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the aftermath of easter.
the half eaten, donnie darko, cheap pink bunny.
the countdown to the rock show.
the unsettling feeling of going it alone.
[ the photo by maeve ]
Served on Saturday, March 29, 2008 at 10:46 a.m.
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good friday, i served up -- somewhat sacrilegiously -- a shepherd's pie for dinner: lamb (of god) mince, cooked with a couple tins of tomatoes, most of a tin of chickpeas, diced carrot and sweet potato, and rather a lot of broccoli. the potato topping was mashed with the remaining chickpeas, and dotted -- as prescribed by stephanie alexander -- with butter. i do not know why i have not made a shepherd's pie before this, but it's a fine way to eat two large potatoes in one sitting.
i figured i'd walked it off earlier that afternoon. we walked from the heart of the city into chinatown for vietnamese -- pho bo tai and some porky nem. good old chinatown, who else would be open to feed you when everyone else shuts down to commemorate the lord's passing? after, we walked the length of the city to get to the botanic gardens. around the time jesus gave up the ghost, the skies above us grew dark and ominous, and the bats ever more shrieky. we caught a bus home then, before the heavens opened.
easter saturday, after a companionable lunch of pastrami bagels and ginger beer, i headed into kinko's on broadway to rustle up some grunge on the photocopier. kinko's -- that bastion of 24-hour print self-servicery -- was shut. the bastards! i hightailed it to the big kinko's in the city, and it was a hive of activity. blowing up line drawings to 400% -- now that was like coming home. but, ok, for actual homecoming, i stopped by BBQ king for a box of their finest, stickiest char siu.
easter sunday, the easter bunny -- visiting from chiltern, victoria -- presented me with a giant lindt easter egg casket, and the kid with a startling assortment of lesser chocolates. a good start to the day, which went on to include the circus festival at darling harbour, a BBQ pork bun picnic, the parisian toy boats exhibition at the maritime museum, and then a meandering walk through pyrmont, over the anzac bridge, up the back streets of balmain, and home to leftover shepherd's pie.
we ate a lot of meat this weekend, and i was glad for the cleansing veggie wrap of easter monday. we walked a lot through the city this weekend -- it's both infuriating and a joy. in between i finished a drawing of what may become a CD cover, hopefully. it feels good to be working again.
Served on Tuesday, March 25, 2008 at 12:55 p.m.
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these are busy days. i've been laying out the program booklet for the sydney arab film festival for a week now. last friday, as i waited in the train station beneath the airport, i fielded a call -- the most crystal clear reception in an underground station! -- asking me, only partly in jest, why i was not at home laying stuff out. but it seems even super urgent and late jobs are entitled to five rounds of author's corrections, so here i am, the millstone still tied to my neck. a very sleek millstone, mind, if i do say so myself.
night times at the computer call for simultaneously stimulating and comforting snacks. a cup of tea, definitely, and a rotating roster of small sweet things. a square (or four) of chocolate one night, a raspberry cream biscuit another.
this particular raspberry cream was unexpectedly good, though somewhat smoushed from being in its paper bag for too long. we found it at the cookie man concession at david jones, nestled close to the caramel creams. you get a crunchy shortbread sandwich, filled with sugary "cream" and anointed with a dab of sticky red jam. the caramel's definitely on the cards for the next trip to DJ foodhall.
speaking of caramel...
i never dallied the mille feuille at adriano zumbo patissier, not even that season he filled it with mandarin creme. i don't know what held me back -- all that pastry cream, all that pastry -- but i suspect it was that there was always something pinker on display. if he'd just remolded it into a cream horn, i totally would have bitten.
but all this is in the past now, because to herald the autumn, there it was: the salted butter caramel mille feuille. after a couple of weeks of missing each other in the shop, i finally had one cornered. and... the planks of pastry were crisp and very nicely sugar-glazed, the fat lines of creme patisserie most enticing. and while the richness of it was lush on my tongue, and i felt completely full after a mere third of the cake, i was left wanting more. more! more salt! more caramel even. i still have two thirds, just to make sure. but, just, more.
zumbo is a riot of colour at the moment: a rash of new cakes hit the counter in the last few weeks. there's a fancy piped meringue thing crowned in fat, shiny cherries. there's a slab of chocolate (and chocolate rice crispies!) beneath a wave of pistachio something. there is a multi-layered pink thing in a glass wearing a jaunty pink macaron beret, another incarnation of the macaron marie (ispahan), which will surely be the next thing i pick. but oh! the pink things to be had!
Served on Friday, March 21, 2008 at 10:09 p.m.
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this is how the days go when a sister is in town.
you might wake up early on a sunday morning, breakfast in a flurry, catch a bus and then another bus to the sparkly blue edge of bondi. you will meander through the markets, spurring each other on: a sausage on a roll, a red pleather handbag. you will eat fish, and chips, and pineapple fritters, when all the while you really want to get to the gelato shop on the corner. you will meet with cousins. you will bury your hot feet in the cool sand, and build a colony of tiny sandcastles, fashioned from an empty gelato cup.
you might wake up at a respectable hour, breakfast leisurely, catch a bus and then a train out west, to auburn, just to eat a couple scoops of chewy turkish ice cream. you will step into one, then two, and maybe even three dollar discount stores, coming out with bags of cheap household treasures. a pink plastic basket for pegs, perhaps; a rubber anti-slip mat for the tub; some rolls of masking tape... all these things take on a desirable mystique when they are under $3. you will step into one, then two, then three bakeries, and come away with as many little paper bags of sticky sweet lebanese biscuitry. meat shaved off a large rotating torpedo will be eaten, as well as dips the colour of candy.
you might wake up just in time to be lazy, and sit in the park across the scout hall, while the kid takes a music class, and then you will catch a bus to the art gallery, to meet another cousin -- the city is just full of them at the moment. you will look at bats -- wooden ones at the gallery, and real, hanging-upside-down, screechy ones in the botanic gardens. on a whim you will catch a ferry to luna park, to arrive just in time for a ride on the carousel -- it spins at a cracking pace, to the tune of "bonanza" -- before the park closes. because you can, because it is the last day of your weekly travel pass, you will catch a train back across the bridge to marrickville, and walk a great distance to a restaurant you know will serve you excellent chilli-lemongrass squid (or tofu, you can't decide), and when you get there, you will learn that said restaurant is closed mondays.
nights, after the kid has given up and gone to sleep, there might be a selection of truffles unearthed during the day's outing, or a rose syrup and shaved chocolate sundae. there might be something from zumbo with the gilmore girls. or a whole season of "sex and the city" and the ensuing pangs of not being in new york. there are always cups of tea. jasmin, rose pu erh, chocolate spice.
days, well, they go by, and today, we followed the script we know by heart. someone takes someone to the airport. "see you real soon," we say, although we don't know if it will be one year, or two. we felt queasy, but we put it down to hunger. we felt queasy, and we put it down to the mcdonald's we ate simply to quell the hunger, because the hot cross krispy kreme doughnut hadn't quite done the job. and then she got on the plane and i got on a train and our lives returned -- instantly -- to normal.
Served on Friday, March 14, 2008 at 11:34 p.m.
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of course, we could not visit haberfield and only get food to go.
we had pizza, and it was fine pizza, but as soon as the seafood-stuffed calamari arrived at the next table, we felt the regret deeply. we had pizza, but not so much pizza that we could not then head across the street straight after for a selection of dolci at pasticceria papa.
i think, even so, that we were being hopelessly optimistic. there were three numbered plaques on the table, and in good time, two of those were replaced by twin plates of mini cannoli. i had my eye on larger things. my order was for a cup of gelato (two, if you count the kid's mango ice), and a fat chocolate eclair.
there are those in our circle -- a solitary frenchman, actually -- who believe steadfastly that a chocolate eclair must be filled with chocolate creme. a strip of choux pastry with a slick of chocolate icing on top, filled with fresh whipped cream? a travesty! i should be very amused to see his reaction to an eclair of mock cream. i, for one, would not turn it down.
but. so. papa's chocolate eclair is filled with both! i cut through the beastie to find a layer of dark chocolate custard beneath a layer of cream. bliss.
the gelato was equally sublime. firmly packed into every last facet of the cup, it made a pretty picture in red, white and green. viva italia! the amarena was a vein of red sour cherry running through light, milky gelato. the pistachio was almost savoury.
there were still biscuits left on the table when we reached the outer limits of our stomachs, but i'm sure you've figured out that in the end, i did get a couple of mini cannoli to go.
Served on Wednesday, March 12, 2008 at 11:41 p.m.
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so. burrata.
saturday, we barreled up to haberfield, which is always less than the expedition in my head. which is to say, it is a great adventure, but it takes only two buses to get there, and if you time the connections right, and if the buses run punctually, then you can be there in just over 30 minutes. deborah can walk across the highway to get there in 10 minutes, but let's not hold that against her.
because i don't actually get to haberfield that often (see: expedition in my head), i end up going a bit crazy with the procuring of comestibles. this time, i'd even brought my stripy esky.
it was exactly the right size. by the end of the afternoon, it was packed to the brim. from the italian deli, a modest package of freshly-sliced olive mortadella, and one of chilli salami, both wrapped neatly in luridly printed waxed paper. from peppe's, two boxes of ravioli: veal, pancetta, sage and white wine; roasted duck, prosciutto and caramelised onion. and from paesanella, a small tub of ricotta and a large tub containing a voluptuous ball of cream-filled mozzarella. burrata.
according to my recent googling, burrata is "the current darling of cheese lovers" -- around southern california in any case. i first had it a couple of years ago, and i think about it from time to time. it is a spongy white lump, formed by hand. essentially, it is a thick outer skin of freshly-pulled mozzarella, filled with shreds of leftover mozzarella and fresh cream, before being sealed up.
we brought it home and had it for lunch a couple days later. it's true what they say: you slice it open and the cream runs out. it is mild and rich at the same time, and the innards have the texture of scraps of cheese sealed in a pouch.
it was wonderful with sliced tomatoes, pepper, salt and a drizzle of fruity olive oil.
Served on Wednesday, March 12, 2008 at 11:06 p.m.
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a week ago, we had breakfast for lunch at circle cafe. well. i had breakfast for lunch; everyone else had lunchy-type things.
the tea service at circle is a beautiful thing. sure, it could do with a few more leaves to the pot (and some sort of removable tea-leaf container so that whatever leaves in the pot don't sit and stew in the time it takes you to drink three cups)... but these days, when a cafe tea experience usually involves a flaccid teabag in a stingy cup of lukewarm water for the same price as a barista-pulled coffee, taking tea at circle is none too shabby.
i am taking tea right now, but it has gone cold. it is 1.22 in the morning after all. i have lucked into some work, you see, and this means that after a morning of fun out with the kid and the sister, and an afternoon of gingerbread-baking, and a late evening dinner of ruffle-edged pasta with broccoli, asparagus and fetta (with a side of giggles), i am moving slabs of text around while the house sleeps.
throbby head aside, it is a nice feeling. not so nice is the feeling of blog posts left unwritten. i have so much to tell you! perhaps tomorrow i could sneak in a tale of the cream-filled mozzarella...
Served on Wednesday, March 12, 2008 at 1:13 a.m.
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this is how to make a makeshift sausage risotto:
buy some nice sausages. (today at about life, we picked a pack of toulouse sausages from eumundi smokehouse: pork, with pepper and white wine.) split the sausage skins and fry the meat in a small amount of oil, just to break it up and brown it a little. remove the meat from the wok. there should be a puddle of sausagey oil in which you can now fry a finely-diced onion. and some risotto rice.
you would have had you stock on another burner, of course. this may be that stuff out of the freezer that you made three or four months earlier by boiling the remains of a roast chicken dinner. add the stock one painstaking ladle at a time, while it is slowly absorbed by the rice.
i think you generally have to stir for like, thirty to forty minutes? halfway through, return the sausage meat to the rice, then keep going. you might want to sample a couple of grains of rice from time to time, just to see if it's cooked through enough. you will be excited by the rich, meaty flavour of the broth -- the extreme savouriness -- and encouraged by the cries from across the counter in the loungeroom, "oh my god, that smells so tasty!"
when the rice has just about lost its al dente-ness, it's time for mantecatura! i don't beat in quite as much butter as locatelli prescribes (75 grams), but i like the symbolism. also, i don't generally add parmesan because i don't crave the cheesiness.
this is how to fuck up a makeshift -- though promising -- sausage risotto:
the last couple of times i made this, i added a handful of rocket after turning off the heat. it wilts and adds colour, and a foil to the meatiness.
this afternoon at about life, we'd procured a bag of organic rocket -- wild rocket, actually, from ladybird organics. and now i think the "wild" makes all the difference in the world, because where the rocket i'd been buying previously from the local fruitshop was mild and pleasant, this organic stuff was really something else. a vile weed from hell!
the thing is, after plating up, i also dolloped a spoonful of rocket pesto onto the mound of risotto, for dramatic effect, so you can stir through for a uniform green tinge, or a burst of something extra. again, when i've bought this at the fruitshop up the road, it's been like the icing on a cake, a little salty green accent to the grand starchy statement. the about life house pesto is a startling emerald green, just gorgeous, but it was like eating poison. the bitterness, just from the tiniest first contact with our tongues, was like one of life's harshest lessons. i guess in this case, that lesson would be: taste the damn pesto before you use it. or at least, read the label to discover that it contains just a healthy blend of rockets (sic), pistachios, lemon juice and olive oil, and then choose another pesto with salt, and maybe even cheese.
i put an empty bowl on the table, to contain the pesto i was not ashamed to scrape off the top of the risotto. we thought that would take care of things; we trusted that the bitterness had been contained. but we were wrong: it lingered. and that was when we realised what set wild rocket apart from the regular tame stuff.
we scraped the risotto off our spoons with our teeth so that it would not touch our lips, and at least one of us contorted herself so that she could swallow each mouthful without it touching her tongue. did you succeed, nellicent?
we made it through the meal, giggling from the awfulness, and we did not go back for seconds even though there was plenty left in the wok. in fact, after dinner, i spent a good few minutes picking out each strand of wilted rocket from the rice. and then when i had amassed a sizeable tangle, i took a photo of it. sigh.
but see, i'm not discouraging you from making your own sausage-and-rocket risotto -- no way, it can be wonderful -- but you might just want to check that you're not using any hardcore, top-of-the-line, clean-living type ingredients.
Served on Wednesday, March 5, 2008 at 9:44 p.m.
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the fizz is nice against the prickle. distracting, anyhow. for i am falling sick once again, and in need of distraction, from the sharp (in the back of the throat) and the cloudy (all around my head). my rose-print drinking glass is filled with rose-red fizzy. i'd been searching for a while, in a cursory and on-and-off manner, for a bottle of rose syrup cordial. this involved falling into any indian spice-and-video shop i might happen to pass, and not finding a tall bottle of red. last thursday, though, i got lucky. so. rose syrup + soda water = the bestest red fizzy ever.
thursday was lucky for several other reasons. first up, we dropped the kid off at playschool. and then nellie said, "let's have breakfast at bourke street bakery."
at the bakery's broadway outpost, we lucked into the corner booth. well, the only booth. my sourdough toast with house jam came with a just-right portion of salty butter, wrapped up in a twist of waxed paper to look like candy. my hot chocolate came in a wide, low bowl. it was perfect fuel for a day of trudging through the rainy streets of surry hills.
a litany of old favourites unfurled. at object gallery, we found ceramic thongs hand-painted with intricate blue-and-white scenes. at christopher's cake shop, we bought a bag of shortbread, filled with jam, dipped in chocolate. we moseyed, ambled up bourke street and down crown, and finally came to climb the galvanised staircase at fratelli fresh...
...to sopra. here's a tip. get there a little way past two. the masses will have lunched and departed, and the water jugs, though empty, will be refilled with a smile if you bring one up to the counter.
the handwritten blackboard, as high as the ceiling, confounded me with choice, so i fell back on another old favourite: the antipasto plate. there are always four parts, and three of them change according to the seasons; the one constant is egg mayonnaise, which sounds a bit low-rent, but in fact it is a perfectly boiled egg draped in... silk. in the silky mayonnaise there are great chunks of chopped-up cornichon. it is great. great, i tells ya.
today, the lineup included some asparagus, pickled beetroot with gorgonzola, and boiled fennel with salsa verde. everything was simultaneously light and intense, the kind of delicious that makes you slowly whittle away at each element, one at a time, as you weigh up in your mind which you want as the final taste in your mouth.
as it turns out, the final taste in my mouth that afternoon was of an ethereal (and ephemoral) buttermilk pudding, which collapsed halfway into its own puddle of berry sauce.
we caught a break in the rain, and a bus to the city, and then another bus back out to get the kid, and after spending some time looking at pyjama pants and petshops, it was dinnertime. we had lured maeve to playschool that morning by promising a sushi-train dinner afterwards, and we are not girls who fall back on their word.
especially when it involves tomodachi. upstairs at broadway shopping centre, they do a fast trade in exotic sushi filled with schnitzel and cream cheese, or topped with blowtorched scallops and kecap manis. we had a plate of maki, whose crowning glory was a sliced of grilled cheese.
for dessert we pulled this off the train: an azuki mochi, divided into bite-sized portions, decorated with aerosol whipped cream and fresh strawberries.
it's like all the fun in the world happened on thursday.
Served on Tuesday, March 4, 2008 at 11:15 p.m.
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we walked up the steps from kings cross station with a cakebox in our hands. heading towards potts point, i lamented, "we still haven't been to yellow." but on this fine sunday, we weren't too bummed; we were on our way to the 95th birthday celebration of an old family friend (uncle rowan has known me since i was four), and more importantly, our cakebox was from adriano zumbo patissier. inside it was an enormous chocolate-passionfruit tart.
it had been a slightly surreal morning. earlier on, we'd been watching adriano on kochie's show, after a txt from trusty deborah alerted us to the fact. some moments later, the phone rang and my sister picked up. "this is adriano," said the voice on the other line: the cake was running late. we'd called in to order it the day before, and on the receipt it said, "envious 8 inch", chortle snort.
but so there we were, scurrying through the back streets of the cross, thinking about cake. we got to rowan's to find our aunt unpacking curries from her car: a fine chicken vindaloo and a sweet pumpkin-cashewnut affair, it turned out, but they were only formalities before the main event.
rowan had been receiving guests all morning, and each one had brought him a cake. on the dining table in the formal dining room sat a modest sponge, layered with cream and dulce de leche. it had already been divided into dainty slices, and a third of them had been eaten. beside it, the hummingbird cake, presented personally by simmone logue -- who lives downstairs -- was still intact, the birthday greeting writ large on a plank of white chocolate. the envious had begun to sag during its trip east, so we whisked it into the fridge. shortly after, another guest arrived, with a large cakebox in her arms. the sticker on the packaging read, "yellow"! it was shaping up to be a most impressive birthday cake buffet.
i know you know i was excited about the zumbo chocolate-passionfruit tart, because i'd had it before, and i knew that it would be great. the yellow cake, on the other hand, was mysterious and new. well, it was a large brown brick, and we saw raspberries. the top was smooth dark ganache, adorned with three bits of goldleaf, crumpled just so; the middle was layers of chocolate mousse (wherein lay the raspberries) and sponge; the base was a flavoursome dacquoise -- i'm calling it hazelnut. it was extremely enjoyable.
the caramel sponge was an interlude of innocent fun. (and i made no overtures towards the hummingbird cake, because, um, it's healthy?)
but the envious: look at it! truly a celebration cake. it reminds me of jesus riding into jerusalem, with all those palm fronds waving about, and the bounty of golden macarons. the pastry is crisp and perfect, the filling full and rich. it hits you all at once, this tart burst of passionfruit, and then the low notes of caramel and chocolate, and then your mouth is empty, the last vestiges melted off your tongue so you are immediately ready for more.
i couldn't eat more than the two tiny slices i'd had right then, but when my aunt took charge and divided the remaining cake amongst the guests ("he has diabetes! he will die if he has to eat all of this!" is what she said), i did not protest too much. after dinner that night, i thought i'd straighten up the giant wedge of envious that had come home with me, but as i trimmed a little bit off this side and then that, my destiny became clear. at some point i thought i'd save the mini macaron for later, maybe even for the kid, but nah. that went too.
Served on Tuesday, February 26, 2008 at 11:18 p.m.
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we got to changi airport early, because nellicent had to buy a computer, and i had to buy a soft-serve soy milk ice cream. five or so weeks ago, in transit on the way between london and sydney, i had popped out into the non-business side of the painfully gleaming new terminal three, to have a crystal jade shanghai dinner with the olds. our post-dinner explorations unearthed, on basement two, a mr bean outlet, offering not just a range of traditional chinese soy milk products, but also new-fangled curiosities like roasted hickory-smoke-flavoured soy beans and soft-serve soy milk ice cream.
well!
i was extremely curious at the time, but had eaten too much dinner, and so with great regret i had to walk on by. but now, here we were, three hours before flight time, dinner long gone, in need of a quick sugar burst for a modest bout of duty-free shoping.
i must tell you that soft-serve soy milk ice cream is amazing! it is not that awful, chalky western soy milk, mind, but the light, refreshing and, above all, beany asian soy milk. you know tauhu fa? the wobbly pudding version of soy milk? this is the frozen version, in a wafer cone, with a topping of finely chopped peanuts or chocolate sprinkles, if you so desire. at SG$1.20, an absolute bargain, and immediately after fighting off the kid and finishing off the last, pointy bit of the cone (the ice cream went all the way to the bottom), i considered -- quite seriously -- getting another.
but i did not. so i was able, in the departure transit mall, to sample one of these ice cream mochis. at the mochi creamery stand, they were set out like jewels in the display case, a selection of pretty pastels in flavours like green tea, or chocolate-vanilla, or passionfruit. i picked azuki bean and warmed it in my hands for a few minutes before splitting it three ways with nellie and the kid. the mochi skin, evenly dusted, was soft and chewy, and not sweet; the ice cream within was. the dainty confection was perfect all 'round: small and pink, for starters, and grainy with red bean.
an hour earlier, the pure white soy milk ice cream had made me almost buy a shiny white computer at the duty free apple shop, although sanity and bank balance prevailed and i finally settled for a dazzling mighty mouse. kids, i am scrolling with my fingertip!
after relinquishing the last melty bit of pale pink mochi to the kid, on the way to the departure gate, i bought myself some fancy paul smith perfume, which smells of roses and green tea.
and then the beef pastrami croissant served up by the tardy flight crew at 2.30 in the morning, and the fitful slumber crammed into the economy class seat, and the rude old bags pushing their luggage trolleys into our persons... and once more we find ourselves in sydney.
Served on Sunday, February 24, 2008 at 11:39 p.m.
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let's call this the holy grail. i'd been trying to visit icekimo for the last two or three years, ever since my sister thrust a slightly dog-eared business card of theirs into my hand. and perhaps i didn't try hard enough. i mean, this is an ice cream cafe pretty much in the next suburb from the family home, but it was never the right time, or there was just no time (no time for ice cream! whoulda thunk!), or... see, there's just no excuse.
but we finally made it. saturday night after korean bbq, we circled the block twice looking for parking, ran across the big street in the path of fast cars, ducked beneath the scaffolding that armoured the building, and finally stepped into pink, corrugated, c u t e icekimo.
there were more flavours that i wanted to try than i could reasonably expect to consume after korean bbq, but fortuitously, nellie and the kid sorted themselves out in a most agreeable manner.
maeve had an enormous "small" scoop of bandung, a rich and rosey concoction in a most fetching shade of pink. my sister intoned "dino milo" at the counter for some time before picking cempedak, which was just as i had hoped. it was a sunny orb of yellow, and the perfume of the fruit filled my mouth when i licked a proffered bit off the little plastic paddle. they'd been generous with the chunks of cempedak all the way through.
me? i had a scoop of teh tarik, and a scoop of jasmine. both were light and milky, and comforting in the way of a cup of tea. there was wistfulness as i scraped away the last dregs at the bottom of the paper cup.
singapore has been good to us... except for that moment on friday morning when my permanent residence visa was revoked, finally, after almost thirty years. "um. our records show that you are not employed in singapore," said the auntie behind the counter at the immigration department. "yes," i said, and she was almost apologetic. "try and come back to work before may," she suggested, "and if you stay for a year or so, we may reinstate your status." so that's it then.
tomorrow night we leave, our bags packed with such treats as apple kitkats, strawberry marshmallow oreo chocolate pies, a muji shirt, moomin candy. several bags of quality german xmas gingerbread just to keep the japanese contingent in check. when i next return, way, way after may, i will have a bedroom here, and a bank account, good times and treats, a mother and a father... and an unsettling feeling that i won't be able to stay for as long as i'd like.
Served on Tuesday, February 19, 2008 at 11:34 p.m.
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this is how the holiday goes: you arrive, and the three weeks are spread out before you, full of promise and possibilities. your life slows down, a little. an early morning trip to the wet market with your mother, a meal at a little pink cafe... this could be your everyday life. and then suddenly you're three days away from the plane trip out, and there won't be a return visit to the little pink cafe, and -- even worse! -- you have not had a single dosai, nor a bowl of meepok, and the opportunities to slot these meals in are diminishing fast.
[ takes a deep breath. ]
so this morning -- noon, really -- even though we had scheduled leftover popiah at home for lunch, we called halftime from our mustafa excursion and froggered across the street to a shiny indian vegetarian cafeteria, gleaming with anticipation.
a dosai makes any day a good day; a rava dosai is even better, crunchy with semolina, and embedded with a festive mix of sliced green chilli, mustard seeds, minced onion, ginger and whatever else the house mix might be. a ghee rava dosai is a magnificent and superior being, surrounded in a golden halo that comes from being fried in clarified butter.
one ghee rava dosai and a cup of syrupy masala chai later, i laid my head on my mother's shoulder. oh! such contentment. we would have come to little india sooner, but my mother had been gravely concerned about the chikugunya-riddled mosquitoes that had colonised the area recently. fresh out of the car, she brandished a tube of mosquito repellant at us. but we live on the edge, dammit! look at us, choosing bindis with not a care in the world, trying on amusing shoes in the basement.
so today, we snuck in two lunches. but here's what i snuck in last week.
on our first morning in port dickson, a roti bom. breakfast of champions: an extra buttery paratha, sprinkled in sugar. it came with a puddle of dhal and a slurp of fish curry gravy. unwrinkle you nose; the tangy, peppery curry is a most suitable companion for the crunchy, sweet bread. the kid drank half my teh tarik and then ate enough of the roti that i felt i needed to order another. i didn't right then, but i couldn't wait until the next day so that i could have it again.
as it turned out, i did not, because a murtabak presented itself, stuffed with dry chicken curry, with extra chicken curry gravy for sloshing around in. it was big enough to feed five, i believe, but i ate it all. the kid did not eat any of it, naturally, or any of her sardine murtabak (which i'd persuaded upon her in the guise of something a cat might enjoy), but she did drain most of my beaker of teh ais.
T minus three days and counting, i've finally learnt my lesson. my masala chai today was all mine, because the kid had her own golden column: mango lassi, which she drank in a single slurp. and then we did get home -- late -- for popiah. i had the best intentions to wrap modest little rolls, but they took on a life of their own. you start spartan, with a lettuce leaf, but then the turnip-carrot-tofu-beans, and the sprouts, the shredded cucumber, fat baby sauce, minced garlic, crushed peanuts, sprigs of coriander, fried shallots, crabmeat, prawns, an extra drizzle of sauce... and you are sunk.
Served on Monday, February 18, 2008 at 11:55 p.m.
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port dickson (say it, now, in the malaysian way: poddick son). itís a hell of a town. at the tail end of the development boom of a decade ago, my father bought a holiday flat here, which swiftly went to seed. a corner on the tenth floor of cell block c -ñ thatís us.
but once you look past the mildewed exterior walls, and the eerie green tint of the swimming pool, it is possible to live it up. the two hours of traffic jammed down the highway from kuala lumpur ñ- fully explained when we passed by a rainbow bus in the ditch ñ- became mere hiccups of the past the moment we set foot in billion pasar raya, a behemoth in the middle of PD town, crammed full of cheap everything: childrenís clothing fashioned from lurid nylon; brown-paper-covered notebooks; small aluminium curry pots; big, ugly shirts for big, ugly men; that primary school paste of my childhood, in little tubs of primary hues, with matching applicator paddles (i had to buy a pack, just for the smell. if theyíd had those lotus-scented erasers, i wouldíve bought those too.)Ö and letís not even get started on the grocery section on the ground floor. i lingered too long at the self-service bins, a wall of familiar savoury crackers and sweet biscuits, and left, eventually, with nothing.
but there was no shortage of food of course -ñ two nights brought us two slap-up seafood dinners for not very much money at all. the first night, in the fabulously faded restaurant of the terribly nostalgic hotel merlin, the classic cantonese dishes competed against a backdrop of pink and green.
the next night, at a much newer establishment ñ- built to an exact match of the adjacent chinese temple ñ we were serenaded by the karaoke caterwaul from upstairsÖ and the operatic new year salute to the gods next door. we had a dish of mean little crabs in chilli sauce, but we got them back by chomping right through their brittle belly shells. there was a steamed pomfret, in the teochew style, all strips of salted vegetable and chunks of tomato ñ and a piece of lard, we were assured by our mother -ñ but the kid ate her share, and mine, and quite a bit more. there was squid in crunchy batter, and the lightheartedness and glee you get from fried food, until we discovered a tiny, inquisitive snail making its way across the lettuce garnish.
iíd like to tell you that all our prior reservations about port dickson were vanquished during our short time there, and for the most part, in a purely superficial way, they were. late on the second day, we overcame our misgivings about the glowing green water in the swimming pool ñ- a man languidly walked the perimeter that afternoon, flinging ladles of what i took, trustingly, to be chlorine from a bucket hanging off the crook of his elbow -ñ and splashed about to no ill effect. we made sure to keep our heads above the water at all times, and this is how we did not miss a tabby cat by the poolís edge, thrown back by violent convulsions before vomiting up a disagreeable something or other.
we walked uphill through the rainforest of cape rachado to a historic lighthouse, talking all the way of monkeys, and coming across none. we got caught up in banking hijinx. we bought cake boxes at billion! we stayed clear of the beach, fearful of the blinding sun and the warnings from concerned relatives about the high levels of e coli in the surrounding waters. so we took long naps in the afternoons, and that always makes things better.
we had driven past the fixtures of a military history on the way into town, but on the way out, it was villages and dusty brown all the way to the highway. the schoolkids walked along the road to get home, the chinese and indian girls in bright blue pinafores, the malay girls in baju kurung and headscarves, the harsh afternoon all around. we were heading home too.
Served on Sunday, February 17, 2008 at 10:11 a.m.
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the first day of the new year, we joined the convoy of nice, nice 2 and nice++ buses up the highway to the shimmery hot centre of kuala lumpur. it was past lunchtime when we finally arrived at my grandmother's house, but lunch was there waiting for us.
just in the door, we caught up with our once-a-year cousins on the unyielding rosewood chairs, but our mother, always straight to the point, was already at the big round table, hunched over a small bowl of new year noodles. what it is, is meesua, roughly hewn bits of chicken, and a whole, perfectly hard-boiled egg. it was only the first of many meals to come.
because what else is there to do when it's shimmery hot outside? we did venture out, full of bravado, to the playground across the street one morning, but we were quickly humbled. so we visited the old aunts, the ones who confuse us year after year. third grandaunt on the grandmother's side? fifth grandaunt on the grandfather's side? i thought i had it finally worked out, but now... nothing. next year, we start again.
one thing that is constant: the glass jars of salty pistachios. the kid discovered a taste for them, and a monkey-like trick to open each nut with the half-shell of the preceeding one. anything else was a random bonus: sarsparilla cordial, or van houten scorched almonds, each one coated in a thick shell of wax-glazed milk chocolate. twenty years can go by, and these are the tastes you remember. soft, juicy dragonfruits, an unnerving red on the inside -- these are new, but whisked out of a gentle aunt's well-stocked fridge, they are slurped up, already a favourite.
and every few hours, it seemed, we returned to our grandmother's house for another feast. one lunchtime it was assam laksa, the ingredients meticulously sliced and laid out for fine-tuning the flavour; the pungent broth simmering in an enamel cauldron just beside. one lunchtime -- our last -- there was a fish, and acar, and otak otak. stuffed crabs and lobak. jiu hu char wrapped in lettuce leaves. two soups: one of porkribs and salted vegetable, and the other an innocuous broth of pig intestines. three generations of relatives came and ate in three waves, and i sat through them all.
there was a neverending jelly, multilayered, and each layer tasting of itself: coffee, or evaporated milk. pink even... we made it down to the last sliver on the afternoon we left, sitting around the big round table with our once-a-year cousins. the older one talked about the iron man competition she is confronting in a couple of weeks; the younger one whisked the paiseh portion -- left purely to be polite -- out from under our noses.
Served on Saturday, February 16, 2008 at 09:58 p.m.
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the year or the rat is upon us -- my year! this evening's reunion dinner got a little bit out of hand with a sashimi salmon first course and a magical cauldron that never boiled dry. a worthy procession of farmyard animal, fish, fowl and funghi -- sliced fine -- was dipped in bubbling chicken stock, and then a bright green sauce composed primarily of bright green chillis. i ate eight bowls, and then discovered, upon standing, that my centre of gravity was decidedly fluid.
the biggest discussion over the last couple of days has been about the distribution of angpow. my sister, recently married, has heard that she is exempt from issuing funds for the first year of marriage; that she should give angpow to all unmarried relatives; that she should only give to those who are younger than she is; that she should only give to the generation after ours. no-one knows what rules apply to someone who is not married, but has a kid, the father of whom has removed himself from the equation. "who asked you to live your modern lifestyle?" she asks, because she is helpful, my sister.
this time last year, i was clinging to the rim of a hotel toiletbowl, purging my insides of the poison burger from a roadside reststop. we are making that pilgrimage to malaysia again this year, and i am prepared. i have a bag of muji mini soyabean poundcakes, a couple of mandarins, and some slices of bakkwa. with any luck i need eat nothing else until we are tucked safely into my grandmother's enormous rosewood table, with the lazy susan piled so high it can barely turn. no matter -- what is directly before us will undoubtedly be delicious.
Served on Thursday, February 7, 2008 at 12:39 a.m.
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the days go by, all at once fast and slow, and accordingly we are dilligent and lazy. which is to say, we are doing plenty of nothing.
we hang out at the local playground -- just before sunset the previous evening, a small boy practised his trumpet, solo; this morning, three high school kids smoked cigarettes and thrashed about to tinny metal -- and we go to muji, and we eat.
yesterday, post-dimsum, we fell into a booth at a japanese dessert cafe and ordered treats all-round. mine was a maccha parfait: from the bottom up, clear jelly, maccha jelly, whipped cream, corn flakes, more maccha jelly, a scoop of maccha ice cream, a swirl of maccha soft-serve, two slices of tinned peach, and a crisp wafer.
(pre-dimsum, we ate too many slices of kaya toast at the kaya toast place in the belly of the local mall.)
Served on Wednesdayday, February 6, 2008 at 10:21 p.m.
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"it is 34 degrees today," txted singapore girl, "so aircon is good." just before noontime, thursday, we met in the air-conditioned wonder of miracle supermarket in chinatown, to stock up on hello kitty rice crackers and green-tea salted-plum candy (and to consider the possibilities of durian mochi), and then we walked a couple of blocks westward to the air-conditioned wonder of mamak.
we were shown to a table in the back, directly beneath the air-conditioner. "it will be cooler here," said the waiter, but still, it wasn't quite cool enough to order any of the familiar and comforting numbers on the menu. not today, the sambal kangkong, or the sambal sotong, or a murtabak even, which was available with a chicken or lamb filling. it might have been different if they'd offered a sardine murtabak; back home, the roti uncles fill it with mashed-up fish, straight from a tin, sticky-rich with tomato sauce.
but it was too hot for anything meatier, so i picked something light: the roti bawang, stuffed with slices of red onion. and a teh ais.
the tea showed up first, a beer stein of sweet condensed-milky tea. sweeeet. the roti, when it arrived, came with two curry sauces -- a homely chicken curry gravy, and a welcome and excellent surprise of an assam curry hiding little bits of fish.
oh, it was good! the crunchy and succulent just-cooked onions in flaky pastry, the alternate mouthfuls of contrasting curries. by the time it was over, i was sorry to discover that there was no room inside of me for dessert -- none of the sweet rotis on offer, or the ais kacang which promised rose syrup instead of a generic sugary flavour. sigh.
so i will be back. it's great to have found this shiny red restaurant, and its litany of old favourites. it's only a little bit less great when we think about how much this food costs in singapore.
but here's the thing -- i am in singapore. surprise! me and the kid flew in on saturday, gliding in on a wave of vomit. there are so many things to eat we don't know where to begin. this afternoon i had a sardine sandwich in the cutest pink cafe ever, followed by a cup of tea and a share of a limonata cupcake, and a chocolate one. i wanted nothing more than to move in.
Served on Monday, February 4, 2008 at 10:26 p.m.
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it had started out so promisingly, the launch of the sydney chinese new year festival. when we got to the marktetplace, it had not rained for several hours, and a great sumo panda was wandering amongst the trees soliciting photographs. the first stall we saw was the korean ice cream vendor, hawking watermelon-shaped icy-poles (as previously documented here) for a dollar, and this amazing corn ice-cream sandwich for a dollarfiddy.
a true-to-life corn-shaped wafer shell, with a heart of chocolate-coated corn ice-cream. straight out of the bag, the smell of corn was intense and pure -- the taste less so, though the light and creamy was punctuated by little bitlets of corn.
corn!
but it all went downhill from there. as we progressed down the rows of stalls, it became apparent that this was a sham of a market: a few stands of standard supermarket asian brands -- oyster sauce, curry paste, exotic drinks, feh; a few too many toss-and-"win" sideshow amusements run by scary carnies; an array of asian streetfood, all deepfried, most on sticks...
there was a stage, too, and a large pink rat-shaped lantern, but at some point, as we considered a dinner of takoyaki and papaya salad -- the healthy choice -- the DJ interrupted his mandarin rap record to say, "due to inclement weather, the official proceedings have been cancelled."
which was all we needed, really, to hightail it out of there. dinner was had in a brown booth across the road, at cafe de macau. and what a strange, strange dinner it was. macau food eh?
Served on Saturday, February 2, 2008 at 01:57 a.m.
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the blue skies and sunny sun on australia day brought them out in droves: buff young blonde things, draped in australian flags, wearing flag stickers on their bumcheek pockets, plastering fake tattoo flags on their faces, sharing the warmth with their flag-emblazoned singlets with "if you don't love it, leave" printed beneath the southern cross. i don't know if it was the immigrant in me, but it all made me feel a little uneasy. what do these children think about when they swathe themselves in flags? it goes a little beyond simple, good ol' USA-style rahrah patriotism, surely. well, maybe not. anyway, we had more important things to think about... like how many minutes it would take us to walk from the ferry to the angie hart show!
yay, angie hart! the whimsy of frente! that i've carried around since university brought me and the kid to the steps flanking a little stage in the heart of the rocks. we unpacked our ham sandwich and waited. angie stood alone by the side of the stage as the previous act dismantled and her gear arrived. she looked all adult contemporary rock chick... older. her hair was long and tangled, and her arms were soft, and beneath her billowy blouse, a little pot belly -- she has aged as i have! and then her equipment arrived, and her guitarist, and she began to sing and it was just gorgeous. but it was a tough lunchtime crowd, in this little square surrounded by fastfood takeaway: people chatting over cartons of noodles, that man at the table right in front of the stage who kept his face turned away for the entire set.
the kid too was mostly unimpressed. "i don't like this song," she said, once the ham had run out. i was not beneath telling her that if she didn't stick around for the whole performance, then we would not be going to the dorothy the dinosaur show later that afternoon.
but it all went according to plan. the ice creams on sticks, the dinosaur lurching about on stage before going backstage to collapse of heatstroke, the carousel ride, the grande raspberry iced tea frappucino, the ferry back home, the paddle in the pool, the lamb and rosemary sausage in white bread eaten on a picnic rug on the balcony --
hers with tomato sauce; mine with the fancy green peppercorn mustard that i procured at the maille boutique in paris. see, one of us does play at being australian better than the other.
i asked her later what part of the day she liked best, and she replied, "the swimming pool." tchk.
Served on Monday, January 28, 2008 at 10:44 p.m.
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i had sworn that i would not be eating a single cake once i arrived back in sydney, but today, a whole week since i landed, i walked into zumbo and counterboy handed me a big, fat, welcome-back macaron.
"have you tried this?" he asked casually, before continuing ominously, "you're not allergic to anything, are ya?"
it was a potent mix of savoury and sweet -- truly, savoury and then sweet -- with a definite grittiness in the heart of the filling.
"um. is it some sort of thai salad macaron?" i asked.
turns out it was white truffle and praline. of course! that comforting, earthy aroma, heady and musky. i'm sure it would have worked fine on its own. the hidden slab of praline was nice and all... but brain-jarringly sweet. today was the first time ever that i was glad the kid was around to share the macaron; i do not think i would have been able to get through it otherwise.
and not just because i'd had my fill of the damn things while i was eating my way through paris. and not just because i had sworn not to eat cake.
in paris, i ate macarons from laduree, gerard mulot and pierre herme. (in london i ate macarons from yauatcha. well, technically, in london i also ate the pierre herme macarons that i'd bought on my last morning in paris.) the macarons were: salted butter caramel, chocolate, pistachio, passionfruit-basil, ginger, raspberry-chocolate, nougat, rose, pistachio, chestnut-maccha, chocolate-caramel, olive oil-vanilla, white truffle-hazelnut, black truffle, balsamic vinegar, fig-foie gras, pandan, chocolate-jasmin, vanilla-black sesame, raspberry-lychee, saffron-something... and a few others...
i would like to tell you about these, i really would, but i arrived home to a growing stack of emails, telling me about all the work i could be doing, to earn the money to replenish the dwindled reserves, which is sort of what happens when you remember -- wrongly -- that 1 euro is worth 1.2 australian dollars (instead of 1.6 australia dollars).
no regrets though, as i sit here with my 22 bars of european chocolate and my shiny red foldup shopping trolley bag and my vintage "ivory"-handled bread knife. my jars of green mustards. my sneakers and my comic books.
my three weeks of cake fat.
Served on Tuesday, January 22, 2008 at 9:08 p.m.
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