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ah friday, the day i throw off the fluffy pink shackles of parentdom and walk the city streets as quickly and carefree as i once did. this past friday, i walked the arts of islam exhibition at the art gallery, which closes next sunday, so quick! go! if you haven’t already.

i had been warned by a friend that one might be brought to tears by the beauty of some of the works on display, and it’s true, walking through the middle rooms filled with four-hundred-year-old qurans and illuminated manuscripts, one gets an idea of how insignificant it is to be moving text boxes around on a computer screen, when such amazing feats of publishing could be achieved with a very small paintbrush and a tub of gold paint. i didn’t cry, but i may have stifled such sacrilegious utterances as “holy fffffff” a half dozen times.

if you like drawing, as i do (or more accurately, if you like looking at drawings and getting that knot in your stomach from guilt that you are not drawing, as i do) then you might also like to see the dobell prize for drawing, where amongst other scribbly things you will see a rather arresting portrait of a boxer, a sympathetic rendering of a bull, and a luscious red still life of a pomegranate.

and then you might feel a bit peckish, and think to avail yourself of the tasty treats at the cafe downstairs. it is bordering on overpriced, but it is mostly good and fresh, and if you beat the lunchtime crowd, you can sit in a booth looking towards the room, with the deep red carpet and the gleaming white chairs, eating a well-dressed greek salad, and another with potatoes and slices of chorizo (though only two slices of chorizo for your $9.50, ch.).

posted by ragingyoghurt on 16 September 2007 at 4:18 pm

permalink | filed under around town, art, lunch

last friday, international opec day, i looked out the window and it was raining. ten minutes later, the sun was out… until the rain kicked in again. and so it continued through the morning, until it was time to go meet deborah. we packed our picnic rug just in case, and small forks, a flask of hot tea, and some pretty teacups, because we had a spring picnic in mind.

it’s good to have a plan, isn’t it? we already knew that one of the things we’d be eating was adriano zumbo’s chorizo and olive baguette. the other, as-yet-unkown entity was to be any lovely thing (or things — we had not planned to be restrained if the situation allowed) on the new season’s menu.

we met across the road from zumbo, and hurtled across darling street to the happiest place on earth. but, where o where were the delicate morsels of pink and green and yellow? everything in the cake display was chocolate!

(i know i say it like it’s a bad thing, and it’s not. just, the plan in our heads was in colours other than brown.)

so we pressed up against the wall as other people came and went, and eventually we worked out a suitably diverse collection of cakery for our morning tea. it had stopped raining by the time we emerged from the shop, and emboldened, we strode with purpose to the park. amidst other optimistic picnickers, we spread out our blanket. it had barely touched the ground when we felt the drizzle on our heads. after deborah pointed out a low ceiling of blackness blowing in from down the hill, we folded up the blanket and raced the raindrops home.

the kid, for whom the picnic torch burns bright, spread our faux burberry across the balcony floor, and then the parade of baked goods, and the pouring of tea. deborah unpacked a tidy box of cucumber sandwiches and a brand-spankin’-new ikea catalog. i was immensely pleased with both: the sandwiches had been made with soft white bread, and butter that the clever girl had salted herself, with pink flakes from the murray river; the ikea catalog holds the promise of things to come. we tried the chicken, mushroom and almond sausage roll, which tasted salty and peppery above all else, and, alas, doesn’t quite hit the heights of the lamb and harissa at bourke street bakery. and you already know the chorizo and olive baguette: lovely, chewy bread filled with a choice selection of salty things.

but we could hardly wait for the sweet things: deborah’s maxiadz was a great brown wheel on a stick — two bits of chocolatey dacquoise sandwiching luscious chocolate mousse and divine raspberry brulee. the whole contraption was coated in chocolate and then sprinkled with cocoa and rolled in chopped hazelnuts, and even between the three of us, chocolate freaks all, we could not quite finish it. (ok, i finished that last crumb of dacquoise later that night.)

and this, the one i’d been hanging out to try for aaaaaages. sugar lips: a brioche donut filled with lemon creme. look how it sparkles with sugar and cinnamon! see how pillowy soft it is when you slice it! just watch that glorious pale yellow ooze forth! if the man would just bottle his lemon creme, i would buy it and grow fat on it alone.

we poured the last cup of muji spicy orange and pepper tea, and then brewed a new pot of T2 monk pear. a splendid time was had by all.

posted by ragingyoghurt on 11 September 2007 at 3:51 pm

permalink | filed under cake, chocolate, lunch

i’m all worded out.

these days the kid says, “tell me a story, from your mouth.” and sometimes the story that emerges sucks, and she kind of breaks eye contact for a second as if to spare me any embarrassment, and then asks for another. sometimes, the story is a tale of a bunny who goes up to the moon in a paper box rocket, and the moon is made of red jelly, and the bunny scoops some into a bowl and has it with the ice cream from the freezer on his rocketship, and the man in the moon comes out from behind his moon mountain and says that if everyone came and scooped up bowls of moon there would be no moon left, and the bunny feels bad and fetches a tub of pink yoghurt from his fridge and fills in the hole, and the moon man spends the rest of his days sitting in his comfy deck chair looking out at his little pink puddle, and the bunny decides he has had enough of an adventure and rockets back to earth to see his mum. and when the story is a success, i get to tell it maybe three or four times a day, two days in a row so far.

by two-thirty this afternoon, naptime, the quiet refuge i sought was at circle cafe. on a saturday. in the rain. so, silly me, circle was packed with a raucous late lunch crowd, which i mostly managed to tune out by reading david sedaris in the new yorker food issue — three great things rolled into one, no?

i had really wanted a bowl of soup, for the rain, and circle tends to do interesting soup, like chestnut, or french onion, instead of pumpkin, pumpkin, pumpkin. however, the interesting thing today was that there was no soup on the menu. so i had a mushroom, spinach and gruyere crepe, which arrived covering half the plate, a fat pillow with a lovely, frilly golden edge. the filling was different to what i expected, which was sharp, salty gruyere. instead, it was tempered by rather a lot of bechamel sauce, which, when you think about it, is exactly the kind of mushroom-riddled stodge you want on a cold, rainy day. so yay. on the other half of the plate lay a salad of leaves, tomato, onion and olives, so perfectly dressed that it must have been tossed by hand, with love.

as i ate, the room gradually emptied, and by the time i was done, i was finally surrounded by silence.

posted by ragingyoghurt on 8 September 2007 at 10:44 pm

permalink | filed under kid, lunch

thursday night i stayed up late, working so that i wouldn’t have to friday. i had plans up my sleeve! plans that were almost scuttled friday morning, when the kid woke up a little later than usual, slightly dribbly in the nose, and announced that she was really ever so not well. it turned out (or, as i chose to see it) she was quoting “charlie and lola“, to which she has lately become addicted, and i figured (chose to) that the dribble was cosmetic, so we caught the slightly later bus and made it to playschool just as the kids were starting their morning snack.

i hightailed it to badde manors, and squeezed into the corner booth in the back. i like it here; it’s kinda rumpled, and the service is friendly-tinged surliness. i like it so much i didn’t even mind the freeform jazz dee-dee-dee-dee-dee on the stereo. even when they switched over to the tibetan chanting over a dancebeat that my yoga teacher used to play during class, it didn’t jar. well, ok, it jarred a little. when i first started coming here, over a decade ago, i didn’t realise it was vegetarian (although maybe the rumpled surliness should have been a clue?), because meat has never been the main event for me. but then i noticed that sometimes it was hard to get people to come along with.

the thing is, you would not feel like you were missing out if you ordered — as i did, yesterday — the mediterranean breakfast. when it arrived at the table, i think i may have gasped, or at least, inhaled audibly. the previously surly waitress caved in and smiled a little. “enjoy that,” she allowed.

and how can you not? four wedges of toasted turkish bread, topped with fried eggs, sprinkled with za’atar; fried haloumi; fried eggplant; pickles; olives; slices of tomato and cucumber. a veritable bazaar on a plate, and the only downside to such generosity is that if you try to work it such that you are alternating bites of everything, instead of say, eating all the lovely crunchy, salty, melty haloumi in one go, the cheese would have cooled down by the time you’re halfway through, and taken on the squeaky-between-the-teeth consistency which is less than ideal.

but it was otherwise perfect, perfect with a pot of actual, brewed chai. too many cafes serve damn chai lattes made up with too sweet flavoured syrup, but this handsome teapot is full of leaves and twigs, pours four glasses of spicy, not-too-sweet tea, and the last serve gives you a heartening gingery warmth in the back of your throat.

in a little over an hour i was well-fortified, though perhaps a little too distended in the belly, to try on a pair of $18 jeans at target up the street. i’d been looking forward to seeing the veronicas’ new fashion line, and although i liked the little chain with the dangly plastic punkrock charms hanging off a miniskirt… it was all just too red and black, and besides, everything was child-sized 7 to 14. well! just the jeans then.

things were going according to plan: i met up with an old flying monkey at the UTS gallery for the fun exhibition, + & – = X, 20 years of typo-graphics from the tokyo type directors club, before adjourning for long, long lunch at xic lo in chinatown. it’s not especially tasty here, but today at least, the summer rolls were fresh, and the “healthy drink” — barley, ginko nuts, dried longan, red dates and strips of seaweed in a sweet brown syrup, topped with a hillock of shaved ice — did a good job of pretending it wasn’t just a glass of sugar water.

and then suddenly the afternoon was mostly over, and it was time to spring the kid from playschool. i found her out back, shoeless and lightly dusted — like a cinnamon donut — with sand from the pit, and we headed back up broadway for an afternoon bun at breadtop with some good folk from a distant past. there are people with a grudging and uneasy relationship with facebook, but having orchestrated recent reunions with long-lost friends, over facebook, over baked goods no less, i cannot say that it is a bad thing.

nellie?

posted by ragingyoghurt on 1 September 2007 at 10:28 pm

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

haberfield is a bus and then another bus away from me, and even though the trip surprised me by being much quicker than i’d expected, in the last couple of years, i have been, let me see, oh, just the once.

this is a pity because the main street goes something like this: chocolate, cheese, pizza, deli, cake, pasta, cake, supermarket where two or three aisles are filled with more shapes of pasta than you have ever seen, and then, on the corner, pasticceria papa.

it was raining monday morning, and though i had mostly psyched myself up to take on the temperamental bus schedule, i was very pleased when ana said she’d swing by and pick us up. so we arrived mostly dry, in great time, and ready to eat, which we did.

this is what two big girls, two little girls, and a one-week-of-gestation-remaining baby can put away, in just under two hours:
veal arancino
prosciutto pizza
custard tart with mixed fruit
cassata gelato
mixed berry and cream tart
mini ricotta cannoli
large ricotta cannoli
almond biscuit
three lattes
three babycinos

the gelato was especially good, a festive riot of hazelnuts, candied fruit, chocolate shavings and dramatic swirls of pistachio paste. good thing they were out of pink for the day; the kid was easily swayed.

still, it was the superlush ricotta cannoli that came home with me, four in a shiny brown box, along with a chocolate custard horn and a napoli biscuit and a fat schnitzel roll.

this is not your regular breaded cutlet on fluffy white buttered bread. behold: schnitzel, yes, and then roasted cherry tomatoes, eggplant, fontina, mozzarella, artichoke, rocket and prosciutto (though you could choose one with salami), in a chewy-soft roll.

i ate it, with a cup of darjeeling tea, for a late lunch, and it sat in my stomach well into the evening, when plans were already afoot for a return visit.

posted by ragingyoghurt on 21 August 2007 at 5:25 pm

permalink | filed under around town, cake, ice cream, lunch

bagel house, right after it finally opened on darling street, was strangely empty. for weeks, it seemed as though the only people i could see through the clouds of steam emanating from the back room, were the people behind the counter. these days, there are queues at the counter, and the historic mirror-topped tables are usually occupied. it could be just because i’ve been going in on the weekends… clearly i will have to make more mid-week visits, just to see.

when we arrived today, after walking through the summertime, it was bustling. we bustled ourselves a table. the kid, having learnt from the last time that cream cheese, capers and chopped onions are not her friend, customised her smoked salmon bagelwich to contain just the smoked salmon, and some sliced tomato. on a cheese bagel. it was a great success. have you seen how they make the cheese bagels? through the glass window of the operation’s nerve center, you can see neat rows of already-boiled, not-yet-baked bagels, each one with a uniformly square slice of cheese perched on top; it bakes down into a bubbly, crunchy, cheesy crust. and the bit that has melted into the hole? huf!

fearing that i was stuck in the rut of reuben on dill bagel (pastrami, sauerkraut, pickles and swiss cheese — the greatest of ruts to be stuck in), i ordered the portobello mushroom melt, on an onion bagel. in my head, i envisaged a great big field mushroom, as wide in diameter — if not wider — as the bagel, meaty and dark, grilled with garlic and fruity olive oil. instead, it was a modest scattering of regular button mushrooms, finely sliced. they had been grilled, and were tasty, but they lacked that satisfying bite of a monster mushie. still, it was in itself pretty monstrous, and eaten in large mouthfuls, with the pesto, red onion, grilled capsicum and swiss cheese, it was a delicious lunch.

afterwards i walked to the supermarket to stock up on nappies and tinned tomatoes, and popped my head (the body followed unquestioningly) into adriano zumbo patissier to see if the pink biscuits were on today. they were not, and saturday afternoon is crazy, so i spun on my heel for a quick retreat. even quicker though, charlie counterboy brandished an acrylic-framed label at me. i knew from the small print that it was for the gorgeous glass of sticky-rice-coffee-lemon-orange which i had encountered earlier in the week. back then it hadn’t yet been christened, and now it had. in boldface, they had named it after me!

!!!

remember when santos made the raging yoghurt cupcake? i felt all strange and tingly. it was like that all over again; almost brought a tear to my eye. “are you happy?” asked charlie.

darn tootin’.

posted by ragingyoghurt on 11 August 2007 at 10:17 pm

permalink | filed under around town, lunch

and then on sunday, i met deborah and her boy at the powerhouse, ostensibly to immerse ourselves in a bunch of design festival exhibits, but as soon as they showed up, a matching pair in chocolate brown, a simultaneous rummaging through our bags occurred.

“i’ve brought you something,” she said, “but it’s not very exciting.”

“i’ve brought you something too!”

and the simultaneous rummaging through our bags brought out bags, and bags in bags. i was relieved of a couple of zumbo macaron, and was very pleased by the package she handed me: a compact lump in a bakers delight paper bag. i knew what it was before she announced, “a chocolate mud scone”. whee! but she was still pulling stuff out of her tote: a bottle of sri lankan kithul treacle in a bright pink plastic bag. wah! so she lied — this was very exciting! exotic sugar!

but at this point we were still pretending that we were there to feed our minds and our eyes, so we dutifully worked our way through a couple floors of smart works and bollywood, until our eyes lost focus and our minds started wandering. in fact, they wandered right out of the building, and across the road, to hannah’s pies.

this, folks, is the real reason we had converged on this corner in ultimo: the tiger. a meat pie (there’s real meat in here) topped with a scoop of peppery mashed potato, topped with a scoop of mushy peas, into which has been set a pool of gravy. the countergirl presses a hollow into the mound of green with the base of her gravy ladle, then with a deft gesture, tips the gravy in. genius. genius under $5. we carried our wobbling towers of pie back across to the museum forecourt for our pie picnic. people pointed and stared, double-took, thrice.

oh it was lovely, eating this with the sun on my back.

[ photo © deborah rodrigo ]

thus fortified, we headed back for another two hours of looking at stuff — swedish stuff and woollen clothes, and now i think i’m all designed out, but look: if you visit the powerhouse museum any time during the design festival, you get a pass for unlimited free entry over the next fortnight.

i know the kid will be getting at least two excursions to the robot bears on the ground floor in the coming weeks. you press these buttons, and they play teddy bear’s picnic on their little brass instruments.

posted by ragingyoghurt on 7 August 2007 at 7:35 am

permalink | filed under around town, lunch

the first thing counterboy said to me as i stepped into zumbo this morning was, “why haven’t you been blogging?”. to which i might have mumbled something about being busy. i dunno.

i don’t remember so much of last week. i know there was a crazy deadline that had lurched and hiccupped over the weekend, and then into the week itself, where corrections and adjustments were still being made an hour before it was due wherever it was going. and then a large bunch of flowers showed up on my doorstep the following evening. and then, um…

i met my aunt for a devonshire tea in a foodhall in chatswood, where the scones were warmed in the microwave before being plonked on a plate with two little squirts of cream-in-a-can and two tiny foil-sealed packs of kraft strawberry jam. that’ll learn us to get scones at a muffin place, although really, the scones were the best thing on the tray. she paid for morning tea, as she is wont to, and then she paid for dimsum as well. and right at the end, she handed me a box of home-made yam cake. good value, my aunt.

i met a friend (really, my sister’s friend) for brunch in newtown, and although i couldn’t persuade her to have tacos at 10am (plus, they weren’t actually open yet), we didn’t do too badly at the cafe across from the cinema, with buckwheat pancakes, coconut-infused mascarpone, maple syrup, and half the fruit in a small greengrocer. oh, and a side of bacon. she is from singapore; we spoke singlish. it was great.

i became addicted to the pre-packed exotic mushrooms at harris farm. shiitake, enoki, shimeji, and oyster mushrooms, quickly sauteed in sesame oil with rather a lot of chopped garlic and whatever asian greens are handy, poured over jasmin rice — what a dinner it made… twice! i had it first with flowering choi sum one night, and then addressed my addiction head on by buying more mushrooms to have with broccoli and baby buk choy soon after). you don’t need any more seasoning than a spoon of sea salt: the mushrooms flavour everything.

i went to the organic markets and bought just short of half a kilo of salty french-churned butter.

i found myself stepping, too casually, too often, into the jewelbox that is adriano zumbo: a mandarin macaron one day, a brioche stuffed with custard and mixed berries the next. or was it both on the same day? and another the next? i lose count.

oh! also, my sister got married, not that you’d know, since she hasn’t been blogging either.

posted by ragingyoghurt on 6 August 2007 at 8:42 pm

permalink | filed under around town, cake, kitchen, lunch, nellie, snacks, werk

two tuesdays ago, i woke up in my hotel room in melbourne with a mission. i had to find the waffle place for breakfast, and then i had to be at acmi at ten, when the doors opened, to buy me a ticket to the pixar exhibition.

the waffles you might have already read about; the pixar show — well, by the time i waddled my waffle-laden ass over to the hideous yet brilliant federation square, there was a short queue at the ticket counter. yep. first day of the school holidays (they’re closed monday), and there were munchkins everywhere.

the three or four large rooms crammed with concept sketches, colour studies and clay models made me feel, alternately, awe and revulsion (awe towards the pixar artists, clearly, and revulsion at how i had squandered my life away and never did any drawing). there were touchscreen video kiosks scattered throughout the exhibition — ingenious foldy things that could be adjusted from full-height vertical to how-low-can-you-go? did i mention there were children everywhere? — video kiosks, before which you could stand for many many minutes (hours?) if you were so inclined, to watch behind-the-scenes everything on pixar productions. and then there was a zoetrope.

oh. my. godddd.

there’s this small, dark room, right, and in the middle is a carousel of toys from “toy story”, engaged in all manner of acrobatic activity. it’s kind of interesting, this dimly-lit tableau of colourful little statues going around and around… and then the strobe lighting kicks in, and the music, and it’s the most amazing thing ever (4.2mb mp4, as documented by this guy). i went back in three times. kids everywhere.

so that sums up the pixar show for me: 3D “toy story” zoetrope. quick! go! you have until october.

and then it was lunchtime. i got a passout just in case, and guess what! went back to waffle on and joined the immense lunchtime queue for freshly-baked baguette sandwiches. truly, the man takes them out of the little oven behind the counter, splits them open, and fills them, still steaming, with such things as salty butter, ham and pickles, if you, like me, ask for le parisien. and if you do request le parisien, he will ask if you want cheese in it as well. “you will like it, i promise. it is very good gruyere.” it was. the whole unwieldy baton.

i tore bits off, salty-melty, as i walked up flinders lane, and then i devoured the rest of it sitting in the sun in fitzroy gardens until the lunchtime tree loppers cut short my reverie, sending a gust of sawdust my way. but no matter: it was time to cross the street to craft victoria, to see the scarves. so many scarves, and what’s the definition of a scarf anyway? i’ve been curious about learning how to knit, and now i see that if i stick to scarves, i may not need to.

i did a quick jaunt back up brunswick, to see if the shop i really wanted to go to was open (it wasn’t; they were renovating), and it turned out to be sunny enough that i could sit outdoors — in melbourne, in wintertime! — and have a cup of gelato.

here’s the thing: maybe you walked past trampoline yesterday, while poking ’round fitzroy. you might have even popped in briefly, just to see what flavours might lie waiting in the metal troughs. “chai latte” might have caught your eye, and probably “berry pavlova” — a bright pink concoction studded with uneven chunks of broken meringue. but you were sloshy full of lunchtime soup, and besides, there was no-one at the counter. today is a different story: with only a ham-and-cheese baguette under my belt, and two helpful youngsters behind the counter, i came away with a double dose of “chai latte” and “caramel pear”. the former had not much tea flavour, but the spices were intense and true; the latter was creamy and smooth for a sorbet, and had a sweet, dark caramel syrup running through it. dee-licious.

i caught a tram back into the city, and as i passed my stop on collins street, it occurred to me that i could ride all the way to the end of the line, because really, what the hell did i have to do? and so i found myself in st kilda. strolling aimlessly, with purpose, looking in windows, being seduced by those acland street cakes (and another trampoline outlet!).

“chocolate kugelhoph… now available in slices” said a hand-lettered sign. it comes in a large pan, and the surly countergirl will cut you off as much as you want. turns out i wanted $3 worth; it would do fine for breakfast.

and then the sun began to set, and i could’ve done that thing where you walk along the bay and see how quick the sun can drop away… but i had a movie to get to. back in the city, i was just in time for [mutters, lips unmoving] “blades of glory“. me and… well, at first i thought i had a personal screening, but then two, and then four, and by the end, no more than twelve, and will ferrell. it was no worse than i expected, and there were larfs to be had; just enough good stoopid fun for $8.50.

after, walking through chinatown and not being able to decide which noodle joint would be better than the others, i turned the corner onto lonsdale, and stumbled upon the international cake shop, right where i last left it years ago. glistening greek pastries called to me, like sirens, i tell you. once i was inside though, it became clear that i would have to break the perfect wheel of spanakopita sitting behind the glass counter. it was salty and good, and the tea service was not without charm.

the night was quickly crashing to a close, and the cakes behind glass — all manner of shortbread, filo, gateau, syrup-soaked temptation — put their best sides forward. i picked the chocolate sandwich sponge slab decorated with piped icing (over a golden semolina cake) and decided later, back at the hotel, that it was a slightly stale mistake. tchk.

i never made it back to see the pixar zoetrope.

– – –

one tuesday ago, i went to see “transformers“. wah!

posted by ragingyoghurt on 17 July 2007 at 3:22 pm

permalink | filed under around town, at the movies, cake, dinner, ice cream, lunch, trip

in the vicinity of about life yesterday, i discovered that i had less money in my bank account than i thought. like, five cents short of the minimum amount needed to make an atm withdrawal. KLA!

still, the $15 in my wallet was just enough to buy me a loaf of 7-grain sourdough, a small tub of roast pork, green apple and red cabbage salad (a very small tub, because the countergirl didn’t fill it up all the way; $5.50 for a handful of thinly sliced apple and cabbage, and two pieces of pork is a little steep, methinks.), and, best of all, a fat, round house-baked beetroot bread roll.

not too dense, not too fluffy, and a beguiling shade of pink. the taste of beetroot is not strong, but it does have a faintly earthy flavour. i sandwiched the pork salad into it for lunch, and it was good.

this morning i awoke to deborah’s magnificent and austere breakfast, and it became clear to me that i would have to follow suit; lightly toasted beetroot bread is made for buttery avocado and boiled egg.

and it’s true what they say: if you give your egg a good swirl after immersing it in the pot, the yolk centres itself perfectly.

posted by ragingyoghurt on 6 June 2007 at 12:18 pm

permalink | filed under lunch, shoping

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