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breakfast, sunday morning, 9am.
saturday afternoon, we stopped by luneburger for lunch, on the way to the kinokuniya zine fair. as i finished my delicious sunflower-seeded roll filled with pastrami, cheese and salad, i glanced over at the counter and discovered that a whole new tray of sweet buns had appeared during the course of our little meal. it really was an amazing sight, and in my mind i was already eating one for breakfast before i had even returned to the counter to buy it.
[ countergirl, visibly surprised: oh! you were just here! ]
behold: the chocolate-crumble roll. a base of plain yeasty bun topped with a monstrous amount of soft, crumbly, cocoa-rich biscuit and a flirty zigzag of sugary icing. in fact, the edges of the pastry were all crumb, and in the end, too much even for one and a half chocolate-mad girls.
of course, we anticipated none of this after the zine fair, when we returned to the underground labyrinth around town hall station to finally cash in my krispy kreme birthday voucher from two birthdays ago.
there's nothing like a free doughnut sundae to bring cheer to a random unbirthday celebration. i picked the current promotion doughnut -- "chokkolate" glazed -- and a scoop of boysenberry ripple, and the kid chose "rainbow". mmm... lurid. honestly, i wasn't expecting too much of the ice cream; i figured it would be like if you ordered a grilled fish meal at KFC... turns out it's super premium stuff, rich and creamy with an almost stretchy texture. totally outdid the doughnut i thought, which was after all the regular yeast doughnut, with a fudgey chocolate glaze, just like the name sez. i don't know why i thought it would be chocolate on the inside too.
it's probably just as well it wasn't though, given the breakfast we were up against in the new day.
probably.
Served on Sunday, June 29, 2008 at 10:47 p.m.
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o you don't know how much i've coveted these elephant tea caddies. i've wanted one forever. this one, 30% off at the david jones winter sale, is filled with a hearty breakfast tea that makes me slurp it up, lean back and say, "AHHH," in a most contented manner.
i've had a good run of breakfast toast of late. you may remember the morpeth olive toast with honey. i've just finished a loaf of excellent spelt sourdough fruit bread from sonoma, perfect with salty butter and a generous shower of cinnamon sugar.
i am excited about the bread i bought today: polish rye with caraway seeds. it would ordinarily be the foil to a lick of vegemite... but i've freshly run out. well, the kid ate the last bit on a bit of burgen soy and linseed this morning. no matter, i think it will be just as good with a slathering of sour cherry jam.
man, i sure hope i have some sour cherry jam hiding out in the back of the fridge.
Served on Wednesday, June 25, 2008 at 11:43 p.m.
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we lunched at haberfield last saturday, where we discovered that the most innocent-looking vegetarian offerings at pasticceria papa might be harbouring bits of meat. tiny chunks of chopped-up schnitzel amidst the chopped-up tomatoes on top of a particularly springtimey pizza, for example. or two enormous meatballs concealed within a "broccoli and potato" schiaciata. but because none of us are actually vegetarian, we ate every last crumb, even the ones that the kid generously graced with scraps of salami off her salami pizza.
she is all about salami these days. and ham. and bacon, she told me, she loves the best, although i think it's really ham. how much salami should a kid eat? surely italian kids (or spanish, or hungarian... and wherever else salami come from) eat quite a lot of it?
before lunch, we stopped by zanetti 5 star deli, and bought olive mortadella, and pickled octopus, and a packet of little starry pasta. we sat on the the steps out front eating mortadella, which, after an initial uncertainty about the olives, went on the list of approved cured meats.
and then after the cold cuts, and the pizza, and the gelato, and the ricotta cannoli -- oh wait, that was me! -- the kid requested soup for dinner, with her new starry pasta. here's what went into our minestrone pot:
onions
garlic
salami
celery
carrots
cabbage
a potato
two bay leaves
a couple squirts of tomato paste
chicken
chickpeas
frozen peas
cherry tomatoes
the stars baby, the stars
Served on Wednesday, June 25, 2008 at 10:41 p.m.
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meanwhile, over at adriano zumbo patissier, the salty-sweet treats keep a-coming.
this is the way it happens: the winter cakes aren't due in-store until july, i'm told, and i've tried all of the current season that i care to -- i think the only one i didn't fancy was the death star filled with peanut butter -- so i cast my attention towards the other display case, the one that normally holds the macarons; of late it seems to also be brimming with chocolate!
on a recent visit, i procured a lemon macaron, a pale yellow beauty that proved to be soft and moist, with a mild and fragrant citrus filling well-tempered by white chocolate ganache.
but it was really the pistachio chocolate pressed up against the glass which enticed me more, with its swirl of pistachio paste atop a dark chocolate cup, sprinkled in chopped nuts. once i broke through the delicate dark chocolate though, i discovered that it was half-filled with regular praline. sigh. if only it had been all pistachio, nyup nyup.
thing is, after i had made my selection, i started discussing the rest of the assortment with the countergirl, which in retrospect was quite the tactical error. for i pointed to a dark brown square anointed with a dab of silver, and was informed that it was a strawberry-balsamic chocolate. clearly i would have to return.
when i did, some days later, there was something new again: a dark chocolate dome encrusted with flakes of salt. "what's that?" i breathed.
turns out it was filled with caramel. i ate the one placed in my hand by the counterboy, to settle our discussion on whether it was a soft, runny or hard, chewy caramel. it's just semantics really... my runny is your chewy. what it was, in the end, was great. amazing, even. i immediately bought another.
and the strawberry-balsamic one, which surprised me with its square of sturdy jelly -- all at once tart and tangy and savoury -- perched atop a tablet of milky-chocolatey-praliney something, enrobed in dark chocolate. not too shabby at all.
but the caramel... o the caramel.
Served on Friday, June 20, 2008 at 10:07 p.m.
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deborah's been running hither and yon getting her wedding together, but when she returned from over the mountains the other week, she brought me back a handsome bottle of vinaigrette from a french patisserie in bathurst.
it came in handy on friday -- a most elegant dressing for a tumble of mixed leaves and orange grape tomatoes, topped with three fat slices of salty fried haloumi. i don't know why i don't make more of an effort at lunchtime, but this was a pretty convincing argument in its favour. i didn't really need it, but the accompanying slab of morpeth olive sourdough, buttered, was a good chaser.
the bread came into its own for breakfast the next morning. toasted, it develops a lovely crunch on the outside, and becomes far more receptive to a slathering of salty butter. and here's the clincher: chestnut honey. that pungent, woodsy aroma of the sweet honey gives way to the intense salty bursts of the embedded kalamata olives.
the first slice was so good, i made another, and then i couldn't wait for the day to be over and done with, so i could have it for breakfast again today.
Served on Sunday, June 15, 2008 at 04:13 p.m.
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i'd been thinking about painting my bedroom green for several years now. many, many years actually. behold this fine mosaic of paint chips i have amassed: one of these is for ralph lauren paint in a lovely shade of dogwood, and another is from crayola ("green thumb", it's called; i also have a little square of warm, sunny yellow called "macaroni and cheese"). both these tchotchkes i procured on my last trip to new york, which would make this quest at least... um... six years old.
it wasn't so much a fear of commitment that stood in my way. ok, so it was a little. but it was more that i was afraid my room would end up looking like a hospital recovery ward. calm, soothing, healing green and all. and yet, this impulse kept rearing its head, year after year.
a few weeks ago, i finally gave in to it. there was a lot of masking tape involved, and scuffmarks on the ceiling from the ladder i bought when i used to live somewhere with high ceilings. there was a surprise appraisal from the team of actual, professional painters who, coincidentally, were repainting the outside of my building. there was a chocolate croissant for sustenance, and an early-to-mid-'90s australian rock playlist (cue: tumbleweed, you am i, spiderbait), and then...
green.
i like it in the morning, mossy in the natural light. not so much at night, with the energy-saving lightbulb casting a disturbing radioactive hue. i think i might have to revert to a good old-fashioned tungsten wire.
last week, i finally, finally put the cake on the wall. if i wake up on my left side, it's the first thing i see. because of course, it's never too early for cake!
Served on Saturday, June 14, 2008 at 09:48 a.m.
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tragedy on black friday.
Served on Friday, June 13, 2008 at 11:10 p.m.
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cleveland street, abercrombie, parramatta road. these are awful, awful streets along which to walk, urban grit to the extreme. but last thursday, i walked up to the cleveland end of abercrombie, and friday, i walked a good way down parramatta road, all on the promise of a good breakfast.
i'd heard about cafe giulia from a couple of people: one who'd just walked past and peeped in, and one who goes there lots -- both had only good things to say. so on thursday i found myself sitting across from the little matchbox girl (the one who goes lots), across from the counter running the length of the old butcher's shop. the handwritten menu board behind it was about as long too, and had so many options scribbled onto it as to be unhelpful (but, y'know, in a good way).
i saw a plate of waffles go by -- tall slabs of 'em, crowned in bananas and doused in syrup. on the menu, there was a version that came with stewed rhubarb and mascarpone. i wanted it! but, it turned out, not as much as i wanted the breakfast special that morning:
shimeji mushrooms with sage butter, fava beans and home-made sourdough toast. "the special," announced the waiter when he finally brought them to the table, quite some time after matchbox girl's had arrived, "...because you're special."
and truly, i did feel special. the mushrooms were wonderful -- whole clusters, cooked so that they were caramelised and crunchy on the edges, and slippery, salty and buttery everywhere else. the fava beans, surprise! came as a mound of well-seasoned mushy peas. it was all the kind of delicious that makes you (me) want to weep with joy.
i didn't, though. just poured myself another cup of house-blended chai. all the clatter and chatter reverberating off the white tiled walls was doing my head in.
the next day, it was only slightly less noisy at deus cafe, the overwhelmingly art-directed sidecar to the deus ex machina bike shop. it's a huge space, dark and moody, with a dramatic wall of painted numerals, and lots of wood, and more than a handful of young professionals in black plastic-framed spectacles having business meetings, or working on their shiny macbook pros. right in the center of the room, at the plywood table shaped like a giant O, there was me, waiting for singapore girl to amble her way down missendon road.
it was about 10.15, when i asked the guy behind the counter if it was too early for the lunchtime menu. "it depends," he said, "on which items... and who's asking. go on... charm me."
but it was too early for charm, and it turns out, too early too for the poached salmon salad with fennel, potatoes and roquette, and for the deus dog -- lamb sausage with tzaziki and tomato confit and chips (too early, specifically, for the chips). i resigned myself to the breakfast crepes with caramelised bananas, mascarpone and maple syrup.
so. good.
i'm guessing the crepes were made with buckwheat flour. they were slightly chewy, with a lovely nutty flavour, and alas, there were too few of them. four, if you must know, but i'd rather it had been six. singapore girl had warned me that she thought the serving too small when she'd ordered them previously; meanwhile, her deus breakfast -- fried eggs, sausages, bacon, spinach, mushrooms, toast -- threatened to spill onto the table and engulf us all. she left her googy yolks, but i scraped my plate clean.
Served on Monday, June 2, 2008 at 07:37 p.m.
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weekend teacup blogging
i think this is starting to become an affliction. i was at the rozelle markets yesterday, and when i said, "i think i'm going to buy that pink teacup", the kid responded immediately, "but you already have the green teacup". that's how bad it is.
but it was $15, less than half the price of the ones i saw in the dusty window of a dusty antique shop in glebe. this (and, ok, a couple of orphaned saucers) were from a woman who said she had moved on to other things, and was purging her personal collection. she had wild hair and a crazy rainbow wooly jumper. bloody hell. i could become that woman.
so no more teacups.
the biscuits, on the other hand... these beauties were from christopher's cake shop at taylor square. delicate shortbread sandwiched with sugary icing and dipped in coloured chocolate. the pink one is strawberry flavoured, and the yellow one a most engaging lemon.
these i will be back for, oh yes.
Served on Sunday, June 1, 2008 at 11:13 p.m.
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i finally got the anabanana today. it's just, i'd gone savoury at breakfast, and around lunchtime, i found myself needing something sweet, and i peeped into zumbo just to see... and i'd never seen anabanana looking like this before. actually i don't think anyone's ever seen anything look like this before.
it's like one of the happy little elves back at the workshop went postal, and dumped the entire sack of brown sugar over the lot of 'em.
i'm not complaining, mind. in fact, i'm quite in awe of the bold, sugary statement. there is no finesse in this pastry -- not today anyway -- but there are roughly chopped walnuts buried in the sweet avalanche, and a stream of cinnamon running through the light and crunchy brioche feulletine. (yes! there is pastry beneath the sugar!)
there are no bananas though. weird, huh?
[edit: a source close to the cakebox has informed me that the bananas are rolled in between the layers of pastry.]
i like it quite a bit. i expect i will like it tomorrow too, and possibly the day after, for that is how long i expect it will take me to get through it.
Served on Thursday, May 29, 2008 at 09:35 p.m.
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singapore girl finally made it to balmain last week; she'd heard about a particular cake shop i like to go to. so there we were, thinking we were safe by going for lunch beforehand, to line our stomachs, but we left zumbo with two cakes for now and a bag of macaron for later.
reading it off the little plaque in the shop, charlotte o'hara sounds like one of those eccentric ladies with too many voices in her head: biscuit cuillere, ginger and vanilla bavarois, lime creme, fig, basil and pistachio jelly... and if you were to eat each element one at a time, as i did to start, then you might think the bavarois too gingery, or the jelly too figgy. but i've heard more than one person say it -- including the countergirl -- that all the flavours come together into one great superflavour, and it's true.
truly, this is alchemy at work. i could not decide if i should eat it fast, or slow. it was light and delicate, and certainly could've been inhaled. but that would only have brought matters to an end much too quickly.
after all, she got all gussied up for us: see her bonnet of bright raspberries, plump and bursting with tart flavour. the neat ring of meringue, the fine ribbons of lime zest and white chocolate. the finery on the outside, though, belied a primness within. we took our time with her.
the pace slowed even more for essaouira. turns out that charlotte o'hara is all sweetness and light -- but only while you're eating it. once it's down your gullet, all the richness of the cream and butter remind you how debauched your time together really was.
but try and stop. try and say no to the slim plaques of dark chocolate that break with such a satisfying crack. try and resist the piped rows of dark chocolate chantilly creme, and the ones beneath of orange ganache. the base of cakey hazelnut dacquoise and crunchy praline feulletine were most persuasive. all up, essaouira reminded me of the chocolate-covered, orange-flavoured wafers of my childhood -- which only made me love it more.
and i did stop eating it after all, for i feared that i might die. i left the smallest little corner for quite a way after dinner. i ate it in the dark.
Served on Tuesday, May 27, 2008 at 10:18 p.m.
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another saturday, another $10 teacup. this one at least i can drink tea out of.
friday, after a couple of weeks of half-hearted to-and-froing, deborah and i met upstairs at fratelli fresh. please understand, there was no reticence about meeting for eating. it's just, we couldn't decide if we'd rather eat at danks street depot or sopra... so you see, we did not really mind which way the day went.
the plan was to read the menu board at sopra, and if nothing took our fancy (as if!) we would head across the road. as it turned out, the 1 o'clock lunch crush was so impenetrable that our decision was made for us before we were even within reading range.
i used to go to danks street depot fairly regularly, usually when an invoice got paid. it was just up the street from where i used to live, and it was a great space in which to eat... well, anything really. back then it was just starting up, and you could see into the kitchen from the big central table. back then the kitchen wasn't even in a different room; the only thing separating it from the diners was a bench on which produce sat and chopping happened. once i was there, and the chef himself came up and cleared our table. then at some point, the service started to get a little surlier, and sopra opened up across the road, and i moved away... and i reckon it's been about four years since i was last in there.
and gosh -- gawsh -- is it fancy now: swirly room dividers, precision seating, shiny bar extension. no more that warm, fuzzy, sunlit feeling of sitting in uncle jared's kitchen. it was a high-powered, well-dressed lunch crowd, and very, very noisy.
so. the decision had been made for us about where to eat, but we still faced the quandary of what to eat. the wild rabbit and pork terrine was a definite, but we spent many minutes trying to figure out its complementary companion. i was leaning quite severely towards the slow-cooked broccoli and eggs, and eventually i fell over at its feet.
because it was great! who would think of garnishing a serve of golden, buttery scrambled eggs on toast... with broccoli? it had been roasted, i think, with chili, garlic and white wine, an enormous stalk of it in a most appealing shade of olive green. and on top of that, chunks of salty and creamy fetta. i would eat this at least once a week.
it would be harder to eat the rabbit and pork terrine that often; such a solid, meaty slab. deceptively so, for it is mild pink striations with pale green pistachios and seedy figs peeping through the layers. still, the flavour was at once clean and rich, and just gamey enough. it came with a tidy stack of figgy toast triangles, a tangle of perfectly dressed rocket, and some paper-thin slices of sweet pear, none of which helped to overcome that porky feeling at the end of the meal.
you will not be shocked to know that at this point, we got up, paid our bill, and high-tailed it back across the street to sopra. almost 2.30, there were just enough empty tables that we did not feel bad about ordering just dessert. the waitresses, though surprised, were most supportive.
and truly, i had just been thinking banoffee pie, but suddenly, there we were, with that and the biggest fat bastard of a tiramisu to ever belly flop onto a plate. it really was the most obscene looking thing, and we fell upon it with gusto. gusto which soon turned into confusion, because -- what were those raisins and bits of orange peel doing in there? does sopra really make their tiramisu with panettone? the cakey bits certainly had that bizarre stringy texture of panettone soaked in an alcohol bath.
(the creamy bits, on the other hand, were sheer perfection.)
the banoffee pie was pretty good, although there could have been a few extra bananas beneath the gorgeous blanket of freshly piped cream -- you'd think bananas were still $13 a kilo. tchk. but aside from all that, and aside from the twinings tea bag that passes for an order of tea, sopra is still possibly my favourite place to eat.
(by which i mean, i get out here only two or three times a year, but i love it when i do.)
we sat for a while, fighting the good fight, woefully distracted by the men at the next table and their antipasto platter, and tray of cured meats, and, ahem, seafood basket. but eventually the cakes won. well, the tiramisu did anyway.
the kind and patient waitress commiserated, and pointed the way to the cash register.
it was just gone four c'clock.
Served on Sunday, May 25, 2008 at 09:28 a.m.
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the pistachio crumble topping from "the sweet melissa baking book" resurfaced yesterday, the crunchy golden eiderdown on a bed of tart rhubarb and bosc pears.
leftover rhubarb crumble makes a glorious breakfast the morning after, gives you the energy to leave a tearful and protesting kid at playschool, where she will spend most of the day crying. it was a smooth trip into glebe today; normally the bus crawls down the clogged artery of victoria road, packed full of feral schoolchildren. but today we had our pick of seats, and we were there in a flash.
weird.
i walked to the cinema then -- because honestly, that's why i put the kid in school -- and it became clear why the streets were so empty: everyone and their kid was at the movies. this is the thought that went through my head: what, all these people sprung their children from school so they could come see "indiana jones"?
but then amidst all the squealing and shrieking i heard a tired parental voice say "teachers' strike" and "nim's island", and i knew that it would all be ok.
the movie was great fun, even though indy's not quite so hot anymore. oh, saggy indy in baggy trousers, we are all getting so old and creaky. still i left the cinema with a spring in my step and the raider's theme in my head. in fact, it's still in here!
the next time i see a film, remind me not to have rhubarb crumble beforehand, no matter how delicious. it only gets in the way of having a banana choc top during the proceedings.
Served on Thursday, May 22, 2008 at 10:38 p.m.
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i love ruby red grapefruit. look at it! the colour, amazing. the taste, pretty good -- just astringent enough that no one else wants to share. but the one i got at woolies the other day was a revelation. it was full of flavour, yet mild, with a soft sweetness. it was wet and juicy. the kid, with whom grapefruit has disagreed in the past, took a most tentative suck, her lips already puckered up in anticipation. and then... she wanted more.
back in my childhood, my mum sometimes brought grapefruit back from the supermarket. it was exotic then, in the tropics, the regular, dour, yellow grapefruit. and we would only eat it if it were sprinkled, heavily, in brown sugar. i thought i'd carry on the tradition, just for kicks.
aside from the 21 bars of chocolate i brought back from europe over the summer (you'd be surprised at how long it takes to consume them at a steady though not compulsive pace; i think i have just begun my fifth bar), i also made space in my suitcase for a handsome canister of sugar. not just any old sugar, mind. this one i found in la grande epicerie de paris, in an aisle of fancy sugars. i spent too long gawking, almost fell into a sugar-coma just by being in close proximity. and then, i guess because it was xmas time, i chose the saveur de no'91l, from terre exotique.
here's the guff, run through babelfish: "this sugar especially was concoct'8e and lovingly prepared for the happiness of all. c' is while thinking of the crackling d' a chimney, with its soft heat and by evoking the sugar refineries enjoyed at that time l' year that we imagined this "sweeten of no'91l". it combines the softness of cane sugar and the savours traditionally used in the receipt of the bread d' spices."
the savours include cinnamon, green anise, ginger, cardamom, and girole... which seems to translate as a kind of mushroom? wha? it smells particularly anisey, but the flavours of everything could be much stronger. it's only 5% spices after all, mixed into €6.5 of raw cane sugar. no match, in this case, for the magnificent grapefruit.
Served on Thursday, May 22, 2008 at 09:32 p.m.
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over the weekend, saturday, we had second breakfast --
oh no, wait. third breakfast. at two in the afternoon.
this was after first breakfast of tea and toast, and yoghurt and berries, at home.
and after second breakfast at the orange grove markets; i had been on a long-overdue mission to procure some gympie butter, and all of a sudden, there we were, watching the ponies, with a cherry danish for the kid, and a bacon, egg and chimichurri roll for me (the chorizo guy is capitalising on the extremely long queue in front of the honey-cured bacon and egg roll guy), and a raspberry-orange juice in-beween.
yes. so, third breakfast was had, because we were barreling down oxford street after partaking of the giddy merry-go-round that is the hope street markets, and the kid wanted scrambled eggs. but where o where does one find scrambled eggs in that section of oxford street, between the uppity paddington end, and the trashy darlinghurst end? is there somewhere not too trendy, or too gay, or too derelict? no, really, i want to know!
well. because i saw the sign for the $13 vegetarian breakfast outside BD's foodhall, i can at least recommend this place to you. even though BD is short for "body development", and one of the guys behind the counter had very large muscles squeezed into a very small black t-shirt. i'd been in here once, a few years ago, to buy a bottle of water. it's the shopfront for a catering outfit, and the counters are packed with large bowls of bright salads, and a vast array of baked things and sandwiches.
but we wanted breakfast. we split it, the kid and i -- she had the eggs, and i had the mushrooms and hashbrown, and there was more than enough toast, avocado and baked beans to go around. and you know what? when you least expect it, possibly the best mushrooms ever show up on your plate. an enormous tumble of whole mushrooms, larger than your regular button ones, cooked dark and slightly caramelised, with crunchy bits and a hint of balsamic vinegar. they must have been roasted, they had such a rich, smoky flavour.
but my cup of tea, poured from a large teapot in which a single teabag floated forlornly, was no match for the rather wonderful ring i found at the candy hand stand at the hope street markets. look at it! wonderful!
possibly the best little plastic thing ever to be stuck onto a ring and sold for 10 bucks, my precioussss.
Served on Monday, May 19, 2008 at 08:20 p.m.
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a couple of months ago, i volunteered to put together the newsletter of the kid's playschool's parents' committee. i didn't really think it through at the time, just figured it would be a catalyst to get some non-work-related design done. however, what it actually meant was that we had to make a special trip into school the other evening to attend a meeting. and i had to take minutes! because i also had to write the darn thing!!
it also meant a couple of trays of flaccid sandwiches -- plastic cheese and vegemite, and plastic cheese and ham -- and tepid water drunk out of the children's regulation red plastic tumblers, but let's forget that ever happened.
after it was all over, we caught the bus back to balmain with our fingers crossed, and got off the bus right opposite the new sushi place that's just opened on darling street. it threw a welcoming golden light out into the night, and we stepped through the door to find the last two empty stools at the counter.
it's a small room, seats about twenty. one waitress in front, two or three chefs out back. and a sushi train! sugoi! which, incidentally, is the name of the restaurant.
you probably already know this, but i l o v e sushi train: all those possibilities going 'round and 'round on colourful little plates. sure, there is that stressful element -- similar to when you go for dimsum -- where you can't really relax and enjoy the eats because you are always keeping watch for something (better) that might come along, but sometimes you find a place where everything looks good, and none of it has the dehydrated edges of something that's been riding the conveyer belt carousel for two hours...
and sugoi could be one of those places. we fished a plate of sashimi off the train; the temperature and texture of the fish was perfect. there was a pretty roll of tempura vegetables wrapped up in a delicate pea-green crepe, and topped with a dab of salad cream and a sprig of loveliness. there was spider roll! which i really do quite like. and at the end, there was no red bean mochi topped in whipped cream and strawberries and syrup like they do at tomodachi, but there was a fruit salad of melons, grapes, tinned pineapple and a slice of strawberry, in a glass goblet, on a red plate.
the newsletter has so far been well-received by the committee.
Served on Sunday, May 18, 2008 at 10:16 p.m.
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good morning.
a fine way to start the morning, and the week, is to break open a new box of tea and brew a pot. T2 have a shiny new boutique beneath the old gowings building in the city -- perfect timing, really, for i was in the market for a new breakfast tea.
in the shop, there is english breakfast tea of course, and irish. but there is also sydney breakfast (scented with bergamot) and melbourne (vanilla). i was curious about the indian breakfast tea, and asked enough questions (fewer than you'd think necessary) that the countergirl packed a little sample -- "enough for a small pot," she said -- in a baggie for me to take away. i love that!
in the end i came away with the morning tea, a hearty blend of broken leaf tea, according to the spiel on the box. and it's true; it's the kind of robust tea that tastes of the bush from which it was plucked.
it was the perfect foil for a wedge of coconut brioche, a light and chewy bun in a sturdy helmet of sugary desiccated coconut -- reminiscent of something from a chinatown bakery -- which i had procured on yesterday's excursion to petersham.
we don't really do mother's day, but y'know, any excuse to have cake... so two mums and two kids and a sister and a brother descended upon honeymoon patisserie for second breakfast. i made it through the wall of people at the counter, only to be confronted with a second, more impressive obstacle: what to choose.
there were slices of a brown slab cake with pink icing and silver dragees, three layers sandwiched with cream and custard. i resisted. there were custard tarts in three sizes, and i had been thinking about them all morning, and yet... i sort of wanted bacon and eggs, so i picked their opposite: a rather ostentatious caramel tart. and a jam donut. and, because i don't like playing favourites, the coconut brioche to go,
the donut was excellent. dense and chewy with a generous smear of sugary red jam. it wasn't hot, but that was part of its charm. i should've gotten the big one. should've maybe not gotten the caramel tart, because after i ate that, i felt somewhat unbalanced. (it must be said that the caramel was lovely and soft, and very compelling. it compelled me to eat its entire self after all.)
afterwards, we ran around the park, and worked up an appetite for baked beans on buttered toast. normalcy returned.
Served on Monday, May 12, 2008 at 09:55 a.m.
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saturday, i accomplished the unprecedented: three rice-based meals for breakfast, lunch and dinner. mmm... i like rice.
breakfast was a trio of sticky rice puddings from lucky thai sweets and video. i had not come this way in ages, but friday afternoon after a spectacular lunch at spice i am (they must have turned up the heat for us; me and singapore girl scraped clean our platters of green papaya salad and sweet and sour clear fish curry, with lips tingling and gullets raw), we floated down campbell street on a chili high and picked the last two boxes of the shelves.
black rice with egg custard; white rice with fried onions, prawns and sugar; yellow rice with salty-sweet shredded coconut -- i think i figure out which one is my favourite, and then with the next mouthful i change my mind.
there were longans too, $7.50 for a moderate bunch at paddy's markets. the price seemed shocking at the time [and yet, still no match for the half-pound of lychees in new york, eh, nellicent?] but no longer begrudged -- all the fruit is unblemished, firm and juicy on the inside.
lunch was the biggest plate of rice in the world. the special broken rice, to be exact, from the vietnamese stall at the sussex street food centre, but you cannot see the rice for the meat. there is a large grilled pork chop, all perfumed and lemongrassy. there is a skewer of thinly-sliced pork, rolled up. there is a slice of meatloaf, although the dominant ingredient seems to be mung bean noodles. there are pickled carrots, and a modest salad of sliced tomato and cucumber. there is a small bowl of nuoc mam cham, and an only slightly larger bowl of msg soup.
dinner was unnecessary you understand, but i cooked up a pot of chicken and pumpkin congee for the kid. later, after she had gone to bed, i scraped the bottom of the pot for the brown crusty bits.
i guess this is what happens when you eat pasta all week.
Served on Sunday, May 11, 2008 at 09:09 p.m.
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there was quite a bounty of macaron at adriano zumbo patissier last week. besides the four you see here, there was also mandarin, liquorice, and fresh mint.
"won't you try the fresh mint?" asked counterboy when i had made my selection. i wrinkled my nose at the lurid green.
"i don't like mint-flavoured things," i explained.
"it's not mint-flavoured," he insisted, "it's fresh mint." and then he handed me one over the counter to prove his point.
and whaddya know -- it really was minty! not toothpasty in the slightest. but, eh, mint.
so we left with the four: chocolate, which the kid picked for herself; rose, which is my all-time, number-one favourite; passionfruit and yoghurt, which is a softer, more delicate version of the bright and brassy regular passionfruit...
...and tomato sauce. yuh!
look at it! all gussied up with fancy jewels of crushed-up flotsam. don't let that fool you; this was heinz big red through and through. it was surprisingly salty upfront, umami even, before rounding out the edges of my tongue with the familiar sweet and sour of childhood. through the power of suggestion, i could almost taste ground beef too. well. i liked it anyway, and i suffered an immediate craving -- still unfulfilled -- for a big, fat hamburger.
i wonder if the pastry chef would make a banh mi macaron -- baquette-flavoured biscuit, with a tangy pickled carrot and radish ganache, and a dab of pork pat'8e hidden in the middle. i wonder...
Served on Tuesday, May 6, 2008 at 08:50 a.m.
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this time last week, the cold, harsh light of day saw me finishing up the last, leftover slice of a sour cherry pie with a pistachio crumble topping. i was sad to see it go. it had been long, long overdue, and the previous friday afternoon i had arrived for a weekend at my aunt's house with two containers of dry ingredients measured and mixed and ready to go. one was to become the crust, and the other, the crumble.
more weeks ago than i'm prepared to specify, the good people at penguin mailed me a crisp, new copy of "the sweet melissa baking book". i must admit i was not immediately enamoured of this book. aside from feeling generally ambivalent about cake (!) after the nonstop cakefest that was xmas, new year, chinese new year, sister-in-town... there was the somewhat lacklustre publication design to get past.
it's 2008 after all. who puts out a cookbook -- a cakebook, no less -- with no pictures but for an 8-page colour section two-thirds of the way through? the rest of it -- 240 pages in total -- is cheap black helvetica on cheap white paper, with copperplate headings and mustard yellow embellishments. there are bees on every second page -- the logo of the eponymous brooklyn-based bakery. it really looks like an early-90s effort, and even coming from me, with all the golden memories of the early 90s, this is no compliment, humpf.
but. see. the more i flipped through the book, never really wincing less at the just too large italicised helvetica introductions to each recipe, the more i came to realise that you really shouldn't judge a book by its interior design (the cover is... fine. not "ooh baby, you so fine", but just, "oh, alright. fine.": there is an honest photograph of a chocolate cake, crowned in nubile and glistening berries; but there is also a subhead in 12pt helvetica bold.). in fact, the book is so packed full of delicious-sounding things, that i could not decide what to tackle first.
there is a good selection of trusty basics: orange-scented scones, chocolate chip cookies, chocolate walnut brownies. there is a chapter of some quite over-the-top layer cakes:sweet almond cake with lemon curd and lemon mascarpone frosting, roasted pecan cake with caramel orange marmalade and burn orange buttercream, (there is a classic red velvet cake with cream cheese frosting.) there is a bit up the back full of truffles and caramels. and in between, there are buns, pies, cookies, cakes, and cookie cakes.
eventually, i picked the sour cherry pie with pistachio crumble, because i love every single word in the name (yes, even "with".). also, in her introduction, sweet melissa claims it is her favourite pie, and a best-seller at her bakery. there was even a glossy colour photograph of it. i set to work.
the section on pies begins with a lesson on pie dough. it is a comprehensive breakdown on all the elements that go into the crust, and what to do with them. there is a page on pie dough technique, followed by three recipes for different sorts. all up, it's 11 pages of thorough instructions, about an hour and a half of combined chilling time alone, and me, a pastry novice, making a rather wonderful crust that baked up golden brown, light, crisp and flaky.
yay.
the crumble topping, with its whole oats ground to a flour and its pistachios hand-choppped, was even more wonderful -- sweet and crunchy with a rich, buttery, pistachioey flavour. the cherry filling -- now that's where i came unstuck. i'm blaming the kilo of frozen cherries; i'm going to argue that they released a lot of moisture as they thawed in the oven. at the end, they were so plump and juicy that the base of the pie crust disintegrated into soddenness. delicious sod, mind, which more or less rendered this pie into a crumble with a pastry crown. and we all fell upon it like bears.
one of my favourite memories of new york is of sitting in the upstairs cafeteria at bloomingdales, eating a wedge of blueberry pie to recover from the ordeal that is accompanying my mother shoe-shopping. the crust on top was light, crisp and flaky, and sprinkled in sugar. once i figure out how to overcome the soggy fruit, i think this book will take me right back.
Served on Monday, May 5, 2008 at 09:13 a.m.
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speaking of pizza...
here's one i picked off the zumbo countertop a couple of weeks ago: a double-carb masterpiece of thin, puffy flatbread with an artful arrangement of sliced waxy potato. see the dainty sprigs of rosemary, and the whimsical daubs of mild and musky goat cheese?
it was even better after i emptied the rest of a jar of pesto-marinated fetta over the top of it.
+++
are you like me? do you get grumpier and grumpier the hungrier you become? especially if it's someone else preventing a meal from happening? grrr. i don't have to be hungry, is the thing, and i rarely am... except for right now, i feel a little hollow beneath my belt, but my jeans and i, we've only recently reached a truce, and i don't want to antagonise the situation.
the situation in the rest of the world is more dire. over at avaaz.org there's a petition calling on G8, UN and EU leaders to take immediate action to address the world food crisis by mobilizing emergency funding to prevent starvation, removing perverse incentives to turn food into biofuels and managing financial speculation, and to tackle the underlying causes by ending harmful trade policies and investing massively in sustainable agricultural productivity in developing nations.
gaaarn. sign it. they are just over three quarters of the way to 100,000 names.
Served on Wednesday, April 30, 2008 at 03:41 p.m.
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a couple of days before i went away, i popped into the blood bank to donate 470mls of my finest, stickiest, type B+.
[ B positive! hah! ironic really, when you think about it ]
but so, after the bleeding, and the complimentary made-to-order strawberry milkshake, and the healthy snack pack from which i wolfed down two biscuits that must surely have contained a good dose of transfatty margarine they were so yellow... i wandered northward about two blocks, and finally made it to central baking depot.
i kept forgetting it was there, this bigger, fancier outpost of those bourke street bakers, in a part of the city i just never get to. but there it was, all good, honest, industrial chic, with little tables hewn out of big trees, and even littler faux milk crates fashioned out of... i dunno, galvanised steel fencing? in any case, it's about eight more places where you can sit -- and quite a bit more breathing room -- than at the other two bourke street bakeries.
with more room comes more cake! there were trays of cake behind glass -- slabs of flourless chocolate cake, and something hummingbirdy, and what i remember to be a caramelised banana cake sandwiched with a fat layer of cream, for which i must return, oh yes. in the window there were danishes and twists. on the counter there were bowls of chocolate meringues.
so i went the pizza route. this one, a pleasing crunchy base topped with roasted capsicum, pancetta and ricotta, with pesto, was that delicious amalgam of slurpy and squishy and salty. up front they were thin slabs arranged just so on a tray, but they arrived at the table sliced up and sandwiched. thoughtful, no?
i imagine it must get busy at lunchtime, but around 11, it was just me and the couple at the next table, the girl making the most orgiastic noises over her sausage roll. so i left them to it...
...and stumbled into the babycakes boutique right across the road, where the cupcakes are bite-sized and the variety boggling.
but that's a story for another time.
Served on Wednesday, April 30, 2008 at 03:32 p.m.
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the tourist cafe in cooma is quite an institution. above the main counter, above the decades-old kitschy souvenirs that no-one ever buys, there is a lurid painted frieze depicting a range of traditional greek delicaies. but that olde time menu is now somewhat surpassed by a range of hearty australian dishes, all of which come with chips. even breakfast! this is where i had a mushroom omelette a couple years ago -- a large, rubbery omelette riddled with small, rubbery mushrooms.
so this time, i thought i'd play it safe and order the toasted cheese and tomato open sandwich. look how it glstens! and look at those chips, fried up just how i like -- overcooked and dessicated, with a whiff of stale oil. i like chips cooked in many, many ways.
the kid had an order of cinnamon toast: cheap and nasty white bread, well-buttered and generously dusted with cinnamon sugar -- the cook had used the edge of the plate as his boundary, rather than the edge of the toast. (and what a plate! much better than the trendy square of white china on which my cheese-on-toast arrived.)
but the very best thing about tourist cafe is the iced chocolate. a comically large glass of milk and ice cream doused in chocolate syrup, and topped with a cloud of whipped cream as big as your head. if you have a small head.
i ate a lot of meat that week away: meat pie followed by meat pie followed by pastie. a home-cooked roast beef in rutherglen with all the fixin's, and then another one at the ex-services club in cooma, with an endless bar of serve-yourself condiments. one of those meltaway supermarket tandoori chickens in a bag. a good portion of a salami marked down for quick sale. it was a pattern broken only when we returned to the civilisation that is the harmonie german club along one of canberra's indistinguishable arteries: some slabs of fat, roasted pork, practically quivering in the shadow of a great mountain of red cabbage.
after i arrived back in sydney, i spent the first two days eating bowls of noodle soups for almost every meal.
Served on Tuesday, April 29, 2008 at 09:01 p.m.
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it's true what they say: icing sugar makes anything look better.
the kid was quite adamant that we should make cookies on a rainy afternoon last week, but i managed to lure her down the madeleine route by telling her they were little cakes like cat paws. i have a new madeleine tray, and wanted to see if i could avoid the alien pods of doom -- you may remember -- from last year. i feel heartened enough from this batch to give those darned maccha madeleines another go.
but not just yet. this morning, we are padding quietly on our paws, out of town aboard the slow train to albury. back in a week, i think.
Served on Monday, April 14, 2008 at 06:07 a.m.
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so it's been about a year since i first stumbled into adriano zumbo patissier. right now, there's a big pink 1 in the window; happy birthday, zumbo! truly, an occasion that calls for cake.
i haven't been in there a lot lately -- a non-conducive combination of feeling poor and fat -- but in the last week i seem to be able to fit into my jeans again (and i figure any day now an invoice will get paid), so friday saw me in the little corridor of a shop, eyeing the beauties behind glass.
and here's the thing. friday mid-morning, it was just me in the shop and the boy behind the counter. it was like the old days, when i could -- and did -- ask any number of questions about the new cakes, like, "what's this, like the cloud 9, except with the green powder?" (it's a pine-lime custardy thing under meringue, like a splice.) or, "what's this custardy-tarty-looking thing?" (it's a custard tart), and i wouldn't be in anyone's way. these days, it's a line of ardent admirers wanting pastries, and no time for lingering.
sigh. it was a great place to linger.
just before the next barrage of cake-seeking women hit the shop, i made away with miss marple.
all at once prim and saucy, she is a sturdy lass with a delicate bonnet of snap-crackle toffee and a petticoat ruffle of french crepe. the peekaboo through the sugar is enticing, no? a melange of slippery sliced strawberries and orange segments, tossed in grand marnier.
bundled up in the chewy crepe is a maple sugar mascarpone with more fruit for good measure. the mascarpone is smooth and custardy, and laced with grand marnier too -- a hidden trap for those of us so, so allergic to alcohol -- but it is so, so good i ate through the disturbing tightness that ensued. hem.
+ + +
a few weeks ago, the kid and i had a zumbo picnic date with the little matchbox girl. but it has become quite clear that a zumbo picnic is at odds with the ways of the universe, because -- you remember the first two rained-out events -- it was third time unlucky: as picnic hour approached, so did the big black rain clouds. by the time we stepped out of the shop, fat droplets were pelting down.
so we went to starbucks.
they were nice about it, at starbucks, turning a blind eye as i unwrapped my brown paper package, unsheathed my knife from my picnic basket (so much for positive affirmation), and divided up the handsome cake within.
and i'm sorry to have to type these words, it really irks me, but the unfortunate name of this cake is... "piste as she goes".
-__-
because, yes, ok, there are pistachios in it. a pale green pistachio mousse actually, right on top, and it's am-a-zing; bright with flavour. the subsequent chocolate mousse and caramel cinnamon ganache layers are luscious too. but as we delved deeper, into the slightly stale rice crispies in the praline riz souffle, and the slightly tough chocolate cake base, we became somewhat less enchanted. maybe the name was prophetic, after all.
if ever there was a contender for another glass version of a zumbo cake, this would be it. a tidy column of pistachio mousse, with a sash of chocolate and cinnamon -- it would even be worth saying the name out loud for.
Served on Sunday, April 13, 2008 at 09:27 a.m.
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and after that circus (refer: previous post), there was the easter show. yay. the last (and first) time i attended this grand display of warm and fuzzy rural-urban relations was about ten years ago. now that the kid is three, and cognisant, and a year away from having to pay to get in, i thought it was the perfect time for a revisit.
i was most interested in the prize-winning cake displays of course, and maybe a cheese on a stick. and a cream tea at the country women's association tearoom. the kid mentioned something about milking a cow.
we showed up early, the kid and i, because the bunny judging was on at 9.30. however, bunny judging turns out to be a somewhat unriveting cluster of studious types in lab coats standing 'round a rabbit, cupping it in their hands and holding it up to measuring tapes. huh.
so we wandered for a bit, stopping for a $5 ride on the mini ferris wheel (it went around so many times to make up $5 worth that the kid started heckling the lone carnie about when it would stop.) we played at being radio announcers at the abc caravan. and then when singapore girl finally showed up, we descended upon the woolworths fresh food dome, and that's when things started to happen.
the kid wanted ice cream, but for the first time ever she did not want pink ice cream. "i want green tea," she announced most decisively. as you wish. me, i stumbled upon the irrewarra homestead natural ice cream stand, selling organic ice cream made in southern victoria, without the use of chemicals, pesticides, artificial colours, flavours or preservatives. and truly, the banana ice cream was like eating creamy frozen bananas, and the blueberry was flecked with bits of fruit. it was delicious, but the taciturn dairy farmer type manning the booth said it was not available in sydney, and only in health food shops around melbourne.
we marveled at the regional produce displays with their giant animatronic frilled-neck lizards, and we marveled at the amazing decorated cakes in the arts pavilion next door. (at this point the kid tipped over her half-tub of sloppy green tea gelato, and the fun lurched off course for several sad minutes.) but distractions abound in the arts pavilion: just look at this clever champion cake in the shape of a selection of champion preserves. ha!
surprisingly, champion preserves were not a feature of the tea and scones at the CWA tearooms. what you do get with your two (out of a total 22,000 made throughout the show) fresh, still-warm scones are a little tub of whipped cream and two little packs of supermarket jam, strawberry and apricot. and a pot of hot water for your teabag. it was a moment of olde worlde calm before we headed back out into the blazing sunshine, straight into the clutches of the hot corn vendor.
and that is how the day progressed. in between the buttered corn and the yoghurt sample at the dairy farmers milking show, we fed the baby goats (and persistent, pushy sheep) in the nursery farm. in between watching an educational presentation of a pair of butchers cutting up half a carcass of beef and milking a real, live cow in the milking barn, we had a lamb pie and a sausage roll. just for milking the cow, we got some squeezy packets of purple berry yoghurt that you suck out through a nozzle, so we had that too, and by the end of the afternoon, when i finally tracked it down, there was just no space left in my stomach for the cheese on a stick.
because the kid doesn't yet know about showbags, i bought her another ride at the kiddie carnival before coaxing her aboard the train back to the city. she continues to speak of the music video she will make next year in the abc caravan. a grand time will be had by all.
Served on Friday, April 11, 2008 at 02:50 p.m.
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fucken tired and shit.
this time last week... well, see now, i started off saying "last week", and then it hit me that it was actually two weeks ago. crap. so this time two weeks ago, i was calling 'round likely candidates, trying to give away a spare ticket i had to the v festival.
which is harder than you'd think, even if it was two days out from the darned thing. in the end though, maybe i was just not meant to get rid of it. saturday, as i walked up to the gates, dressed in my best muji shirt, with an on-the-way bourke street bakery lamb-and-harissa sausage roll under my belt, and the scalper with the slimy, solicitous air muttered, "tickets? anyone got tickets to sell?", i hesitated just a beat too long, and the moment was gone. me and my spare ticket and VIP wristband were sailing through the bagchecks, going it alone.
which, as it turns out, is not a bad way to go. i squeezed down the front of hot hot heat, i trudged to this, that and the other stage on a whim, and when whimsy got too much, i found a shady spot in the grass for myself, my "new yorker" and a quite delicious veggie sandwich which i'd thought to get at bourke street bakery some hours before to save me from having to eat the hodge-podge of stodge that is festival food.
(funny the way you have to go to a big rock show sometimes, to get a quiet moment to yourself.)
i was killing time until the main event, really. to me, that was queens of the stone age. as evening fell, along with a light drizzle, and the beast of a drummer kicked in... OH it was great! you know... when the crowd seizes up, and you feel it in the back of your neck. it was that kind of great, monstrous rock.
and maybe it's a sign that i'm too old for outdoor rock festivals, but there were not too many moments of greatness that day, inbetween the trudging from stage to stage. duran duran were not great, but then again i was never a duranite back in the day. rosin murphy was pretty great, with her costume changes at each song and her funny, dramatic dance moves, and her funny, wonderful backing singers. smashing pumpkins started off great, with a lilting guitar anda wistful "today is the greatest day i've ever known...", but then three songs in i remembered why i don't listen at length to the pumpkins. the whining, the whining does not end.
and so (she whines), i left. i beat the mass exodus, and i caught a cab to my palatial bedroom at the vibe hotel in rushcutters bay, where i ordered copious amounts of room service and fell asleep in crisp white linens.
you are thinking, this is strange. why is she off to rock shows, and spending nights in hotels,and where is her kid? but i assure you, there is a perfectly reasonable explanation. the kid had been deposited that morning with her doting aunties and smitten boy cousin for a day (and a night) of belated easter eggs, and vegemite sandwiches, and portuguese cakes, and as little as she could eat of a home-cooked corned beef and white sauce. and i, i had won a prize -- the subscription prize, and who ever wins those? -- from time out sydney magazine, of festival tickets, and VIP passes (read: clean toilets), and a night in a hotel, and a spankin' new mobile phone, and spankin' new phone credit.
(now there's a moment of greatness right there. although the collective two hours that i spent on the phone with three or four of virgin mobile's finest offshore call centre personnel, trying to convince them that i really had won a phone off virgin-sponsored competition, and that i hadn't stolen someone else's phone whose details were on file as the registered owner of the SIM card, and that they should please, please let me have goddamn access to my account, please... that was really not very great at all.)
but so, i was famished from seven hours of v fest on nothing more than a sausage roll and a veggie sandwich. and so, i ordered up big -- so big, i thought, that i was surprised and a little bit embarrassed when the food showed up and they'd only included one set of cutlery.
i had chips, of course, because you must have room service chips, and these were pretty good chips, all crunchy and golden and fat. i ate many of these before i even tasted the duck salad, which i'd ordered out of curiosity, because the description on the menu read: seared duck with lychee, capsicum and watercress salad, with raspberry vinaigrette. the duck was not seasoned, except for the crisp skin, which was, aggressively. the salad was two bitey and mismatched flavours of watercress and capsicum -- diced, and in three colours. the lychees strewn over the top seemed mismatched to that, and the raspberry vinaigrette was...um... sour?
fortunately, i got dessert too, because i was hungry at the time. but the vanilla bean ice cream was mostly melted by the time i got to it -- it had been delivered sitting atop the warm duck -- so i drank that with a spoon, and then i was much too full to have more than a taste of the belgian chocolate mousse.
so i had it for breakfast. rock!
Served on Thursday, April 10, 2008 at 9:52 p.m.
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the days streak by like lightning.
our baubles arrived in the mail today: shiny smooth perspex clouds, with dangly lightning bolts. i couldn't decide on gold lightning or pink, so i got one of each. you have until 10am tomorrow (wednesday) to get a bunch of plastic jewellery for a song. these ones are most appropriate for the weather right now.
right now, i'm working on a job that doesn't want to end. last night i breathed a sigh of relief and prepared to write up a hefty invoice, but this afternoon, there it was again, mocking me from my inbox. truly, it makes me want to staple my head.
it didn't stop us, though, from watching hours of kid's programming on tv as we played a gambly game of "i wonder if the rain's stopped now, so we can go out" (no.). it didn't stop us building a slightly flawed train network (much like our great city's) across the red carpet.
it didn't stop us from making toasted cheese/green apple/green peppercorn mustard sandwiches -- lightly toast some nice grainy bread, spread each piece with a little butter and top with thinly sliced granny smiths and tasty cheese. stick them under the grill until cheese bubbles. dab mustard over one of the slices, then plop the other on top. sweet-sour, wilted-crunchy all at once, with a double thick layer of oozy, mustardy cheese bang in the middle.
we split a mandarin for dessert, and then we bravely went forth into madeleine battle, round two. it was only 2pm, and the rain was relentless.
Served on Tuesday, April 8, 2008 at 10:42 p.m.
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