ragingyoghurt

Category Archives: werk

i’m about to disappear down a tunnel of work again. only seven pages into an annual report layout, and my head has gone spongy, and my eyes are a-twitchin’. but do not worry, there is pearl jam in the background, a large cup of almond tea to the right of me, and to my left…

an adorable mini chocolate kugelhopf from lüneburger. it is a rich burst of cocoa for a mid-afternoon slump, moist and just a little bit sticky (awful in late summer weather but just about perfect in a cake). and scattered here and there, chocolate chips. such a tiny treat! and at $2, quite the cheap thrill.

posted by ragingyoghurt on 4 March 2010 at 3:24 pm

permalink | filed under cake, chocolate, werk

a couple of months ago, i volunteered to put together the newsletter of the kid’s playschool’s parents’ committee. i didn’t really think it through at the time, just figured it would be a catalyst to get some non-work-related design done. however, what it actually meant was that we had to make a special trip into school the other evening to attend a meeting. and i had to take minutes! because i also had to write the darn thing!!

it also meant a couple of trays of flaccid sandwiches — plastic cheese and vegemite, and plastic cheese and ham — and tepid water drunk out of the children’s regulation red plastic tumblers, but let’s forget that ever happened.

after it was all over, we caught the bus back to balmain with our fingers crossed, and got off the bus right opposite the new sushi place that’s just opened on darling street. it threw a welcoming golden light out into the night, and we stepped through the door to find the last two empty stools at the counter.

it’s a small room, seats about twenty. one waitress in front, two or three chefs out back. and a sushi train! sugoi! which, incidentally, is the name of the restaurant.

you probably already know this, but i l o v e sushi train: all those possibilities going ’round and ’round on colourful little plates. sure, there is that stressful element — similar to when you go for dimsum — where you can’t really relax and enjoy the eats because you are always keeping watch for something (better) that might come along, but sometimes you find a place where everything looks good, and none of it has the dehydrated edges of something that’s been riding the conveyer belt carousel for two hours…

and sugoi could be one of those places. we fished a plate of sashimi off the train; the temperature and texture of the fish was perfect. there was a pretty roll of tempura vegetables wrapped up in a delicate pea-green crepe, and topped with a dab of salad cream and a sprig of loveliness. there was spider roll! which i really do quite like. and at the end, there was no red bean mochi topped in whipped cream and strawberries and syrup like they do at tomodachi, but there was a fruit salad of melons, grapes, tinned pineapple and a slice of strawberry, in a glass goblet, on a red plate.

the newsletter has so far been well-received by the committee.

posted by ragingyoghurt on 18 May 2008 at 10:16 pm

permalink | filed under dinner, werk

the days streak by like lightning.

our baubles arrived in the mail today: shiny smooth perspex clouds, with dangly lightning bolts. i couldn’t decide on gold lightning or pink, so i got one of each. you have until 10am tomorrow (wednesday) to get a bunch of plastic jewellery for a song. these ones are most appropriate for the weather right now.

right now, i’m working on a job that doesn’t want to end. last night i breathed a sigh of relief and prepared to write up a hefty invoice, but this afternoon, there it was again, mocking me from my inbox. truly, it makes me want to staple my head.

it didn’t stop us, though, from watching hours of kid’s programming on tv as we played a gambly game of “i wonder if the rain’s stopped now, so we can go out” (no.). it didn’t stop us building a slightly flawed train network (much like our great city’s) across the red carpet.

it didn’t stop us from making toasted cheese/green apple/green peppercorn mustard sandwiches — lightly toast some nice grainy bread, spread each piece with a little butter and top with thinly sliced granny smiths and tasty cheese. stick them under the grill until cheese bubbles. dab mustard over one of the slices, then plop the other on top. sweet-sour, wilted-crunchy all at once, with a double thick layer of oozy, mustardy cheese bang in the middle.

we split a mandarin for dessert, and then we bravely went forth into madeleine battle, round two. it was only 2pm, and the rain was relentless.

posted by ragingyoghurt on 8 April 2008 at 10:42 pm

permalink | filed under kid, kitchen, lunch, werk

these are busy days. i’ve been laying out the program booklet for the sydney arab film festival for a week now. last friday, as i waited in the train station beneath the airport, i fielded a call — the most crystal clear reception in an underground station! — asking me, only partly in jest, why i was not at home laying stuff out. but it seems even super urgent and late jobs are entitled to five rounds of author’s corrections, so here i am, the millstone still tied to my neck. a very sleek millstone, mind, if i do say so myself.

night times at the computer call for simultaneously stimulating and comforting snacks. a cup of tea, definitely, and a rotating roster of small sweet things. a square (or four) of chocolate one night, a raspberry cream biscuit another.

this particular raspberry cream was unexpectedly good, though somewhat smoushed from being in its paper bag for too long. we found it at the cookie man concession at david jones, nestled close to the caramel creams. you get a crunchy shortbread sandwich, filled with sugary “cream” and anointed with a dab of sticky red jam. the caramel’s definitely on the cards for the next trip to DJ foodhall.

speaking of caramel…

i never dallied the mille feuille at adriano zumbo patissier, not even that season he filled it with mandarin creme. i don’t know what held me back — all that pastry cream, all that pastry — but i suspect it was that there was always something pinker on display. if he’d just remolded it into a cream horn, i totally would have bitten.

but all this is in the past now, because to herald the autumn, there it was: the salted butter caramel mille feuille. after a couple of weeks of missing each other in the shop, i finally had one cornered. and… the planks of pastry were crisp and very nicely sugar-glazed, the fat lines of creme patisserie most enticing. and while the richness of it was lush on my tongue, and i felt completely full after a mere third of the cake, i was left wanting more. more! more salt! more caramel even. i still have two thirds, just to make sure. but, just, more.

zumbo is a riot of colour at the moment: a rash of new cakes hit the counter in the last few weeks. there’s a fancy piped meringue thing crowned in fat, shiny cherries. there’s a slab of chocolate (and chocolate rice crispies!) beneath a wave of pistachio something. there is a multi-layered pink thing in a glass wearing a jaunty pink macaron beret, another incarnation of the macaron marie (ispahan), which will surely be the next thing i pick. but oh! the pink things to be had!

posted by ragingyoghurt on 21 March 2008 at 10:09 pm

permalink | filed under cake, snacks, werk

a week ago, we had breakfast for lunch at circle cafe. well. i had breakfast for lunch; everyone else had lunchy-type things.

the tea service at circle is a beautiful thing. sure, it could do with a few more leaves to the pot (and some sort of removable tea-leaf container so that whatever leaves in the pot don’t sit and stew in the time it takes you to drink three cups)… but these days, when a cafe tea experience usually involves a flaccid teabag in a stingy cup of lukewarm water for the same price as a barista-pulled coffee, taking tea at circle is none too shabby.

i am taking tea right now, but it has gone cold. it is 1.22 in the morning after all. i have lucked into some work, you see, and this means that after a morning of fun out with the kid and the sister, and an afternoon of gingerbread-baking, and a late evening dinner of ruffle-edged pasta with broccoli, asparagus and fetta (with a side of giggles), i am moving slabs of text around while the house sleeps.

throbby head aside, it is a nice feeling. not so nice is the feeling of blog posts left unwritten. i have so much to tell you! perhaps tomorrow i could sneak in a tale of the cream-filled mozzarella…

posted by ragingyoghurt on 12 March 2008 at 1:13 am

permalink | filed under breakfast, werk

“comic artist rehab is where four comic artists (who haven’t been as busy as they should) commit to drawing four panels every four days for four weeks.”

this month, i am one of those artists — and today is my first strip! come for a squiz if you’re interested or if you’d like to arrange for an intervention for someone you know.

my friend, amber, set this up, and clearly she is plenty busy as it is, because she is also the one responsible for the kids craft weekly website, and now book, which i spent a chunk of last month working on, and which is finally back from the printer, with its satiny smooth cover that i can’t stop stroking (and now i know how matt moran felt at that good food show demonstration). you know you want one!

posted by ragingyoghurt on 2 November 2007 at 9:56 pm

permalink | filed under drawn, werk

i really put my eyes through the wringer over the weekend: one feels quite swollen, and the other is decidedly twitchy. there’s nothing like a looming deadline (which i’d cleverly been choosing to ignore, until it was too late to pretend it wasn’t looming) to keep me at the computer for all hours of the day, beyond blog and facebook.

[ nellicent! join! ]

i’ve been drawing on my real desktop, and shuffling little coloured boxes around my virtual one, and i have within easy reach too many chocolate bars and not quite enough bowls of berries. cups of tea are always on standby.

i’ve been drawing happy pots and perturbed sheep, know-it-all kitchen sponge people — the best enforced fun i’ve had in a long time. i’m helping to put together a real, live book for the real fun website, kids craft weekly, and at the moment we are pretending that it will all be done and sent out into the world in the next month.

HAHAHA.

i’ve just realised we must look exactly like this amiable saucepan, smiling blankly in the face of adversity.

anyway. buy a book? gaarn. you never know when you might want to turn your collection of wooden spoons into a family of puppets. or a paper bag into an owl.

[ photographs © kids craft weekly ]

posted by ragingyoghurt on 24 September 2007 at 6:01 pm

permalink | filed under drawn, snacks, werk

my desk is a mess again, and i haven’t even arrived at the busy time. i am circling the periphery, looking in, pacing myself. just pacing.

at my elbow i have sheets of paper, covered in scribbled lists: lists of amendments to layouts; lists of drawings to make; lists of invoices to send; lists of where to go in queensland.

i have passes to a film on the weekend: “an epic tale of mothers and sons, mothers and daughters, unrequited love, betrayal and secrets… the true story of a glamorous shanghai nightclub singer, who struggles to survive in seventies australia with two young children“. phew!

i have tea: muji jasmin tea ball in a muji glass teapot, good gifts from my good mother.

i have chocolate: a monsieur truffe bar with cocoa solids of 64%. there is some guff on the back of the package about fresh fruity notes and bouquets of dried fruits, but i am simply impressed by how a dark chocolate bar — french, no less (by way of melbourne) — can be so goshdarned creamy.

i have an urgent calling to watch that hideous show, “age of love“.

posted by ragingyoghurt on 16 August 2007 at 10:30 pm

permalink | filed under chocolate, misc, tv, werk

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

today was all blue skies and fluffy clouds, perfect for a cupcake excursion! we caught a bus and a train, crossed two bridges, and walked out into the sunshine at kirribilli markets. we wandered through the maze of stalls, not really looking too hard, and then we found it: chocolate suze’s biscuit (and cupcake) stand, as advertised.

there were sample jars filled with little nuggets of shortbread, warmed by the sun, and a sign which told me to try as many as i wanted, so i did: white chocolate and cranberry shortbread, cranberry and pistachio, macadamia, ginger… there were as many different kinds of biscotti, including an intriguing pear and cardamon specimen. there was a shameless display of well-frosted cupcakes, overwhelmingly pink and copiously sprinkled. and there was chocolate suze, who i had never met before today, and is yet more proof that the innernet is my friend.

but we cannot stand around making small talk about butter; maeve is not so easily distracted when there are pink cupcakes about. with pink dragees! and that boy is going to get it! but he didn’t. we took the cupcake to the park, plonked ourselves down in the shade of the harbour bridge, and then she dug out all the dragees and ate whatever frosting she hadn’t licked off along the way. as an afterthought, she ate about half the cake too.

she was kind enough to offer me a nibble now and again, so i was able to ascertain that it was all sugary icing and buttery cake, and sometimes that is all i ask of it. and so it was that after a play in the playground, and another meander through the market, and a greasy gozleme on the bare patch of grass in the middle of it all, and a free facepaint in the likeness of a pink kitten, we ended up back at the cupcakes so that i could buy one of my very own, and bring it home with me.

“that is such a delicious and moist cupcake,” i gushed. “does it have a lot of butter in it?”

suze smiled a wicked smile. “yes,” she said, “and you don’t want to know how much.”

i thought i’d be eating it tonight, solace while i worked a crazy deadline. but an even crazier deadline has taken shape, making this evening just the calm before the storm. and so here it sits, biding its time, waiting for the morning when it will kill me a buttery death. it will be great!

posted by ragingyoghurt on 28 July 2007 at 10:48 pm

permalink | filed under around town, cake, kid, werk

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