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Posted by ragingyoghurt on 17 March 2010 – 11:46 pm

Filed under blog, cake, chocolate, snacks, werk

i’m filling in a questionaire at the moment, and the number one question is: what is your secret food shame? it took me aaages to think of something. i mean, i eat a lot of crap, but i’m not necessarily ashamed of it. i recently came to the conclusion that my favourite food may well be hot chips, but i wear that badge proudly. (figuratively, mind; i might now have to set about making an actual thing with a pin in it, oh boy!) i don’t like oysters? is it not possible to have a dedicated interest in food while studiously avoiding those slimy, putrid bivalves? sure!

and then it struck me: my secret food shame is that i horde food. i don’t mean to. behold, this rather dramatic looking chocolate mooncake that i won off grab your fork way back in — ahem — september last year. where does the time go, i ask you!

do not fear. it has been cryogenically preserved in my fridge, still sealed in its ornate plastic packet with its little sachet of desiccant. i broke it open this afternoon, desperate for a mid-annual-report-layout snack. the bag emitted a barely perceptible sigh as i cut it open; at last the mooncake would fulfill its destiny.

it was the smell that struck me: an aroma so rich and chocolatey that i was surprised when i bit into the skin, and discovered it actually wasn’t. instead it was mild and cakey, with an undercurrent of regular mooncake pastry. no, the chocolate lay beneath.

GAH. a big, moist mouthful of fudgy chocolate. mmm… quite trufflicious. and here’s the surprise: a pure white heart of mochi. well, ok. so i wasn’t so surprised. having eaten a couple of them not quite — ahem — six months ago, i knew of the chewy treat within. and also, there’s the sticker on the pack that says, “o-mochi mooncake”.

yes folks, this is mooncake innovation at its… well, that level a little way short of “finest”. the mochi isn’t really there for flavour i think, but it does a good job breaking up the mass of sweet, sweeet, flavoured lotus seed paste — mellows out the flavour while providing some thought-provoking texture. and how striking it is, against the chocolate.

i like it. taste aside, i love the sharp impressions in the skin, from the mould. it looks like it’s been carved out of ebony, no? the macha omochi mooncake looked to be an objet d’art crafted in jade. when mooncake season comes round again, i’ll be looking out for these in the usual chinese grocery shops.

so yes, i am a little bit embarrassed that it’s taken me six months to eat it. but hip hip hurray for those food technicians who engineered this long life mooncake, still delicious after all that time.

anyway. the reason i’m filling in this questionaire is that a picture i submitted on a whim to eat. drink. blog. was selected to be part of the SBS photo exhibition at the inaugural australian food and drink bloggers’ conference in melbourne this coming weekend. hopefully it doesn’t melt away into a little puddle, my snapshot of a watermelon and pineapple ice pop, amongst such illustrious, gorgeously styled, DSLR macro company.

Posted by ragingyoghurt on 16 March 2010 – 3:24 pm

Filed under around town, cake, lunch

what!? the middle of march already? then it is probably longer ago than i’d like to admit, that i met singapore girl for an early lunch down at the rocks. it was a monday morning in late february, and the night before, i’d wondered if a slap-up meal at the newish baroque bistro would be just a bit over-the-top for a start-of-the-week appointment.

as it turned out, it wasn’t immediately so much of an issue. lunch service doesn’t kick in until noon, and after our cursory lap around the museum of contemporary art, it was just gone 11.30. what to do, what to do. as we pondered in front of the menu by the door, the helpful waitress showed us some pastries in the window which we could have for “breakfast” instead. alas, it appeared that a couple of flies had beat us to it. we sidled up to the indoor cake counter then, and concluded that we might have a drink and a snack until lunchtime.

splendid.

we were ushered back outside, where the sun was bright, and the dark steel tables had absorbed just a little too much warmth to be comfortable. but then the macarons arrived and made it all better. you may already be familiar with these plump little specimens, from la renaissance up the road. (baroque is their new, upper market venture.) according to their website:

our chefs regularly attend the atelier pierre herme school of patisserie in paris to discover the secrets to the perfect macaron.

darn tootin’. these were perfect. after the initial crack of the shell, the biscuits were moist and yielding. the rose one was filled with delicately perfumed buttercream, and the jasmin one, with its white chocolate ganache, sang clear and true of fragrant white blossoms. paired with a big bottle of local fizzy water, it made a delightful pre-lunch treat. it was only the impending lunch hour which kept me from ordering another one or three.

shortly after twelve, our waitress came back to check how we liked the macarons (uh huh!), and to ask if we would like to move inside for lunch. we had grown accustomed to the great outdoors, so we stayed. and here is what frolicked across the table a short time later: bangalow pork loin, with confit potato, onions, mushrooms, and pine jus. the meat was mostly tender, and the fatty bits not terribly off-putting but for the one mouthful which resisted being chewed and ended up at the edge of the plate. the sauce was rich, and the tumble of accompaniments (note: bonus diced tomatoes and sprigs of cress) most pleasing indeed, even for me, who doesn’t much like pine nuts. a not-too-heavy, not-too-light spring time meal for the last days of the season.

we had been unsure, reading it off the menu, how large a serve $27 would buy you in a fancy bistro on the tourist trek. i would say, perfectly respectable. i would even go as far as to say that the kitchen has finely calibrated the portion size so that you could fit in a dessert after. even after one and a half macarons (though no starter) prior.

ah, beauty on a plate. just look at the demure berries, lined up so primly. do not be fooled: they conceal a lush and seductive pastry cream. there weren’t quite a thousand layers in the pastry sheets of this mille feuilles. shame: they shattered in a most satisfying manner. after they were gone, i kept dabbing at the crumbs with my finger, trying to get every last fragment of the rich caramel flavour. the one let down was that instead of the rose petal ice cream listed in the menu, this raspberry mille feuilles came with a matching quenelle of raspberry sorbet, which melted swiftly into raspberry puddle.

it’s a bit sad, isn’t it, when unannounced substitutions occur? you might have picked a dish purely because you felt like, say, rose petal ice cream. raspberry sorbet is fine and good and all, but maybe the thought of rose petal ice cream was all it took for you to pick this dish over another. no matter. after checking with the attentive and friendly waitress, i am pleased to let you know that baroque bistro will be happy to welcome you any time for just desserts.

next time, i might come by for the passionfruit souffle, or the valrhona chocolate dome. maybe even the crepe of spiced apples. indoors, where it’s air-conditioned, and the ceilings are high, and the beams exposed, and the acrylic chairs pink, and the second-hand smoke from neighbouring tables not an issue. and never again will my mind be sullied by concerns about how fancy a monday luncheon can be…

fade out: internal monologue

fade in: jaunty french accordion music

Posted by ragingyoghurt on 8 March 2010 – 12:40 am

Filed under bookshelf, drawn, kid

i made a drawing a couple of weeks ago. did some picture research on the internet, sketched a rough on paper, redrew all the components in a loose and scribbly fashion on the back of some official letter i’d been sent, scanned them in, then pieced it all together in photoshop. i was pleased that day to finally figure out how to drop colour into a tonal greyscale drawing, without the colour layer obscuring or compromising the pencilled outlines.

layers > multiply

that’s all it took. for years i’d wondered. i sent it off then, to where it was needed, and not an hour later, received a two-word reply: oooooh! beautiful! how warm and shiny i felt.

the kid works much quicker. she takes a sheet from my tray of one-sided printouts, and draws directly in any shade of felt-tipped marker. a few days ago she grabbed the nearest biro and made my new favourite drawing: a joyous supermarket excursion with a cat, a mouse, and a family of tiny kittens. it really sums up the happiness i feel when i’m at the supermarket.

(though not the bit where i stand in a queue for 20 minutes because my woolies refuses to put more cashiers on, grumble, gnash.)

something else that makes me happy is the super speedy three day sydney zine from dawn at handmadelove, full of drawings of smiley food to eat around sydney (in three days, oh the pressure!). just look at the lovely watercolouring, and the cheery lettering. here’s one of my favourite cafes, badde manors, #3 in glebe. it’s true: they do have a way with potatoes.

[ picture from handmadelove ]

Posted by ragingyoghurt on 4 March 2010 – 3:24 pm

Filed under cake, chocolate, werk

i’m about to disappear down a tunnel of work again. only seven pages into an annual report layout, and my head has gone spongy, and my eyes are a-twitchin’. but do not worry, there is pearl jam in the background, a large cup of almond tea to the right of me, and to my left…

an adorable mini chocolate kugelhopf from lüneburger. it is a rich burst of cocoa for a mid-afternoon slump, moist and just a little bit sticky (awful in late summer weather but just about perfect in a cake). and scattered here and there, chocolate chips. such a tiny treat! and at $2, quite the cheap thrill.

Posted by ragingyoghurt on 2 March 2010 – 11:03 pm

Filed under misc

my aunt’s best friend died on sunday. she lived a couple of streets away from my aunt, and we saw her every now and again when we went up that way. she wasn’t ill, and she wasn’t that old. 56, according to the news report.

a 56-year old cherrybrook woman died after losing control of her blue toyota tarago van on the golden highway at dunedoo about 2.30pm.

at that time, we were in chatswood, just finishing up a lunch of shanghainese dumplings and garlicky eggplant, and trading tales with my cousins about our assorted ailments (me: a hurty sternum; my cousins: a current cold and a recent kidney infection). my aunt was reaching into her handbag for a small foil packet of hard candy made up with mysterious chinese herbs. she gave then to me, and said they would be good for my cough; it had made hers much better.

meanwhile, the van had come off the road, and had flipped and rolled, several times, and had come to rest on its roof. the five passengers managed to free themselves, but my aunt’s friend in the driver’s seat was trapped in the wreckage.

the news report mentioned the other passengers: a female with broken bones, two men aged 58 and 27, a 24-year-old woman, another woman whose age was unknown…

you couldn’t assume that the men were her husband and her son, and the first woman her sister, and younger woman her daughter. the third woman was her other sister, who had only last month been in an induced coma overseas, from a lung infection, and who had miraculously recovered, and come to australia for a recuperative holiday.

you wouldn’t know that the woman trapped in the car had been a nurse, and an artist, a painter with a studio in her backyard. she could whip up a batch of pumpkin scones just like that, and once, when she somehow coaxed the kid away for an afternoon, she whipped up a tray of pink cupcakes, from a packet mix, but still. that afternoon, the kid returned with take-home cupcakes, a case of lovely waxy crayons, a sketchbook, and a pair of enormous sparkly fairy wings. on her fridge door, this woman displayed a picture of a mermaid that the kid had drawn. the last time i saw her, almost six months ago, was across a grimy laminate table, over bowls of mediocre phở delivered by suitably surly waiters.

she didn’t make it out of the van. she died while the emergency crew tried to save her. it’s strange: i didn’t really know her that well, but i feel the break in my periphery.

Posted by ragingyoghurt on 1 March 2010 – 11:29 am

Filed under around town, bookshelf, kid

summer took the stage for a last curtain call.

saturday, we traipsed across the lush green lawn of a historic house in a leafy north shore suburb, and watched chocolate suze get hitched in jolly rollicking fashion under the impossibly bright and burny sun. afterwards, there was coca cola, and orange juice, and fairy floss, and a fat, sprinkled krispy kreme doughnut — and that was just the kid. afterwards, her head didn’t quite spin around, but the sugar gave her enough of a buzz to carry around, for the rest of the afternoon, the enormous lollypop she charmed out of the bride.

it was still summery when we got back to the city, so we sat a while in our box seat above the town hall intersection, watching the finely-tuned ballet of crisscrossing pedestrians in the golden light. and because the box seats are actually three big corner windows in the children’s department at kinokuniya, we also kicked back, made ourselves comfy, and fashioned a small pile of books to pass the hour.

on one of the shelves, i found a book called “all kinds of families!“, with pictures by one of my favourite illustrators, marc boutavant. we sat and read it for a bit, this jaunty rhyme by mary ann hoberman, but when i got to the verse that went:

clams in the sea make a clammily family
lambs in the field make a lambily family
jams in their jars make a jammily family
and yams in the cupboard a yammily family

i knew that i would have to take it home with us. books are family too!

happy days to you and the mister, mrs noods! we are honoured to have been there to see the beginning of your own little family. may your fridge always be overflowing with treats.

Posted by ragingyoghurt on 25 February 2010 – 2:46 pm

Filed under around town, lunch, trip

so yes, it was hot in melbourne, but it never got too hot for pizza. one day in january, after a short spell at luna park —

[ the kid is still too short for most of the rides, but we did qualify for the ghost train (a dud), and then the mini-roller coaster in the shape of a large green dragon (rollicking god fun for the 105cm-tall set). after which she procured for herself the largest fairy floss in the world. it was roughly half her height, and weighed enough that it eventually pulled itself off the stick. she kept calm and carried on, slipped her arm through the mass of spun sugar, and fashioned herself a fine edible bracelet. ]

— and a large amount of gelato that melted before we even made it down the street, and a good bout of digging in the sand beneath the promenade, and the merry side-stepping of washed-up jellyfish on the shore, we stumbled, somewhat sundazed, into il fornaio, which hangs off the prince hotel on ackland street. i’ve always come by at the wrong time, too late for lunch service, and this time, alas, we were once again told we could have drinks only, or anything from the display case.

fortunately, the display case still held a handful of small pizze. i picked the prosciutto. the waitress was kind enough to put it in the oven for a spell, and it was just the salty, crunchy-edged kind of mid-afternoon snack you might wish for, just in from the beach with your legs all sandy.

some days later, we took shelter at the NGV international. for a while, we pretended to look at art, though really we were more interested in standing over the impossibly sleek airconditioning vents in the floor of the gallery. and then also, lunch. the gallery kitchen beckoned, from its hiding place behind the ground floor escalators. and you will see this picture, and yawn and say, ho hum. i couldn’t help it! i am completely powerless against the lure of a prosciutto pizza, but look! this one was also decked out with fat slices of field mushrooms and a smattering of olives and fetta.

ahh… such pleasurable little discs of modestly puffy, barely charred dough, their sharp flavours uncompromised by just a scant amount of cheese. it’s a rarity around these parts i tells ya. if they had been just three bites larger, they would’ve been perfect.

Posted by ragingyoghurt on 25 February 2010 – 10:50 am

Filed under around town, ice cream, kid, trip

what a long, terribly hot summer it’s been. our fault, i suppose, for spending most of it in sunny melbourne. on the most horrible day, we took shelter in the airconditioning of the arts centre; my plan was to see as much of the AC/DC exhibition as the kid would allow. except that we found ourselves drowning in a deluge of pink tulle. turns out it was fifteen minutes away from the lunchtime matinee of the angelina ballerina show, and hundreds of little girls in ballet dress-ups swarmed the lobby. the kid turned her large limpid eyes my way; the temperature in the street was the wrong side of 40; i handed over my credit card, and spent the next hour or so sitting in a sea of battery-operated glowsticks, watching lithe, human-sized mice dance across the stage.

but the temperature kept climbing, and at 1.40 in the wee hours of the morning, i woke up stifled. i poured myself down the hallway, and had a cold shower, and eventually got back to sleep. later we were to find out it was hovering in the lower-mid-40s all night, and when the temperature finally dropped at about 8am, it was to a refreshing 34°C.

ugh.

so we went out in search of icy treats, often. the lemon-lime and bitters sorbet at trampoline was truly delightful. a very fetching shade of palest pink which dissolved gracefully into a gentle citrusy tang on my tongue. i liked it so much i went back for more.

there was the emergency slurpee from a hole-in-the-wall 7-eleven one afternoon in the melty city, and a golden gaytime krusher at KFC one sunday when nothing else was open in shimmery rural victoria. it was a most unappetising shade of… bilge, a pale and lumpy yellow in the plastic tumbler, that tasted better than it looked, until it warmed up to room temperature.

and then, holy moley, there was the organic cinnamon donut gelato from fritz gelato at the souf melbourne markets. lush and milky with a streak of sticky red jam all the way through. behold its majestic crest sitting atop an enormous scoop of caramelised fig and roasted almond yoghurt gelato, equally lush and milky, and filled with crunchy little fun bits of seeds and nuts and burnt sugar. good times…

and then we came back to sydney, and the holidays galloped to a close, and the kid grew up and went off to school. no tears were shed from anyone involved.

Posted by ragingyoghurt on 17 December 2009 – 10:29 pm

Filed under around town, cake

i don’t know how these things happen, but suddenly i’m 10 kilos heavier than what i’d like to be. hmm… ok, so i do know. i follow the cake, is what happens.

a couple of weeks ago, we followed it down hot and dusty king street, to cool and sweet-scented buppa’s bakehouse in newtown. we like cake, deborah and i, and we like american cake, and buppa promises the real thing.

that saturday morning, the air inside was tinged with sugar and by the time we reached the front of the moderate queue, i was somewhat delirious with sugarlust. there wasn’t a lot of choice on our visit — maybe three pies and three cakes — but we only needed one each after all.

turned out, we didn’t even need that. the red velvet cake was a little dry and the frosting was so painfully sweet — and gritty with sugar — that i felt my teeth wince, and my throat spasm in protest. it was near impossible to eat one without the other, and yet eating both together was not much better. in the end, with regret, we left it. i hardly ever leave frosting, but today the billowing mass left over mocked me triumphantly from the plate.

much more successful was the chocolate-peanut butter pie. i hardly ever order peanut anything, but the combination of the creamy, salty, savoury peanut butter and bittersweet chocolate was quite alluring. at the glass-fronted counter, this had seemed a plain-looking pie, a beige mass held demurely in a dark cookie crust. however, it was plated with gay abandon: chocolate syrup drizzled over the top, and then extra cookie crumbs from the pie dish strewn about. all sorts of crunchy-crispy-sticky-creamy. mmm… this is truly the sort of thing i’d be happy to eat, feet up and slumped in my sofa… until i find myself 10 kilos heavier than i’d like.

i ordered tea to go with, and on the counterperson’s recommendation, chose the $5 pot over the $2.50 cup. what came to the table was a teapot with a single teabag floating forlornly in the hot water. this is the sort of tea service that irks me, and the kind of pricing structure which makes me cranky, hrumph.

so i marched back up to the counter, and got a slice of pie to go. apple. the pie had already been cut into, and appeared to be sitting in half its depth of pie juices. i asked the man with the cake knife if it was possible to make a fruit pie and have the bottom of the crust remain crisp, because, y’know, disintegrating pie crust from a year-and-a-half ago. proudly, buppa chimed in to say that this was a sign that no unnecessary thickeners had been added to the filling; the apples were fresh, and peeled and sliced by her fair hand.

and so, it was sort of sloppy when they gently slid it into the takeaway paper box, and quite a mangled mess when i transferred it to a plate at breakfast the next morning. but the crusty edges were still crunchy, and the top flaky, and the apples, cinammon-spiced and still tart, were delicious. thinly sliced, they retained a bit of bite, some cooked a little more than others.

i can’t wait to try the cherry pie. it’s homely food, unpretentious and a little messy, and i’d probably even recommend eating it at home. the shop itself, despite its tables and chairs and sweet, sweet smell of cake-baking, is somewhat lacking in character… and may i just say again, $5 teabag.

we blinked as we headed back out into the big bright that saturday morning, dazed with sweetness and light. little did we know — well, perhaps there was an inkling — that not quite an hour later we would be fingertips deep in dhal and chutneys and thick curry sauces. there were hoppers, and a big, brown dosai, and when we finished those, a plate of parathas. at last, we were free of the sugarhigh.

Posted by ragingyoghurt on 30 November 2009 – 9:57 pm

Filed under cake

so. tetsuya aside, i’d say that this has been a pretty low-key birthday. by low-key, i mean, there was no cake. sure, there were several fancy desserts, and quite a bit of ice cream, but no, nothing with candles stuck in the top and a mess of crumbs at the end.

sometime last week, i thought i’d check out the newly launched summer range at adriano zumbo patissiere, with the thought that i might finally get me some birthday cake. but when i got there two lush tarts batted their eyelids at me, and i was sold.

well. they were.

may i present, to the left, “through the looking glass jessica rabbit”. from a distance, it looked like a glistening fried egg atop a pastry shell, but as i swooped in close, it became apparent that it was a delicate construction of shavings of coconut (chewy and slightly savoury, even) and a UFO filled with sour. below, silky layers of pandan jelly and coconut creameaux in the coconut pate brisee almost made it seem like it wasn’t 40° out. i liked it a lot.

and then there was “weekend in the cross”, though surely not the seamy, steamy, slightly salty kings cross you know, and maybe even love. this one, i adored. the rose creme in the pistachio pastry was positively dreamy; the plump raspberries and sweet-juicy watermelon sitting in a puddle of tart rhubarb compote, a perfect foil. it didn’t even need the baggy of sweet-sour watermelon powder, but why turn down a sprinkling of good, harmless fun?

because the kid was there, we also got a modest array of macarons: lychee, pink grapefruit and jasmin, mango and sticky rice… and darned if i can remember what that speckled one was.

they were all painfully sweet, although the fruity flavours were quite pleasant. i especially liked the lingering notes of jasmin after the citrusy burst of the pink one. i especially disliked the hard, crunchy, grains of rice in the purple one. raw? toasted? certainly not sticky. tchk.

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