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i’m not much of a twitterer (tweeter? twit?). that whole twitter scene is far too noisy for me. of course, it has its uses: i did get that chocolate bar from @thirdrawerdown.

and just the other day, a tweet by @grabyourfork alerted me to the existence of scone toast. i have been mildly curious every time i’ve been to the supermarket and noticed the crumpet toast, but have so far managed to not buy it due to my general meh-ness about crumpets. but scones — scones are different: warm and fluffy vehicles for copious amounts of jam and cream. in fact, what i twittered back was “any excuse to eat thick cream on bread”. and then i went out to the supermarket and bought myself a loaf.

scone toast is part of tip top’s café range, which you may remember from café raisin toast, which i had dismissed as being ridiculous because it appeared to be normal raisin toast, only sliced thicker. scone toast, according to the website, “has been inspired by the taste and texture of traditional scones, and is presented in a thick cut, flour dusted loaf.”

thick slices indeed! 2cm blocks of spongy white bread. once toasted, i ignored the pitiful serving suggestion on the bag — note paltry dab of cream attached to the toast with a tiny puddle of jam — and slathered the slice with raspberry jam, several dollops of whipped cream, and sliced strawberries. and it was… ok. it had quite a light, chewy texture, and a fleeting taste of an actual scone, but in the end it was more bready than crumbly-cakey. quite a bit more enjoyment was to be had from the berries and cream.

the next day i had another slice with a good smear of home-made lemon curd, and i couldn’t help but think that there were other, better breads that i’d rather be eating.

so yeah, it wasn’t terrible by any means, and i can’t even say i’m disappointed. i mean, if it had been delicious and sconey then i would have been truly surprised and pleased. for now, i’ll save my stomach space for real scones, and half-heartedly await the next installment in the café series. maybe a sub-par banana bread?

speaking of twitter, i recently added @farmtable to my stream, a restaurant in san francisco about which i know nothing; it was mentioned randomly on someone’s blog. they mostly post their daily menus, which makes for quite a delicious stream-of-consciousness:

chocolate cake w edible flowers
about 7 hours ago

prosciutto butter sandwich w scallion oil. chicken posole soup. little gem salad w cherry tomatoes zucchini radish & creamy basil dressing
about 8 hours ago

hb eggs over baguette w smoked salmon capers zucchini yogurt dill sauce. dt=ww w panir honey strawberries boysenberries. apricot bcakes.
about 11 hours ago

pm: roasted zucchini w housemade hummus & mint oil on sourdough, chicken pozole soup, mixed greens w tuna salad
4:45AM Jun 17th

spicy tuna salad sandwich w eggs. moroccan chickpea soup. mixed baby green salad w nectarines pecans chevre & vinaigrette. cherry pie!
4:36AM Jun 16th

hb eggs on baguette w summer squash, leeks, pantaleo cheese. dt=pan de mie w white nectarines fromage blanc blueberries. cereal is back!
1:50AM Jun 16th

pm: farro salad w basil spring onions baby carrots & avocado, moroccan chickpea soup, pulled pork on challah, yogurt cake, cardamom palmiers
5:02AM Jun 15th

am: cherry brioche bread pudding, hb eggs over baguette w burrata carmalized spring onions basil oil, dt-mascarpone bananas toasted pecans ww
2:02AM Jun 15th

white peach bread pudding, roasted white peaches bacon chevre on pan de mie, dt-pan de mie mascarpone cherries pecans, coconut chard soup
4:32AM Jun 13th

little gems blue cheese radish lemon walnut dressing, yogurt cake, fromage blanc tart w mixed berries, orange blossom olive oil cake
4:32AM Jun 13th

pm: meatloaf friday! coconut and red chard soup, mixed greens strawberries walnuts balsamic vinaigrette, pecan rounds, fudgy brownies
4:58AM Jun 12th

pm: bacon arugula ascutney mt cheese on baguette, carrot & german butterball potato soup, mixed greens w strawberries chevre walnuts balasami
4:58AM Jun 11th

pm: egg salad on sourdough, creamy tomato soup, rooftop greens baby carrots radish spring onions w housemade green goddess dressing
6:21AM Jun 10th

am: dt-pan de mie fromage blanc mixed berries honey, hb eggs over baguette mixed sauteed summer squash fresh chevre, polenta maple b cakes
2:30AM Jun 10th

posted by ragingyoghurt on 18 June 2010 at 1:57 pm

permalink | filed under breakfast, something new

that last sunday before the rains came, we slathered up with sunscreen and walked into rozelle to meet family for brunch. i’d been curious about rosebud since before it opened months and months ago — a year? two? i’d watched its evolution from big empty space to slick cafe, but somehow had not made it past admiring the french aluminium stools on the footpath, and the big red mural above the pass.

inside is a big, open, sunlit space with bare lightbulbs on languid wires strung from the ceiling. inside is a big white plate with golden slabs of french toast, hewn from a brioche loaf, all soft and moist inside its caramelised crust. there are flaked almonds, sour cherries and a generous dollop of mascarpone. there is an artful pouring of maple syrup. it may be the most delicious thing you will eat all week.

i stopped short of licking my plate clean. accompanied by a tall glass of sweet, rose-infused egyptian tea, it was all the energy i needed for an afternoon on cockatoo island.

yes, the sydney biennale is on again. two years sure went by quickly! i don’t know what it says about me, but the attraction in heading out to cockatoo is the return trip through the harbour on the vintage ferries, and the island itself with its collection of old buildings and industrial relics.

the art, i found to be a bit hit and miss — in fact, there is a whole cluster of buildings on the south west end of the island that i missed on purpose, because every room housed a video installation. much too tedious for this philistine.

the turbine hall held most of the big statement pieces, though i didn’t photograph my most favourite of the lot because i didn’t think i could do it justice. french artist kader attia filled a hall with a recreation of a shanty town — actually, the roofs of a shanty town — with corrugated iron sheets going every which way, and tv aeriels and satellite dishes protruding haphazardly. walking across it was inexplicably moving and humbling.

another of my favourites was robert macpherson’s “chitters: a wheelbarrow for richard, 156 paintings, 156 signs”, which is just what it was. a larger-than-life celebration of the vernacular of roadside signs the artist encountered around australia. yes, yes, hand-lettering — i cannot go past it.

i was impressed by the spectacle of cai guo-qiang’s “inopportune: stage one”, which filled an entire cavernous warehouse space with a series of cars, in suspended animation, exploding with light. totally like watching a john woo movie.

there was whimsy, too, amidst the aging machinery. for example, the ornate dr moreau robot sculptures by rohan wealleans. they were fenced off from the public, so i never resolved the question of whether they commanded hugs, or fear.

i remember feeling a rare squeamishness in encountering the room of dead communist leaders, life-sized and waxen, lying in state. i may have whimpered and recoiled when i realised that fidel castro was still “alive”, his chest rising and falling with each mechanical breath.

and i could go on about the life-sized model of the hubble telescope, crafted by one peter hennessey out of nothing but sheets of plywood… but i won’t. instead, i will show you this sign with its jarring punctuation.

now that raises a shudder.

but it’s true: there were lots of plugs.

used to light up artwork like this:

oh wait, like this:

hm.

let us pause, and take ourselves outside, where we can tread on the grounds that have seen the footsteps of convicts, labourers and shipbuilders over 150 years. let us picnic on bagels and hommous. let us wonder at the state-of-the-art shower block — all polished concrete and stainless steel and the most elegant of utilitarian ceramic toiletware — that now services the well-appointed campsite. let us admire the jaunty stripes of this bench that looks over the historic tennis court by the caretaker’s residence up on the hill.

ahhh… all better.

posted by ragingyoghurt on 1 June 2010 at 9:42 am

permalink | filed under around town, art, breakfast

another morning, breakfast for some of us was a remarkably life-like, custard-filled totoro bun. not for me: the day before, i had chanced upon the new digs of the japan centre on regent street. i stumbled into this warren of wonders, and came away with the bready gift for my sister.

it is more frenetic in the store than out on the street. past the sidewalk tables with the unsettling spongey seating, just after the entrance, there is hot steamy action with freshly made savoury snacks. then there are the refrigerated shelves piled with ready-made meals. there are a few rows of tables where people can (and do! madness!) sit and eat this food amidst the crush. there is, somewhat inconveniently placed, a bank of cash registers, before the grocery section kicks in — all the staples and then some, as well as a fridge of treats like cottage industry black sesame panna cotta and maccha swiss rolls. there is a wall of practical kitchen utensils, whimsical bento accoutrement and aluminium foil printed in cartoon characters. beyond all that, almost hidden, a sushi train. truly a fine example of a small but hyper(crazy)efficient inner city supermarket.

back home, totoro-pan was met with an appropriate amount of appreciative gasping, and delivered a comforting combination of airy, sweet bread (complete with “polo” topping for the belly) and nice light custard. me, i had the tiniest nibble, and then contented myself with eating quite a bit of the kid’s hello kitty bun. really, i’d bought it for effect, as the child does not like custard, not even chocolate custard. shame: kitty’s filling was a smooth, dark specimen, rich with cocoa. when i was done tearing limb from bready limb, i licked my fingers clean.

posted by ragingyoghurt on 3 May 2010 at 10:08 pm

permalink | filed under breakfast, shoping, trip

let me tell you about breakfast. this morning, sitting at my desk and watching last night’s episode of masterchef online and writing this — how’s that for multitasking? — i have before me a slice of buttered and vegemited bourke street bakery soy and linseed. i also have another slice slathered in a big sticky blanket of laduree caramel au beurre salé. and i have milky tea.

it’s mostly back to normal: trying to fit a plate somewhere on my paper-strewn desk, or on the dining table which is mostly a thing repository. sometimes just an empty spot on the carpet littered with crumbs from the kid’s last three meals. oh how i miss that clean expanse of candy-striped oil cloth on an almost awkwardly positioned table in a lounge room in london.

our first day there, i steered the excursion into waitrose, where i found an enormous jar of bonne maman apricot compote. just look at that vibrant orange colour — it was very striking against the green gingham lid. i commandeered a packet of scones then, and a tub of clotted cream, and waited eagerly for breakfast time to arrive.

my sister does not have a microwave oven, so i ate the scones cold in the first jetlaggish light of day. however, by ensuring that the volume of cream and compote was greater than the volume of scone, i managed to counter any cold hardness that an overnight scone might normally possess. in any case, this supermarket scone was moist enough inside, and performed admirably its role as vehicle for deliciousness.

and the fruit compote? my word, it was some kind of wonderful. tangy-sweet with huge chunks of succulent apricots right down to the bottom of the jar. we ate our way through it over the next couple of weeks, mostly on buttered toast, and were sorry to see it go.

now, here’s something completely different: we only made it out for breakfast once, and that was to euphorium bakery. i surprised myself by going savoury; even the counter girl seemed taken aback when i ordered the british pork and apple sauce sandwich. but she grabbed one from the pile and sliced it in half before plonking it down on a plate and pushing it across the counter.

i was silenced. it was as big as my forearm. every mouth at the table dropped open in awe as i set it down — except for the kid who was grappling with a perplexing and sodden (and ice cold and rubbery) blueberry clafouti (tchk. there is really no need to serve such a fail in a cafe, especially one where they make everything fresh inhouse.) i began to eat, and the meat was moist and a little bit streaked with fat. there was soft bread, and salty butter generously spread, a foil to the sweet-tart apples. there was crisp lettuce, and crunchy edges of crackling. it really was a most pleasing sandwich.

it was so good i had in again for lunch, after carrying it around in my satchel for some hours as i wandered through the excellent national portrait gallery (a compact and well curated selection of the permanent collection; a quite mesmerising exhibition of three centuries of indian portraits; and a room of mind-boggling contemporary “miniatures” by the singh twins). though mainly because i only managed to eat one half of it for breakfast.

posted by ragingyoghurt on 3 May 2010 at 12:25 pm

permalink | filed under breakfast, trip

the official birthday celebrations kicked off the night before, with the drama of a thunderstorm beating against the plate glass windows of ocean room. two cousins, the kid and i, presided over by my good father, sat down and ate some really good sashimi, some anchovies topped with tomato sorbet, some soft-shelled crab tacos (not quite enough soft-shelled crab tacos, if you ask me), some shoe-string fries topped with a tantalising sprinkle of shichimi pepper — and here’s the thing, you think japanese, and you think delicate little bits of food, but we also had a whole wing of of a yellow fin tuna, so large that it came with a map to guide us.

there were three zones marked out, and the meat — slow roasted over 40 minutes — tasted different from each part. milder white meat up top, slightly dry, and more intensely fishy flavour, from the moist and dark underside. all even more delicious with the crushed cucumber ponzu dipping sauce.

friday morning, i marked the turning of 37 with a tall paper cup of rich hot chocolate, and a short plastic one of central baking depot‘s house granola. it’s oats and sesame seeds, and sunflower seeds, and whole hazelnuts, and dried dates, and a bunch of other stuff too i’m sure, baked golden brown, broken into crunchy chunks, and topped in plain yoghurt and tart stewed fruit.

is it healthy? i don’t know, but it was packed with enough hidden oils and sugar to keep me fortified for a terrible hour-long busride out to bondi for sculptures by the sea.

it’s true, what all those bondi locals have been grumbling about. the coastal walk slowed down to a coastal crawl, as every body stopped to look. and look. and look. even funner than seeing the sculptures was watching the hardcore joggers trying their best to run around the punters, the school kids, the old ladies, the dogs, the sculptures, and then looking irritated to find their path blocked, again. again. dear bondi locals: stop grumbling! find an alternative jogging route for a couple of weeks! do you see me spleening about the queues out of zumbo, keeping me from cake?

the funnest thing of all though, was the magical dream house on top of the hill, a life-sized cubby house completely covered by one jane gillings in an armour of found toys and plastic bottle caps.

oh how we wanted to buy it and take it home with us! instead we opted for hot chips and potato cakes down by the beach.

we had gelato then, once the spuds had settled, not by the sea, but tucked away in the cool and dark of messina. the mythical gingerbread gelato eluded me, so i made do with a triple chocolate extravaganza. chocolate fondant — rich and creamy with a hazelnutty edge; chocolate sorbet — smooth and light and intensely cocoa-y; and chocolate yoghurt — milky with a pleasant tang, my pick of the pack.

and you might think a birthday would end there, what with the kid falling asleep in the car on the way back to my dad’s hotel suite in the city and all…

but she performed that trick of bouncing out of bed about two minutes after she was tucked in, so we trekked into BBQ king and they brought us soup, all porky and ribby with a single chunk of carrot.

then they brought us a great bowl of roast duck congee, infused with delicious ducky flavour and a wonderful surprise of ginger slivers hidden deep in its heart.

and then a platter of fat, fried you tiao. the rice grains in the porridge had broken down into lush creaminess, just perfect for dipping.

now that’s how you end a birthday. lips glistening with oil, a starchy rice mass expanding slowly in your belly.

posted by ragingyoghurt on 18 November 2009 at 9:03 pm

permalink | filed under around town, art, breakfast, chocolate, dinner, ice cream

the kid turned five over the weekend. FIVE!

no, i lie. the kid turned five the weekend before last, while we were living it up in melbourne. how’s that for time flying eh? last weekend was the party.

so this is the way it goes… four years of casual family-type functions, and then the kid goes to preschool, and suddenly i am looking down the barrel of a princess party with actual school friends.

princess party, of course, meant that half the class — the boy half — was automatically excluded. the task of whittling down the remaining girls to a more manageable number (four) was only a teensy bit harder.

and so, at ten thirty on saturday morning, with the dining chairs swathed in pink tulle and sparkly ribbons, and the cucumber sandwiches stacked daintily on the top tier of the serving dish (heart-shaped fairy bread on the bottom), we welcomed a host of visiting princesses for crown-making and morning tea.

there were plastic wineglasses of fizzy fruit juice, melon balls on frilly-tipped picks, sugar-crusted fruit gummies, and it all went without a hitch — hitchless — with the only frisson of anxiety during a round of old skool pass-the-parcel. (you know, in which there is just one prize in the heart of the layers of pink and purple tissue, instead of multiple little prizes all the way through. the attending parents squirmed uneasily, and said things like, “remember, it doesn’t matter who wins”, and “they’ll learn about life’s disappointments”. so true…) pin-the-tiara-on-the-princess was much less fraught, so much so that the girls gamely played it three times in a row before losing interest to the newly unwrapped polly pockets.

and there was cake. a lovely, moist and crumbly cake that i baked the night before — with a smattering of experimental raspberries — before frosting in the morning amidst the last-minute pottering.

now, let’s talk about frosting. here is a genius recipe, in which cream cheese is beaten with sugar, and then folded into whipped cream. you get a light, cream-cheesy taste with a voluptuous, dollopy texture.

more importantly, you get quite a lot left over, and, as a result, the desire to eat it straight out of the bowl. the only way to prevent this is to make more cake, so we did. monday afternoon, straight out of school, we baked the same cake recipe into cupcakes, emptied the last of a bottle of blue colouring into the leftover frosting, and voila.

cake for days, i tells ya.

posted by ragingyoghurt on 28 October 2009 at 10:21 pm

permalink | filed under breakfast, cake, kid, kitchen

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.

posted by ragingyoghurt on 27 December 2008 at 11:43 am

permalink | filed under around town, breakfast, cake, nellie

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.

– – –

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.

posted by ragingyoghurt on 17 September 2008 at 10:26 pm

permalink | filed under around town, breakfast, kid, lunch

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 at 11:43 pm

permalink | filed under breakfast

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 15 June 2008 at 4:13 pm

permalink | filed under breakfast, kitchen, lunch

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