and agree: it's an affliction!)
but it was half price!
monday lunchtime, the bowl was sitting clean and fresh on the drying rack as my bucatini came to a boil, and before i realised what was happening, i had grabbed it and filled it with a tangle of spicy coriander pesto noodles with peas and broccoli.
ah lovely and versatile pink mixing/pudding/pasta bowl.
maeve was ambling down the street the other day in a pair of pink trousers and her black and white stripy t-shirt. she looked like a giant licorice allsort. we went to starbucks, and the girl behind the counter said, "is that your, um, sister?"
"UM... no, my, um, daughter."
"it's just," she said, "you look so young... and my sister and i, we have eight years between us, so..."
"ah," i said, "there are 32 years between us."
and then she offered maeve a chocolate muffin sample and a baby-cino. note: starbucks balmain does baby-cini for free. me, i had noticed the scrawl on the blackboard that said, "hot white chocolate", and instantly i had to have some, with raspberry syrup.
i had some, and it was way too sweet, and thick, and white. i mean, of course, but i was surprised. like that time in sainsburys, nellie, when we gazed up in awe at the shelf of brown-bagged gourmet chocolate chip cookies, and picked the one labelled "white chocolate and raspberry" because you said they were amazing, and we took the bag home and broke it open and ate a cookie and thought, hmmm. because it was a regular chocolate chip cookie, and standing flummoxed in the kitchen we could even see through the cellophane window in the bag that they were clearly brown chocolate chips, and how had we not made the connection, standing at the end of that aisle in sainsburys, that the "white chocolate" label did not compute with the brown chocolate within? we did not compute.
Served on Wednesday, June 21, 2006 at 04:02 p.m.
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"i think you might as well switch to butter," is one of the last things my mother said to me, before she got on the plane home last month. we were brought up on margarine, but for a few years now she's been trying to get me onto one or another miracle yellow bread spread product.
about four years ago she announced that my preferred choice of spreadable butter-canola blend should be replaced by this tub of gloopy yellow grease that she had just bought at the supermarket. it was gloopy, i think, because its manufacture did not include the evil, death-causing process of hydrogenation. so it may have prevented your arteries from being clogged up (and in fact i think it may have been one of the cholesterol-reducing spreads), but the gloopiness was like a suspicious slick on your toast, which became a very disagreeable slick on your tongue. i just could not get that gloopy, slicky feel off my tongue, no matter how hard i scraped with my teeth. i can't remember what it tasted of (gloop?), so the flavour was probably surprisingly un-disagreeable, but i do remember that one of the ingredients in this product was rosemary extract. perhaps it was added to counter the actual taste of the gloop, by neutralising it. my mother dutifully ate this spread on her bread for the rest of her trip, but when she left, it sat quite unloved at the back of the fridge, for months probably, before i stopped feeling bad about throwing it out.
texture is an important factor in butter or margarine or hybrid yellow spread isn't it? you want it sort of solid, so you can scrape it on your toast, and watch it melt and sink into the surface, so you can see the texture of your bread, rendered all shiny and golden with melted butter. the gloop started off gloopy, and then had the audacity not to melt or sink; it just sat on the surface of the toast, waiting to ambush your hapless tongue. but maybe this was intentional. i read a diet tip once, where the advice was to wait until your toast became cold before you buttered it, so that the butter would not melt and sink, so that you could see how much butter you had put on, and not re-butter an already buttered spot. oh how i laughed, and then put down the magazine to never read again.
in the meantime, my mother had been happily eating her special health-giving margarines until just a few weeks ago when she discovered that her preferred product had changed its formula, and contained trans fats, just like all the other margarines on the market. "aiyah, you know," she said, "sometimes i think i will just switch to butter. i mean, how much do you eat at one time anyway, and it tastes so nice when they give it to you at a restaurant."
sometimes my mother astounds me with her clarity.
so last week, at the end of my tub of spreadable butter-canola blend, i bought a block of lightly salted butter at the supermarket. and so clearly, i had to also buy a butter dish. a simple task, no? i searched the kitchen departments of big city department stores, and trawled through the underground homewares emporium. "yes, butter dish!" was what the shop person would say. "right over here... er, over there... er, we seem to be out of stock."
i went online; ebay had an eclectic selection including a tupperware set where the description of "mission brown" was included as though it were a good thing, a depression era glass specimen weighing two kilos, a crystal heirloom with a reserve price of $98 (no bids yet), and a porcelain one in the shape of a cow. and yet none of these were quite what i was after.
at one online shop, a search for "butter dish" gave me this:
which actually i would not mind having, but being a limoges legle provencal blue butter dish, it costs just under $100, not including postage.
finally i went up the street to the local kitchenware shop, where i had previously seen a glass butter tub with an embossed cow on the lid... but it had been sold. recently, even, because there was still a sad rectangle of empty space where it had previously stood. i thought i should get the one that remained, before it too disappeared: a simple, white china dish, square, with a modest little knob on the lid:
everything the limoges is not... except, um, of course, a butter dish.
as i paid for my new material possession (and this is the sad truth: having run out of things to buy, i create situations which will allow me to buy related accroutement i might otherwise not have to. switching to butter... having a kid... etc... just watch, now that i have a butter dish i'll have to go out and buy a stick of salty, cultured french butter), it struck me that i had been mistaken. it wasn't that people didn't eat butter so there should be plenty of butter dishes in the shops, or even that people didn't eat butter so there was no demand for butter dishes and no reason to keep them in stock. it was that everyone is eating butter these days, and butter dish supplies cannot keep up. i don't mean to alarm you, but this winter, we are facing a critical butter dish shortage.
Served on Tuesday, June 20, 2006 at 02:12 p.m.
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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!
Served on Wednesday, June 7, 2006 at 02:08 p.m.
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oh this rain it will continue through the morning...
it paused briefly today -- blue sky! sunshine!! -- to allow us to stroll boldly up the hill splashing in puddles, before laughing in our faces and raining on our heads. still, we made it to bakers delight, as directed by the kid.
"bun shop? ok. bun shop!"
and then the supermarket, where everything was on special, and where maeve sat in the pram, docile, ok, content, gnawing on her bun while i walked the aisles thinking of all the possibilities. at the checkout, an elderly european woman said to her, "oh you are very selective, picking out all the chocolate and raisins."
but they were actually olives.
i recently learned, via tomatom.com, that raging yoghurt is one of the top 20 food blogs in australia: i scraped in at 19, woop. ed succintly summed up the blog in one word: "cakes". so i unleash unto you, the ragingyoghurt cupcake tshirt, featuring a drawing you may recall from the other month.
Served on Tuesday, June 6, 2006 at 10:59 p.m.
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the third day of winter, i walked up the street singing hot hot heat in my head.
at the supermarket, i picked out a kilo-punnet of mandarins off the shelf. the price label said $3.92, but at the checkout, it checked out at $4.88. ghastly! i showed my receipt to the girl at the service desk, and she sent someone off to check, (and oh how i crossed my fingers that i'd seen right), and some minutes later, i was being refunded the $4.88, which due to rounding up, was actually $4.90. a free kilo of mandarins and 2c to boot!
the scanning code of practice is your friend, trusting consumer. be vigilant! in the last few years, i have gotten such free food as a loaf of bread or a tub of ice cream or a bag of rice crackers or whatever else was on special that hadn't been updated in "the system".
i tried it once at kmart, though, and the checkout boy was scathing: "we don't do that here." ooOOkay.
Served on Sunday, June 4, 2006 at 03:39 p.m.
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a week ago today, my mother and i sat at a tucked-away table in the leafy courtyard of la renaissance patisserie, at the rocks, eating french pastries (after our lunch of french meat pies). while she perused someone's left behind tabloid newspaper, i photographed my gateau. then she said, "you know, the baby is really sweet and good, but sometimes it's nice to go out without her."
"mowmy, it's always nice to go out without her," i replied, which is sort of maybe an exaggeration, but that afternoon at least, i was happy to be left alone to eat my hazelnut biscuit with chesnut puree, vanilla bavaroise and candied chesnuts. the "biscuit" was actually a dense sponge cake studded with chopped hazelnuts, and its base was a thin layer of dark chocolate. it was a small cake, compared to the monster wedges you get at other cafés around the city, but mmm... it packed a lot of cakey, creamy, nutty, chocolatey punch. and because my mother is practical, she wrapped the decorative star anise in a serviette and told me to take it home to flavour a soup with. really, the cake that keeps on giving.
the next day she got on a plane, and flew back home to a stack of old newsapers that she will be compelled to spend a couple hours each day reading, until she has caught up with all the news she missed while she was away.
me and the kid? we spent the last week getting used to normal life again. coincidentally, the last vestiges of illness -- the lingering cough, the leaky nose -- also vanished. so now it's playgrounds and parks in the sharp morning wind, and then healing hot chocolates and baby-cini after. it's watching maisy DVDs on demand or listening to the child sing, in perfect pitch, the maisy song (or versions of it in which "maisy" is substituted with any number of two-syllabled words: mummy mouse, or water mouse, or nana mouse, or potty mouse... you get the idea.) it's trying to squeeze maybe a flier design or a bout of invoicing in during naptime. it's kind of awright.
Served on Saturday, June 3, 2006 at 04:06 p.m.
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i really like the monster cuffs on my new hoodie.
Served on Friday, May 26, 2006 at 03:06 p.m.
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wednesday, after a harrowing morning spent buying a fridge (and then later finding out it was $100 cheaper online, with free delivery, but would you buy a fridge online? wouldja?? in retrospect, yes, i would.) me, my mum and maeve retreated to the much more warm and welcoming arms of sopra, upstairs from fratelli fresh, where we stood in line for twenty minutes? half an hour? who can tell, when yer starving? anyway, the truth is, my mum stood in line while maeve tried to dismantle a display of bulk-bagged italian chocolates artfully arranged at the feet of a classical roman statue of a lady.
i last ate here more than a year and a half ago, when i lived just down the road, and my mum was in town, and maeve was just a few weeks old, strapped sleeping to my front. back then i ate antipasto, because of the inclusion of what is listed on the menu as "egg mayonnaise", and arrives a perfectly boiled egg, halved, with a slurp of tangy real mayo over the still moist, golden yolk. after months of being careful about properly cooked eggs, it was exactly what i wanted.
wednesday afternoon it was sort of what i wanted too, but after we were seated, and the waitress approached, the words out of my mouth were, "oyster mushroom salad, with asparagus, kipfler potatoes and caciota", the last of which i thought would be some sort of cured meat, but turned out to be a curdy white cheese. which was just the first pleasant surprise, because when the salad arrived, it was a mound of mushrooms, an entire small harvest really, and little discs of sliced potatoes, both of which had been grilled to the point of crunchy bits, in butter and oil and salt. and the blanched asparagus and cheese, and some mesclun, for light relief.
i wanted to eat and eat, so it was just as well that maeve was intent on guzzling the innards of her own bocconcini-and-tomato panini and was disinterested in my lunch; after losing the battle with her over the strawberry granita, it was only right that i got to eat every last mushroom.
and then having only had a light lunch of mushrooms, i thought it was necessary to have dessert. i sort of wanted the buttermilk pudding with mixed berries, but i truly, madly wanted the eton mess with strawberries.
"and um, could i get the eton mess, please?" is what i said to the waitress.
she beamed wide. "of course you may!"
it came, this great big dollop of pink on a plate. just strawberries and their juices folded into cream, atop chunks of sticky-on-the-inside meringue. oh yes. "i could eat this every day," i told my mother, although for $12 a pop, i was being figurative. maybe.
"really?" she said. and then she had a spoonful. "oh, it's quite nice."
because, as you may remember, my mother does not like sweet things, i was not too concerned with the dent she was making in my pud. but the battle with the baby had already begun. she didn't quite match me spoon for spoon, and i was making sure that my spoonfuls were bigger than hers, and really, it wasn't hard to just keep shovelling this magic into my mouth... but at the end of it, i wanted another one, just for me, to eat very slowly in sunny sopra.
Served on Friday, May 26, 2006 at 07:50 a.m.
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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.
Served on Sunday, May 21, 2006 at 01:16 p.m.
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[ via chocolate suze... ]
...who's been working in the kitchens of a pancake restaurant, and gets to make herself whatever she damn well pleases for lunch. lucky!
Served on Friday, May 19, 2006 at 11:18 a.m.
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since nothing happens around here except for vile illnesses, i thought i'd tell you about the sunday morning in london, about two and a half weeks ago, when we waited for the rain to stop before deciding that, yes, we would catch a bus up to the columbia road flower market.
at the bus stop, a slightly dishevelled woman tried to sell us a suitcase. "Ł20 in the shops, but i'll let you have it for ten." we demurred. it would have been hell trying to drag that thing through the thoroughfare of the market. for what we discovered is that the sunday market is a stretch of road with stalls set up on either side, selling all manner of potted plants and cut flowers. aside from the brief moment where nellie stopped to buy a mint plant -- how's the mint plant, nellicent? -- we were just propelled down the middle of the street, people shoving, stepping on my shoelaces, being nudged in the heels by the wheels of our pram.
"it's empty!" hissed an indignant woman.
"they just brought it along to bang into people with," replied her fella.
because clearly we like to drag this unwieldy charriot out and wrestle with it on sunday mornings. no, silly english people, because if a baby was sitting in that pram, someone would have crushed her legs and another one, maybe you, would have taken her eye out with a potted cactus.
i don't know how long that stretch of road was, or really even how long it took us to get through it. but some time later, we came to the clearing, and there was sunshine and fresh air, and also the real reason we had come all this way: treacle.
i had read in some travel magazine, before leaving australia, that the best cupcake shop in all of england was to be found at the columbia road flower market. they are only open when the market is, those scant six hours every week. we sold our mother this excursion on the promise of flowers. she played along.
the plate glass window was all brown diagonal stripes, and inside, past the vintage and modern and modern-vintage crockery, was a glass counter with drawers full of cupcakes. they were small and large (well, regular, then), and randomly decorated. oh those little cupcakes!
we could only pop in and out of the shop quite furtively at this stage, because we were waiting to meet friends for a tapas lunch across the road, and by the time we were ready for cake, the numbers had dwindled. there were just enough for us to make a modest selection: the baby had her own mini chocolate cupcake iced in blue; nellie had a vanilla cupcake topped with smarties; and i think i got the best one: chocolate with pink icing and red sugar (and rogue blue sprinkle). the cake was light, moist and very chocolatey, and frosting just the right side of sweet. the sugar was crunchy.
after i finished it, standing outside by the kerb, i wanted another. unfortunately, we were in polite company, and also, we had a plane to catch. sigh
Served on Wednesday, May 17, 2006 at 02:09 p.m.
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here are two hot chocolates i had in london.
the first one -- doesn't it look enticing? -- was from carluccio's, the special florentine chocolate, which turned out to not be made to order. instead, it was dispensed from a constantly churning little tub perched atop a shelf high above the espresso machine. it has to be constantly churned, because, as i found out, if left to sit for any period of time, a skin quickly forms. the drink itself is like a runny pudding, and tastes a bit of cornstarch. whuh?
the second one was from the tate modern. you can get a plain hot chocolate, or one with cream and marsmallows. they skimp on neither.
well folks, i'm on to my third variant of cold in about five weeks, horrible squishy bouts of spongyhead and phlegm in hues spanning the spectrum from clear to bright green to murky brown. in between each cold are endless spasms of residual asthmatic coughing.
tonight i washed down an antihistamine, a couple of puffs from a purple inhaler, and a vitamin c pill with a glass of tea. i'm not sure if this renders the medication useless. at least, i mean, it can't be bad; not like washing down valium with bourbon, for example. we shall see.
the tea is from a can that i've had in and out of the fridge for the last year or so (though i wouldn't be surprised if it actually turned out to be two years old). what happens is, i put it in the fridge, planning to drink it, and then in the meantime an influx of new groceries makes me take it out again to make room. but so tonight, it is finally over, this in-and-out tea saga.
this is what the can says:
"It's time to Pure. Pure life,
pure time, with pure mind.
Pure taste, with heart.
Little sugar, just black,
pure tea. In Famouse House."
you see why i had to get it.
Served on Tuesday, May 16, 2006 at 08:47 p.m.
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[ back cover, "apples for jam" ]
last week i bought a new desk ornament: 300gb of space, cleverly hidden in a compact block of industrial plastics. when i say "last week" i mean "thursday night"; around dinnertime, i clicked my mouse on the purchase button, and shortly after lunch on friday, a courier knocked on my door with the parcel in hand. if only all internet shoping could be like this. i bought an external hard drive once, years ago. it was all of 2gb, and cost me $800. so i'm much happier with the new one, which cost less than half that, and which allowed me last night, for the first time ever, to back up my computer (which has been making a disconcerting whirring noise of late). if you live in sydney and would like to pay substantially less than retail for all manner of computer stuff, and have it delivered to you before teatime, you could try shoping here.
this weekend i bought a lovely book of colourful and tasty treats, "apples for jam" by tessa kiros, despite my vow not to buy any more cookbooks ever. having finally decided that i didn't really need a copy of "falling cloudberries", i was ambushed by this book. it's sort-of italian, and the food is photographed on vintage tablecloths or vintage china, and there are kids' drawings, and a recipe for pudding made of greek yoghurt and condensed milk. and a bookmark of pink satin ribbon. right beside it on the shelf was the next book that i vow not to get: nigel slater's "kitchen diaries", which has none of those things that make "apples for jam" so warm and sparkly, and which reads like what this blog would be if it were better. hem.
next week, fingers crossed, i will be buying a ticket to pearl jam. ridiculous! aren't we too old to be doing this? (clearly, no, because while i haven't rushed out and bought the album, i did hand over good money for the latest "rolling stone" with eddie of the cover) i have seen pearl jam five times. in 1995, i slept out overnight on the pavement outside the ticketing booth, showed up late at my newish job the next morning, and watched the band, small as ants, from the nosebleed seats. in 1998, deep in the throes of that job laying out pop magazines, i wrangled my way into three shows, two of them in the moshpit. in 2003, post-rothskilde, there were no more moshpits, and no more pop magazines. the seats weren't too bad: the band were as big as... large ants. who knows what this year will bring. next week i'll be sitting here, finger poised on my mouse, hoping the ticketing site doesn't get shut down by traffic overload, hoping the seats won't be too crap in an arena twice the size of previous shows -- stadium rock!! whatever. there'll be guitars, and eddie will start singing, and it'll be really, really good! waarrgh!
Served on Sunday, May 14, 2006 at 10:40 a.m.
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your trusty correspondent on the isle of wight, circa 1974, already cultivating a sneer of disdain for anything less than artisanal gelato (though still happy to guzzle whatever you might stick in front of her).
just as it was thirty years ago, it was my father's idea to make a trip to the isle of wight this time 'round. what i thought was, eh, it's in a beatles' song; can't be bad. we even rented a cottage.
in two days on the isle of wight, in-between car ferries, it is theoretically possible to have six, maybe eight, cream teas. this would depend on whether or not you'd have a cream tea at teatime, after substituting cream teas for all other main meals. the number of cream teas we actually ended up having is: two. hngh. but don't hand-lettered signs like this make you want to go the extra mile?
no? what about this one?
the sign outside the first tea shoppe we tumbled into, late in the afternoon after a rainy morning spent in a flamingo park, which served up their clotted cream in hygienically sealed plastic tubs:
mmm... appetising... but after the lid was removed and the crusty yellow cream scum scraped off the top, all went according to plan.
the next day we had much more luck with cinammon scones and already-decanted cream.
but it's not all about cream teas is it? what of the other regional british delights one may encounter on this wee island off the main island? amidst warning noises emitted by those who'd already seen behind the counter, my father ordered a cappuccino in a sandwich shoppe in an olde village. how they make it is, the guy behind the counter tears open a little sachet with the word "cappuccino" printed gaily on it, empties it into a cup, adds hot water and stirs. it's even pre-sweetened. when it arrives at the table, it will be accompanied by a little square of good dark chocolate. if you ordered a normal coffee instead, you might whiten it with this:
"a blend of glucose syrup and vegetable fat"
i'm not saying the food on the isle of wight is not tasty. there was the first meal off the boat, in a greasy diner on the main street of ryde, where a mother sat fagging into her son's chips, and the friendly counter woman warned me against the king-sized breakfast on the basis of it being really quite big (and also containing black pudding); the delicious and authentic indian takeaway later that night: curry, biryani and chapati eaten in the toasty warm kitchen of our cottage; and then dinner at the crab the following evening: a brie, mushroom and cranberry wellington, in which everything was wrapped in puff pastry and served with potatoes, vegetables and a jug of mustard-watercress sauce.
but it's not all about gorging oneself on rich food is it? what of your father's longing to rekindle the magic of your childhood, when no-one had disappointed anyone else, and years of recrimination and regret had yet to become an insurmountable heap? see, now he has a fresh baby with whom to begin anew.
Served on Thursday, May 11, 2006 at 02:18 p.m.
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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.
Served on Wednesday, May 10, 2006 at 09:31 p.m.
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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?
Served on Tuesday, April 25, 2006 at 08:29 p.m.
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[ 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.
Served on Sunday, April 23, 2006 at 09:00 p.m.
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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!
Served on Tuesday, April 11, 2006 at 12:16 p.m.
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