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so guess who doesn’t have diabetes anymore.

there was cause for a celebration a couple of nights ago (not the return of normal blood sugars at that stage, although i’d had my fingers crossed for the last week and a bit following my post natal glucose tolerance test), and we found ourselves around a table at hellenic republic, bathed in the golden light of the early evening, with lamb and potatoes and cypriot grain salad (and cabbage salad, yes, and eggplant dip and calamari and octopus, and hell why not, a spanakopita and three lamb chops), and these amazing chargrilled green chilli peppers all smoky and succulent. the platters are small at hellenic republic, but when one of the birthday girls orders double of everything for the table, you suddenly find yourself approaching a dangerous level of satiety.

dangerous only because you must leave room for dessert. the kid and i are never two to go past a mess, so we got the hellenic mess to share. unexpectedly, it was plated in a bowl — a jumble of rosewater meringue, orange blossom jelly, vanilla-infused cream and a dribble of strawberry ouzo sauce poured at the table. (the waiter dispensed it from a small bottle, and i thought he might leave it after the ceremonial pour, but no, he whisked it away.)

mmm… it was a lovely mishmash of flavours and textures. the pistachios were crunchy to offset the crisp meringue; the jelly was wobbly and ethereal. in fact, the delicate orange blossom flavour was probably a bit overwhelmed by the strawberry sauce. but then i was a little too: the ouzo made my belly clench. perhaps if there had been more cream…

no matter. it was gone in minutes (the kid had three helpings), helped along by a pot of mountain tea. see how pretty, the basket of pale green herbery. the internet tells me it is ironwort.

it was still daylight when we left the restaurant. it was a jolly walk home.

posted by ragingyoghurt on 30 December 2011 at 6:55 am

permalink | filed under cake, dinner

a few hours after harlan was born, while we slumped dazed and confused in our palatial birthing suite, an attendant brought a tray to the bedside — breakfast!

i lifted the lid on the plastic bowl and was rather pleased to discover a heap of rice bubbles. there was also a tub of peaches, and a tub of milk, a grainy roll, a pat of butter and a foil pack of strawberry jam. all in all a low-fibre, high-sugar meal befitting a world class healthcare provider, yes. i pretty much inhaled breakfast — it was all gone in a little over five minutes.

when lunchtime came round, i was excited to read “HONEY CHICKEN” on the sheet tucked beneath my tray. i had visions of golden, glistening, batter-coated chicken lumps. i lifted the lid to find this:

this sinewy looking mass of muscle, deathly pale against its bed of rice. despite its woefully unappetising appearance, the meat was actually moist and tender, and had the faintest taste of honey on its surface. alas, i cannot say the same for the vegetables. they just tasted of good health, in the blandest possible way.

it was around this time that i txted the boy — who had by this stage extricated himself from the miniature couch where he’d been reclining and gotten himself back home to install the recently procured baby capsule in the back of his truck — and begged him to bring me fruit and the packet of ülker chocolate biscuits lurking in the pantry.

that evening, the meal slip read “SWISS STEAK”, which promised a slab of tender meat covered in a rich mushroomy gravy, and fat slices of mushrooms. instead, it turned out to be a slab of meat, yes, held together with a fat vein of gristle, and doused in a bewildering sweet and sour sauce. i ate around the gristle and sauce, and then, having learnt my lesson from lunch, i turned the pat of butter for the dinner roll out onto the rice and vegetables, peppered and salted the whole thing, and rendered it palatable.

dessert was a tub of cold set custard — the highlight of the meal, really — and a red delicious apple, which is my very least favourite kind of apple on account of its complete, ironic undeliciousness.

i was pondering the random selection of meals that i’d been subjected to as i gazed out at my city sunset view, when an attendant came by and placed a sheet of paper on my bedside table. a menu! for the next day’s meals! it all became clear: up until now, someone else (a computer?) had been making the choices for me — here was my chance to see if these hospital meals could be more enjoyable if i got to pick what actually showed up.

so for lunch the next day, i chose irish stew, and for dinner, the hungarian goulash with mashed potatoes, followed up by that compelling custard on both counts. breakfast had already been decided for me, and i was greatly saddened to discover a pair of weetbix in my bowl the next morning, which is my very least favourite kind of cereal on account of its complete undeliciousness.

alas, i was cleared for discharge the day after that, so i will never know if the falafels in tomato sauce were any good. the irish stew was, and the goulash too, which was delivered while kid #1 was visiting, and met with her approval.

my last breakfast, on monday morning, i was back on the rice bubbles. they really do snap, crackle and pop!

and then we were off, me and harlan, back into the big wide world.

posted by ragingyoghurt on 25 November 2011 at 12:22 pm

permalink | filed under breakfast, dinner, lunch

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…

posted by ragingyoghurt on 1 July 2011 at 2:00 pm

permalink | filed under breakfast, chocolate, dinner, kitchen

still working through my broccoli puree obsession…

put some pasta on to boil. add to the pot all that broccoli you have in the vegetable drawer (i had two medium heads). when the broccoli is just tender and still bright green, remove and refresh in cold water. puree to desired consistency in a food processor. continue cooking the pasta.

fry some chopped garlic in a bit of olive oil in a large pan. add the broccoli puree, salt to taste and a couple of ladles of pasta water. simmer. tear up a fillet of hot-smoked trout. add it to the broccoli to warm through. i had a tub of store-bought chunky spinach and cashew pesto in the fridge, so i put a couple of spoonfuls of that it as well. drain the pasta and toss into the sauce.

think about salsiccia and crema di broccoli pizza.

posted by ragingyoghurt on 20 June 2011 at 2:42 pm

permalink | filed under dinner, kitchen

it is nice to see that there is order in other parts of my world. my immediate surrounds are teetering piles of papers and magazines, some destined for new homes, some headed for the great recycling bin in the sky, some — the tiniest little scraps, really — are somehow imbued with great sentimental value, and languish in the purgatory of my lounge room rug, waiting…

but the ceremonial red folding chairs were arranged just so last wednesday in the rather lovely leichhardt town hall, and the leichhardt celebrity brass band were resplendent in bright yellow, as i, amongst sixty others with interesting — if not purely long and challenging — names, became citizens of australia. yes, i have only been here since 1989, but here, as the mayor said, is where my migrant journey ends.

it was a jolly ceremony, with pop classics up front, and advance australia fair coming up the end, with friendly words, a pledge of allegiance and a gift of a baby tree in-between. the mayor, in his ceremonial, fur-lined robes, was proud to boast the live band — bugles! trombones!! — accompanying the national anthem, the made-in-australia flags which were handed out to all inductees, and the lamingtons in the back of the hall for the post-ceremonial reception.

and what lamingtons! first of all, they were huge. secondly, there were moist, with a good coating of rich chocolate and coconut. thirdly, there were enough that i managed to have three of them.

yes. the third one was actually surrendered by the kid a few bites in after she realised that she only liked the idea of having a second lamington. immediately upon handing it over, she started making eyes at the last remaining custardy fruit tart on the table. at this point, i steered her towards the door…

and on to dinner. what better way to celebrate becoming an aussie than to stuff oneself with italian food? the most mediocre of italian food, even. we were privileged to have ms d as witness to the naturalisation, and pleased to dine together at a laminate table in the balmy courtyard out the back of bar italia.

i have not been to dinner at bar italia for the longest time. some years ago, i ordered off the non-pasta dinner menu, and the size of the piece of broccoli which accompanied the meat stuck in my head for evermore.

when the food arrived, i was overwhelmed by the wonderful aroma of cake. i thought it was a nearby flat white, but once i started eating my veal marsala, it became clear that the sweet smell was coming from my plate. it was an enormous serve of soft meat in brown gravy — just as i remembered, and look at that broccoli! — but what had escaped my memory, and perhaps the dish has changed over the years, was that the sauce was so sweet that the meat seemed to be coated in caramel syrup. i thought the kid might like it, but she was quite repulsed. i expect it was the confusion of candied meat.

(but where was the problem? she likes candy, she likes meat, she likes bakkwa…)

we had a garden salad (dressed with the finest — not! — bottled dressing, ah memories of youthful folly) and a large bowl of chips (very nicely cooked, but so aggressively salted in parts that it hurt to eat them), and after it was all gone, we sought to right the wrongs (so wrong they were right, kind of) by eating copious amounts of gelati.

it’s insane how much gelati they can scoop into a flimsy plastic cup at bar italia. i was slow in naming my flavours so much of the cup was filled with an almost savoury, full-of-nutty-bits pistachio. the counter boy made up for it by piling the bounty gelato into a large cloud above the rim of the cup.

it was very moreish, unfortunately, packed with shredded coconut and a number of dark chocolate shards. unfortunate, because after the meat and veg, and salad and chips, and yes, the three lamingtons, i could eat no more.

here’s one for the album: eating my first lamington as a new australian (all the while keeping my eye on my second lamington).

posted by ragingyoghurt on 21 September 2010 at 1:09 am

permalink | filed under cake, dinner, ice cream, misc

one friday afternoon, a kindly frenchman took maeve to the zoo. thusly unfettered, the rest of us took the long, meandering route to the imperial war museum, to see “the ministry of food” — a very engaging exhibition about what the british public ate (and didn’t) during the second world war.

it was quite a compact exhibition, but excellently curated with very convincing plastic food (how did they make that mug of solid milky tea?), vintage propoganda posters and film clips, sobering ration cards, an entire walk-in shoppe packed with “goods” in packaging of the era, and a real shop at the end with such covetable war food-related merchandise as pencils screenprinted with the ministry of food logo, felt brooches of peas-in-a-pod or sweetcorn, rubber eggs — they bounced in unpredictable directions, CD compilations of jaunty wartime tunes to cook or tend a garden by, and yes, even a cookbook, “the ministry of food: thrifty wartime ways to feed your family today“, written specially for the exhibition by jane fearnley-whittingstall (mother of hugh).

downstairs the museum cafe had been converted into “the kitchen front”, serving, for the duration of the exhibition, meals cooked from wartime recipes. unfortunately, we were there quite late in the day, and hot food was no longer on offer. however, i did see a small selection of old-fashioned cakes, and you could choose to have your scones with mock cream, rather than regular, for the authentic wartime afternoon tea experience.

in any case, we were in no mood to fill ourselves with snackage, for we were due not too long after for dinner at fifteen.

and so it was that we reunited with the kid at a table in jamie oliver’s do-good restaurant. the frenchman was there nursing a coke, but handover complete, he left in protest because 6pm is apparently too early to eat. huh. shame then, because he did not get to partake of the handsome italian waiters with their charming banter, nor the the festive antipasto platter, a veritable bounty of cured meats, marinated vegetables, bread, cheese, and the plumpest, juiciest green olives you ever did see.

pleased, i sipped at my rhubarb and vanilla lemonade (that sounds entirely possible doesn’t it? it has been some weeks since i sipped it, and so it could well be entirely possible as well that i am actually misremembering). i became even happier when my main course was placed before me.

slow-roasted pork belly: three wonderful fat slices, all at once salty, oily, tender-soft, topped with a golden arc of crunchy crackling. piled onto a mound of sauteed chickpeas and chard, it was a generous mound of food. i think i may have left a chickpea or four, at the end.

because i thought i should have dessert, y’know, for research. even though the dessert menu was somewhat uninspiring. perhaps if we’d been eating fancy downstairs, rather than casual upstairs the choice would have been more agreeable. as it was, we had a choice between a couple of heavy-sounding cakes and a brownie.

i picked the lemon cake, dense with semolina and moist with syrup, served with a good amount of thick vanilla cream and a tangle of candied rind. i must admit, it was quite delicious, and would have been lovely for afternoon tea. ultimately, it was the wrong dessert at the end of a large meaty dinner, and i was sad to leave more on the plate than i normally would (that is, ahem, nothing at all, normally).

i still think of this luscious food, hungrily. i might just have to pop in at fifteen melbourne the next time i’m down that way.

posted by ragingyoghurt on 9 May 2010 at 10:50 am

permalink | filed under dinner, trip

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.

posted by ragingyoghurt on 6 May 2010 at 10:35 pm

permalink | filed under cake, chocolate, dinner, 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

what a difference a half hour makes. if you aim for dinner at 6 o’clock, but become distracted beforehand in the subterranean cave of delights that is basement books, your 6.30 arrival at din tai fung will mean another 30 minute wait for a table. when we did front up at 6 a few weeks ago, we were ushered straight in.

the half hour of waiting groomed our appetites into big growling beasts, such that we had to order two baskets of xiao long bao (one serve with crab, and one without, and oh, how they both burst with sweet, porky, crabby juices) to quell their grumbles. between the four of us, we also put away a little dish of cold cucumber salad — more a miniature great wall fashioned out of thick slices of the gourd, in a chili-oily dressing; a large dish of dry-fried green beans with minced pork; a bowl of soup noodles with a moist and tender fried pork chop on the side; another bowl of soupy noodles topped with pork and picked vegetable.

we like pork, we do.

here’s the thing, the servings at din tai fung are moderate, and the food delicate, but dessert is constructed to a whole other scale. we were just short of full once the last noodle had been slurped, that last sliced of peppered pork chop dealt with. and we were bold, and ordered fresh mango over crushed ice.

and as it approached the table, other diners swiveled their heads around to stare. behold: a mountain of shaved ice (packed a little too tightly tonight; they should have served it with an ice pick) doused in mango syrup and sweetened milk. a generous globe of mango gelato perched precariously at the summit. fat slabs of mango at its base. and when it was gone — no, actually, we only made it three-quarters of the way through — we were completely stuffed.

posted by ragingyoghurt on 12 November 2009 at 1:14 pm

permalink | filed under around town, dinner, ice cream

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.

posted by ragingyoghurt on 4 December 2008 at 5:30 pm

permalink | filed under boy, cake, dinner

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