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good morning.
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Served on Thursday, June 28, 2007 at 08:52 a.m.
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i chanced upon this new ride at the mall this afternoon.
i thought you might like to see it too.
don't it make you smile?
Served on Wednesday, June 27, 2007 at 10:15 p.m.
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nonetheless. i am crashing forth with our plan to meet up with boy and kid in melbourne next week. cleverly, i am even getting there two days before they do, on an amazing $70 plane ticket (one that leaves at 7am, but. anyway.).
so far the itinerary is:
DAY ONE
1. arrive in melbourne, 8.45am.
2. koko black for breakfast.
3. exhibition of sneakers at the art gallery.
4. gertrude street + brunswick street.
5. dinner at lord of the fries.
DAY TWO
1. belgian waffles for breakfast.
or maybe a pastry at the markets?
2. pixar exhibition at acmi.
3. scarf festival at craft victoria.
4. "blades of glory".
did i miss anything?
i wonder if i can wrangle dinner at the press club. and a crabapple cupcake at the prahran market. hmm... maybe that is just too ambitious.
Served on Wednesday, June 27, 2007 at 02:07 p.m.
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i don't get to wear my rainboots too often, a birthday gift from a few years ago, from my sister -- one gift of thirty that she mailed me, madly, when i turned thirty. but today they kept my feet warm and dry in the big wet.
my house is the big empty this week; boy and maeve gone bush. yesterday, after waking at 5.30am to wave them off into the not-quite-sunrise, i tried to get back to sleep and then stayed in bed until ten-thirty, finishing off the novel that's taken me many months and false starts and week-long lapses to get through. then, feeling unsettled, i tidied the house. i popped out to buy some art supplies, and lunch from bagel house. the NY reuben: pastrami, sauerkraut, pickles, cheese, all steaming in a toasted dill bagel. i rented a DVD from a hole in the wall. you reserve your movie online, show up at the great dispensing machine on the street, swipe your card, listen to the chunk-chunk of machinery, and then "infernal affairs 3" slides out the slot. (video store clerks? so 90s.) i bought tofu. i came home, and drew.
today, i drew (work) and painted (a dollhouse, pink). put on my boots, went back to the hole in the wall, got out "the devil wears prada". at the post office, i bought the selvage of reg mombassa's big things stamps. at about life, i propped myself up at the counter with a bottle of honey ginger beer, and ate a plate of bruschetta: three slices of perfectly toasted, garlic-infused bread, topped with marinated button mushrooms; artichoke puree; marinated peppers with pesto and goat cheese. and then because i could, i stopped at the fine food store and bought a tub of gundowring raspberry ice cream. for later.
i came home and drew some more. i'm working on a publication for an arts organisation -- a sort of legal-aid-for-artists organisation. so i sent them a bunch of sketches for the cover design, and thought (hopefully) that they might go for the... dare i say, spunky, quirky, striking one. instead, they picked the ultra-traditional one: drawings of various artists' tools contained within a grid. sigh. at least it will be the easiest one to produce.
i put on the heater, and a radio birdman LP. i lit my spicy tea-scented candle. i traced the roughs i had drawn this morning. because i have no lightbox, i trace standing up, with my paper flat against the window. i can only trace in the daytime, and it makes my arms ache.
my house is the big empty, and this hole that has opened up inside me, sunday night, things were said about mistakes made, shaky ground shifts again.
Served on Tuesday, June 26, 2007 at 05:32 p.m.
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i stopped by my new favourite shop the other day -- adriano zumbo -- for a chorizo-and-olive baguette, to have with a bowl of the cauliflower and cumin soup i'd made the day before, with a whole cauliflower i'd bought for $1.82.
down the other end of the counter, a vision in pink caught my eye. little blocks lined up in a tidy row, and at the very front was a little card that said:
WIMBLEDON
pain d'epice and pistachio base, baked white chocolate cheesecake, raspberry mousse, creme fraiche.
ostensibly a white chocolate and raspberry cheesecake. a fairly classic combination... but with all sorts of insane detail. look! plump raspberries. chopped pistachios. white chocolate shards with arty marbling. squiggles of pink-tinged creme fraiche.
it was a fairly straightforward transaction up until this point: i was immediately won over by this cake, i had to have one, i placed my order...
and then the counterboy said, "that website, ragingyoghurt, is that you?"
GAH. sprung.
happily, the only chastisement i received was, "stop calling me 'the counterboy'!"
so, the boy behind the counter, his name is charlie. and in case you were wondering, the macarons that day were mandarin, and hazelnut.
but i had my mind on other things.
Served on Friday, June 22, 2007 at 08:39 p.m.
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the coughing started towards the end of matt moran's masterchef theatre at the good food and wine show. as matt moran arranged raspberries atop a creme base, the one sharp point at the back of my throat grew into a great spluttering fit. i don't think it caused too much disruption; the applause for the raspberry tart drowned me out.
but i have been coughing for just over two weeks now. at its worst it was the kind of cough that brings up brown and lumpy from my lungs. now, the germs seem to have all gone, but i wake up at four in the morning, still coughing, and the only way to get back to sleep is to watch cindy crawford's informercial ("i never thought i'd be in an informercial..." she says, not batting an eyelid.) and read another chapter of "snow".
having only vicariously experienced the good food show of previous years via grab your fork, i asked helen for some tips. "bring a backpack... get $25 worth of samples," she offered helpfully.
so we hit the ground eating, deborah and i: lavosh bread topped with figs and white cheese, unusual jams -- strawberry-balsamic vinegar-black pepper -- on bite-sized scones, little cups of ready-peeled crabmeat, south australian pasta sauce made with south australian tomatoes, pomegranate green tea, chocolate...
for me, the show was all about chocolate. five minutes in we had found an organic chocolate stand with samples of buttermilk chocolate ("it is very sweet," warned the samplegirl. and it was.) then we found the lindt stand, where a lady distributed raspberry lindor balls, and right behind her stood another lady handing out orange lindor balls. then the adora stand, where you present your hand, palm up, and the kind counter ladies filled it with callebaut chocolate buttons. the ikea stand missed a great opportunity to supermarket their range of swedish food (they were selling kitchens) but there was an enormous bowl of daim candies for the taking. not an hour into the show, we were walking down the aisles, woozy and lightheaded. but not one to let a feeling of unwellness stop me from eating chocolate, i plundered the sample trays of the three or four other organic chocolate stands, a generous hunk of a triple chocolate cookie and a teaspoon of wattle seed white chocolate mousse.
we sampled savoury for a bit -- dried figs, fish tofu, curry on rice (twice!), corn chips -- and then we bought the donna hay magazine show bag. curiously, it contained no donna hay products (besides the magazine, which irritates me), but was startlingly value for money. $7.95 bought us a couple of mini samples: a small packet of cardboard corn cakes and a tiny bottle of shower oil, but also a host of full-sized products like a pump pack of liquid hand soap, a tin of moroccan spice flavour rub, a 750g carton of raw sugar, a dozen dishwasher tablets, a pack of disposable plates edged with blue daisies, and a loaf of bread (!). [edit 22/06: and a three-pack of chocolate brownie-muffin bites, and a bottle of fiji water.]
across the aisle, the delicious magazine showbag upped the stakes with gourmet samples and a bottle of wine and a coffee voucher and a lindt chocolate cupcake, but you only got the showbag if you took out a subscription to the magazine. fair enough. but in a glorious twist of fate, deborah bought herself a subscription, and then handed me the cupcake. thanks, lady!
and so it was this moist, dark cupcake with the lush chocolate ganache that sat in my lap during the matt moran cooking show, though it didn't really make it past the first few minutes. being in row g, we missed out on the plate of salt and pepper squid that got passed 'round the early birds up front, but he sure made it look easy, cleaning the squishy beast. "even simple enough for donna," he quipped. then he picked up his cookbook several times, stroking the cover gently, like a proud papa.
the theatre disgorged right by the glitzy display of curtis stone's new cookware range. silicone sheets with shallow star-shaped moulds for making wafers. double-walled glass ramekins. nice, and of course, we need more celebrity chef cookware. but the bright yellow C logo all lit up like broadway gave us the giggles.
we did a last lap around the exhibition hall, to buy the things which we'd been listing in our heads. there were other things we might have bought, at special show prices, if those prices hadn't been tied to unmanageable quantities like five tins of powdered stock, or four bottles of soy sauce, for $10. (though at the kikkoman stand, we learnt that a teaspoon or a tablespoon of soy sauce in a dessert such as a lemon tart could really bring out the... tartness. when quizzed further, the counterman admitted that a tablespoon would actually be a lot, and the recipe developer actually recommended more like a teaspoon. perhaps the recommendation should actually be no soy sauce whatsoever in your dessert. anyone care to try this?)
so for me, what ended up in my shopping bag were three bars of single-region lindt dark chocolate (and a coupon for a free lindt macaron at the lindt cafe) for $5; the $25 adora chocolate showbag containing one each of their sixteen truffles, a dark chocolate bar, a bag of chocolate-enrobed turkish delight (from iran), and another mini belgian chocolate bar; and a carton of the organic triple chocolate cookies sampled earlier in the day.
way earlier. a week ago, i asked helen if two hours would be enough to see everything. wisely, she'd said to budget for three. as we left the exhibition hall, an announcement came through that the show would be closing in 15 minutes. i guess this means we'd been there close to six hours.
the show closed at six, but by five, the exhibitors had already begun scrubbing down their counters, and the samples were long gone. en route to the exit though, we were stopped in our tracks, because the good man at king island dairy was still handing out little tubs of chocolate creme dessert. what it is, is pure thick cream (53% milk fat, no vegetable gums or whatever) combined with belgian chocolate. genius.
i immediately wanted more, but it was dark outside, and there was a healthy walk to the buses ahead of us, and how were we to know that halfway through, it would begin raining sideways?
Served on Tuesday, June 19, 2007 at 11:16 p.m.
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in the vicinity of about life yesterday, i discovered that i had less money in my bank account than i thought. like, five cents short of the minimum amount needed to make an atm withdrawal. KLA!
still, the $15 in my wallet was just enough to buy me a loaf of 7-grain sourdough, a small tub of roast pork, green apple and red cabbage salad (a very small tub, because the countergirl didn't fill it up all the way; $5.50 for a handful of thinly sliced apple and cabbage, and two pieces of pork is a little steep, methinks.), and, best of all, a fat, round house-baked beetroot bread roll.
not too dense, not too fluffy, and a beguiling shade of pink. the taste of beetroot is not strong, but it does have a faintly earthy flavour. i sandwiched the pork salad into it for lunch, and it was good.
this morning i awoke to deborah's magnificent and austere breakfast, and it became clear to me that i would have to follow suit; lightly toasted beetroot bread is made for buttery avocado and boiled egg.
and it's true what they say: if you give your egg a good swirl after immersing it in the pot, the yolk centres itself perfectly.
Served on Wednesday, June 6, 2007 at 12:18 p.m.
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another day, another macaron. or two! monday lunchtime, post-park, saw us tumble once again into adriano zumbo. my primary mission, because i had finally run out of bread in the house, was to try the chorizo-and-olive-stuffed baguette which i'd been eyeing for a couple of weeks: a club of bread into which had been baked sliced-up sausage and olives (and today, the counterboy informed me, also mushrooms and tomato.) you have questions, i'm sure: is it still a baguette if it has all this stuff in it, and cheese on top? the jury is still out on that one. is it tasty? oh yes. warmed up in the microwave, it was all moist salty bits all the way through a satisfyingly chewy dough. definitely not the featherweight baguette you might find around these parts (though who am i to judge them when i haven't actually set teeth on an actual frainch baguette).
and the macarons? the pistachio was plump and hefty, and very, very sweet. i would rather have had a stronger pistachio flavour, and maybe some discernable nuttiness. the lavender was intensely perfumed, very lavendery, which is terrific if you are a fan of the herb. i love it in a handcream or a fancy soap, but i've always been a bit overwhelmed by the floweriness when i've eaten it. so it was with this encounter. still, i was impressed with its true flavour and luscious texture.
i was drawn to these macarons because of their pale, dusty hues. i am working on a brand-redevelopment project at the moment, and one of the tasks has been to come up with a new colour palette of muted tones. i don't actually have to come up with the colours (or the layout, woohoo!) -- it's a collaborative project, and i get to discuss colours and typefaces and columns and footers with two other designers. it's great!
what i do get to do is draw the pictures. it's both a good thing and a bad thing, because i haven't done an illustration job in years, and i've been itching to get back into it, but because i haven't drawn to a brief in, well, years, it's been quite a challenge to get my head into that space. i think i may have the main character worked out though; now i have to get cracking on the host of crafty monsters.
anyway. while i was sitting here doodling blobby shapes holding paintbrushes this evening, i discovered the storm that was brewing over the new london olympic logo. (yes, i'm aware that i would probably get more drawing done if i weren't drawing at the edge of my desk with the internet on.) several clicks later, all i want to say at this point is, "how come i (will) never get paid £400,000 to design a logo?".
and also, why have they used that hideous font?
oh ok. and also, the logo was designed (according to the press release), "reflecting a brand savvy world where people, especially young people, no longer relate to static logos but respond to a dynamic brand that works with new technology and across traditional and new media networks." and so, the promotional video of coloured shards sweeping through the streets of london (in time with a slightly stressful and irritating soundtrack) actually works quite well. but then every time it appears -- the static logo, frozen onscreen -- argh!
the outline! the drop shadow! argh!
maybe they'll have to "print" it -- animated -- on e-paper.
[ edit: mere hours later, you will not find the colour shards video at the link above, because "new olympic logo causes epileptic fits". PAH.
Served on Tuesday, June 5, 2007 at 10:23 p.m.
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two weeks ago, the kid and i stood at the kitchen counter -- she, perched, with toes curled around the very edge of a dining chair -- sifting maccha powder into flour. we melted butter, we cracked eggs. we were finally giving the maccha madeleines a go (ref: the post, "the ethnic paris cookbook", right down the bottom of this page).
it started off great. a newly acquired madeleine pan, a pale green batter that had to sit overnight in the fridge. "and now, can we make the shell cakes?" asked the kid, periodically.
and finally, the next day, it was time. i tried to fill the madeleine tray to two-third's [is this apostrophe correct?] capacity as specified in the recipe, but there was so much of it that it came up to the brim. i whacked them in the oven for as long as the recipe said, and waited for it to be a bit puffed up, before turning down the temperature for a little more baking. and even given the unevenness and hotness of my oven, and the little blurb on the back of the madeleine tray packaging that extolled the superconducting properties of silicone, i wasn't quite expecting this:
they were puffed up way more than you might think possible, and yet, not quite enough, for each one had broken out the top of itself. the single one that hadn't blown its top seemed to have sprung a leak out of its side. a leaky tumour. when i removed them after the recommended baking time, it became clear that even though the outsides of the madeleines had browned quite nicely, and they had risen to majestic (ok, monstrous) heights in the oven, they still had quite runny insides. that tumour? it was still molten.
i gingerly removed one from the tray and bit into it, and it was not horrible. in fact, the parts that had cooked through had a nice spongy texture, slightly chewy, and a mild maccha-and-honey taste. i left the others to cool while i decided what to do. and when i returned, my alien pod cakes had turned into alien vagina cakes of doom.
i wonder if madeleines are the new macaron (the new cupcake?). deborah had a very successful run with her honey madeleines, and kathy turned out quite the golden bounty.
clearly some temperature tweaking is ahead of me. [grumble]
Served on Saturday, June 2, 2007 at 05:38 p.m.
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a week ago, my mum and i walked the gauntlet of cleveland street to stand in line at sopra, for a taste of the sydney italian festival prosciutto promotion. we stood for a long while, almost as long as it took to walk to waterloo from glebe, and then we gazed upon the handwritten board at the three-item-long special menu.
three.
it was written all in italian, but "melone" in the first one was pretty easy to decipher and came, tantalisingly with "gamberi", and i vaguely remembered that "agnello" in the third one is lamb, so twenty minutes later, when a waiter came 'round to see if we were waiting for something ("um, actually, yes, we are waiting for our orders to be taken"), that is what we ordered.
the middle option involved some sort of pasta and melanzane, and when it arrived at the next table, it turned out to be a penne-moulded-around-chopped-vegetables-and-baked sort of thing.
the prosciutto and melon salad was all colour and light, and the surprise thing (if you don't read so much italian) was that the third party was a tangle of fennel salad topped with two grilled prawns, tasting of sea and salt. the prosciutto was pink and springy, and tasted strongly of fresh pig. all delicious.
the lamb was a backstrap, wrapped in prosciutto, perched atop a small heap of baby vegetables -- carrots, potatoes, tiny artichokes, green beans -- and fat, flavoursome field mushrooms. it was very tasty, but the lamb was disappointingly tough. halfway through i figured that taking much smaller bites made it more manageable.
we shared it all, as well as a rocket and parmesan salad, because what our waiter said when i asked if the meals came with vegetables, was, "no". it was not a bad thing though, because if you have had another rocket and parmesan salad elsewhere, you might be expecting some dressed leaves crowned with a few shards of cheese. but. at sopra, the dressing is the cheese! tiny ground up bits of salty parmesan mixed into the oil, coating each rocket leaf, so you get cheesy flavour in every bite. genius! and the flakes of sea salt! so very salty!
as we cleaned our plates, we noticed that all the other tables had attentive waitpeople who explained the italian menu in great detail, and that the guest chef, massimo spigaroli (president of the italian prosciutto consortium) stopped at most of the tables to ask how everything was. we were afforded no such pleasantries, and so were equally tough (like a lamb backstrap) when it came to leaving a tip.
(noodlebowl has some very luscious pictures of the other prosciutto event.)
Served on Friday, June 1, 2007 at 10:57 p.m.
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if you can sense, just based on the amount of green goop coming out of a kid's nose, and the warbling noise at the base of her throat when she coughs, that more sickness is about to descend upon you, you might have a breakfast of soy and linseed spelt-sourdough toast, generously slathered in fresh goat curd and chesnut honey to make you feel better.
the first slice will be so wonderful that you will make another one, and then you will feel somewhat bloated for the rest of the day.
and then by early evening, you will feel the dull throb in your head, and the familiar tightness in the back of your throat that a purple strepsil can't quite shake.
(so you will make a pot of duck and sweetcorn congee for dinner -- using leftover chinatown roast duck and half a tin of sweetcorn kernals and a large hunk of ginger -- to make you feel better, and then you will feel somewhat bloated for the rest of the night.)
tasty, but.
Served on Friday, June 1, 2007 at 10:35 p.m.
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today's zumbo macaron: pear and vanilla. a lovely pale thing filled with a fresh pear ganache. sigh.
(deborah's got a real, live pic of it here.)
Served on Wednesday, May 30, 2007 at 10:08 p.m.
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quick! before i forget...
i went to new zealand, and all i got was this lousy photograph of a lousy airline meal. well, an exaggeration maybe: it wasn't "lousy" so much as "lacking". the pie gravy was gummy, but at least there were actual chunks of meat glued into it; there was cake, but it was cold, hard and dry; there was no fruit or veg, unless you count the tomato sauce. ok, lousy.
also, i did take more than this one photograph. just, surprisingly, nothing more of food.
we were in christchurch, because my father had a conference to attend, and invited everyone along for the ride. so while he met with colleagues and ate convention center fare all day, my mother, maeve and i...
walked the streets;
[ looking at the street map in the hotel room, we'd plan our expedition and set out for a long walk to something at the other end of the city. what we discovered is that christchurch is pretty small though, so we'd always reach our destination in about ten minutes. ]
went to the art gallery;
[ the christchurch art gallery is a just-right-sized museum for a couple of hours' exploration, and has a large activity room set up for children with puzzles and magnetic walls. when we were there, there was a gargantuan inflated rabbit sprawled across the main foyer, and another smaller one hiding in one of the galleries. just what a kid needs to be engaged with art: bunnies! ]
and explored the arts centre.
[ which is a city block worth of working studios, galleries, cafes and shops --including a much-lauded fudge shop -- and whose courtyard we stumbled into, to find ourselves amidst a cluster of medieval mosaic pillars. lovely.
except that as you got closer, you discovered that each pillar had been wrapped with printouts of intricate kaleidoscopes of people, an installation by korean artist, lee joong keun. lovely and amazing! ]
there was a lot of public art in that one city block.
but eventually, a kid gets tired of art, and starts asking to see penguins. we breezed through the international antarctic centre (in which there is a snow-filled room where you can put on a high-tech jacket and experience an antarctic storm with 40km/h winds -- breezy indeed! it may seem like a fun idea to start with, with the layer of powder snow on the ground, the cave in which to take shelter from the storm, and the slippery dip made of ice, but by the end, it will be a somewhat traumatic experience from which the kid cannot wait to escape), pausing long enough for the kid to throw the shriekiest of tantrums in the penguin enclosure. the penguins didn't care though; they were behind glass.
eventually, too, a father gets tired of conferencing, and we climbed aboard a rental car and headed out to the jade-green countryside. barely two hours out of the city, the kid painted the upholstery a fetching shade of vomit, so we stopped for a little rest at little river.
we spent the next three days in akaroa, a town where a volcano used to be. everywhere we turned, it was like looking at a picture postcard. a postcard on which a picture of a kid has been superimposed on it, eating a pink ice cream.
there was a lot of good eating, in particular a dinner by the cosy fireplace at ma maison, where every one of my three courses was perfect: akaroa salmon and caramelised scallops, resting on a salad of pickled diakon, mung bean and paw paw, finished with a lemon butter nage and a vanilla balsamic glace; followed by pressed terrine of confit duck and veal, with crispy bread and a seedless grape chutney; followed by double chocolate tart with maple syrup, vanilla bean ice-cream and a black forest sauce. what they did not say on the menu was that the tart also came with a great dollop of marscarpone, and that the black forest sauce was actually a little bowl of macerated cherries, which really pushed it that bit beyond just "perfect".
there was a lot of wool purchased. possumerino in fact, a non-pilling, lightweight, extra warm mix of sheep wool and possum fur. my mother must have been up for a special-service-in-pest-control award for keeping the pesky possum population down, because by the end of the trip she'd bought possum merino hat, gloves, socks, cardigans (three!), and had scored a scarf from the conference folk. oh! oh! and a possum fur collar!
unstoppable, my mother.
there was a lot of broken crockery in the artist's garden at linton. these days i am wary of too much whimsy, but the kid seemed to enjoy the crockery-covered cats and dogs, the ballerina table, the grand piano which housed a collection of succulents and played a selection of french cabaret standards sung by the local piaf... me? i found a small corridor, tiled with shards of mirror, just wide enough for a bench to sit and reflect upon this ex-volcano hanging off a little island in the south pacific ocean, and what a pretty good place it was to be.
Served on Tuesday, May 29, 2007 at 10:01 p.m.
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this just in from our correspondent in the field:
"baby had a great time. no nap.
on arrival, fed the guinea pigs, then off to michel for babycino.
then to playground where she spun and spun on an axis, and chased the cockatoos and ducks.
played stephen's drums like a maestro, then the trumpet, then the guitar.
enjoyed the braised pork and the rice drenched with its gravy. even dipped all her veg in the gravy.
(have you marinated the pork? she lives for that)
the to cecilia's for cupcake with icing and cream and charmed the pants off the folks there.
came back with 2 goodybags of cupcakes.
had her bath and was read many stories and sank contently into dreamland past 10 o'clock."
my mother's been trying to bond with the kid, but maevis has been playing to get.
"on tuesday po-po will take you to ee-po's house to see the rabbits and guinea pigs," she offered last week.
"actually," replied the kid, "you stay here and mummy will take me."
but so, after music class this morning, and dimsum this afternoon, i strapped her into the carseat and waved her off with my aunt and my mother, who were bubbling with gentle trepidation up front.
and then i went off to watch zodiac. and then leisurely browsed the aisles of jusco, where i found some yummy lychee-and-grapefruit hard candy and a box of double-maccha-dipped chocolate pretzel sticks.
a good day for all, then.
Served on Tuesday, May 22, 2007 at 11:01 p.m.
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and so a month goes by. it kicked off with a txt from a concerned well-wisher, letting me know that all the pictures on this page had been replaced by a dramatic highway-by-night photograph. dramatic indeed! my domain had quietly expired, who knows when, and evidently my registrar is not the kind that sends out a renewal reminder. after an almost frenzied exchange with the helpdesk, who helpfully sent an email which confirmed, "your domain name expired. you were supposed to log in and renew the domain...", i typed my credit card details into a box, hoped for the best, and then left a few hours later for new zealand.
my good mother is visiting this month. her first week here, we did the rounds: about life, circle cafe, bar contessa, david jones food hall... we had every intention of doing sopra, but barrelling up crown street, we passed by bills and our plan came undone. she'd been talking about trying the ricotta hotcakes for years, and i figured it was now or never. and now, perhaps, never again; is it neccessary to have that much pancake on a plate? tchk. we shall try again for sopra this friday: as part of the sydney italian festival, they are presenting "special prosciutto menus"!
we had cupcakes from cupcakes on pitt (the promising sticky date cupcake was a bit dry and quite heavy and strangely muffin-like -- i am not recommending it; the strawberries and cream was much more delightful -- pretty pink cake with fresh cream and a single sliced up strawberry), and cupcakes from the colonial bakery at the milsons point train station (the lemon cupcake had a generous dollop of whipped cream and a splodge of dayglo yellow lemon jellycandycurd), and then my mum briefly talked about a new cupcake cookbook and how she might buy it and bake cupcakes in her impending retirement. (she has since recanted, and will now be baking muffins, which really sums up the difference between us, i think.)
we did circle cafe again...
and for a week in-between, we went -- my olds, my kid and me -- to new zealand, where babycinos are called "fluffies", and the marshmallows that come with them are invariably a little stale. the lamb is delicious though, in all its forms: lamb pie, lamb burgers, more lamb pie, lamb salad. somehow i photographed none of it.
this lamb salad is from about life, and is one of the best things i've eaten, ever. tender roasted meat, shaved fennel, pomegranate seeds, this gorgeous beast i captured.
Served on Tuesday, May 22, 2007 at 09:11 p.m.
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so, the second kid-free friday went according to plan. dropped her off at playschool just in time for morning tea. in the midst of quiet munching children, there was a place set at the table for her, a bowl containing a slice of apple and a slice of orange. she was hesitant and shy and nervous, but the magnetic pull of the fruit was too strong.
i walked into the city, and on to surry hills, to the ray hughes gallery, where the most amazing show by lucy culliton, "domestic science", is on for another week or so, so hurry! hurry over to see it.
it's a hundred and sixty-five paintings and drawings of the best cakes, preserves, decorated arrowroot biscuits, knitted dolls, coat hanger covers, stuff at a regional show, all painted with love and gusto, candy colours, dabs of paint so high off the board you want to lick it. well, i did anyway. i mean, i did want to. lucy culliton is probably my favourite contemporary australian painter, and not just because she paints glorious buckets of hot chips and sauce, or trays of fairy cakes; her series of cactuses is as gorgeous as the rest. i had come to the gallery with a secret mission: i wanted to buy one of the paintings for myself.
because how much higher will her star rise? and how affordable will a painting be at the next show? and how much do her paintings fill me with joy?
plenty. i walked through the exhibition once, and again, and i saw how many red spots were on the main wall already: the lamingtons had been sold, and the festive iced cake covered in sprinkles. i tried to imagine that one of the remaining cakes could be mine: a second-prize orange cake; a doily covered in pink-iced cupcakes; a cream-and-jam-filled victoria sponge (truly the most lickable of the lot). i paced the wall for half an hour. i had to leave, and i walked down the street to the bourke street bakery, where i sat on an orange milk crate on the sidewalk, and meditated over a pork and fennel sausage roll and a belgian hot chocolate. it fortified me.
when i returned to the ray hughes gallery, ray hughes -- who had earlier seen me with my nose mere centimetres away from a chocolate cake -- smiled and gestured at the woman in bluejeans and cowboy shirt sitting opposite him, beneath the wall of plenty. "this is lucy," he said.
and what i said was, "i think that one of these paintings is mine, but i don't know which one yet." and then, because she looked quite mystified, i said, "i think that i am going to buy one; i just haven't worked out which one."
because she does not know me, she asked, "cake or knitting?", and she was friendly and kind and above all, unprecious, and told me about the names she had written on the winners' certificates -- emmylou harris had won for the pink-iced cupcakes, and how she had visited a dozen or so regional shows and distilled the best into this fictional, best-of-the-best lithgow agricultural society show, (and how lithgow wasn't actually the hotbed of homecraft that she'd conjured up), and how she'd been a graphic designer a long time ago and gotten tired of the routine and gone to art school and would never go back to moving type about a page...
and i paced back and forth some more, and at times she would take this piece or the other off the wall and bring it into the sunlight, so that i could see just how luminous the cream filling in the victoria sponge really was, and how supple the red jam. and i wandered into the back room for respite, this little room filled with lively and understanding portraits of barnyard animals and exotic parrots; lucy's friend rachel fairfax had accompanied her to all the country shows, and had documented the animals as lucy studied the food and craft.
and when i slunk back to the wall for maybe the fourth or fifth time, she laughed, not unkindly. i told her i'd narrowed it down to two: the pink cupcakes on the doily, and the resplendant packet butter cake, which showed me something more to love every time i came back to it. she put them side-by-side on a bench, and then it was clear.
we shook on it, and she placed a red dot next to #81. my first piece of art! i felt pretty great.
and then i got home, and minutes later my print rep called to let me know that the proofs of the book were online for approval. we signed off on them just after 4pm. and then i felt extremely great.
i think though, that i will have to go back to the show, to see it all again without that spectre of needing to buy something gnawing a hole in my belly. bring on kid-free day the third!
Served on Saturday, April 28, 2007 at 10:28 p.m.
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how has a week gone by already? it's like time travel i tells ya. last sunday morning we were a flurry of activity, pretzel-dipping. this time i roped in eager little hands: grabby fingers to break up a lindt bar, agile fingers to fish pretzels out of the chocolate bath, grubby fingers from samples along the way.
we packed a picnic then: buffalo mozzarella and pesto sandwich for me, tasty cheese and avocado sandwich for the kid, and a little box of sliced tomatoes for on-site insertion. a couple of mandarins in the basket, and a few chocolate-dipped pretzels for good measure. we were off to the acoustica festival, just up the hill and then down the hill from home.
from the crest we looked down into birchgrove oval, and it was like a quaint village through the clearing. an arc of little white tents lined the perimeter, some festooned with balloons, proferring all manner of festival foods, sunglasses and quick massages. there was a giant inflatable slide, and a swing-carousel, and something with a row of clowns' heads that swiveled to and fro.
in the middle of it all there was a boy and his guitar. he was the first act of the day, and the front row was his friends from high school. there was no second row -- it was very early in the proceedings -- so we sat a couple metres back, on my $10 "burberry" picnic rug, and minutes later, as he played an elliott smith song, all the food was gone.
"can we go and buy some ice cream?" asked the kid. it was a reasonable request, even though the new zealand natural ice cream stand was charging an unreasonable $4 per scoop.
we returned to our rug to catch as many minutes of act number two as it took for the pink ice cream to be eaten, and then, "can we go to the face painting?"
we returned to our rug -- one of us hopping all the way -- to see the third act of the day, but it was perhaps too much to ask of the kid. she was already being pulled in the direction of the playground up the hill. we left in the middle of some pretty good 12-bar blues.
considering the last live music i saw was baby proms at the opera house, and the second last live music was a playschool concert, i was pretty happy.
this makes me happy too: the six-month expired box of royce nama chocolate in my fridge is still completely edible! these little bricks of fine chocolate, each one dusted in cocoa powder, pack a punch of dark chocolate flavour and melt away to nothing on my tongue. actually, the google translated page tells it better: "it is the raw chocolate of the sweetness moderate adult. ...the elegant fragrance starts overflowing, V.S.O.P was blended in the bitter chocolate. tastefulness it is the raw chocolate of the adult taste where the elegant fragrance and the bitter impression of overflowing do not accumulate."
all true. it is made with fresh cream, and apparently has a shelf life of one month. but i have put it to the test, and six months past 27 october 2006, they are still perfect. now that's time travel.
Served on Saturday, April 28, 2007 at 09:15 p.m.
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torn.
torn between sleep, or blogging, or watching brainless tv, or "reading" that 754-page edition on american vogue that i found at the library last week. 754!
the book project? yes, a mere 124 pages, but it still lingers, the way a cartoon character leaves a dust cloud in the shape of itself after it's skedaddled. the book lingers as the final, last-minute sunday midnight change to the final last-minute friday 5pm change. it lurks as the too big postscript files that refuse to be distilled on my seven-year-old computer that has to run select programs in classic mode. it taunts as the limit on the client's bank transfer which prohibits the upfront payment being made to the printer which prevents the printer from telling me if the files i sent through last week are ok.
as it turns out, hmm, not really, which is why 6GB worth of raw postscript files are right now being burned onto DVDs for a second time lucky.
so let's think back to happier times. like last friday, when i finally returned to adriano zumbo pastissier, and casually asked the counter boy (not adriano this time), "what flavours are the macarons today?"
rose. olive oil and vanilla. gianduja.
i don't know that i could really have considered choosing just one, so in the end i got just one of each.
these are great macarons. they are hefty with moist and crumbly almond body -- not like the weird, dessicated hollow shells i have encountered in other, lesser macarons -- and their ganache fillings unusually soft ("runny" sounds bad, but really, it is so good). the rose one, gorgeous pink and all heady perfume, had a filling with a sort of evaporated milky flavour. it reminded me of bandung, that lurid indonesian beverage of rose syrup and milk, which i am quite partial to. i'm guessing it's actually a white chocolate-based concoction.
the olive oil registered, not unpleasantly, on the roof of my mouth. it was an intriguing sensation: the ripe flavour without the oiliness, coupled with the fact that it was actually a sweet biscuit. i didn't detect a lot of vanilla flavour in the filling, but the texture of it was sublime. i had been curious about this particular macaron since reading about robyn's pierre herme specimen, so now, curiousity sated and fond memories remain.
the gianduja... i think i'd really rather have a piece of actual velvety gianduja, studded with whole hazelnuts. but in macaron form, it was a classy hazelnutty biscuit with a not overly chocolatey finish.
and what business did i have, traipsing into patisseries on a friday afternoon?
friday morning, i had dropped the kid off to her very first day of playschool. i was kid-free! she'd been talking about going to school for some months (though i think the fact that she'd get to carry a backpack was the main attraction), and when we went for the open day a few weeks ago, and she saw that the kids in possum room were in the midst of a ballet class, she lunged at the door making little clawing motions (much like a small marsupial, no?) and said, "can i go in? and do ballet?"
thursday morning, when we attended a brief orientation session, and she discovered the sandpit in the back, she threw herself belly down in the sand, and swam around in it for a good while. she painted a picture in yellow and purple on the classroom easel. she went headfirst down the play yard slide.
so. friday morning, when i dropped her off, she got all quiet, and concentrated on the toy acquarium table while i made myself scarce. when i called to check on her at 11, she was busy with playdough. when i returned to pick her up at 4.30, after a day of grocery shopping and errands, she was busy making a plastic vegetable dinner at the wooden stove, and the afternoon's face painting was now a half-butterfly smeared away from cheeks down. she was giddy with excitement and smiling. she can't wait to go back again. phew.
Served on Monday, April 23, 2007 at 10:50 p.m.
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mashed potatoes. truly the gift that keeps giving. a little over a week ago, i made mash out of four enormous golden delight potatoes. the portion we did get around to eating -- with a crispy-skinned salmon fillet and a side of mixed asian mushrooms quickly sauteed in oil-butter-garlic -- i mixed in the last few brussels sprouts in the crisper, thinly sliced and fried up with minced garlic. mmm... smooth, creamy mash with bitter green crunch.
the next evening, following too much lunch at a chinatown foodcourt, i made a light dinner of fishcakes! a tin of red salmon, a tin of sweetcorn kernels, a good grating of butternut pumpkin, a cursory beaten egg and the leftover mashed potato: squished up in-between my fingers and formed, most of it, into palm-sized patties. these i coated in an improvised dusting of flour, polenta, pepper and salt. and then i fried them up to golden crunchy brown and we had three helpings for dinner -- that's five or six fishcakes. huff.
but quite a bit of leftover mash, bulked out with salmon and corn and pumpkin, yields quite a lot of fishcake mix. so we had fishcakes for lunch sunday, and then the boy left for south america on tuesday morning, and then i fried up the remainder mix for fishcakes on tuesday night, and then, surely tempting the gods of food poisoning, had the very last two on wednesday afternoon for lunch, as a sandwich, with sliced tomatoes and dijonnaise. yum.
after i served up dinner tuesday night, and before i was quite ready to sit down and eat, the kid scrambled up onto my chair, and was reaching past my plate to get to the spoon in her bowl.
she said, "i want to eat some of your yellow thing. your yummy yellow thing."
"you mean, the fishcakes?" i asked. she had previously been dissecting them with her bare hands, picking out all the corn first up, and then maybe eating a handful or two of the mushy innards.
"no," she said. "your yummy creamy yellow thing."
"oh," i said. "um. that is mayonnaise mixed with mustard. i'm not sure that you will like it. but you can try." so she did.
"was it yummy?" i asked.
"no."
Served on Monday, April 23, 2007 at 09:47 p.m.
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call me common, but i really like sweet, flavoured yoghurt. if they would just make a chocolate cheesecake yoghurt, i would be the first in line. but it looks like the brief period of a couple years ago, where the refrigerated shelves held such exotic flavours as blueberry pancake yoghurt, is just so two years ago. these days, it's all the regular fruit flavours, or vanilla. so i don't really buy the glop anymore.
that said, i really do like the new range from dairy farmers. in particular, i really like the packaging of the new range from dairy farmers, particularly in particular the raspberry-and-cream one. just look at those dewy, plump raspberries, covering the entire surface of the waxed paper cup. it feels good, this waxed paper cup, a hefty little thing in your hand, being pulled off the shelf and into your basket.
it is thick and creamy, as the label says, even though the good, honest country folk in the ad don't say anything about the gelatine, tapioca-based thickener and vegetable gum in the mix. whatever. it feels good going down.
it is pale pink, and not cloyingly sweet (though this would really depend on your personal sweetness threshold), and there are bits of real raspberries in there. i thought it might be extra good if i added some fresh berries (fresh from the punnet) too. and it was!
Served on Saturday, April 21, 2007 at 02:35 p.m.
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in the midst of one of those two-hour, long-distant calls to nellicent the other night, i asked, "um, where is your sainbury's?". i thought that i'd made it seem an innocent question, apropos of nothing, though my index finger was making random loop-de-loops on the magazine page.
she gave it serious thought. "oh. it's in [name of suburb], on [name of street] and --," she paused, before the shrieking began. "i know what you want!!"
"argh!" i shrieked back, "i want it! i want it!"
"i know what you want! i have already bought it for you, in my head!"
"well," i said, "i hope that you are not talking about cheese."
because i surely wasn't. a week ago, i'd read a story on anya hindmarch, in "vogue", that mentioned a shopping bag she'd designed for sainsbury's in the UK, in one of those everybody-wins exercises to reduce plastic bag consumption. and what a bag. before it's even gone on sale at the supermarkets, it's already sold out its online pre-sale allotments, and gone on to appear on ebay at forty times its original cost.
we went on to discuss the logistics of obtaining one (or two!) of these bags -- which sainsbury's branches might sell them, and if she might have to rope in one of her friends in case there was a one-per-customer limit (there is!) -- and now that i've read a bit more about the madness, it all seems just a bit too stella-at-target. so perhaps i won't be getting one after all.
but what better time to spruik the raging yoghurt shopping bag? ok, so it's not designed by anya hindmarch, is not a limited edition, will cost you more than £5, and will make me a couple of bucks too... but you can hang it over your shoulder and carry all manner of groceries in it, just like the sainsbury's one. anyway, don't you just need another canvas shopping bag? i myself have a selection of eight or ten hanging from my laundry door.
and while we're on the hindmarch comparisons, look what i made saturday morning: chocolate-covered pretzels.
after breakfast (sour cherry jam on buttered rye and caraway bagel, yum) i melted down a 100g bar of lindt dark chocolate in a large bowl over a pot of simmering water. i tipped in a bag of salted pretzels, and stirred until everyone was well-coated. i fished them out with a bamboo skewer and laid them out to set on a sheet of grease-proof paper. it's an effortless and addictive snack, i tell you, with the bittersweet chocolate (just a thin enough coat to start melting in the warmth of your fingertips), and the sharp crunch of the pretzel, and the lingering surprise of a random salt chip.
Served on Sunday, April 15, 2007 at 01:42 p.m.
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there is an urgency to these posts, isn't there? is it necessary to have four posts in a day? it's just, they are back today.
after i considered bagels for breakfast, i briefly considered bagels for lunch. in the end, i took myself and my "new yorker" to circle cafe. because, when will i get another chance to sit in a nice cafe and drink iced tea with mint and lemon, and chew and swallow at a normal, leisurely pace, and not worry about little grabby (grubby) fingers reaching into my plate? despite my anticipation of lots (well, several at least) of quiet, quality meals out over the course of the week, this was the first such undertaking.
well. tuesday, having read about har mee in the city, i'd set out in search of these elusive noodles; apparently they are only made tuesday, friday and saturday. apparently. i joined the queue, inched forward slowly, placed my order at the counter, and then didn't quite understand when the countergirl said, "there is no har mee today, because we did not work yesterday."
she filled my silence with explanation, something about how the day before was the easter monday public holiday, so they were treating tuesday as regular monday, and the rest of the week would be a day out. (and the rest of the year, presumably. what the hell?) i asked her what the special for "monday" was, and she gestured towards a laminated poster on the wall that said "kueh teow soup". ch. she was already looking over my shoulder, taking the order of the man behind me. i suppose my eyes had already told her that i wouldn't be eating there that day, even before my mouth did.
so there was that attempt.
anyway.
they make a fine nicoise salad at circle. mesclun, lightly dressed, punctuated with strips of roasted red capsicum, pungent caperberries, chunks of good tinned tuna, and on top, a criss-cross of whole anchovy fillets. a hard-boiled egg and a roma tomato, quartered, radiate from the periphery. the last time i had this, there were whole olives hidden throughout, but this afternoon they seemed to have run out. nevermind. it is a large, flavoursome meal, even when you don't count the little basket that comes with, holding a stump of house-baked baguette, and two pats of butter.
i stretched it out, my last solitary lunch hour: i had a hot belgian chocolate afterwards, drank it in sloooow sips. and then i waddled off and bought some dinner groceries, came home, put stuff away, cleaned out the puddle of sour, brown water at the bottom of the crisper drawer, and heard the key turn in the door. heard her squeaky little voice waft downstairs, "hello, mum!"
good thing i'd gotten that amazing, twinkly gingerbread heart at circle, to go.
Served on Friday, April 13, 2007 at 10:04 p.m.
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for breakfast this morning i had a cup of black tea and six (eight?) daim candies. it didn't have to be that way; i had considered walking up the street into rozelle, to the newly-opened bagel house cafe. when i rode the bus past yesterday the doors had finally been thrown open, and there was plenty of hot, steamy action in the back. but it would have been too indulgent, no? to go out for fresh bagels when there were still three from saturday in the freezer? probably not.
this week past, i've eaten my way through toasted fruit bread, blueberry bagels (twice), swiss cheese and tomatoes on toast (that was tuesday, when i thought i should eat something that wasn't just sugarbread, in preparation for the afternoon's bloodletting), and yesterday, delicious spelt crepes stuffed with spinach and fetta, and topped with sticky fig jam, at the fair trade coffee company (i had tea).
the day before, breakfast had been the last three profiteroles from the profiterole cake. backtrack: the thursday before good friday, the last day of term, the boy's staffroom had given him a farewell cake: a dozen or so custard-filled puffs, arranged on a large shortbread biscuit base. the whole structure was covered in chocolate and sprinkled with tiny coloured sugar flowers. oh, and foil-wrapped chocolate eggs strategically positioned in the swirly chocolate border. he got through a couple of profiteroles that night, and then friday, he left it in the fridge when he drove off into the big brown. so there i was, alone in the house with most of a profiterole cake for company. what to do?
it was easier than i thought, a profiterole here, a couple there, throughout the week, though the chocolate was compound, mixed up to have that certain oily consistency that you don't really object to until it's too late. you know how it is: you eat two profiteroles, and feel fine about eating the third, and that's when it wreaks its revenge.
Served on Friday, April 13, 2007 at 04:33 p.m.
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i finally went to see the tezuka exhibition at the art gallery on wednesday night, after a good day of shifting bits of text around the page. balance, right?
all those tiny, perfect, original drawings -- page after page, yellowed with age -- of astroboy and kimba and the other creations of a forty year career. the brush marks of still-white paint, drawn over with corrections. it made me want to weep, or draw. either.
i was wilting and hungry halfway through, so i went down to the gallery cafe and ordered chai: no longer listed as "chai latte" on the menu, thank god, and no longer delivered in a picardie glass. it came in a fat little teapot; pretty good tea service for three bucks. the sun had gone by then, on late-opening wednesday, so i sat at the counter against the big window, feeling the evening chill come through the plate glass. and i had to draw it, this perfect teapot. the priapism, sadly, is all my fault.
at a home decor shop yesterday, as i flipped through my notebook for window measurements, the shopgirl pointed at my drawing. "that's really good," she said, "do you do art?"
"um, sort of," i said. i told her about astroboy and how i was compelled to draw after.
"i used to do fine arts," she said, "but then i realised that there's no money in it, and i would prefer to do something for people who told me what to do, and then paid me. so now i'm studying design."
"that is so weird," i said, "because i studied design, and every now and again, i think that i should be doing art, like drawing or printmaking."
we talked about art schools. she gave me a price on roller blinds. it's always PMS368 on the other side.
Served on Friday, April 13, 2007 at 10:53 a.m.
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my father called the other morning.
"what are you doing?"
"working..."
"oh, that's good!"
"hmm. you say it's good, but you don't know that the work is stupid, and the pay could be better."
"then you are undercharging. you need to charge more."
"but when you work for a non-profit organisation, you can't charge normal, commercial rates."
"then you can't always work for non-profit organisations. don't you want to work for a real company?"
"wellll. if i worked in a commercial setup i wouldn't be able to stay home and look after a kid all day."
"ah. you have a point," he said, then, "where is the kid?"
"she's gone on holidays."
"what!? so why aren't you there with her?"
"um, because i have to work?"
"but don't you miss her?"
"no."
"what!? why not!?"
"because, when you spend 24 hours a day looking after someone..."
"ah. i see."
"and i have so much work to do. i mean, it is tricky to balance the work, and the kid --"
"that's what life is all about, finding the balance."
hungh.
another ridiculous thing i encountered earlier this week are the all-round party spoons from jamie oliver's "easy entertaining" range for royal worcester, marked down at the david jones' easter sale from $30 to $15. for six "oriental spoons" in a box. the catalogue pictures shows nine, which means a box and a half. (why do people serve food in these soup spoons anyway? why don't they stop??)
don't they know you can go to any chinatown supermarket, walk down the kitchenware aisle, and avail yourself of as many of these spoons as you care to, for about 70c a piece? maybe a dollar for one with a finer finish. the trendy homeware stores do the same trick with bamboo steamers: $30 for something that will cost you $5 at a neighbourhood "ethnic" shop. what has multiculturalism achieved, if not to bring affordable cooking utensils to the general populace?
ri.di.culo.us.
Served on Friday, April 13, 2007 at 07:24 a.m.
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ladies.
there is a tiny shop next to the pub across the road from the supermarket in balmain, where, up until quite recently, you could buy orthopaedic footwear or health socks or heart moniters. to be honest, i'm not even certain that this is what the shop used to sell, because i never looked too closely. and then it closed, and the shopfront was all boarded up, and a couple weeks ago it seemed like there was a flurry of dusty shopfitting going on, but i didn't give it too much thought beyond, "ooh, they're putting in a counter. i guess it'll be a cafe." because of course, balmain needs more cafes.
this afternoon as i barrelled past with a hessian bag of groceries on a shoulder and a crate of nappies under an arm, i registered in my periphery a vision in pink. in the shop window, it seemed that biscuits -- bright pink biscuits -- had been attached to a wire frame in the shape of an egg. it was a large three-dimensional egg, and there were yellow chicks about. as i got closer (and closer!), it became painfully clear (o exquisite pain!) that the biscuits were actually unsandwiched macaron halves. [edit 11/04: and also, i have just walked past again to have another look, and what i had originally thought to be yellow chicks are actually yellow macarons, painted with bold black stripes, and sandwiched with wings! bumblebees!]
i peered through the window, and was momentarily confused, because there appeared to be only a single pastry in the display case inside. but then curiousity got the better of me and i entered, to discover that the counter running the length of the shop (more of a corridor, really) did hold a small selection of rather lovely-looking little cakes after all. no macaron though; perhaps they had all been used up for the window decoration. perhaps, like the rest, they had sold out in brisk holiday trade?
a cute italian boy ran the shop. he had a little steel dumbbell through his eyebrow. "do you make all this?" i asked. he did: cakes, tarts, viennoiserie, chocolates, and perhaps... macaron. the name of the shop is adriano zumbo. that's him.
i asked if he made macaron regularly. he said that he did, just not over the holiday weekend, and that every day there would be two flavours for consideration. and did he make exotic flavours too? yes, occasionally. he said that macaron didn't seem to be as wildly popular in sydney as they are overseas. it's the new cupcake, i said, and also no-one really sells them here. there is the lindt shop, i said. he retorted, as though it were a bad thing, that theirs are mainly chocolate-based. and then i told him that i used to go to beb on broadway, but they seemed to have closed their shop. he looked surprised, and pleased, briefly. he said that when he goes to france, he eats nothing but macaron, they are so good.
the walls of the shop are grungy, painted mute colours over brick. the floor is recycled wooden floorboards, polished to a golden sheen. [edit 20/04: the other wall is recycled wooden floorboards, polished to a golden sheen. the floor is polished concrete, painted red.] the counter is plain white, topped -- jewellery-shop-style -- with a clear display case. from this case i bought his last envie: a tart of raspberry and dark chocolate ganache (the pte sucrČe is crisp and fine, the filling is lush and smooth with tart, squishy raspberry surprises all the way through). and for good measure, a raspberry-dark chocolate truffle (might have to leave this one until tomorrow). all for a little over $6.
if you catch the 442 from town hall, you could be there in under 20 minutes.
Served on Monday, April 9, 2007 at 09:03 p.m.
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now that i have cleaned the random stuff off my office shelving, my little collection of... other stuff finally has a new home. now i can see it when i sit at my desk. well, how else will i force myself to take eye-breaks?
chinese kids and watermelon pincushion, assorted unazukin, and two froggy tape dispensers with frogstyle printed sticky tape. hey! stop rolling your eyes and uncurl your lip. this stuff is gold!
sonya's matchbox project is pretty cool too. (and pretty!)
Served on Monday, April 9, 2007 at 08:35 p.m.
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so i was talking to my aunt on the phone over the weekend, and when i mentioned that i had the house all to myself, she became quite concerned. "you musn't forget to eat," she advised. i may have laughed out loud. and then i told her that i had made wontons the night before, and i had a brown bag full of bagels.
high on the carb rush from our saturday bondi bagelthon, deborah and i returned to the city and trawled the aisles of harris farm at broadway, coming away with such treats as a quarter of a cabbage, a tray of oyster mushrooms, a bag of bean sprouts, a punnet of strawberries, a wedge of peppery pecorino, two ruby red grapefruit and a bag of small salty pretzels.
for the premium sweet and salty snack, the pretzels will be dipped in lindt 70%. rather than, y'know, the easter clearance chocolate i pounced on in the shopping centre foyer: a kilo of quality milk chocolate for $10... but that is really a story for another time.
the mushrooms, cabbage and sprouts went into the inaugural homemade saturday night wonton noodle soup (mushroom broth), and made me very happy.
the strawberries, i am eating right now, after my third pork fried rice dinner since friday; there was a lot of pork mince leftover from my wonton-making exercise. but last night saw an addition of shredded cabbage and bean sprouts, and tonight, lovely, crunchy, greeeeen celery.
i discovered this afternoon, that my local supermarket sells individual wands of trimmed celery! this is perfect, because no-one else in this house eats celery, and anyway, a whole bunch never fits into my crisper drawer. at $3.98 a kilo, three batons cost me all of 67c. sliced finely and fried with minced ginger and garlic, it was a delicious addition to an already satisfying meal.
who doesn't love fried rice?
Served on Monday, April 9, 2007 at 07:35 p.m.
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in between our morning tea bagel and our lunch bagel, deborah and i popped into wheel and barrow, where everything was beautiful -- especially those clear ice-cream glasses in the shape of ice-cream cones -- and where we didn't buy anything.
at one point i positioned myself directly behind a narrow shelf so i could surreptitiously photograph a beautiful test-tube filled with beautiful pink dragees. it didn't work though, because a sales assistant pushed through with a large box of something that she had to stack onto that very shelf i was standing in front of, right at that moment. after she'd returned to the counter, we heard whispers wafting over to us: "...taking photos!"
three seconds later another sales assistant appeared at my side. "what are those pictures for?" she asked, not rudely, but not offhand curiously either.
i paused. and then i shut off my camera. and then i said, "actually, these are for my own amusement, because i found a cockroach in your dragees!"
i handed the tube over, and she might have recoiled. "well. i think i will dispose of these," she said, reaching for them finally, "and normally, we don't allow photographs."
why did i stop listening to spiderbait? this is just great.
Served on Saturday, April 7, 2007 at 11:02 p.m.
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what's this? three posts in two days? surely this means that that harpie of a book project i was working on is safely ensconced at the printers, being teased and bound into its silky-sheened covers... but, no.
after postponing the launch date for a fortnight to give us more time to work on it, it became clear that "us" meant "them". "they" who, after i gave them a stack of PDFs for proofing a week and a bit ago, promised daily that the amendments would be sent back tomorrow, then tomorrow, then monday, then tomorrow, then tomorrow, then tomorrow, then this afternoon, no, tomorrow, no no, this afternoon. so finally on thursday it landed with a thud, as only an 11-page word doc can, detailing changes, additions, suggestions to move a single page to somewhere else in the book where there is already something else, and an even better suggestion that because they had to remove a pictorial page i could perhaps add some pages at the end where more pictures could go. hmf.
so i did the sensible thing of course: i ignored it. and gave myself the day off. this was possible because friday morning, a little before five, the boy took the kid -- slumped still asleep on his shoulder -- away for easter holidays, in the country, with his olds, for an unspecified period of time, but most probably at least until wednesday.
W H O O P.
so i blogged for some hours. and i went up the street in the drizzle for a paper and some magazines, and i sat on my balcony drinking hot chocolate and eating hot buttered cross loaf. then i blogged for some more hours. and watched four episodes of season two of "carnivale", rented the day before for the bargain price of $3.50 for the entire six-disc set.
then i made wontons, which is something i'd wanted to do since i read of helen's wonton frenzy. truly, it was as easy as she said, and why have i not done this sooner? the only hiccup came halfway through the wrapping: i had dealt with exactly half of my filling of organic pork mince, water chesnuts, straw mushrooms, garlic, soy sauce, white pepper and minced garlic... when my wrappers ran out! i guess helen's packet of wrappers must have been twice the size of mine, and when i read the empty packaging again, there it was: 34 pieces. who the hell gets all geared up squishing minced pork through their bare fingers, and then makes only 34 wontons?? ridiculous.
i wasn't up to re-refrigerating the bacteria-infested remainder until i got more skins, so i tossed it into my wok with a tub of leftover rice, and voila! instant pork fried rice dinner! which wasn't very good friday of me i suppose. i made up for it by staying up much too late and watching that jesus movie on tv.
this morning, i found myself awake just after six, so i cleaned the house. i have a clean house. so maybe it's not the same as if my mum had cleaned it, but spray and wipe was involved, and a vacuum cleaner, and several large garbage bags. by ten, i was freshly scrubbed, waiting for deborah to show up: we were going on a bagel hunt.
she'd mentioned these really good bagels that a colleague kept bringing her, and then there was a story in the paper, and a one-off easter weekend saturday opening, and it all came down to us on a train to bondi junction, finding the great bagel and coffee company right there in the pedestrian mall, and splitting an everything bagel with a generous spread of smoked salmon and dill cream cheese: cream cheese, into which had been blended smoked salmon and dill. we ate it, so happily, sitting just in from the rain, with paper cups of steaming english breakfast tea. then we went back in and between us bought 18 bagels to go.
except we didn't. well, the bagels didn't. the counterboys were kind enough to hold them for us, while we explored the westfield behemoth across the road. after a few hours of great consumer restraint, we went back to pick up our bagels, and pretended for a little while that it might maybe be a little bit too crazy if we sat down to bagel sandwiches for lunch. our restraint is no match for bagels though, so there we were:
"i think i'll get the pastrami one."
"mmm, yeah, i think i might too."
beat.
"unless..."
"we order two different ones and split them?"
"yeah!"
it helps to talk things through sometimes. the pastrami one, for which we chose a rye bagel, comes with sliced pickle, tomato, lettuce and mustard. they put the pastrami on steaming, but if you sit outside on a rainy autumn day, and decide that you want to save the pastrami one for last, it will be stone cold. but tasty. so tasty. tastier, though not necessarily better, than the turkey one, on an onion bagel, with cranberry sauce, avocado, brie and sprouts.
Served on Saturday, April 7, 2007 at 09:38 p.m.
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the kid was drawing circles with dots in them the other day ("biscuits!"), when i said, "why don't you draw a hot cross bun?". she only paused long enough to look at me like it was a really good idea before she went on to draw bun after bun after bun. three pages of them in fact, until she got bored and wandered off. illustrated food blog? it's a cinch!
how is it easter already? well, ok, only good friday, but it was only last friday that i discovered the hot cross loaf at bourke street bakery and promised that i would return for it. by wednesday, it struck me that it was only a couple days away from the easter weekend, and after that... who knew if hot cross loaves would still be baked. after all, bourke street bakery is not a link in a chain of franchise bakeshops who churn out hot cross buns all year 'round.
after an obligatory hour spent with the ducks, geese, pelican and playground at victoria park, we arrived at the bakery on the stroke of lunchtime. i had never registered before if it was set up to eat in; other times i had only stood just inside the narrow doorway for as long as it took to order a takeaway loaf or tart. but yes, there is a single corner table, which might seat four snugly, and if you have an extraordinarily long torso, there are also three stools at a counter mounted so high up the wall that it came up to my chin.
all seating will be free if you arrive at an early hour as we did, but if you spend too many minutes trying to choose what you might like to eat (as i did), the corner table with the sensible seating will be taken, and you will be forced to perch on one of the bar stools. when maeve sat down, the counter was this far above her head.
but so, the choice, enormous! i knew there were delicious sausage rolls (a few years ago i had the lamb, harissa, almond and currant one, and this time, eyeing the pork and fennel -- there is also a chicken option -- i went with the lamb again. the pastry so flaky and buttery! the filling so flavoursome and crunchy with chopped nuts!), but there is also pizza (ready-made, cut into slabs) and panini (the kid chose roast pork with coral lettuce and mayonnaise on a herby-oniony roll).
by the end of lunch, we had migrated to the corner table after the original inhabitants vacated, and there was a good two thirds of pork sandwich leftover for my lunch the next day. also, maeve had endeared herself to the countergirl to the extent that she offered me anything in the window in exchange for the child. my eyes darted to the chocolate tart, but in the end, i paid my $5.50 for a hot cross loaf and we skipped outside to the bus stop where we waited quite a bit over half an hour for the every-20-minutes service back home.
earlier in the day, in the treasure trove that is the discount-stickered upstairs shelvery of gleebooks, i had found "candyfreak", which is self-explanatory, really, and an appropriate read for the choc fest that is the easter holidays. [of course, you could argue that chocolate is not really candy, that it is a whole different (and better) entity, which it is, but yeah, maybe next time.] there is a front-cover endorsement from amy sedaris, and a blurb about the author, steve almond, being "the dave eggers of food writing", and the dust jacket itself mimics the silvery foil of a candy bar wrapper, so clearly this book (published in 2004, two copies left at gleebooks, $14.95 reduced from $44) is like, waaay cool. we shall see; i'm only up to chapter two, and steve is still talking a bit more about himself than about candy... and i never really could get into dave eggers anyway. but i have skipped ahead, just right now, and there is a visit to the necco factory, whose outlet store annex in boston i visited with my obliging sister several years ago.
[ sighs wistfully ]
we pass like ships in iChat.
Served on Friday, April 6, 2007 at 10:43 a.m.
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[ all art in this post by dinah diwan, from "the ethnic paris cookbook" by charlotte puckette and olivia kiang-snaije ]
a couple of weeks ago, the fedex man showed up at the door with a package for me. it was a copy of "the ethnic paris cookbook", from the good people at dorling kindersley. i was surprised, and pleased, because it had only been a week or so since i replied to a mass-emailed offer of a copy to review. who doesn't like DK? with their range of educational books, illustrated with copious deepetched photographs? a favourite pastime was flipping through any of the DK travel guides until i got to that double-page spread in the food section, showcasing a deepetched array of that country's national cuisine. mmm... spatzle...
"the ethnic paris cookbook" is certainly lavishly illustrated, but with actual drawings. [who doesn't like an illustrated food blog? maybe one day i could become one, but for now of course, you can go to lobstersquad.] the slightly naive (deceptively so), very charming, incredibly detailed artwork by dinah diwan distinguishes the book from the rest of the pack: ink drawings painted vibrant colours, collage, and rubber stampage run the gamut from raw ingredients, to instructional diagrams, to finished product, to paris streetmaps and shopfronts.
there's a lot packed in. the book purports to "focus on the ethnic influences on paris's haute cuisine", and brings together recipes from a diverse range of cultures, grouped into: morocco, tunisia and algeria; vietnam, cambodia, laos and china; japan; lebanon and syria; cameroon, senegal, the west indies and the caribbean. phew. but how does this make it a paris-centric book, and not just one that represents any city with an enormous migrant population, like, um, sydney? here, we can easily (from the city, at least) catch a train and within not too long a time (fingers crossed), experience any one -- and quite a few more -- of the cuisines listed. maybe even some of our best friends are...
well, for one, thailand doesn't feature (though there is a recipe for green papaya salad), but see, aside from recipes (over 100 apps, mains and desserts) and mini-essays on key ingredients, the authors have included reviews (and addresses) of the parisian restaurants (and pastry shops and providores.) which examplify these disparate cuisines, as well as stories of the individuals to whom recipes have been attributed. there are brief histories of the various ethnic communities within the city -- the chinese in france, for example -- and overviews of today's streetscapes. in a small section titled, "japanese grocery stores in paris", they list three, and then go on to say that "because these grocery stores are quite expensive... many japanese now shop at korean grocers in the opera neighbourhood or in the japanese section of chinatown supermarkets". truly, insider information.
and so, why a whole chapter devoted to japonisme? i think the answer would have to be the maccha macaron. japan and france, food, fashion and art, they have this thing going, non? in fact, there is no recipe for green tea macaron in the book. there is, instead, a recipe for black sesame macaron, and given my brief, confusing history of macaron-making, i shall be giving it a miss. however, after i procure a madeleine tray this weekend, i will give the green tea madeleines a go. watch this space.
also tucked away in the japanese dessert section, a sweet little tribute to chocolate and zucchini.
i really do like the japan chapter, mainly because i'm that way inclined, but there is more from the book that i would try: beet salad with harissa (tunisia), banh xeo, finally (vietnam) -- there's also a recipe for banh mi, but holy moley, have you seen santos' lobster banh mi? she wins!, beef and okra stew (cameroon), grilled chicken with garlic sauce (lebanon)... or actually, maybe, just maybe the tabbouleh sorbet.
[ it looks like "the ethnic paris cookbook" is only published by DKUS for now, but of course, is available all over the internet. ]
Served on Friday, April 6, 2007 at 05:40 a.m.
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