ragingyoghurt » adventures in good eating etc.

here is second breakfast: a perfect boiled egg, salted and peppered, then smooshed onto buttered sourdough toast.

here is a rotten egg: i was sent an unsolicited email yesterday from a publicist at a publishing house, heralding the release of an upcoming “fictionalized memoir”, a “novel as a food diary” about “a young woman who equates food with love and with disastrous consequences”. the publicist — let’s call her ms. matsumoto — also offered me the chance to announce this book to my readers, or to interview the author. she also pasted into the “to” field of the email, the email addresses of about 80 other food bloggers.

i sent her a reply, thanking her for spamming me and 80 other people and EXPOSING OUR EMAIL ADDRESS TO ALL AND SUNDRY, and i was surprised to receive an apology from her this morning.

“i’m so very sorry! i assumed that food bloggers shared a sense of community and had asked an intern to work from a list called food porn.”

thing is, i consider this only a sort-of food blog. i don’t think i am as committed to the eating or, more precisely, the documenting or cooking as are others out there. so it’s nice to feel validated by being pulled from a food porn list as a target for spam.

and of course i feel terrible at letting the team down, what with my grandious lack of a sense of community and all.

posted by ragingyoghurt on 23 November 2005 at 9:46 pm

permalink | filed under blog, breakfast, grumble

i finally gave in to the sandwich board outside starbucks yesterday, the bright red one that announced, “christmas drinks are here!”. the larger-than-life pictures of creme brulee frappucino and mint mocha frappucino looked most enticing, but two weeks after the sign appeared i still hadn’t ventured in because not being a great fan of minted whatever, and feeling somewhat dubious about the potential egginess of a creme brulee-flavoured coffee, what i really wanted was a gingerbread latte.

still, i thought i should give the creme brulee a try, for the cause, and so a bit tentatively, i trundled (with pram) up to the counter and ordered one. a small one. just in case.

but because i am not so good with prolonged eye contact, immedately after placing my order i cast my gaze down to the counter… and saw a laminated poster of three christmas drinks. they did have the gingerbread after all.

“oh! you have the gingerbread!” i exclaimed.
“yes,” said the countergirl.
“um. oh. i’ll have that one then. i actually did want the gingerbread.”
“that’s cool. do you still want just a tall one?”

[ i find only one thing ridiculous about starbucks, and it is that the small drink is called “tall”, because apparently an espresso is counted as “short”, so. let’s not even talk about “grande” or “venti”. ]

i was impressed at the quick-thinkingness of the countergirl. there was no reason for her not to think that since i had actually really wanted the gingerbread frappucino, i would now order a bucket of it. but, no, thank you.

however, since i was with child, and had to keep said child away from my whipped cream, and feed her her hot chocolate from a spoon, and sneak some reads of my 50c newspaper, and make sure she wasn’t eating the red crayon there in the sunny starbucks courtyard, i was somewhat distracted, and will no doubt have to return another day and give it another go.

posted by ragingyoghurt on 23 November 2005 at 9:32 pm

permalink | filed under around town, drink, kid

this morning, across the innernet, i asked saffron, “if i got into the city early, would it be foolish to try out one of those new starbucks xmas drinks? creme brulee latte frappacino!!”

to which she replied, “umm, yes it would :-I ”

a sterner emoticon never existed.

in the end, it turned out to be very sensible advice, because after spending an hour and a half trying on underwear, there was no time for starbucks. 2.30 came, and it was time for afternoon tea! past the gleaming timber doors of the globe bar at the observatory, augustus gloop was already ensconced in a large couch with a cup of milky tea. before too long, saffron was there too, with sister and friend in tow. and so.

there were five girls hungry for cream. there were three scorpio birthdays (and a fourth just out by two days), three flutes of pink champange, two pots of assam tea, one pot of ceylon, and one — a lovely silver thing — of english breakfast. there was a three-tier stand with fruit scones up top, crustless sandwiches in the middle, and tiny sweet things down below. there was not quite enough dollopy cream and really good jam to make it through the second round of scones, and when we asked for more, the second helping was half the size of the first. there was service so unobtrusive as to be non-existent, humph, and when you pay each for dainty little mouthfuls of food, maybe you don’t want to ask thrice for your tea, or wish that someone would come by and offer you more hot water for your depleted teapot.

for the record, the sandwiches were: salmon and capers, ham and cheese, cucumber, and egg salad. the sweet things were: sweet, sweet almondy caramelly slice thing, chocolate friand with three nuts (the nuts were: pistachio, walnut and almond), and white chocolatey custard fruit tart (the fruits were: blueberry, raspberry, strawberry and mango). you will see from the photograph that i couldn’t decide what i wanted as the last taste in my mouth. turned out it was the fruit tart.

posted by ragingyoghurt on 20 November 2005 at 9:56 pm

permalink | filed under around town, cake, snacks

oh all right. a photo. day five of banana bread, and it’s still going strong.

we spent the lunching hours of saturday in the old neighbourhood. it was time for maeve’s twelve-month immunisations, and upon discovering that the balmain doctors would charge for the privilege, we packed maeve, half an orange and a slice of banana bread into the car and drove to the surry hills medical centre, where for children at least, it’s still free. there we encountered a frontdeskman so rude and unpleasant and snatchy of medicare cards out of my hand, that we had to immediately go next door to café mint to while away our estimated one hour wait.

and what a pleasant hour it was.

“what’s the chickpea salad like?” i asked the waiter.
“well… you’d really have to like chickpeas because there are a lot of them.”
“but what is it like? are the chickpeas crunchy, or soft… or al dente? does it come with leaves? or other vegetables?”
the waiter was very patient. “it is not like a regular salad,” he said. “there are other things in it, like apricots –”
“oh, ok, i’ll have that!”

there was also a grapefruit and almond frappé.

the chickpea salad was all chickpeas, with torn herbs and little cubes of pumpkin, and no apricots. instead, baby figs! it was a big bowl of cool, served with hot shards of za’atar toast and fried halloumi.

the baby sat calmly, mostly, and deigned to be forkfed chickpeas… until a supplier walked past with a bunch of bananas. “ba.nana.” she intoned. her eyes followed the yellow trajectory.

“na-naa.”

“naa-naaaaa.”

and suddenly the chef was striding out of the kitchen and offering her a banana. as simple as that. all i have to do now is train her to say “chickpea salad” and i’ll be set.

posted by ragingyoghurt on 20 November 2005 at 8:57 pm

permalink | filed under around town, kid, lunch

for the last week or so, i’ve had three bananas going soft and ripe on the kitchen counter. not just leopard-spotted ripe, but dark, slug-like ripe. and really, i guess i started out with three, but the boy kept cutting them up for baby snacks. at one point i was sitting downstairs at the computer and heard him in the kitchen making knife-extracting, snacktime noises, and had to yell upstairs most unbecomingly, “i’m saving those bananas to cook with!”

for the last week or so, blueberries have been plentiful and cheap… well, affordable at least. remember that time we went to fratelli fresh and reached our hand out for a punnet of blueberries, and then recoiled and fell over frothing when we saw the pricetag? it has not been like that this time. at the supermarket, blueberries were going for a song (.94 a punnet, which, ok, is just over twice the price of an song at the iTunes store. a song and dance then).

for the last week or so, my father was in town. while my mother was here we discussed her dumpling skins, her kenwood chef, and what her old mixer was doing these days, now that she had mr kenwood. it turned out that old mr philips was languishing in a plastic bag in the back of a kitchen cupboard. “aiyah,” she said, “i should have brought it for you.” aiyah, i could only agree. and so a txt was sent and a box was packed, and when my father got off the plane a couple weeks later, he came bearing an electric mixer.

there is a point to all these little stories, and that point is everything came together sweetly — even with just one and a half black bananas — in a loaf tin in a 175° oven. yes, when i tipped it out, it were the most perfect banana-blueberry loaf ever. i didn’t even take a picture of it, because all you have to do is imagine the most perfect banana-blueberry loaf ever, and it was that. i had some fresh hot out of the oven yesterday afternoon, and some more toasted with butter this morning, and i will have more again tomorrow breakfastime, and it will be crunchy on the outside, light and moist on the inside, fat blueberries running deep blue stains over everything.

posted by ragingyoghurt on 17 November 2005 at 9:56 pm

permalink | filed under cake, kitchen

and the winner is…

me! for i am the proud new owner of a lovely pink beehouse teapot. ’twas a birthday gift from the boy, following such hint-droppery as, “i know what i want for my birthday: a beehouse teapot!” and “i have seen the pink one up the street, at the shop near bray’s books, called plenty. i have seen the yellow one in the same shop, except at bondi junction.”

for those of you following the saga of raspberry-coconut versus lemon curd, the loser was… also me, for when i rocked up to the markets on saturday, the cake stall was an empty counter between thai food and hippy vegetarian stodge. hungh.

posted by ragingyoghurt on 15 November 2005 at 1:15 pm

permalink | filed under cake

behold the bar italia iced chocolate. the surly counter boy took my order, and then turned away. when he faced front again, he held a drinking glass packed with chocolate gelato, to which he added as much cold chocolate milk as he could. and then he splashed a glug of normal milk in for good measure.

it was a luscious thing, but it threw a wrench in my post-cannelloni gelato plans. out back under the tarp, two sets of parents (three, if you count me and the boy), a baby, an aunt, a cousin and someone new, somehow managed to consume most of a lot of pasta. i turned thirty-three. my mother got on a plane. and just now, in two txts, she reports from the front:

“now in darwin to offload ill girl” and “stewardess fell, hit head, was unconscious, then vomited. suspected internal bleed.”

posted by ragingyoghurt on 13 November 2005 at 10:41 pm

permalink | filed under ice cream, lunch

having recently read that the girl who ate everything eats 100g chocolate each day, and then having somehow drawn myself into a handbag reveal exercise, and then having suddenly looked up and seen the carnage of confectionery on my desk, i thought i should catalogue it, because i don’t normally eat like this. no, really.

what we have here are:
– a bag of lindt christmas chocolate almonds (2 remaining, see previous entry)
– a cherry ripe wrapper (i actually only ate a third of this, after handing over the bigger half to the boy)
– an unopened bar of valrhona dark chocolate with candied orange peel (a present from my mother)
– a jacques torres box containing:
— an unopened ritter sport marzipan bar
— the last square of a ritter sport yogurt bar
— a handful of addictive little japanese chocolates
– coincidentally, a package of poofy badges, from robyn, who started all this.

posted by ragingyoghurt on 13 November 2005 at 10:41 am

permalink | filed under chocolate

my stats tell me that 80% of the traffic to this page comes from saffron and santos, so, well, you probably already know this story. but anyway.

the ballad of the green tea lamington
a little while back, a cheap and nasty supermarket raspberry lamington prompted the following discourse in my comments box:
santos. 13.09.05 – 12:58 pm: hallo! so lamingtons don’t have to be chocolate covered to still be called lamingtons? oh the possibilities!
bowb 14.09.05 – 6:38 pm: santos: i would like to see you make a maccha lamington please, with a red bean cream filling. on your site in say, a month?
santos. 15.09.05 – 12:48 pm: it’s a deal 😀
saffron 15.09.05 – 10:04 pm: oooh can i try too? pleeeeeeeaaaaaase?
bowb 16.09.05 – 9:06 am: hurrah! a bakeoff!

and so in the ensuing weeks, two cakeheads got busy. me? i figured my work here was done. hey, thinking up ideas for cake is hard yakka.

sadly, because the technology to send food molecules through the ether and have them regroup on the other side hasn’t yet been invented (hurry up, boffins! or, oh wait, you’ve invented it and are keeping it a secret!! which is even worse!!!), i’ve only been able to look at pictures of the wonder that is santos’ lamingtons.

happily, because saffron is only a busride away on a saturday afternoon, i was the lucky and extremely pleased recipient of a cluster of green tea lamington cupcakes.

all the components are present: light and moist maccha-tinged sponge, a glorious purple heart of yam jam, whipped cream and shaved coconut dusted with maccha. an inventive and delicious interpretation!

and now, alas, there are no more of these little beauties. the last one, i just ate her, and scraped the paper clean.

meanwheel, most of the the remainder of visits to this page are from people googling “raging yoghurt”. who are you, mysterious people?

posted by ragingyoghurt on 9 November 2005 at 10:18 am

permalink | filed under blog, cake

i exited the lift on the fifth floor of myer, ostensibly to research the prices of certain books and CDs, but suddenly i was ensnared in a maze of festive food. the happy little christmas elves were setting up the christmas department: shelf after shelf of chocolate, and marzipan, and gingerbread, and stollen, and chocolate covered marzipan, and chocolate covered gingerbread, and marzipan stollen… after my head stopped spinning around and i regained the ability to walk, i noted that there were yet more shelves of condiments and fruit jellies, but i was already halfway to the counter with a bag of lindt christmas almonds: roasted almonds in nougat and milk chocolate, with cinnamon and coriander. (the nougat is a thin crunchy shell. the chocolate is warm and spicy. the almond, eh, it is an almond.)

the backstory is, i bought a bag of these three years ago, actually two bags, because the first one was so amazing that i had to have another in the pantry, for later. but this was the time of the pantry moths, and when i finally opened up the bag, i found that each chocolate had become luxury accommodation to at least one burrowing pantry moth worm. gah! the horror! it was late january, so christmas chocolates were no longer available, not even in the 50% off discount bin, and in fact i would not see this christmas almond variety for two more years.

so you see why i had to immediately buy some, and eat half a dozen of them while listening to CDs at the listening station. oh public headphones, how you make my ears itch!

david jones food hall made me twitch; their christmas display included a handsome white tin containing a kilogram (“1’000g”) of stollen, for just under , and a very large chocolate covered gingerbread pretzel (a comparative bargain at .95). those wacky germans! i really wanted the jar of fortnum&mason christmas spiced preserve, “extremely full of plums, redcurrants, strawberries and raspberries” — which made me think that lola had written the label copy — but then i noticed the ingredients list kicked off with cane sugar. pah. perhaps i should have made do with the long-stemmed strawberries at the fruit counter ( a kilo, and it looked like a quarter of that would be stem)

in the end, the number of christmas treats i came away with, apart from that bag of christmas almonds, was “zero”. instead i signed a credit card receipt at a record store, for new music! that isn’t yet another pearl jam bootleg! now i have discs and discs to listen to: eels, fiona apple, and in a surprising turn of events, pete murray, because i figured out that what i actually had had against him was his chin dimple.

posted by ragingyoghurt on 8 November 2005 at 11:58 pm

permalink | filed under around town, chocolate, shoping, soundtrack

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