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Category Archives: ice cream

we blinked as we re-entered the sunny sunday. we’d been hiding out in the dim cavern that is the london BMI IMAX cinema, wearing dark glasses, stretching our hands out towards the floating cheshire cat. “alice in wonderland”, in 3D, was a rollicking rollercoaster ride — in spite of the curious bit of freaky styley dancing at the end — but after a couple of contraband movie snacks, we were ready for the main event.

a short way across town, upstairs at fortnum and mason, there is a restaurant called, the parlour. it’s a decadent ice cream shoppe straight out of the 50s with a baroque (rococo?) sensibility. there they will serve you a sandwich, or a salad, and you will order one or the other — or both — and it will be a competent affair. however, you will know that it is only a little something to prepare your stomach for what is to follow.

what followed, for me, was a “lazy sundae afternoon”, which entailed

strawberries and 12 year old balsamic vinegar, vanilla bean and frosted strawberry and shortbread ice creams blended with strawberry coulis, crushed meringues, whipped cream and fresh strawberries.

it certainly made an impact as it arrived at the table, served in an enormous pink goblet of heavy cut glass. such fun! all those bits of crumbly meringue! multiple biscuits! a veritable cloud of whipped cream! the taste of strawberries through everything was quite lovely, but perhaps in the end, the overall impression was just that it was… nice.

which is not a bad thing, certainly, and i did not complain as i ate the lot. but i think the ice cream could have been better: more luscious, a little less frosty in parts.

more, in fact, like the coupe we had at afternoon tea not quite a week later and just a couple of blocks down, at the wolseley. i wish i had a picture to show you, but their no-photo policy is stark on the front page of their menu. you will just have to believe me when i tell you that the combination of crushed meringue, lemon curd and lemon yoghurt ice cream, whipped cream and flaked almonds makes for a very luscious sundae indeed. i think of it still, with a sigh, this pale yellow beauty in a frosty silver bowl.

aside from the lemon meringue coupe, we also had a perfunctory round of afternoon tea (a three-tiered tray to share between four) and a slice of treacle tart, which was light and lemony, and possessed none of the sickly sweetness that you might expect. the pastry was just perfect, and the filling, pleasantly sticky, well, that was perfect too. my mother — quite out of character — must have had four, if not five, mouthfuls of it, and i feared i might have to stab her with my fork to get her to stop.

such blissful eating amidst the bustle — a constant stream of tea-takers swarmed through the restaurant, but the waitress never hurried us along. for a moment, this little stretch of banquette seating under the high ceilings and marble pillars, it felt like home.

posted by ragingyoghurt on 5 May 2010 at 12:32 pm

permalink | filed under cake, ice cream, trip

we were only scheduled to be in london for 10 days, until eyjafjallajökull erupted and gave us a bit of a bonus extra holiday. before then, we operated on a strict program that had been planned and refined over the preceding months, via a very comprehensive spreadsheet. with first day brunch at ottolenghi done and dusted, we found ourselves on the train, richmond-bound, for second day lunch at petersham nurseries.

out of the station, we walked down the high street to get there, and along the river, and through a muddy paddock, and up a dusty driveway, and through a little of the nursery, and arrived in good time to be shown to our table in a large tentish room with a dirt floor (a tent festooned with enormous bunches of fresh flowers, and strewn with mismatched furniture of varying vintage). my sister thought it was important that we have bread and butter, and lemonade, and quick! and then there they were.

the menu was streamlined – just three options for each course — and according to one of the nicest waitresses in the world, might change from day to day depending on produce available. friday, i was lucky enough to have…

fried artichokes with a caper and mint dressing
such a riot of crispy edges and zingy flavours! such a joyous jumble of leaves! the play of textures was fun indeed as i mix-matched artichoke outsides (brown and crunchy as chips) and insides (pale, soft, and mildly tangy) with capers and lemon juice and minced-up mint leaves that no doubt found their way into all the crevices of my teeth. smile!

grilled sardines with aioli
you know, it looked modest on the plate, and felt light to eat it — all those lemony, fish oily flavours — but golly, i was stuffed when i was done. the sardines were plump and moist, and the sauteed chard yielding, and the lovely dollop of aioli — so full in the mouth, i only needed a little dab on each forkful of fish, and made it last right ’til the end.

almond tart
we had been excited to read it on the menu, and gleeful to see it at the table — this sturdy wedge of pastry with the lazy slurp of cream and candied orange syrup. it was even pleasing to eat, but alas, in the end, the crunchy pastry shell filled with dense frangipane, rough-hewn nuts and rind completely vanquished us. we probably would have appreciated it more on its lonesome, with a big cup of tea, and not the legacy of three fat sardines and as many crisp-fried artichokes.

stracciatella ice cream
truly, the surprise winner of the show. the ice cream — presented in a heavy drinking glass — was super premium, rich and creamy, and served at exactly the right, just melty temperature. mixed very generously into this were more bits of good dark chocolate than you’d think necessary, or possible. the ice cream makes its way down your throat, and then the shards of chocolate melt away and linger on your tongue. blissful, it was, even when the pain of distended belly kicked in. i could not stop eating this.

it looks simple, does it not? this food? there was nothing extraneous on the plate; each course just a tumble of a few flavours, and no adornment except for its necessary elements. but it all looked beautiful, and tasted much more wonderful than what you might expect from such spare plating. everything that could be eaten — with the exception of the noble almond tart — was.

they serve coffee from a cafetière here, or any number of floral infusions. no, not a single normal tea, grumble. so i picked mint from the list recited by the waitress, and was brought a comforting pot of green. a fine way to conclude a meal in the middle of a garden centre on a sunny springtime afternoon.

posted by ragingyoghurt on 4 May 2010 at 11:00 am

permalink | filed under ice cream, lunch, trip

they’ve changed the tables (and chairs) since i was last at messina. the stools are now handsome bentwood affairs, and the tables are shiny oversized metal trays set precariously on spindly tripods (all the better, i suppose, to see how you look as you gorge yourself on the product).

the gelati, of course, is as delicious as ever. i still think about the triple chocolate extravaganza i had on my birthday last year. sigh… there are always more flavours on display than i know what to do with, and late this afternoon, barely two hours after weed strudel and exotic cream cake, i thought it might be unwise to have more than, ahem, two.

we were meeting with the artist formally known as “the little matchboxgirl” for a gelato date, and by coincidence found ourselves on the same bus hurtling out of the city towards darlinghurst. the kid rummaged in her handbag for a comic she had made specially for the occasion, and was quite matter-of-fact when sonya immediately handed her a baggie full of tiny tchotkes in exchange. a little later at the shop, maeve sidled up to me and offered, sotto voce, “i like sonya.”

the kid is mostly guided by colour when it comes to icy desserts. sometimes she will surprise me with a left-of-field request for passionfruit or green tea, or — once, confoundingly — mint-chip, but more often than not, it’s a choice between this pink one or the other. this time she picked the only pink available: raspberry.

i always want a scoop of coconut and lychee at messina, but there is always something new i want to try that won’t match, and so i have spent the last few years coconut-and-lychee-less. this time i picked burnt fig jam, walnut and mascarpone because i thought i ought to, for research, and pavlova because it looked so cheery. you may argue that those two flavours do not match, but anyway.

it wasn’t surprising that the fig, walnut and mascarpone gelato was figgy, and walnutty, and extremely rich and creamy from the mascarpone… truly it was a proper grown-up flavour with undertones of seriousness. by comparison, the pavlova gelato was light and charming, milky with highlights of tart berries and tangy passionfruit.

in a cruel twist of fate, sonya did choose the coconut-lychee, but began by eating the chocolate fondant. i’ve had that chocolate fondant gelato; it means business! it fills your mouth with a voluptuous chocolatiness, and once you eat it, you can’t really have anything else in the same sitting. and so it came to pass that the scoop of coconut-lychee sat forlorn in the paper cup as the kid and sonya merrily swapped ballet stories in the balmy breeze.

next time, coconut-lychee, i promise i’ll choose you.

posted by ragingyoghurt on 24 March 2010 at 9:26 pm

permalink | filed under around town, ice cream, kid

what a long, terribly hot summer it’s been. our fault, i suppose, for spending most of it in sunny melbourne. on the most horrible day, we took shelter in the airconditioning of the arts centre; my plan was to see as much of the AC/DC exhibition as the kid would allow. except that we found ourselves drowning in a deluge of pink tulle. turns out it was fifteen minutes away from the lunchtime matinee of the angelina ballerina show, and hundreds of little girls in ballet dress-ups swarmed the lobby. the kid turned her large limpid eyes my way; the temperature in the street was the wrong side of 40; i handed over my credit card, and spent the next hour or so sitting in a sea of battery-operated glowsticks, watching lithe, human-sized mice dance across the stage.

but the temperature kept climbing, and at 1.40 in the wee hours of the morning, i woke up stifled. i poured myself down the hallway, and had a cold shower, and eventually got back to sleep. later we were to find out it was hovering in the lower-mid-40s all night, and when the temperature finally dropped at about 8am, it was to a refreshing 34°C.

ugh.

so we went out in search of icy treats, often. the lemon-lime and bitters sorbet at trampoline was truly delightful. a very fetching shade of palest pink which dissolved gracefully into a gentle citrusy tang on my tongue. i liked it so much i went back for more.

there was the emergency slurpee from a hole-in-the-wall 7-eleven one afternoon in the melty city, and a golden gaytime krusher at KFC one sunday when nothing else was open in shimmery rural victoria. it was a most unappetising shade of… bilge, a pale and lumpy yellow in the plastic tumbler, that tasted better than it looked, until it warmed up to room temperature.

and then, holy moley, there was the organic cinnamon donut gelato from fritz gelato at the souf melbourne markets. lush and milky with a streak of sticky red jam all the way through. behold its majestic crest sitting atop an enormous scoop of caramelised fig and roasted almond yoghurt gelato, equally lush and milky, and filled with crunchy little fun bits of seeds and nuts and burnt sugar. good times…

and then we came back to sydney, and the holidays galloped to a close, and the kid grew up and went off to school. no tears were shed from anyone involved.

posted by ragingyoghurt on 25 February 2010 at 10:50 am

permalink | filed under around town, ice cream, kid, 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

an innocent email on monday morning about the possibility of lunch snowballed, and by the time saturday rolled round, there we were — deborah and i — in our best walking shoes, primed and hungry for whatever the afternoon might bring us.

well. we did have a plan.

i’d been curious to try the new sopra outpost in potts point, and that is where we began. it is much swisher than the original waterloo warehouse: banquette seating, shiny red mosaic walls, an unsubtle soundtrack that made us feel like we were in a 60s italian movie (a slapstick comedy, at that), and — the deal-breaker, were there deals to be broken — fancy, custom printed, evocatively illustrated place mats on very nice textured paper.

they had them arranged just so on the bar, but we spirited a couple over to our table top with not too much recrimination from the waiter. (very efficiently, he showed us a particularly fetching one with a big plate of pasta emblazoned with “fratelli fresh”, and then he replaced the ones we had pilfered.)

much less efficiently, we made our choices for lunch; everything sounded so delicious. and then of course, it was.

there was an antipasto platter to start — four little mounds of: mushrooms and cumin; spicy caponata with surprise crunchy almonds; arancini with aioli; simply dressed green beans.

there was a risotto ala milanese, rich with the colour and tang of saffron, with tiny nuggets of meat folded in. there was a salad of lettuce and tomatoes in salad cream. and then…

there was a roasted bit of organic pork. i’d asked the waiter what it came with, and he said, “nothing. it’s just the meat.” and he added, as an afterthought, “there is a bit of cress on top”. it was just as he said.

and it was amazing. tender, flavoursome meat, fatty where it counted, crowned with a great arc of salty, crunchy crackling. sigh. even shared between two, it was more meat than i’d normally eat in a day. maybe even two or three days.

we ate, and ate, and at some point deborah said, “this is one of the best lunches ever,” and i could not disagree.

and you might think that after a meal such as this, there would be no room for dessert. and you might be right, to a point: no dessert was had where we sat, or even down the road at yellow, but once we had roused ourselves and propelled ourselves back towards the city through darlinghurst, and made the requisite stops for a meringue duckling (croissant d’or) and loaf of walnut sourdough (infinity bakery), we could not resist the lure of the mountains of gelato at messina.

just look at that chocolate sorbet — so glossy and dark (how would you choose between that and the chocolate orange sorbet?). and what about the crisp and bracing lemon sorbet? the pear gelato was much less peary than i’d anticipated, but the fig delivered everything it promised. we sat for a while, in the cool and dark, and watched as streams of lithe girls in long dresses sashayed in for scoops of this and that. we watched a child demand vanilla.

we finished up, wistfully, and made our way one block south, to the chocolate shop.

posted by ragingyoghurt on 20 December 2008 at 9:58 pm

permalink | filed under around town, ice cream, lunch

around the time a rumble of food bloggers descended upon zumbo yesterday — oh! the rapturous prose! the continuing mythology! — i was escorting the kid to her first real birthday party… at mcdonalds! in four years, we have been to mcdonalds three times: twice for little squeezy bottles of water, and once for fries, because we somehow could not find alternative chips in the city on a sunday afternoon.

so it was quite a foray beneath the golden arches with her three-piece chicken mcnugget happy meal, and the shiny lurid furniture in the purpose-built backroom, and the playground made of plastic tubes that amplify the shrieking.

me, i had my own treats to organise. settled into a table out front in the restaurant, with a copy of “the new yorker” in dire need of being read, i concentrated on dipping my fries into my caramel sundae. it wasn’t quite a masterpiece created by a french-trained chef, but it certainly had its merits. the fries were crisp and hot (though a few seemed almost liquid inside — water or oil, i couldn’t tell), and the salt crystals played off the caramel quite well (take that caramel beurre salé). the soft-serve was a cool, creamy foil… though you’d think that ice cream should be colder… shouldn’t it?

no matter. i finished it all, scraped the plastic cup clean, and headed back into the maelstrom just as lolly bags were being distributed. the screaming went up a notch. “where have you been?” asked one of the mothers, “in the cafe? that was a good idea.”

indeed, it was.

posted by ragingyoghurt on 1 December 2008 at 9:55 pm

permalink | filed under around town, ice cream, kid, snacks

it’s old news by now of course. while i was eating my way through auburn last saturday, a select group of sydney’s finest foodbloggers descended upon zumbo cafe and ate their way through the dessert menu.

there were still only three up on the blackboard when i rocked up with singapore girl on tuesday, and just one that i was hellbent on trying.

“it’s not a hamburger.”

… is what it’s called. perhaps you say it like, “it’s nodda tooma.” plus there is a subtitle: “it’s a macaron.”

and behold: an enormous macaron-ice cream sandwich. beneath the initial crunch, the biscuits were moist and chewy, extremely chocolatey. on top were crumbs, from another darker, crumblier specimen. in between was a generous scoop of luscious dulce de leche gelato. there are plans for the ice cream to be made instore, but for now it’s shipped in from messina in darlinghurst.

and right at the bottom, was a layer of rice pudding. strange, no? but so delicious. it was sweet and cinnamony, and surprised me — pleasantly, no, joyously — with chunks of caramelised banana .

in its entirety, it was just enough to hit my chocolate threshold; perhaps if the kid hadn’t eaten quite so much of the caramel ice cream quite so quickly, it would have vanquished me.

singapore girl ordered the deconstructed miss marple. what began at the patisserie as a crepe-encased gateau, and evolved into a tart, now arrives at the table wantonly draped across a big white plate: a pair of slinky mascarpone-filled crepes, all glistening with syrup and crackling with caramelised bits, lay in a tangle with fresh strawberries and tart little orange jellies. but you see, frozen jellies. put one in the kid’s mouth and watch her eyes light up. it worked on us bigger people too.

we sat and ate slowly — well, as slowly as we could; by this time, the kid had had enough of ice cream and jellies, and had grown bored and a little belligerent — each thinking our dessert was the better one, and of course we were both right.

posted by ragingyoghurt on 7 November 2008 at 8:37 pm

permalink | filed under cake, chocolate, ice cream, kid

holy crap, but the kid turned four last saturday.

just look at her, eating cake like a pro. that very morning, as we were on our way to the supermarket to pick up picnic supplies, she volunteered from the back seat of the car, “i want a sponge cake, with strawberry cream, and chocolate, and sprinkles.”

“uh huh,” i said. at least she had given up on the chocolate cake covered in jelly snakes that her cousin had had last year.

we swung by bakers delight for a loaf of pane di casa (for the record, casa broadway is at least 73 times better than casa balmain) and a loaf of olive pane di casa — where big chunks of kalamata olives are worked through the dough, and pulverised olive puree must surely be part of the dough, because the bread, she is purple.

we did a lap around harris farm, picking out such treats as a bunch of radishes, a couple of red onions, a tub of coriander hommous and a tub of parsley pesto, a jar of cornichons, a block of fetta, two avocadoes, and a kilo of smoked salmon for the bargain price of $26.

and then with a little covert manouvering, i was able to collect the enormous pink cakebox and slide it onto my lap while she was being clipped into her seat. at some point, she asked, “what’s that pink thing?” but wasn’t actually interested in the answer.

in the minutes before the guests were due, i halved baby roma tomatoes, and sliced red onions, and dressed them in a basic vinaigrette; i cubed the fetta and anointed it in olive oil and crushed garlic; i sliced radishes. there: a salad platter to go. the kid’s dad drove it all to the park. the family arrived, bearing gifts and chips and bread and salami and a big tub of toum.

an unabashed display of eating ensued. the kid and her cousin downed the tops of four supermarket cupcakes before running off to the playground, but the rest of us made tartine after tartine. this one was my favourite i think:

white bread topped with a dollop of the pungent garlic dip and a smear of the parsley pesto and a couple slices of smoked salmon. mmm… stinky…

at the end, there wasn’t much of anything left. my cousin’s dog, peanut, discovered he really liked fetta.

we adjourned to the house for tea and cake, and the kid was not too disappointed with the pink, sprinkly hello kitty rainbow ice cream cake. there was even a layer of sponge at the bottom.

the best part about an ice cream cake — just under $40 from wendy’s. do it. you know you want to — is that even with two kids, and two aunts, and two cousins, and a gran, and a great gran, and a mum and a dad, there will still be enough for two post-birthday breakfasts for two girls who like ice cream, and cake.

posted by ragingyoghurt on 23 October 2008 at 10:25 pm

permalink | filed under cake, ice cream, kid, lunch

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