mm. i don’t much like it, the speedy passing of months. five months ago, a kindly reader told me i might like hardware societe — it really seems like it was just weeks ago (which i suppose it was, technically, just a lot of ‘em), but it wasn’t until last week that i made it there.

singapore girl was in town for a short spell, and running behind about five, ten minutes in the rain when i showed up. a friendly waitress with fetching sailor tattoos granted me the last marble-topped table, and then brought water and took an order for a hot chocolate. the amazing and forgiving thing about gestational diabetes is the unexpected mercies that it grants — hot chocolates have proven to have no ill effect on blood sugar levels. even this one:

it came, a generous jug of hot, frothed, chocolate-flecked milk and a cup, empty but for the knob of softened chocolate dribbled with cream. perched on a spoon was a tiny chewy doughnut. all up, i poured two cups of hot chocolate from the jug, and it wasn’t until late in the game that i discovered there was a sizeable mass of chocolate hidden in the bottom of that as well. it made for a particularly rich chocolatey beverage by the end (i’m not complaining).

midway through the first and second helping of hot chocolate, singapore girl arrived, twenty minutes late after all, and ten minutes away from the point when the lunch menu clocks in. i’d had ample time to study the breakfast menu, and had already decided… but it wouldn’t have been so terrible to start all over. as it was, the waitress urged us to put our breakfast orders through, and before too long, two fat omelettes arrived at the table.

i am wary of cafe omelettes: too often they arrive overcooked and spongy. this one was pretty much perfect — brown in spots, but soft and moist on the inside, with an edge of butter, stuffed with well-cooked asparagus spears, slabs of soft cheese — brie, or brie-like, i can’t recall — and leafy herbs. it was gone much sooner than i would’ve preferred, much like the last five months since the cafe recommendation.

look what i ate during the just-gone school holidays: a small harvest of potatoes, fried up two ways. i blame the kid. we’d ambled up to the local takeaway on the main street of a little town in a northeastern corner of victoria — it’s the sort of place where under the counter there are lollies in jars to be had for 5c a piece, and behind the counter there is a handwritten board boasting such delicacies as hamburgers with the lot, pineapple fritters, banana fritters, and fish and chips and salad (which we’d ordered the last time we were in town; the salad was composed of a couple slices of tomato, some shredded carrot, a couple more raw onion rings than necessary, and half a dozen slices of tinned beetroot). this time, though, we were just after the chips… until the kid sang out, “and potato cakes. two each.”

i’m sorry to say that they were still mostly uncooked on the inside, crunchy, rather than just short of al dente. but you can tell, can’t you: compared to the golden brown chips below, the batter on the rounds of spud looks pale and flabby (much like one might look after subsisting on a winter diet of fried potatoes). not to worry. there was such a bounty of chips that even divvied up three ways (the wafting aroma of hot fat and vinegar was enough to lure the boy out from retiling the bathroom of his country estate), they proved unconquerable.

another day, i orchestrated a detour to the resurrected myrtleford butter factory, housed in a handsome brick building dating back to 1930. just look at the lovely lettering! here they churn out batons of cultured butter, salted and un-, wrapped in printed foil in a most fetching olde time design.

they had sold out of butter that day (and i can’t seem to track it down in melbourne — the perils of artisanal production, i suppose) but fortunately, mid-afternoon, the kitchen was still open for lunch.

i was having trouble picking one thing off the menu — garlic prawns? blue cheese tart in a buttermilk pastry? — when the waitress came over with a litany of specials. after she spoke the words “corned” and “silverside”, i only pretended to dally for the smallest moment before picking that.

beneath the rather aggressive balsamic glaze — to me it bordered on caustic — the meat was tender and comforting, and all sorts of salty-sweet-smoky. i was most won over, though, by the generous tumble of winter vegetables on the side. behold happiness: carrots, beans, tiny beets, brussel sprouts, cauliflower, a roasted onion and two waxy little potatoes. once my tongue had been beaten into submission (or perhaps the sauce actually did mellow over the course of the meal), the balsamic glaze served as a most agreeable accompaniment to the vegetables as well.

i was too full for a sit-down dessert after that, but from the counter display, i picked a a wedge of chocolate truffle tart to come away with me. it was thoughtfully boxed with a small tub of thick cream and berry compote. i dipped into the rich sludgy slice at random moments over the rest of the day — just a spoonful at a time was enough for an intense chocolatey burst. right before bedtime, i gave in and finished it off, inordinately pleased.

there was a brief and generally good-natured discussion as we stood in the kitchen the other evening, about my collection of little bowls and dishes. “they’re all behind cupboard doors,” i said unapologetically, “and i like them, and use them all.” my little vietnamese ceramic bowl, for example, holds the perfect portion of such things as japanese slaw: finely shred some wombok, then toss with a squirt of kewpie mayo and the tiniest dribble of mirin, a few salt flakes and a sprinkling of shichimi togarashi. you don’t need a lot of mayo; after a little sit, the cabbage juices run into the mayonnaise to create a light, milky dressing. this was a clean and crunchy accompaniment to the wintertime stodge of an oyakodon dinner.

the bowl is especially pleasing at breakfast, when the weather is agreeable and i get to sit in my sunny backyard with a big dollop of greek yoghurt drizzled with honey. walnuts, of course, are the go-to crunch factor, but i finally got around to making that granola i saw at orangette the other year. i dallied for the longest time over what i wanted to put in it (pistachios and dried cherries) but what went into the mix on the day was walnuts and black sesame seeds, and what happened to the cooled-down, out-of-the-oven mix is that i chopped up into it a whole bar of orange-infused dark chocolate. this chocolate, from cocolo, has quite a sharp break, and adds a compelling crunchy punctuation to the chewiness.

once, i also filled the bowl with blue jelly. it really is endlessly versatile…

at maruyu the other weekend, i could not resist this package of choco pies. mochi choco pies! a whole box of ‘em for $2.50! maruyu sits on clarence street, a block west of the queen victoria building — possibly the best city block in all of sydney, with this two-level japanese minimart (that’s, maruyu), an affordable and unfussy french cafe, and a very interesting exhibition space within doors of each other. i’ve gotten many a bargain at maruyu. sure, a lot of it was exotic junk food just past its expiry date, but this one is still good until at least january next year.

so i opened the box, and was somewhat surprised by the size of this little packet. i mean, i assumed each one would be individually wrapped — it’s the nature of this sort of asian snack food, but i really did think that seven to a box would yield a slightly larger pie. what with the plastic wrapper within the carton, and then another cardboard tray in which the little packets of choco pies were nestled, it was a much smaller handful than what i had expected when looking at the picture on the box.

and then when i got that sachet open, all i could do was laugh at the tiny disc inside. choco pie? it looked more like an after-dinner mint.

when i first saw this on the shelf, i was drawn to the mochi part of it, and then the black sesame. that it was covered in chocolate was a bit of a bonus i suppose, but chocolate in asian confectionery is decidedly hit-or-miss. sometimes it’s floury, or grainy, or oily; sometimes it just has a peculiar wrongness. such a gamble, but in this case — chocolate-covered black sesame rice cake — it was a gamble i was willing to take. plus, y’know, two-fiddy.

this particular chocolate — a thin shell — broke with a soft crack when i bit into it, and melted smoothly away. it was not too sugary, and had a rich, dark chocolatey flavour. the soft chewy mochi, which replaced the marshmallow portion of a traditional choco pie, pleased me with its mild sweetness. the inner layer of black sesame paste delivered a nutty taste that lingered, and it was all i could do to stop myself chasing it with another serve.

so i’ll concede that these turned out to be the perfect size after all — the delicate and well-considered balance of the various flavors and textures just called to be contained in a package this petite. and i grant that the individual wrappers make you pause a while, instead of just shoveling the little cakes into your gob, one after the other, until they are all gone, because they are that delicious.

if only they’d thought to put more of ‘em in the box.

it’s been quiet ’round here, i know. well, not so much literally: we’re currently a week into school holidays, so it’s round-the-clock chatter (and singing, and shrieking) from at least one of us. the other of us has been afflicted with the endless lurgy, and then somewhere in there, halfway through the course of yummy yellow-brown antibiotics, i started laying out a textbook on managing blood-thinning medication. 300-odd pages of text and tables and fun diagrams with lots of arrows. lots.

i am less than halfway through, and it may turn out to be 400 pages after all.

i can’t work during the day, so instead we do school holiday things like wake up at 9.30, and eat brioche and apricot jam, and go to the art gallery, or see children’s theatre… this afternoon we walked through misty drizzle to see mr freezy down at the sydney theatre company, in which a high-octane tale of an ice cream scoop unfolds, as does a great mess of flour and sprinkles and jelly babies and drinking straws, and a chocolate-iced donut is thrown into the audience.

afterwards i had a hankering for an eton mess and tried in vain to find the fratelli fresh down by the pier so that we could go to sopra — does anyone know where exactly it is? but anyway, the rain kicked in a couple more notches and sent us scurrying back into the city, where, oh hey! central baking depot.

moments after we plonked our umbrellas in the bucket by the door, the skies broke open. but we didn’t care — i had just enough cashmoney for two hot chocolates and a slice of blueberry-cinnamon-apple butter cake. the large hot chocolate is only a dollar more than the regular, but twice the size, and fully chocolatey. and just look at that cup — so covetable with its heavy china and gold trim.

on monday, it was too wet to sit outdoors with a pie floater from across the road, but we armed ourselves with BBQ pork buns — the baked kind, with the sticky glaze — from furama cake shop in chinatown, and holed up inside the powerhouse museum for several hours. the fashion week exhibition was good fun, and the 80s exhibition was more sensory overload than trip down memory lane, but it was the interactive batik design simulator which held the kid’s interest for more than fifteen minutes. that and the wonderful school holiday activity inspired by sonya gee‘s historic matchbox project.

$2 bought us an empty matchbox, a seat at the big table, and a steady stream of crafty supplies. the kid set out to make a robot cat, but in the end, it was just a regular cat… with a hidden stash of jewels in her slide-out belly. (it’s on until 18 july, if yer interested.)

and in-between? there’ve been rides on the flying fox in victoria park, a mid-week dimsum feast with grandparents, two loads of laundry in the face of the rain, and a little bit of a thrill to finally read myself in print (PAN magazine, last seen at magnation in newtown). also, i’ve been trying to see how best to get any work done during school holidays, but my shortlived experiment involving working until 2am has proved to be unsustainable, with me stumbling somewhat dizzy and nauseated through the rocks today, after just three late nights.

saturday morning, we’re headed to melbourne for week 2 of the holidays. i wonder how many pages of book layout i can squeeze in before then.

i thought i was done with london posts, but no. i don’t know if it’s the sudden pocket of werk i find myself in, but these days i find myself thinking about –– yearning for –– chocolate. i eat too many squares of cheap supermarket lindt, or contemplate a second (or third) tim tam. and then i start reminiscing about the little paper cup of amazing i encountered down camden passage one afternoon.

paul a young makes the best salted caramel truffles ever, and in the winter, a fine hot chocolate. he makes brownies as well — thick black slabs of fudgy chocolate cake with pecans or caramel, but i find these rather too intimidating. as the weather warms up, the hot chocolate dispensary in the corner by the entrance becomes a little outpost for sorbet. there is regular chocolate sorbet, and then there is salted caramel chocolate sorbet, which is what we chose, me and my sister, as we waited for our mother to finish her rounds at the antique stores. the amiable shopgirl arranged a scoop in the pristine white paper cup, and then asked, would you like the toppings?

yes, please!

she poured a stream of liquid chocolate over the sorbet, and then sprinkled chocolate shavings, and cocoa nibs, and little chocolate balls over that. she popped two spoons in, and moments later outside the shop, as i tried to take a spoon of sorbet, i found that the molten chocolate had solidified into a sturdy chocolate helmet. ice magic!

yes, the baubles up top were enchanting and all — a real riot of texture — but the real magic lay below. the sorbet was impossibly smooth and light in texture, while the taste was serious and dark. at first i found myself searching hard for any caramel flavour, but a spoonful or two later, i hit an artery of thick sticky caramel. a jolly good idea to keep the two separated, mr young. it was sublime, and i’m glad we were sharing. i might otherwise have fallen over in the street, twitching and gurgling.

some days later, i bought myself a toffee chocolate bar from peyton and byrne — toffee-nosed chocolate, according to the pleasing white paper wrapper sensibly typeset in gill sans, and adorned with nothing more than a tiny toffee-coloured flower. but the spare aesthetics reveal a somewhat more spartan affair. this slim bar shatters under your teeth, and the rigid grid of crests yields a rather severe burnt sugar flavour within the dark chocolate. the sour aftertaste was definitely not delicious. perhaps it is an inbuilt mechanism to keep you (me) from eating it all in one go? i much prefer the caramel with sea salt bar that i found in singapore on the way back home.

(this is where my london post officially becomes a chocolate post.)

back in singapore, i stumbled upon chocolate research facility, just hours before i had to get on the plane back to sydney. i must admit, i was not overly excited about the chocolate — south-east-asian chocolate always seems a bit too floury, or claggy, or sweet — and my stance was not helped by my good mother, who popped a sample into her mouth, grimaced, and then called undiscreetly over her shoulder while rushing out of the shop, “don’t buy me any. that is really horrible — much too sweet!”

indeed, the first ingredient listed on the box is “sugar”. but what a box! in fact, a hundred different boxes — a unique design for each of as many flavours. i found myself with an armful of bars: last minute presents mostly, in flavours like almond, tiramisu, stout, black sesame and durian.

besides the caramel bar, i also picked for myself, “new york” from the spring/summer ’10 city series (the durian bar represents singapore), with a slick map graphic. this was a bar of milk chocolate with crunchy little pretzels — salt crystals and all — embedded whole. yum.

the caramel with seasalt, from the autumn/winter ’09 series, was adorned with lovely peranakan tiles, and was a moulded shell of milk chocolate with a runny caramel filling. double yum. the chocolate was smooth and mild, and no, not too sweet for these tastebuds.

these are small bars — only 70g, and even though you might find it easy to eat the whole thing in one go, the $12 price tag will probably slow you down. there is also the confounding configuration of the grooves along which to divide your chocolate bar: there is pretty much no fault line to engineer a clean break, unless you begin by snapping it lengthways right down the middle. maybe they do want you to eat it all at once, after all.

i arrived back in sydney to find a chocolate bar sent to me as part of an easter twitter giveaway by the kindly folk at third drawer down. offerings of chocolate really help keep the back-home blues at bay. the chocolate edition that i received was a special edition strawberry stripe bar, with fat, free-form stripes of dark chocolate and white chocolate with “natural strawberry ingredients”. indeed, the strawberry portion was not a lurid pink, and tasted mostly natural. its creamy sweetness was broken up by little bits of tart freeze-dried fruit. in contrast, the dark chocolate was noticeably less creamy, and infinitely less sweet, and had a slight blackened flavour like that of an oreo. it’s like two chocolate bars in one, definitely handy for sharing with a sugar-junkie kid due home from school any minute now.

it had become a habit towards the end. a couple of times a day, i’d summon the airline website, and click on the special link for updates on the volcano situation. wednesday, when we were due to fly, i clicked and read that airspace was gradually opening up but that our flight, already rebooked from the sunday past, was cancelled.

so i called the airline to change our flight once again, maybe for the coming weekend, and instead of the regular hold music, i heard a recorded announcement that the cancelled flight had in fact been reinstated. i was so stunned that i wasn’t even sure i’d heard right. i stayed on long enough to speak with a real person, who said that, yes, we’d be flying that night.

it was mid-morning, and my mother was out buying cuts of pork and chicken so that she could make dumplings and pies for the long days ahead. i sent her a txt. i also sent one to my sister, beavering away at her deskjob, and she wrote back shortly afterward: i see i do not deal well with change.

my mother showed up at the door a half hour later, with bags of meat. stoically, she began making a tray of chicken pies. i went downstairs and attempted to pack two weeks of accumulations and roughly four days of vague happy plans into my big black baggage.

the night before, we’d sat, the four of us exiles (and honorary exile) in volcanic ashland, at a not-too grimy laminate table at HK diner in chinatown. spread in front of us: a platter of peking duck, a saltfish and chicken hotpot, a large dish of noodles fried up with nothing but beansprouts. i gazed fondly at the expanse of shiny food, and said, “so this is what it feels like, to be a refugee”. oh how we laughed at our good fortune.

now, fate laughed at us. outside it was warm and sunny; inside, behind shutters, i wrapped jam jars in knits and nestled them tetris-like and fingers crossed in a cradle of folded tshirts.

but we still had to eat. a little past lunchtime, the kid and i left my mother rolling out puff pastry, and headed up the road towards euphorium bakery. it was late enough that most of the sandwich counter had been depleted — only a few lay forlorn amidst the crumbs of the empty cabinet. i was too sad to eat a regular sandwich, so i picked an alternative from the display: the whoopee.

back home, the others ate their sandwiches as i finished up my packing, while a disagreeable feeling gnawed at my stomach. when i was done, i made myself a cup of tea and ate half the whoopee. under different circumstances, i’m sure it would have been delicious: a couple of moist, cakey, dark chocolatey biscuits held together by a respectable amount of lightly sweetened cream. as it was, i ate it too quickly, all hungry and preoccupied, and it caught in my throat like a handful of dry crumbs.

the other half i left for my sister, and she ate it standing up in the kitchen when she returned that evening, while we waited for the taxi to show up to take us to the airport. i think she found it… bittersweet. the chicken pies were golden on the counter. the pork dumplings would just have to wait for another day.

i don’t know if you know, but i LOVE pizza. i do. i don’t love bad pizza, when the base is too bready, or the cheese too thick, gluggy, or yellow. and yet, i am by no means a pizza snob; i will happily eat ham and pineapple pizza, if the base and cheese don’t offend.

one monday evening, we sat up front on a double decker bus, and raced (like snails) through peak hour traffic, across town, to make it to dinner at pizza east. the restaurant was all unpolished floorboards and exposed beams, white subway wall tiles and wooden tables worn smooth. the windows were of the sort of glass that people don’t make anymore. the napkins were gingham.

there was a heightened sense of excitement, the anticipation of pizza that has come well recommended. we inhaled the ethereal sea bass carpaccio – pale and translucent slices with a a hint of fennel and chilli. we picked our way through a lovely salad of lettuce, with pancetta, hazelnuts and pear in a pleasingly mild gorgonzola dressing. and then the pizza arrived, and there were no other sounds at the table, besides, “mmmmmm…” and “slurp”.

you would not ordinarily think of “slurp”, but i should explain that it was a veal meatball pizza with prosciutto, sage, lemon, parsley and cream. you would not ordinarily think of “cream”, but there you go. it wasn’t a creamy pizza by any means; it just meant that everything was covered in a blanket of succulence under which all the flavours sang in sweet harmony. truly, it was like eating angels. the base was blistered and puffy, a little charred from being in the woodfire oven, perfection.

there was also a zucchini pizza with taleggio, and another one of spicy sausage — very spicy — with broccoli, and by the end of it we thought we might be so full that we might not be able to manage dessert.

and yet…

if we thought we had a winner in the meatball pizza, the salted chocolate caramel tart completely took out the grand champion trophy. it was made up of two distinct, yet barely perceptible layers. up top it was a smooth chocolate ganache, which would have been just fine on its own in a regular chocolate tart. and down below. rrraaarrrr.

down below was a dense, soft, sticky caramel, cooked dark. it was so salty that you almost might’ve thought something had gone wrong. but no, everything was completely all right. better, even, as the initial salty burst melted away into a rich, deep carameliciousness. in conjunction with the chocolate, it wreaked all manner of sweet-salty havoc in my mouth.

this is now the salted chocolate caramel tart against which all other salted caramel tarts will be judged. no wonder the dollop of thick cream stands so tall and proud in its company. even as the last brown skiddies were scraped off the plate, i was fantasising about getting a slice to take away.

lurking in the back you will see its worthy competitor: a maple pannacotta, whose delicate texture belied a bold maple flavour. a shard of sweet biscuit, and a dribble of macerated raisins were the perfect foil. this too, was gone in a whisper.

our stomachs, on the other hand, distended to their final, painful limits, demanded in no uncertain terms that we summon a taxi home. and so we did.

what happens when work and chocolate collide?

i’m glad you asked: several weeks ago, a cardboard carton showed up on my doorstep, containing an unadorned packet of foil-wrapped easter eggs. the kid was immediately interested, but i managed to beat her back. this was a sample pack of cocolo easter eggs for which i had to design an enticing label in time for the lead up to chocfest 2010 easter.

now you can own a packet of these too. i believe they are being sold in independent health / organic food stores around town. the chocolate is organic and fairtrade, and brought to you by an australian company (though it’s made in switzerland, so count those air miles), and comforting in the way that milk chocolate is.

i still have the mock-up i made, printed up on a 15-year-old bubble jet and stapled to the pack. it’s been sitting on my desk for the past month or so — i wasn’t sure if i had to return the sample bag to the chocolate people. right now i’m leaning towards “not”; those foil wrappers are glinting away awful purty.

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.