ragingyoghurt » adventures in good eating etc.

it was way past naptime by the time we emerged from the powerhouse museum yesterday afternoon. we had spent a good slab of time waiting for our turn at schmuck quickies — a sydney design festival event in which the performance jeweller yuka oyama crafts you a piece of jewellery from recycled materials, on the spot. today, the spot was a long line.

we got there about 11.30 to find the musical robot bears switched off and the adjacent schmuck quickie salon brightly lit and full of cameraman and sound recordist and abc tv producers. our 15 minute wait swelled to just short of 40 minutes (without the musical robot bears!), when the organisers came around to say that everything was running slower because of the recording, and it was now lunchtime and could we come back at 1?

so we did. we scooted out for a picnic of hotdog with tomato sauce and pie floater, and returned to the deserted atrium and waited some more. at quarter past one, yuka was back in action, most personable, asking if there was anything out of her bags of stuff that i liked, or if there was anything i liked in general. “i like fabric, ” i said, “and acrylic. and pink!” and then she was rummaging in her trolley and pulling out great handfuls of bright pink ribbon and thin plastic tubes. she worked nimbly, fashioning a necklace from the material, with a scribbly little highlight safetypinned to my collar at the very end. she even made a matching one for the kid.

“it is simple” said yuka, “but it is pretty.” and it was, but here’s the thing: as soon as we were done, the camera crew who’d been lurking in the shadows turned their machines and lights back on, and prepared to document the next participants. the ones who’d been filmed earlier in the day had quite elaborate pieces made; the girl from the tv station, in particular, had a resplendent brooch — an alien botanical specimen, really — attached to her jacket, spirited up from squirty nozzles from detergent containers and a cluster of colourful randomness.

would it be so wrong to imagine that the artist had rushed through ours so that she could make something more involved for the tv people? or had she really seen right into me, and discerned the correct flamboyant vs. low key ratio which makes up my personality, and worked accordingly? ultimately, i was pleased with my pink ribbon (and would have worn it out again today, but i couldn’t attach it to my shirt in as lovely a way as it had been yesterday, argh!), but maeve was rightfully disgruntled: she had wanted to be a bunny. we had barely made it to the exit when she began tugging it off. so we decided that we should go have pink ice cream.

if you are in chinatown, as we were, you might assume an obligation to have your ice cream at passionflower, or maybe the seven-years-out-of-date Y2K cafe. maybe you’d just pop into gelatissimo for a takeaway cone. but across from the entertainment center sits the inconspicuous shopfront of the cold rock ice creamery. i’d been wanting to try this for years: where they smoosh stuff into your ice cream on a cold marble counter. today was the perfect opportunity: it was the closest ice cream store out of all available options, and i was developing an uncomfortable chaffing from carrying the heavy, wilting child.

they had two kinds of pink ice cream for us, and one of them was turkish delight! at an adjacent counter were a great many things you could choose to have mixed into your ice cream for 80c a pop — famous chocolate bars, unlikely candy, frozen fruit, cookie dough, tim tams… and because of the company, i deferred to the unlikely candy option. surrounded by pigeons, gulls and their shit, we shared a cup of rose-flavoured ice cream with gummy bears. the ice cream was lovely and creamy, the gummy bears extra springy from being cold.

next time, perhaps in the company of myself, i shall have it with smooshed-in raspberries, and maybe, if i’m in the mood, smooshed-in chocolate fudge brownies.

posted by ragingyoghurt on 10 August 2007 at 9:53 pm

permalink | filed under around town, ice cream, kid

sometimes you see her. you know nothing about her, not even her name, but she stands there so demurely, sweetly even, and you have to find out more. maybe you turn to the man watching over her, and ask. he screws up his face as he tries to remember the sum of her parts.

“coffee sticky rice,” he said “lemon creme, blood orange jelly…” honestly, he had me at the sticky rice; i may even have whimpered. but i left her behind. and then the regret set in.

i was back the next day — we’re talking adriano zumbo of course — because i really wanted a chorizo-olive baguette for lunch, but when i saw her glowing behind the glass, it was clear that she had won me over. not the thing with the apricots and apples, rolled in white chocolate and pistachios; not even the giant green macaron sandwiched with berries and basil-lime creme could sway me.

in the quiet afternoon, i worked my way through the layers: the blood orange jelly was intensely tart, and adorned with a flutter of tiny petals; the lemon creme felt full and fat on my tongue, and then dissipated completely — a wonderful mystery; there was a curious layer which seemed to be a spongy coconut foam; and a thin layer of coffee-ish jelly almost like the coffee agar agar from my childhood; and then the sticky rice…

which, meh, was my least favourite bit. it wasn’t creamy as i expected: the rice grains were a little al dente, and the stuff surrounding it foamy rather than lush. tchk.

what was lush, was the lemon creme. i could eat bowls of this. because it is hard to isolate this pale yellow layer from the others. i tasted each layer on its own, and then paired with each of the others. i tried to make the lemon creme last, but it kept gliding into each little spoonful i took from the glass.

so next on the list, i suppose, is the brioche donut filled with lemon creme. and here i was thinking i should cut down on the zumbo trips. anyway. i did get the chorizo baguette as well, so that should do me for the rest of the week.

posted by ragingyoghurt on 9 August 2007 at 5:24 pm

permalink | filed under cake

why is there no apostrophe in bakers delight? are they saying that what bakers do, is delight?

well, i guess i’d buy that. i’ve been delighted by some of the white yeasty things that appear on the racks of this franchise bakery chain. somewhat less delightful is the discrepancy between quality (and size!) of buns from one outlet to another. for example, the cheesymite scrolls from the bakers delight in albury are twice the size of the ones from the surry hills mall (and most of metropolitan sydney, i imagine; must be the good country air). and what about when a particular bun is completely missing from a shop? most undelightful indeed.

thing is, i first caught a glimpse of the chocolate mud scone in the display case of the balmain bakers delight, and oh what plans i had for it! i was going to smother it with whipped cream and sliced strawberries. however, when i did actually buy one, it was from the outlet at broadway shopping centre, and i was ravenous, and in the company of equally hungry kid and boy. we split it three ways, cold, from the bag, and wondered at how far this austere scottish bread had come. it was an impressive dark brown, rich with cocoa and a riot of chocolate chips. oh what plans i had for it!!

and then eventually i did have cream and strawberries in the fridge, and i walked up the street — gleeful — to the balmain branch to find no chocolate mud scones. my plans were in disarray! i thought maybe they had sold out, due to deliciousness, but no. i went by several more times, and it was as if they had never been there.

and y’know, maybe they hadn’t: maybe i had imagined the whole thing! maybe they are only sold in the bakers delight at broadway, because that is where deborah bought the one that she thoughtfully brought me on sunday.

and everything went according to plan: warmed up in the microwave, split and slathered in whipped cream and sliced strawberries, and then — an afterthought — more cream and more strawberries. truly, i was delighted.

but the kid made her dad lick the cream off before she would touch hers. is there an age group in which things are too delicious? because she’s in it.

posted by ragingyoghurt on 7 August 2007 at 4:33 pm

permalink | filed under cake, chocolate, kid

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

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

i am about to go watch “america’s next top model” with a cup of tea (green, vanilla) and a biscuit (macaron, rose), which is a grand way to spend a friday night with kid sleeping and boy absent.

last tuesday, as we parked the grocery-laden pram outside adriano zumbo patissier, a yelled-out welcome made its way onto the street: “hello, ragingyoghurt!” it’s nice, no? when the boy behind the counter knows your name? nevermind that your name isn’t actually “ragingyoghurt”…

we entered the shop, and my eyes automatically swung to 2 o’clock, where the macaron usually hang out. except, there were no macaron! not a single one. “where are all the little coloured biscuits?” i asked, perplexed.

turns out the entire zumbo workshop had been wiped out with the killer flu over the weekend. charlie the counterboy had been making pastries to keep the counter stocked. but no pink biscuits for us. the kid, who’d been chanting a mantra of “pink-biscuit-pink-biscuit”, was easily placated with a raisin snail. and i… i finally got a chance to try the cheeky charlie.

a figure eight of a danish, topped with chopped strawberries and pistachios. the surprise is, the brioche feuilletine has a ribbon of sticky red jam running through it, which makes your cheeks tingle with intense strawberriness.

i’d been eyeing this for weeks, but there was always something more enticing than a danish along the counter. plus i didn’t think i could ask charlie himself for a pastry named in his honour. tuesday, an extra countergirl was there to help me out.

thanks, countergirl!

anyway. i thought you might be interested to see the kind of more-enticing-something that’s been keeping me from surprise danishes.

the merry-go-round, from two tuesdays ago: like a regular strawberry custard tart, only crazier. behold the macaron biscuit topped with a tiny cube of turkish delight. beneath the ring of strawberries, a great dollop of creme patissiere — as you’d expect — but within this, a secret core of lychee mousse. predictably, the kid was only interested in the pink biscuit, so after i bribed her with it, she left me — and the merry-go-round — to our own devices. i took it to bed with me that night, and when i was done with it… well, you know how it is.

posted by ragingyoghurt on 27 July 2007 at 9:24 pm

permalink | filed under cake, kid

i arrived home from melbourne to find a flurry of delivery notices on the doormat. the fedex man had been while we were gone, thrice in the week, each time leaving another official bit of card saying, “we were here, you were not”, with the final one adding rather threateningly, “we will be returning the package to sender”.

but i called them up on monday and grovelled a little bit, and a couple days later, my parcel showed up, from the good folk at penguin: a handsome hardcover called, “alone in the kitchen with an eggplant: confessions of cooking for one and dining alone” (edited by jenni ferrari-ader).

“look!” i said to the boy, “people send me books now, because i am media!”

“you mean, because you have a blog?”

“yes?”

“that’s ridiculous,” he said.

which maybe it is, a little. after all, i mean, who am i?

well, never mind me. here is a collection of 26 essays, personal stories from an eclectic mix of writers including amanda hesser (food editor of the new york times magazine), nora ephron (chickflick writer), haruki murakami (tedious postmodern novelist), and steve almond (whose book “candyfreak” — a brief history of regional american candy — i am also currently in the middle of). i am reading them as the editor intended — in order — and a handful of chapters in, have encountered someone who ate asparagus every day for two months, someone who was happy to subsist on crackers:

…most nights i did not feel fancy at all. i ate slices of white cheese on saltines with a dollop of salsa, then smoothly transitioned to saltines spread with butter and jam for dessert. i would eat as many as were required to no longer be hungry and then i would stop.
– ann patchett

…someone who relied on black beans throughout grad school, someone — at last — who didn’t make eating at home alone seem quite so dire:

my home-alone dinners are often composed of one or two flavours, prepared in a way that underlines their best qualities. eggs are high on the list. i rarely eat breakfast but i adore eggs and there are very few opportunities to eat them at other times of the day. so i might poach one and lay it on a nest of peppery or bitter greens. i might toss a poached egg with pasta, steamed spinach and good olive oil, and shower it with freshly-grated nutmeg and cheese. or, i might press a hard boiled egg through a sieve and sprinkle the fluffy egg curds over asparagus. – amanda hesser

which is the way it should be, no? when else are you going to get the chance to cook exactly what you want to eat, without having to take into consideration anyone else’s particularities? the week i had to myself, that week boy and kid were away, i made spaghetti with shredded brussels sprouts sauteed in rocket pesto, and a tofu green curry with as many green vegetables as i could pack in. i’m sure i would’ve made several more meat-free, veggie-packed things, but i also had to fit in some leisurely solo cafe meals, a vegetarian dinner at BBQ king — it can be done!, and adriano zumbo, three times.

this is a book about how food fits into people’s lives. there are no glossy photographs of tasteful little dinners and convenient lunches, but there are recipes now and again, for such things as roasted beet and cucumber salad with ricotta salata, truffled egg toast, kippers mash, yellowfin tuna with heirloom tomatoes and oil-cured olive and caper salsa. see, it doesn’t all have to be about drinking your lonely way through a giant pot of soup.

though it could be, if you wanted it so. it’s not so horrible to eat alone, is it? don’t you? (and what do you eat? tell me. tell me!)

and that is why this book is such an enjoyable read: all those dirty little dietary secrets. and, ok, all the moments of glorious self-discovery. it’s like reading food blogs! at its best, it’s like reading orangette.

i am looking forward to the penultimate chapter, “instant noodles” by rattawut lapcharoensap, because actually, that is one of the things i like to eat best, when i have the pleasure — the luxury — of being home alone.

posted by ragingyoghurt on 24 July 2007 at 2:35 pm

permalink | filed under blog, bookshelf, kitchen

friday, two fridays ago, it rained and rained and rained. though not while we made our way to waffle on to break fast. i know purists — and monsieur waff — would strongly recommend the plain waffle, adorned with nothing more than a dusting of powdered sugar. but. the waffle with maple syrup is an amazing thing. the air around you tingles with a mapley, syrupy aura, and your teeth go soft. since before we left sydney, i’d been telling the kid about how we could go have waffles in melbourne. she was happy to play along, perched up high on a barstool, with her waffle in a brown paper bag; the waffleman thought it might be easier to eat that way. “are you leaving today?” he asked, because he remembered that we are from sydney. “tomorrow,” we replied. there was a sadness in the air. i was already a regular. “you should move to melbourne,” he said, “you will love it.”

as the kid slowed down at the halfway mark, we folded the bag over, popped it into my backpack, and headed off on another adventure. while the boy made a pilgrimage to the fred williams room at the ian potter centre, maeve and i wandered through the indigenous collection, picking out our favourite shell-studded, feather-adorned, hand-woven satchels; making faces back at the totems; looking for native animals hidden in the dots. there was a tale which accompanied a little family of colourful woven dolls:

a woman was out in the bush looking for food for her children. two men killed her. when they noticed that milk was leaking from her breasts, they realised that she must have children nearby. they found their way back to her camp, where they discovered her two children, and killed them too.

tops.

it was heaps more fun ambling down by the yarra, past the australian poster annual. in the shadow of the circus oz tent and a creaky old ferris wheel. we took a ride on “the grand carousel”, a small scuffed thing with a ring of tired animals jerking up and down and a soundtrack composed of the whirr and hum of machinery.

we walked on: the boy led the way up the green slopes into the botanic gardens. and it was fun for a while, even though it was bitingly cold, and even when it started to rain, because by then we were right by the tropical greenhouse, and i knew that inside it would be warm, if a little moist. the kid finished off the rest of her waffle surrounded by steamy exotic vegetation. and then we stepped outside because we thought the rain was easing.

but it tricked us.

it got heavier and heavier, and i got wetter and grumpier: why was there no place to take shelter? by the time i spotted the visitors’ centre and stomped off towards it, my shoulders were sodden, my hair saturated. i fingered the plastic rain ponchos in the garden shop, and gazed longingly at the fat sandwiches and wedges of cake behind glass in the cafeteria. truly, i would’ve been happy to stay.

but the boy had his sights set on a walk beside port phillip bay, and was leaning out the glass doors in the direction of the st kilda tram. fortunately, i had no such desire to slosh around the outdoors for an unspecified time, so me and the kid caught a tram in the other direction, and headed underground.

there is a cute little boutique in the pedestrian tunnel under flinders street, where cute skirts can be found. sadly, everything on the rack was either an 8 or a 14. so we went next door to sticky, floor to ceiling, wall to wall zines and other scraps of paper, and a desk with badge machines where you can sit and press out your own buttons. one of us came away with a little button with a black cat on it; one of us bought too many zines.

and we climbed the dark stairs back up to the street to find sunlight! and life! and the lord of the fries! twas a lovely picnic indeed, on the tramstop bench, with a crate of hot chips smothered in brown vinegar and tomato sauce, and two tiny forks.

and then you know, one thing led to another, and suddenly, one night later, we weren’t in melbourne anymore. we were in a stone-cold motel room in tumut, discovering that the advertised “free cable in your room!” was three sports channels. even the ones that on the handwritten tv menu were assigned to “lifestyle channel” and “fox-something” (not “fox sport”), had since been switched over to something with a football game on it.

we read the interesting takeaway menu that i’d picked up in reception, for a local chinese restaurant. there was an entire section titled “sweet & sour”.

and really, for a while we considered regional chinese for dinner. but then we thought that maybe a counter meal in a pub, or a slap-up feed in the bistro of the RSL club would be more “authentic”. the tumut bowling club is a big, concrete bunker, the inside of which is lined in spectacular carpet of a glitzy pattern you just don’t see anymore. we followed the corridor around several bends to the packed dining room, and it became clear from the laminated menu on the counter listing such classic australian cuisine as “honey king prawns” and “mongolian lamb”, that the tumut RSL bistro was in fact a regional chinese restaurant, albeit with a small selection of steaks and chips tucked away in the extended menu.

we were not really disappointed, but it was very hard to choose. in the end, we had sweet and sour pork — not as lurid and padded out with pineapple and celery as i’ve enjoyed in other country towns, garlic king prawns, and mixed vegetables with cashew nuts. the order took about an hour to arrive, during which time i tried without success to keep the kid away from my lemon, lime and bitters. and then minutes later — well, maybe 20 minutes; we are not swine — it was all gone.

and now, looking down the barrel of a surprise annual report to be designed in five days, these golden memories of melbourne are flashing before my eyes, taunting me, like a cavalcade of well-fried chips.

posted by ragingyoghurt on 21 July 2007 at 10:15 pm

permalink | filed under around town, boy, cake, kid, snacks, trip

two thursdays ago, we walked along the tramline through north melbourne, to breakfast at the queen victoria market. there was a jam donut van parked in the heart of it, and two hot jam donuts with our names on them. there is a hand-lettered sign proclaiming 6 for $4.80, but you are not obliged to make a glutton of yourself. a handy pricelist taped to the window of the van lets you know that 1=80c, 2=$1.60, 3=$2.40, and so on. it was a very long list.

the kid face was all smiles and granular sugar. when she hit the main artery of runny, red jam, she seemed surprised: “it’s like blood!”. i was already onto a fat kransky buried in a mound of sauerkraut. i had asked for double sauerkraut, but when the lady brandishing the ladle asked if this was enough — about five times what you get at those twee german sausage stands at cultural festivals — it turned out that that was the normal amount. wuh!

we wound our way into the city, poking about in some of the shops surrounding the market. so by the time we made it to the larger-than-life-size pixar logo outside the acmi, it was princess maeve in her $2 tiara.

we swanned around the art gallery for a while, and then caught a tram to the prahran market. two markets in one day? well, i was on a cupcake mission. we must have found the crabapple bakery a little past noon, but most of the cupcakes were already gone. “i had a rosepetal one today too,” the shoplady said helpfully, gesturing towards a little tray empty but for a scattering of crumbs. the kid had no trouble choosing; her pink-iced cupcake was also pink on the inside. i hovered for a while, eventually deciding on the chocolate-raspberry cupcake: a mudcake base with raspberries baked in, topped with a swirl of ganache.

the boy had no time for cupcakes. and so, with this fragile package in the crook of my arm, we barrelled on, stopping for a large bag of tiny mandarins, on the lookout for the chocolate stall.

and there it was, three aisles down, monsieur truffe. the frenchman himself was not there that day, but a very hospitable girl offered us truffley treats from the array of samples before her. having already done my truffle dash at koko black, i thought it would be improper to acquire more of the luscious, meltaway beauties. no matter though, because monsieur truffe also peddled a great variety of bars. milk bars and dark bars of varying percentages of cocoa, organic bars, single origin bars, single origin bars with cocoa nibs… i was having a very hard time choosing.

but the shopgirl rescued me, asking what my preferred level of cocoa content was, and then saying, “that’s my range too!” when i told her it was somewhere between 65% and 75%. she recommended a few, and brought out secret samples from the fridge behind the counter. and so i learned that this was wonderful, creamy dark chocolate, not at all like the usual dry and shattery french stuff. before too long i had a little brown bag stuffed with four slim bars. it’s not really hoarding if it’s from interstate, right?

and then it rained. and we went into too many secondhand shops along chapel street, and the boy bought a year’s worth of clothes for $4, $6, $8, and i bought vintage paper coasters from a box out on the street. we were riding the rollercoaster of missed naptime, but a late afternoon cupcake back at the apartment made it all better. for a short while.

getting from north melbourne to north richmond at dinnertime is a trial. the tram you think will take you there would have stopped running, and so you will end up catching a tram to a tram to a tram. the kid will get louder and shriller before the jugga-jugga motion rocks her to sleep on her father’s shoulder, five minutes before you need to get off. but it all works out in the end, because dinner is the biggest banh xeo in the world, somewhere in north richmond.

posted by ragingyoghurt on 19 July 2007 at 10:22 pm

permalink | filed under around town, boy, cake, chocolate, dinner, kid, trip

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