sometimes the kid gets all excited about going to the supermarket. because she cannot yet write most cohesive words, she will draw our shopping list. today we are going to chinatown.
clockwise from top: soy milk, noodles, rose syrup cordial, nanami togarashi, dumplings, chili bean paste, sesame oil.
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this was originally posted to the ragingyoghurt facebook page,
while the blog lay dormant.
it’s the morning after the night we poured ourselves through the chinatown new year night market. every year we go, and every year we say how insane it all is, and then a year passes and we forget, and we do it all again. the kid spent two hours in someone’s arms, buffeted, or on someone’s shoulders, above the crowd, so she basically did ok. the rest of us stopped when the crowd did, moved when it moved, and if we were sweaty enough at a certain point in time, we slimed past whoever was in the way.
me, i seemed to be sweatier than most, because we had thought it prudent earlier in the evening to dine on bowls of bakut teh and steamed buns; my body temperature was already up by a couple of degrees. eventually, when we tired of seeing the same exotic delicacies being peddled by every third shop (this year’s new inclusions appeared to be a range of flavoured taiwanese rice cakes, and fig jelly), we insinuated ourselves into a quiet crevice between two stalls, and replenished our sweat glands with icy cold sour plum drinks.
“will we go again next year?” i asked my mother.
“no,” she said, most decisively. “except maybe to buy mushrooms.”
right now i am fortifying myself with a mug of almond-flavoured soy milk. i had seen an ad for it on the back of a bus on the way home from the airport a week ago, and had rushed out and bought a carton the very next morning. see how effective an 8-ft high photograph of a carton of soy milk can be?
but i am particularly susceptible to soy beans this week. so far i have acquired:
• enormous rice crackers embedded with whole roasted black soy beans
• black soybean hot cocoa mix
• some sort of roasted soybean snack, which i really bought for the carton
• soft serve soymilk ice cream
the last of which i would be quite overjoyed to eat every day, but which would leave little room for the bakkwa-on-white-bread sandwiches, or the sambal prawn rolls, or the mangosteens/duku langsat/jackfruit trinity.
if only this could be my only quandry, rather than the pathological fear the kid has developed, of public toilets which flush automatically. in this city, that is the most tiresome thing of all.
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this was originally posted to the ragingyoghurt facebook page,
while the blog lay dormant.
it was the evening my sister returned from a day at the blue mountains. she had been perched on a grubby metal step — hell, let’s call it the floor of the train — for the duration of the journey back to the city, and been kicked by a rat-faced little boy with a filthy mouth to match. after which there was another lackluster ride on another train — a sushi train — for dinner; it was the second last day of the old year, after all.
and so she and the frenchman tumbled back to the house, and frenchie took his place on the blue couch with the red controller and earned himself another five mario stars, and my sister handed me a little package wrapped in a purple paper bag.
i shook it, as i asked, “can i eat it?”
“well…” she said.
“oh! is it matches?” i ventured.
i felt the exhalation more than i heard it.
“but wait ’til you see them,” she said.
“are they pink?”
but she had no chance to answer, because i had slid the box open, and there they were.
it was exactly as it had been a couple of weeks earlier, when my aunt brought my grandmother ’round for a little birthday morning tea. after the sour cream fruit loaf which my aunt had made — un-iced, though solemnly adorned with whole pecans — my grandmother was presented with a few wrapped-up parcels, and as she ran her hands over each one, she pronounced decisively, and uncannily, “purse,” or “cookbook”. clearly, i have inherited her gift.
i immediately jumped up, struck a match, and lit my new oolong-flavoured candle. everything was nice.
and now, two weeks into the new year, things are still nice, though rather a lot hotter than i’d like, especially today when the trains running through western sydney were not air-conditioned, and i thought i might just vapourise on my way home from facilitating an image-making workshop with some young, especially giggly muslim girls in granville.
things are nice, with the intensive swimming classes, and the lemonade icy poles, and the giant red megaphones in the shadow of the opera house, and between it all, i find i haven’t the time — or, alas, the inclination — to blog anymore. shame, i cannot tell you about the salty peanut butter cup taste test, or the wonderful lunch before the crazy-ass thunderstorm, at gastronomia pelagio. what about the cabbage salad at pompei, which turned out to be a great mound of shredded cabbage, dressed simply with a truffled olive oil and garnished with a few planes of parmesan? almost as delicious as the prosciutto and fig pizza one plate over. (let’s not even talk about dessert — a scoop of peach sorbet nudging a scoop of pistachio, both as creamy lush as they were intense.)
it’s not that i would not like to keep telling you stories. but i think that i must step away for a moment, just a quickstep in the vast scheme of things you understand, until the sky is less burny, and my time management improves, and i figure out the terrible minotaur’s labyrinth that is customising a wordpress template.
and when i return, i will drag an rss feed out with me! yes!
in the meantime, other wordy girls will tell you many a fine story, and point you in the direction of a good feed too.
and because i am never far from the innernet (as much a blessing as it is a curse, i tells ya), i might post an update or two on my brand spankin’ new ragingyoghurt facebook page. ok, just for you, a photograph of the cabbage salad goes up as we speak.
and yeah, what the matchbox said: thanks, for coming by. it pleases me that you do.
normal transmission will resume… some day.
xmas came early — just — when nellie arrived in town.
shortly after 7am, xmas eve, with wandering airport carolers to the right of me, and — surprise — the little matchgirl to the left, and a dark cherry mocha frappucino in my hand, my sister and the frenchman trundled down the ramp, with three suitcases of red, pink and silver.
shortly after that, after the ride back to my very tidy house in the taxi of a very grumpy chinese man (“you are already very happy,” he said almost resentfully, amidst the backseat jollity, “to be on holiday.”), but before the tea had properly brewed, the little red suitcase was disgorged onto my very tidy dining table.
behold: a copy of the new jamie oliver magazine, “jamie magazine“; a dark chocolate and morello cherry fruitcake from fortnum and mason; and a crate of laduree macarons, because pierre herme was not yet open when it was time to board the eurostar a day and a half earlier.
i keep good company, i do.
i ate half the salted butter caramel one, the filling yielding and sweet, then salty, and then half the mango and jasmin, like something made in another world, and then we hustled ourselves to haberfield and waited patiently (though twitchy) in line for cannoli and cold meats.
our christmas day played out in a most agreeable manner: ferry rides, james bond, banana choctops, popiah dinner in the suburbs.
our boxing day began with bread, and mortadella, and smoked salmon. there was raspberry jam and apricot nectar with soda water. my appropriately festive-themed macaron — pistachio, and rose — if you must know, were both divine.
merry ho ho.
it became apparent as we approached the chocolate shop, that it was housed in the old digs of oh calcutta!. i’d never been inside oh calcutta!, and i’m sure it was nice and all, but i can assume that it looked nothing like boon (the chocolate experience), which looked very nice indeed with its glass-enclosed, marble-topped jewelry shop counter and blond wood panelling.
in fact it was deborah who initially alerted me to this store’s existence — “they have a tea room! and chocolate ornaments!” is essentially what the email said — and then i read some in-depth reporting over at the unbearable lightness of being hungry, and as the plans for our day fell into place, it became clear that boon would be a stop along the way.
and so. we stepped up to the door, and opened it, and the smell of chocolate that engulfed us was really quite exhilarating. because we had come from sopra, and gelato, we were in no condition to climb the narrow stairway up to the tearoom. but there was enough downstairs to keep us entertained.
behold — indeed — xmas baubles rendered in chocolate. dainty bags of nibbly things. smart canisters of biscuits. across the way, laid out just so in the long counter, exquisite little squares of handmade filled chocolates, with pretty names to match.
alas, my note-taking is wanting, and i have no recollection of what any of the names are. but in my box of five ($10), i had a quite savoury one of peach and cardamon, one of jasmin tea in a dark ganache, one of rose in a white ganache, one of anise and vanilla (it wasn’t too liquoricey, as the shopboy had said, but the air of aniseed hung around my mouth for somewhat longer than i’d like), and…
…something. told you my note-taking was poor.
the chocolates, on the other hand, were wonderful. crafted by a belgian-trained chocolatier, their fillings were lush and smooth, their flavours subtle and sophisticated.
five chocolates go by too quickly (six even, if you count the sample the countergirl offered me after i’d made my selection), so i’m hoping that the bizarre weather continues, and throws me a summer’s day cold enough for hot chocolates and belgian waffles upstairs.
an innocent email on monday morning about the possibility of lunch snowballed, and by the time saturday rolled round, there we were — deborah and i — in our best walking shoes, primed and hungry for whatever the afternoon might bring us.
well. we did have a plan.
i’d been curious to try the new sopra outpost in potts point, and that is where we began. it is much swisher than the original waterloo warehouse: banquette seating, shiny red mosaic walls, an unsubtle soundtrack that made us feel like we were in a 60s italian movie (a slapstick comedy, at that), and — the deal-breaker, were there deals to be broken — fancy, custom printed, evocatively illustrated place mats on very nice textured paper.
they had them arranged just so on the bar, but we spirited a couple over to our table top with not too much recrimination from the waiter. (very efficiently, he showed us a particularly fetching one with a big plate of pasta emblazoned with “fratelli fresh”, and then he replaced the ones we had pilfered.)
much less efficiently, we made our choices for lunch; everything sounded so delicious. and then of course, it was.
there was an antipasto platter to start — four little mounds of: mushrooms and cumin; spicy caponata with surprise crunchy almonds; arancini with aioli; simply dressed green beans.
there was a risotto ala milanese, rich with the colour and tang of saffron, with tiny nuggets of meat folded in. there was a salad of lettuce and tomatoes in salad cream. and then…
there was a roasted bit of organic pork. i’d asked the waiter what it came with, and he said, “nothing. it’s just the meat.” and he added, as an afterthought, “there is a bit of cress on top”. it was just as he said.
and it was amazing. tender, flavoursome meat, fatty where it counted, crowned with a great arc of salty, crunchy crackling. sigh. even shared between two, it was more meat than i’d normally eat in a day. maybe even two or three days.
we ate, and ate, and at some point deborah said, “this is one of the best lunches ever,” and i could not disagree.
and you might think that after a meal such as this, there would be no room for dessert. and you might be right, to a point: no dessert was had where we sat, or even down the road at yellow, but once we had roused ourselves and propelled ourselves back towards the city through darlinghurst, and made the requisite stops for a meringue duckling (croissant d’or) and loaf of walnut sourdough (infinity bakery), we could not resist the lure of the mountains of gelato at messina.
just look at that chocolate sorbet — so glossy and dark (how would you choose between that and the chocolate orange sorbet?). and what about the crisp and bracing lemon sorbet? the pear gelato was much less peary than i’d anticipated, but the fig delivered everything it promised. we sat for a while, in the cool and dark, and watched as streams of lithe girls in long dresses sashayed in for scoops of this and that. we watched a child demand vanilla.
we finished up, wistfully, and made our way one block south, to the chocolate shop.
oops. i forgot that i was blogging again.
it’s just, the end of the year ploughed into me, and the list i carry around in my head, of all the stuff i need to get done before next wednesday, takes up all the room.
it’s by no means an awful list of terrible things, just a big one. of projects such as: “call around to all those places you want to eat at, to see if they’ll be open between xmas and new year’s day” (sort of 50/50); or “send invoices” (invoices as yet unsent); or “bake gingerbread” (men totally devoured at preschool xmas party yesterday, houses assembled and awaiting dispatch) or “paint the kid’s room in a day” (still on schedule for tuesday, must buy paint tomorrow!); or “buy flowers, and mangoes, and a kilo of smoked salmon”.
i can’t even bring myself to consider “clean the house”, but “get those dishes done” is unavoidable; they seem to pile up so fast these days.
before i started a load the other day, the kid asked me to tie a pretend clothes line across the landing of the stairs. so i did, and then went about washing more cups than you’d think a household of three might get through in a day.
and then when i was finished, and moseyed over to see what the kid was up to, i discovered a wonderful installation of miniature cooking utensils strung across the line. much better than when she disappears in silence for half an hour and re-emerges with her toenails (and entire toes) covered in shiny pink nail polish.
well. clearly it’s a cosmic conspiracy against the rice pudding eclair — once again i made it out of zumbo without. but behind every cloud lies… another cloud! the sunny cloud, to be precise.
it was that fella’s birthday yesterday, and for all those times he wistfully mentioned the lemon meringue pies his mother used to make while he was growing up, i bought him a little one of his own. a regal majesty it is, sitting pretty as though carved out of italian meringue by florentine sculptors. but beneath the swirls of gilt-edged meringue (guilt-edged meringue — ha!) is not your average lemon tart. in fact, it isn’t a lemon tart at all.
just look at that delectable triple-layer filling in its crisp shell: lime jelly, lime curd, and a very lively yoghurt creme fraiche. because he was happy to share, i can tell you that oh, it was good. after the yielding, marshmallowy meringue, the lime jelly tasted like a burst of fresh fruit, and the curd was full and fat on my tongue. and yet, i was glad to have only had the modest serve…
… because we were due for a meatfest at braza. you might think that a 6pm start for a traditional churrascaria is too early. the summer sun is still up, say, or the meats might not be ready yet. and this is true.
but this early, the kid is still in good spirits (and so are we, after the lovely waitress gives maeve the once over and agrees to charge her the three-year-old price — free — even though she’s just turned four), and the meat is not too far off.
for a $38 flat rate, we were presented with a host of side dishes — fried cassava wedges, polenta and crumbed banana; potato salad; green salad, with oranges, beetroot and ricotta; an assortment of tiny pickled brazillian chillies; tomato-capsicum salsa, so delicious we ate our way through two bowls; roasted cassava flour; and rice… which remained largely untouched — and an endless parade of meat, borne on skewers by charming brazillian waiters.
according to the menu, there are 18 varieties that go round; i lost count. that’s my plate halfway through, with a bit of grilled haloumi, some fish that came wrapped in banana leaf, some lamb, some beef, a chicken wing, a portion of banana fritter and a cube of fried polenta. i had already eaten a fat slab of pork neck. minutes later, three other cuts of beef came by, and a skewer of succulent prawns. and some more pork.
the highlight was the pork, i think, and the cheese. and the little meaty sausages and the lamb. and the prawns. also: the cassava chips… and did i mention the salsa? some of the beef was over-seasoned, a cunning ploy to get you drinking more, thought the birthday boy as he savoured his $7 beer, but all the meat was perfectly cooked, still pink and tender on the inside, and when it mattered, sometimes charred and crunchy on the outside.
unfortunately, i cannot tell you a single thing about the chargrilled chicken hearts.
late into the game, we tipped our stop-go doodad on its side to signal: respite! but i put it green end up as soon as i saw the pineapple go by. yes, they will bring you two pineapples impaled on a skewer, and carve off as many slices as you desire. the outside is liberally sprinkled with cinnamon and sugar, and the inside is succulent with juice.
we had barely finished the fruit when the particularly friendly waiter came back with another chunk of meat. “more meat?” he asked, and when we shook our heads, no longer able to speak, he continued knowingly, “more pineapple?”
it was a darned good offer, but we had to decline.
i had every intention of fulfilling my rice pudding eclair destiny (or the rice pudding eclair’s destiny), but it was so hot that morning, and when i stepped inside the cool interior of adriano zumbo patissier, this vision in white, all shimmery and glimmery, spoke to me. its name, after all, is “have a chat, kai”. kai being one of the affable zumbo counterboys, who, yes, will chat to you, in mandarin even, if you are so inclined.
“if you like coconut,” said the countergirl, “you will like this.”
because inside its white chocolate enclosure, there is a base of coconut dacquoise, and a delicate filling of coconut mousse — and the surprise (though not unwelcome) grittiness of dessicated coconut in every mouthful. it was really the promise of lychee jelly that drew me in though, and there it was, an almost too small treasure hidden within.
this pristine beauty, all sweetness and light, vanished all too quickly. there were no regrets, except perhaps that i did not have another at hand. and somewhere in a balmain pastry cabinet, an eclair lives to see another day.
around the time a rumble of foodbloggers descended upon zumbo yesterday — oh! the rapturous prose! the continuing mythology! — i was escorting the kid to her first real birthday party… at mcdonalds! in four years, we have been to mcdonalds three times: twice for little squeezy bottles of water, and once for fries, because we somehow could not find alternative chips in the city on a sunday afternoon.
so it was quite a foray beneath the golden arches with her three-piece chicken mcnugget happy meal, and the shiny lurid furniture in the purpose-built backroom, and the playground made of plastic tubes that amplify the shrieking.
me, i had my own treats to organise. settled into a table out front in the restaurant, with a copy of “the new yorker” in dire need of being read, i concentrated on dipping my fries into my caramel sundae. it wasn’t quite a masterpiece created by a french-trained chef, but it certainly had its merits. the fries were crisp and hot (though a few seemed almost liquid inside — water or oil, i couldn’t tell), and the salt crystals played off the caramel quite well (take that caramel beurre salé). the soft-serve was a cool, creamy foil… though you’d think that ice cream should be colder… shouldn’t it?
no matter. i finished it all, scraped the plastic cup clean, and headed back into the maelstrom just as lolly bags were being distributed. the screaming went up a notch. “where have you been?” asked one of the mothers, “in the cafe? that was a good idea.”
indeed, it was.
