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Posted by ragingyoghurt on 6 July 2008 – 5:56 pm

Filed under chocolate

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.

Posted by ragingyoghurt on 5 July 2008 – 11:58 am

Filed under cake

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 proffering 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.

Posted by ragingyoghurt on 4 July 2008 – 1:25 pm

Filed under around town, snacks

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.

Posted by ragingyoghurt on 3 July 2008 – 10:28 pm

Filed under around town, art, grumble

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 monitors 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.

Posted by ragingyoghurt on 29 June 2008 – 10:47 pm

Filed under around town, cake, chocolate, ice cream

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.

Posted by ragingyoghurt on 25 June 2008 – 11:43 pm

Filed under breakfast

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.

Posted by ragingyoghurt on 25 June 2008 – 10:41 pm

Filed under around town, dinner, kid, kitchen, lunch

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

Posted by ragingyoghurt on 20 June 2008 – 10:07 pm

Filed under chocolate

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.

Posted by ragingyoghurt on 15 June 2008 – 4:13 pm

Filed under breakfast, kitchen, lunch

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.

Posted by ragingyoghurt on 14 June 2008 – 9:48 am

Filed under cake, misc

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!

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