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well. since i can't taste anything at the moment, i thought i'd show you these pictures from a while ago. like, march, when my sister was in town, and i still had money in the bank and a sister in town, and we traipsed around town and pretended to be the types of girls who have long, leisurely lunches at inner city hotspots like bentley.
oh wait, we really did.
although, twenty minutes to our noontime reservation (made that morning), we were twitching on the newtown station platform, realising we weren't gonna make it. i called up the restaurant to let them know we were running late, and to please hold our table. and when we finally arrived, our table was truly still available. as were most of the other tables, for most of the time we were there. whoulda thunk it? you'd expect friday lunchtime to be packed to the rafters.
so hurrah, we took our time reading and re-reading the menu, and then took our time eating our meal, and it all unfurled slowly and delicately and quite beautifully, from the straighforward but delicious beginning of chewy bread and fruity oil.
we each ordered a white anchovy stick with pistachio praline; perhaps we should have gotten a couple more. a number of clean, salty fillets were rolled up and impaled on a skewer, and then coated in sweet crunch -- a perfect balance of textures and flavours, none of which could be described as "fishy".
we shared the gazpacho three ways, pristine, chilled soups of herbs, tomato and almond milk. my favourite one changed with each sip i took. in between, we picked at the colour-matched kingfish ceviche with pickled watermelon and coriander.
we did order cooked food as well of course, although the calamari served over squid ink rice and green chilli were so light and ethereal it seemed they must have been cooked by tiny sea nymphs. it certainly smelt of the ocean.
everything up until then had been from the tapas menu, plated to share. so we were surprised and impressed when our one item off the entree menu -- caramelised pork cheek with beetroot and smoked salmon ravioli -- came divided up into two perfectly art-directed miniature servings, one for each of us. we sat and gazed upon it for some time, our fingers poised quivering on our own cheeks.
i don't know that i have ever used the phrase "melt-in-your-mouth" on this blog, but there you have it. and so rich and flavoursome. our plates were scraped clean by the time we were finished, not a tiny purple flower or paper-thin slice of beetroot "pasta" remained.
and then there was dessert. we may be the sort to share an entire lunch, but everyone gets their own dessert. nellie even had two. well, ok, she had two of the small sweets, because how much do you think $6 might buy you at a fancy restaurant these days? turns out, a lot. the hot ricotta dumplings (like eating fluffy little donuts) and the chocolate ganache with orange oil (like eating fancy nutella out of the jar) were more than enough to go round, even with my $16 black olive sorbet with carrot cake and coffee crunch.
i generally don't pick coffee anything, and never ever carrot cake, but so strong was my interest in the black olive sorbet that i went boldly forth. i was rewarded with a quenelle of sweet and cold that burst on my tongue with intense salty olive flavour before melting away. the carrot cake was an orange sponge, mild and sweet, with a sort of steamed texture -- if only all carrot cake could be like this. there was a rich carroty... i dunno, emulsion? and an unexpected, somewhat flavourless and colourless jelly. and the crunch, sweet and sandy, and not overly coffee-ish. not too shabby at all, by which i mean, really good.
it's true, i've rolled my eyes when i've read about molecular gastronomy, and was mildly concerned before we rocked up to bentley that our lunch might be a bit ridiculous and gimicky. but bentley doesn't go to quite the extremes of that spanish guy, and certainly nothing we ate bubbled or squeaked or foamed. (at one point, something vapoury did waft over from the next table.) in fact, this turned out to be one of the most enjoyable, exciting and unforgettable meals ever to pass my table, marred only by the service, which, though efficient, tended to err on the side of the waiters being way too cool. one of them corrected my pronunciation of "ceviche" in that passive-aggressive way of stressing his pronunciation -- ceveesh -- when repeating the order; the other asked us, "are you sure?" most disbelievingly when we pointed out that we'd only had one bottle of fizzy water rather than the two which had shown up on the bill.
grumble.
but yeah, waiters aside, bentley was lovely and amazing.
Served on Saturday, September 27, 2008 at 03:27 p.m.
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the day after, i felt so much better that i suggested to the kid we go up the street for a treat. the evening before, i felt so much worse that i was slumped in a chair in the outpatient department, with a litre of saline being steadily dispensed into my arm from my very own drag-around drip. this after two days on the couch with a 39ƒ fever, of drifting in and out of sleep, eating nothing more than a tub of yoghurt and a couple bits of toast -- actually, no, the couple bits of crust off the kid's toast --while the kid mostly attended to herself, watching kids' tv and playing with a host of stuffed cats, the trouper.
so ordinarily, a treat might be a cake, or a sticky bun, but wednesday it was a pot of detox tea at circle cafe. yes, yes, i know i only just went, but i do love it so.
inside the squat pot was a veritable witch's brew of fresh ginger, mint, lemon and thyme -- the last of which gave the potion a somewhat unsettling meaty edge. without the thyme, it might have merely been pleasant. the tiny pot of honey which accompanied, i surrendered to the kid. i did not think it was possible to eat honey so quickly with a small finger, but there you go.
the food, when it arrived, made me think i was just about healed. just look at the wonderful pink risotto. nothing about it mushy and bland, from the rice, to the chunks of roasted pumpkin, the wedges of fresh beetroot, the wilted baby spinach.
but the walk up the street really set me back. by the time we made it back home, it was all i could do to propel myself back on the couch. my cough kicked in to the next level -- the one where you think you might bring up a lung or two. my nose somehow become completely blocked up by something deep in my head which simply would not be budged. as a result, my sense of taste completely deserted me.
so i boiled up saturday's leftover takeaway charcoal chicken with a knob of ginger, threw in some rice and broccoli, and ate it for the next couple of meals. ugly food for ugly times. it's true you know, these bugs really are getting stronger.
Served on Friday, September 26, 2008 at 10:23 p.m.
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my bank account is the lowest it's ever been (she says, remembering back to a week ago when she threw caution to the wind and money at the dinosaur designs), but today, tossing up between bagels at bagel house and a nice cafe sitdown, we chose about life. actually, the kid did. it's my fault, i suppose, but she has really developed a taste for "scrambled eggs at a cafe".
"you know, i can make you scrambled eggs at home," i'll say.
"but i want scrambled eggs at a cafe."
sometimes i play along.
so we hop-skip-jumped over the potholes of the backstreets, and sat ourselves down at a big wooden table. these days the kids' scrambled eggs at about life come with a fat slice of lean bacon.
on the grownup menu there is cinnamon chocolate french toast, but i'd been burned by their regular french toast before -- sure, it looks impressive, cut some two inches thick, but the egg only penetrates not quite enough to render palatable a great wodge of bready bread. this problem might have been fixed by a copious dousing of maple syrup, but there was only a small puddle of the stuff. which only confirms my suspicions that about life is not the place to get a delicious sweet thing.
instead, today, i got the about life vegan breakfast -- scrambled tofu with red onion, spinach and roasted pumpkin relish, served on soy and linseed toast. it sounds pretty good, doesn't it? in my head i saw a great mound of sauteed spinach, maybe another pile of pumpkin, and good wedges of grilled onions. instead, i got this:
it was all kind of scrambled together, and placed rather politely on a solitary slice of plain -- and unbuttered, damn vegan breakfast -- sourdough. which, you know, is fine. fine. because why should i be disappointed when the thing on my plate doesn't match the thing in my head?
because it was $15.50, is why.
still, it was almost tasty, even. a good sprinkle of black pepper, and salt (and i never add salt) fixed that. as did a scraping of butter from the kid's order, and a blistered and fatty bit off her bacon that she refused to eat.
i further sullied the vegan experience with a pot of chocolate chai, a wonderful, creamy mix of chocolate and spices brewed in frothy milk. it was particularly gingery -- tingly on the tongue -- and it looked like there was even real chocolate in there, and when i got to the bottom of the pot i encountered a veritable swamp of tangle leaves. so ok, the about life drinks, at least, are delicious sweet things.
but the virtue -- vegan or otherwise -- is overrated, and anyway, possibly too expensive to indulge in with any regularity.
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last week, i spent $15.50 eight blocks down darling street, at circle cafe. there, it buys you the salad of the day. but what a salad! poached egg and bacon salad!
a perfectly cooked egg -- glorious and runny inside -- perched atop an enormous tumble of well-dressed leaves, and many slices of crunchysaltymoist bacon, and shards of parmesan. the accompanying bread basket held half a baguette and two pats of butter.
you see where i am going with this? if you have $15.50 earmarked for lunch, you should go there too.
Served on Wednesday, September 17, 2008 at 10:26 p.m.
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if you're walking quickly between sydney town hall and the cinemas, you might almost miss, just next to the KFC, the great vertical slots in the slate grey walls of the new city building on the corner. but if you slip into one of these and walk down the narrow passageway, you will find yourself in an atrium of still empty shopshells. it's dark, though not gloomy, and the harsh sounds of the street are muffled. through the narrow shaft of the escalator well, a bright oasis of small things, colourful and twinkly, might catch your eye. here is the subterranean wonderland of the newish maxim supermarket, and currently one of my favourite places for a cheap treat in the city.
there is a comprehensive inventory of japanese confectionary -- all manner of crunchy, chewy, gummy, marshmallowy, [random unexpected texturey] goodness. exotic yoghurty beverages. instant noodles and umami seasonings -- liquid, flakey and gritty. and the main attraction, for me: the bank of freezers packed with row after row of single serve japanese (and korean) novelty ice creams.
here's one on a stick, resembling -- and tasting like -- a wedge of watermelon. a couple over, a wafer shell in the shape of a corn cob, filled with corn ice cream. there are perhaps a dozen variations on the theme of green tea - red bean, and one of them might be an ice cream-filled mochi, just the right size for nestling in your hand until it softens to the right consistency. if it's all too much, you might just go the way of a simple icy pole... peach flavour!
saturday, when it was hot, the kid got a lurid mango popsicle, with little cubes of mango jelly embedded throughout. the comic drawings of hula-dancing mangos on the wrapper surely clinched the deal.
i got this handsome tub, in equal parts for the packaging and for the flavour, which was annin tofu, that milky almond jelly pudding you might find in a chinese restaurant. it was delicious -- light and creamy, and not as sweet or frightening as you'd expect from something whose ingredients list begins: glucose syrup, sugar, palm oil, whole milk...
mmm... wholesome.
Served on Monday, September 15, 2008 at 08:02 p.m.
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here i am, riding the bus, the day after i queued two hours -- two -- to get into the dinosaur designs sample sale. i didn't even queue five minutes to get my book signed at the david sedaris reading last month. ok, i didn't even queue period; deborah held a place while i walked to the front of the line to count how many fans there were ahead of us. roughly 80 made it a quick decision to abandon our posts for a splendid dinner of pasta and chocolate cake. priorities eh?
but thursday morning was a lovely day to spend in the sun, reading "the new yorker" style issue while shuffling forward at a snail's pace outside the dinosaur designs warehouse.
i've wanted one of their bangles for years, but i was always too cheap to spend the big retail bucks on these chunks of plastic, no matter how lovely and handcrafted they are. the warehouse -- really, the one room within the warehouse into which a select few were permitted entry every fifteen minutes or so, was the size of an average classroom, with trestle tables set up around the perimeter and an island in the center. atop these were plastic crates, and within these were a jumble of bangles and rings and necklaces and dishes and bowls and platters and vases and jugs, and the sound of fifty or eighty or however many women in total had been admitted, the sound of rifling through these hunks of resin, was like entering a mahjong den. and the jumble was somewhat less lovely (but only a teensy bit less lovely).
and i got my bangle! a pale green, not quite translucent thing, wonky round the edges. it looks like it might glow in the dark, though it doesn't.
and what does one do the day after partaking of a sample sale, laughing in the face of that resolution to not buy anything for the rest of the year that is not food?
you could buy just over a kilo of jelly belly beans, now 20% off at the david jones confectionary department, in a fetching selection of such matching hues as very cherry, cotton candy, coconut, cream soda and chocolate pudding.
or you could wander up to the newish hawkesbury harvest markets at cook + phillip park, where the sun beats down mercilessly, and there is no shady spot for respite.
what there is, is a dairy stand selling a lightly salted butter churned from the cream of real, live, grass-eating jersey cows. if you stop to have a chat, you'll be offered a cup of cold milk, sweet and clean. the gympie lady's been out of butter recently, problems with milk supply and all, so i thought i'd give this one a go.
it was rather good on a slice of soft white sourdough, with a dribble of red gum honey.
Served on Sunday, September 14, 2008 at 12:01 p.m.
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hem. i've been hiding.
you know how it is. you go away for a few days. and you come back, but don't tell anyone, and over the next couple of weeks you realise how unfettered you feel without the blog attached. and then a couple more weeks go by, and then a couple of months apparently -- some people have been counting, evidently, and leaving heartfelt secret messages on their blogs -- and suddenly, you've even forgotten what size to crop your photos, necessitating some resaving of pictures so you can post them.
i really didn't know if i'd be back. i hadn't planned it, but along the way, as i luxuriated in this pocket of time that not writing afforded me -- a pocket of time that i squandered finally finishing "gilmore girls" and starting "six feet under"... and laying out an annual report [note to self: send invoice] -- becoming a reader of blogs rather than a writer of one became a very attractive option. (i also thought of maybe writing this as an anger blog rather than a food blog after an encounter with the ridiculous and exasperating seagull woman of darling harbour on an excursion to the aquarium a few weeks ago.)
well. it could still happen i suppose.
but not today. today, i bring you macaron! we stopped by the lindt cafe at cockle bay wharf after the aquarium, me and the kid, for a dark hot chocolate and a babycino. they had recently introduced a new macaron flavour -- blackcurrant -- and had organised a festival of delice to celebrate. the festival, as far as i could tell, consisted of a free third macaron for every two you bought. i think that perhaps stretches the conventional definition of "festival", but at the same time, i wouldn't turn down a free macaron. so, fine.
they look like fat, perfect specimens, don't they, nestled in their fancy lindt-paper-lined box? but their shells were brittle and hollow, and their fillings unyielding, though undoubtedly quite tasty. tchk. i ate them during a workbreak the next afternoon, swiftly and joylessly. i wished they could all be zumbo rice pudding macaron.
Served on Saturday, September 13, 2008 at 10:42 p.m.
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we are flying south for winter, just for a week, to melbourne.
these birds, on the other hand, have journeyed halfway across the world to rest on my walls. i was only recently introduced to geninne's art blog, and by chance, right as she finished the last of a series of 20 birds in watercolour and collage.
i am thrilled to own a couple of the limited edition prints she sells in her etsy shop. one greets me each time i enter my green bedroom. and the other, because house-painting is so addictive and compelling, farewells me when i leave the apartment through my freshly painted scarlet vestibule.
see you in a bit.
Served on Monday, July 7, 2008 at 07:55 a.m.
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the more observant amongst you would have noticed a crusty little nugget in the previous macaron-skewed post. it is a caramel truffle, which, when i saw it behind glass, seemed unordinary, because its sugary surface was adorned with little beads of caramel. i took it as a good sign, but i had little idea then that when i bit through the granulated sugar crust, there would be nothing else beneath but soft, salty, buttery caramel; those beads were the molten caramel which had broken through!
thus, you might conclude that the crust is just a vehicle for getting a glob of caramel into your gob without making too much of a mess. thing is, i could've sworn that amongst those grains of sugar, there were also a few grains of salt. 'twas a fine vehicle indeed.
Served on Sunday, July 6, 2008 at 05:56 p.m.
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there's an almost ominous air in the window at adriano zumbo patissier. stark against the black drapery, a plainly typeset sheet of paper reads: new collection out 5 july. that's today!
just over a week ago, i walked past the shop after a bout of grocery shopping. sometimes when you're loaded down with calico bags, all it takes is a quick turn of the head as you pass the door, to see what colours of macaron there might be in the centre display case. that day, there were none. but as i faced forward again to propel myself home, a voice fell out into the street, calling my name.
counterboy was behind the counter, but crouched down low and out of sight. "we have lots of new flavours today," he said, "but i'm just setting them up now." timing eh? his arm surfaced first, at the end of which was a hand proferring a sparkling green macaron. like the tail of a mermaid it was (a disney mermaid), encrusted in coloured sugar. i peered into the filling, and was surprised to see it flecked with what appeared to be leaves. turns out it was basil and lime, and rather more limey than basily. i wasn't much enamoured of the flavour, but it shure was purty.
later, cosy at home, i surrendered to the rice pudding macaron. released from its bag, it filled the surrounding air with the comforting scent of cinnamon. that's it there, dusted just so. eating it was bliss; the light and chewy biscuit gave way to a rich filling that tasted of palm sugar, and hid crunchy grains of toasted rice throughout. it immediately became my number one favourite macaron.
the chocolate-earl grey macaron lasted quite a bit longer, two days perhaps, because i approached it with caution. because i am no great fan of earl grey tea, by which i mean, i will not drink the stuff. but the lemony bergamot flavour that i find so caustic and irksome in the beverage was far softer and rounder in the chocolate ganache. it even tasted of tea! in fact, this bronzed beauty was rather good, and you can safely have one with no hesitation.
yesterday, after a tip-off that the rice pudding macaron were back in stock, i popped back into zumbo to cancel out the awful morning that involved a moderate downpour; a bus that trundled up to the stop with its signboard showing the wrong number so i didn't hail it and it went by and i had to wait another half hour for the next one; a temporarily misplaced bus pass; a kid who decided she didn't want to be at school right after we arrived there; a doctor whose waiting room was so full they were no longer taking appointments for the day; the biatch driver of the BMW who decided she wouldn't need to signal she was turning into the street i was about to cross -- at a zebra crossing even -- and when she saw me two steps into the street, merely slowed down and waved at me before driving straight through.
a w f u l.
the chocolate-earl grey macaron were now distinguished by a casual scatter of tea leaves, but i only had eyes for the rice pudding... and that shimmery golden one in the corner.
banana, caramel and chocolate, i was told, by the boy behind the counter. i asked him if he'd already tried it, and if it was exceptionally good, and when he nodded his reply, i bought two.
and now that i've had one, i can say that it is beyond exceptional -- it is amazing. the insides are swollen with the soft ripeness of bananas (actual bananas, as they say), and the caramel is a warm hug for your tongue -- a good thing, surely.
so the question at this stage is, how many number one favourite macaron can a person have? i haven't had a chance to see the main couture line, but if the biscuits are any indication, this winter collection is shaping up in a most pleasing manner.
Served on Saturday, July 5, 2008 at 11:58 a.m.
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after we made it back to the mainland, we wandered through the labyrinth of city streets until i found the central baking depot. alas, i only know its location in relation to the clarence street blood bank, but my cousins seemed happy to be led, and the kid, well, she wasn't actually walking, so she had no vote.
we sat and ate an assortment of pastries, and when i finally established that my order of hot chocolate had never even registered with the guy at the counter, we started making the motions of leaving. this included buying loaves of bread to go. i finally got the cherry, fennel and walnut bread.
it's a somewhat lighter bread than i'd normally prefer, and for something that lists "cherry" way up front, it contains an almost imperceptible count of little bits of chopped-up fruit. see those two little pink flecks? they be the cherries. what it does have is a very agreeable, completely not overwhelming fennel flavour (from seeds, mind), made more pronounced when a slice, lightly toasted and buttered, is sprinkled with spiced sugar. mmm.
oh how i love fennelly, aniseedy things. like fennel, for example, finely sliced in a salad, or braised warm and floppy.
or these delicious spanish flatbreads i unsurfaced when i was in london a few months back. torta de aceite, they are called, crisp and flaky, rich with olive oil, dusted in sesame seeds and sugar, infused with the aura of anise, each one wrapped in waxed paper. a winning package all 'round! does anyone know where to find these in sydney? i have tried the spanish deli on liverpool street in the city, but... nada.
or these glassati anice biscuits that called to me from a large basket at my feet, at fratelli fresh. i eat more than i should of these crunchy little rings in one sitting, until my throat tightens with the assault of the sturdy sugar glaze. and then i eat a couple more.
Served on Friday, July 4, 2008 at 01:25 p.m.
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i'd been wanting to go to cockatoo island for ages. i live a way across the water from it, this island with its history of convicts and wayward girls and shipbuilding. from our balcony, we can see the big old sunwashed sheds, and the towering cranes. we can hear -- and see -- the cockatoo gulls: sometimes they squawk as one, and rise into the air and dive at the water with great force like a gust of microscopic white specks. some days we hear the industrial sounds of heavy metal grinding on heavy metal. most mornings we see a barge go past loaded up with trucks and other such large, wheeled vehicles. so intriguing!
this year, cockatoo island is one of the venues of the biennale of sydney, and a free ferry service will shuttle you between circular quay and the island. it is a very, very cute little ferry, crafted of wood a long time ago, and painted a fetching combo of milky coffee and raspberry jam. you see where this is going?
yes! we went to cockatoo island! me, and the kid, and two of my cousins, to see art! well, ok, i actually wanted to see the island, but what better way to lure some long-lost cousins, with at least one ex-arts-journalist among them, than with the promise of some world class contemporary art?
so under the bright blue sky, we caught the cutest, and slowest, ferry in the world to cockatoo island. us and a big, fat chorizo baguette, and a tub of marinated mushroom salad, and a tub of bacon fried rice (fried in butter! it was proclaimed as the tub hit the picnic table), and a cereal bar. but i am getting ahead of myself.
we got off the ferry, and it was like we had arrived at the land where time stood still (except for the understated but exceedingly modern cafe right next to the wharf)... in the middle of a wind storm. sand and dust whipped around us at a terrific speed, and we walked backwards into the wind to keep the dust from our eyes. truly, it seemed like we were elements in an enormous installation. we gamely explored a few buildings, each of which housed a single artist's grand statement: one of the statements was racist graffiti scrawled all over the walls of a historical toilet block. another, banks of tv moniters screening footage of... well, i didn't pay too much attention, but i'm guessing it was something to do with the weather, given the name of the collective responsible. there was a lot of video art.
after we succeeded in fighting our way to the end of the second wind tunnel (not the one in which a dramatic soundscape had been installed, oh no.) and discovered a shiny new sheltered structure with picnic benches (and BBQ hot plates and a microwave and fridge, if you're interested), we claimed this little sliver of the island, and sat there for as long as we could, until the wind had died down, and we no longer felt like cousins who had not really seen much of one another in twenty years.
[ nothing like a dose of painfully didactic modern art to make us go all breakfast club. ]
and yet, after our windswept luncheon, faced with the choice of catching the next ferry back to civilisation, or venturing out to the higher ground, we picked: more art. because, y'know, i thought we might feel a sense of regret about what might have been, had we jumped (on the) ship. and behold, in one of the charmingly scruffy buildings up on the hill, i came across this amazing, perforated cork-tiled wall in a kitchen corridor leading into yet another video installation.
but look at it, look! so great.
possibly the best thing i saw on the island.
that hour to the next boat passed surprisingly quickly. we stumbled upon the education centre, channelling scandinavia with its glorious natural light, and wide open space, and neat modern furniture (and banks of video screens). and before we knew it, there was just enough time to scramble down the hill right as the ferry pulled up.
around the wharf, the air was rich with the greasy smell of fat, fried chips. and -- whether it was placed serendipitously or by design -- that sticker in the window of the vandalised toilet block? pretty much summed up this portion of the biennale, for me.
the island though, that was great.
Served on Thursday, July 3, 2008 at 10:28 p.m.
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