I am Viennese if you please.

What would we do without stock photos? This from freedigitalphotos.net.

 Being Viennese is my secret identity. Forget my complicated family history, my hotchpotch of Asian and European genes, and my two passports – in my heart of hearts, I am walking along the Ringstrasse, shopping for elegant clothes and jaunty hats. I imagine I spend my afternoons at the Museum Kunsthistoriches or strolling the Schoennbrun Palace grounds and that I pass my evenings at the Wiener Staatsoper or at the Wiener Staatsballett. In my dreams, I climb the gantry of St Stephen’s Cathedral and look out over the city to glimpse a view of the Riesenrad. I stop for cake at Demel Kaffeehaus or the HotelSacher.

This is not just some ultra-weird fetish on my part. When I was 15, I had just such a visit to Vienna. To say it was life-changing is to describe it exactly. The foundations for my future personality were set that long weekend. Everything I saw and experienced was something I wanted for myself: an extensive knowledge of languages, art, history, music, architecture, fashion, and food. While I haven't been wildly successful in some of these areas, it has been fun trying, and I continue to try. It's as good a way of living life as I've found in any self-help book.

Going to the Hotel Sacher for Sachertorte and strong coffee is an abiding memory. We had cake there and we bought another Sachertorte to take home to England. It came in a wooden box, and for a long time afterward (long, long after the cake had been eaten and I had appropriated the box as a pencil case), it still smelled of chocolate. You can see the same boxes in the link that I provided at the beginning of this paragraph. You can also see that Sachertorte is now able to be ordered online. Hmmm....

Looking for a baking project this Easter weekend just past, I came across a picture of a Sachertorte online. I decided then and there that I was going to give it a go. 

Social media provided the means to do so. Very many thanks to @perthchocoholic for sending me a recipe by Pierre Herme and uploading it to Twitter in a series of photographs, as well as for the handy tip about thickening the chocolate glaze on a tray.

I couldn't find 66% Valrhona chocolate, so I had to go with 55% from The Grocer as the best that was available locally. I wonder what the chefs at Hotel Sacher would have to say about my very Australian Monbulk Apricot Jam?

Making the cake batter took ages - the bulk of that time being spent whipping up the seven egg whites.My fault - I should have had the eggs at room temperature.

 

The resulting cake was not quite as dark as I would have liked. That was most likely my fault for not getting the right kind of chocolate.

 

A layer of apricot jam goes on before the chocolate glaze. I had to sieve this - I couldn't find any apricot jam that didn't contain apricot chunks.

Thickening the chocolate glaze. The Herme recipe assumes that you have a 'marble surface' to work on. I wish. However, a cool baking tray worked very well.

It was so shiny!

Once it had chilled, I tidied it up and replated it. In hindsight, I should have added more glaze at that stage because it wasn't nearly thick enough.

And the taste? The actually cake was not as chocolate-y as I'd hoped, and the chocolate glaze not as dense. However, it was a decent chocolate cake, and no one who was offered a piece complained.

Did it transport me back to the Vienna of my dreams? Not remotely. 

Did blogging about it turn up a link that shows how to order a real Sachertorte online? Absolutely.

Now please excuse me, my Viennese alter-ego has some shopping to do.

Waltz this way...

Chocolate covered table: a visit to Sue Lewis

Autumn. A morning walk across the park. Glorious sunshine. Ice-blue skies. Ducks quacking contentedly on the calm waters of the lake. Me, slipping on a patch of Moreton Bay figs, and falling on my arse in public.

My 11 year old is concerned. “Are you okay?” he asks, “Will you still be able to walk to the chocolate shop?”

The kid has his priorities straight, I’ll give him that.

We are on Excelsior Street which is possibly one of the most characterful streets in Perth, given its row of huge Moreton Bay fig trees. Their roots turn up the cement of the path, their thick branches and leaves create an amazing avenue all along the roadside, and their fruit, when it drops and turns to mush, is, quite literally, a pain in the arse when it makes you fall hard on the pavement.

I am, however, physically fine (though my dignity has been a little ruffled) and we continue in our pursuit of chocolate.

Sue Lewis Chocolatier has set up her premises on Derby Road in Shenton Park. It’s a hobbit hole of a shop – all it needs is a circular door – a small terrace out the front leads through the door to the display area and immediately behind that is the kitchen.

Sue is there, smiley and welcoming, as she works on salted caramel Easter eggs. Her marble table is covered in good things – bowls of melted chocolate, chocolate shells ready to be filled, chocolate-covered spoons and spatulas.

“Do you mind if I take some pictures for my blog?” She is fine with that, although she suggests that I might not want to take any shots of the ‘messy parts’. To me though, it’s all beautiful – from the glass stands of handcrafted chocolates through to the chocolate-drizzled work-station. She allows me to come through and watch her work as she mixes salted-caramel.

11 year old points out the platter of brownies on one counter and the chocolate frogs by the cash register. He’s like a kid in a candy store. He is a kid in a candy store. We have a mini tasting session – we try the salted caramel chocolate which has a superb salt-to-sweetness balance within the silky texture of the caramel. We try the honey & thyme chocolate too, sharing half a bite each. It’s also good, very good, aromatic and earthy, but we can understand why Sue is known best for her salted-caramel creations.

While 11 year old decides which flavours of chocolates we are going to take home with us, Sue tells me that she deliberately chose the Derby Road premises because she wanted to have a shop that allowed her to make the chocolates on site. It certainly adds to the flavour of the place to be able to see Sue at work while we are there. There’s nothing quite like an artisan producing the products that they love with passion. There's nothing quite like the smell of warm chocolate permeating the whole room.

There are chocolate-making classes for the public. After a civilised glass of sparkling wine, visitors and their friends can learn to temper chocolate on the table, learn the art of home-tempering as well as moulding chocolate (the choc frogs are the work of Sue’s students) and making ganache. I take a card and store up the information for a few interested friends. I know that I want to go to a class as soon as I can find the time.

We leave with a ribbon-tied box in which we have:

4 salted-caramel chocolates

2 honey & thyme chocolates

2 stout chocolates

2 ginger & black cardamom chocolates

2 raspberry chocolates

I let 11 year old hold the box on the way home and we tread carefully around the Moreton Bay figs lest we take a tumble and squash our precious cargo. It’s been a lovely morning. We’ve had a walk, we’ve had some quality time together, we’ve tasted some delicious confectionery, but most importantly, as 11 year old said “I feel like we made a friend.”

I think visiting Sue in her chocolate shop might become a regular excursion for us. We’ll definitely head back to visit our ‘friend’ before Easter. I have salted caramel eggs to buy.

Plus a chocolate class to organise.

Lurking in the background

I have a new profile picture! What do you think?

I know, I know, – it’s a bit romance-novel-y. I like it though – it keeps the elements of the original William Morris Strawberry Thief design and gives you a glimpse of the person behind the name. Just a glimpse, mind you. People who know me in real life will know that it’s me, and those who don’t won’t be able to stalk me, or come to my place of work and harass me for dissing their restaurant, or demand my autograph...

When I began this blog, anonymity was really, really important to me. It still is in many ways.  I do like to keep my personal life, work-life, and hobbies in nice separate compartments most of the time. So what has changed?

First, I had no idea when I started on my blogging adventures that there was a whole West Australian  community of bloggers, cooks, chefs, restaurateurs, and others in the F&B industry, out there and that I would eventually be meeting Real People. This time last year, I was having a few nervous moments about heading out to my first food-blogger Tweet-up. A year on, I feel that I have found a little place for myself within Perth foodie circles and made some very good friends therein. It’s a nice place to be, not a huge or important place – very peripheral (in this particular universe, I am quite the minor planet…) - but I enjoy it, and, of course, in these circles, people know my real name, who I am and what I do, and a fair bit about my life. This means that absolute anonymity isn't really necessary anymore.

Second, I am finding it increasingly difficult to stop elements of my life creeping into my food posts and my Twitter stream, and I find myself wondering if I should even try to stop it. Sometimes, I’d like to get on here and write about my work, or my children, or my other interests. I don’t just eat, bake and write. There’s a lot more to me than that, and I’d like to share some of it (or at least the parts that don’t smack too much of an existential crisis or a mid-life crisis or both…)

Of late, my personal life has been taking a few interesting twists and turns. There have been a lot of changes  and these have brought about those champagne moments where I fizz up and bubble over, or those other moments that make me want to starfish on my bed in a shiraz-induced stupor. By writing about some of these things, I feel that the blog will get more ‘flesh on its bones’ and be a better read for those who visit regularly. You'll be pleased to know that I plan for more of the champagne than the shiraz when it comes to personal-sharing.

So I'm going to see what happens if I diversify a little while still keeping things mainly about food, still enjoying the writing, and still finding a use for all the pictures that I take.

I hope you will stick around to see how the blog grows.

A different kind of writing (not about food)

My day job is all about language (I work in second-language education), and my my main hobbies are all about language (I read, I compose verse, I write this blog). I want to be a writer when I grow up. Hey, it could still happen!

Every November for the last 4 years, I have participated in National Novel Writing Month (known to its fans as NaNoWriMo) and this November is no different. I have begun my second novel and I have to get said novel to 50,000 words by midnight on November 30.

This is means that if you see any food-blogging from me, I am probably procrastinating. Similarly, you will see my Twitter-stream becomes more about plot and description and word-counts than about food unless, of course, I am rewarding my writing efforts with chocolate, cake, wine, and cocktails.

For my fellow food-bloggers who are also doing NaNoWriMo, the very best of luck! For everyone else - please bear with me. I'll be back to (comparative) normality in December. 

Cheers to all the writers!

 

Dark chocolate, pistachio and pear cake

I love it when my Urbanlocavore box arrives each month. Not only is it just a little bit like Christmas (a boxful of comestible goodies!) but there is also the challenge of combining the various ingredients to create something that you may never had made had those ingredients not just landed (metaphorically) in your lap.

This month's box yielded many delicious surprises and among them were a bar of Bahen and Co chocolate plus a packet of WA pistachios.

So, chocolate is not normally difficult to find uses for, and as you can see from the image below, my primary use of chocolate is one of instant gratification. It rarely makes it as far as the cooking stage.

It's a different story with unexpected ingredients such as the pistachios. Yes, I could just eat them, but there were a fair few and I wanted to make the most of that gorgeous pistachio flavour and texture.

At times like this, I turn to the Internet, and this time, the recipe that popped up was this beauty from Australian Gourmet Traveller magazine. 

I followed the recipe exactly. This meant having to duck out to the shops for extra dark chocolate - my little bar of Bahen beauty was only 75g and there was no way I was going to be able to source another 275g of that particular brand at such short notice. (Next time, I'll be going Bahen all the way, believe me). This means that the cake that you see pictured has a mostly-Bahen ganache and Lindt 70% for the rest.

I definitely recommend this cake. Some chocolate cakes are too sweet and too rich. The dark chocolate in this recipe means that you can enjoy the intense smokiness of the chocolate flavours without finding it cloying. The pistachios bring a lightness and the pear provides the moisture. Everything is in balance to make a very grown-up cake. 

It's easy to prepare too. The prep time was exactly the 20 minutes that the recipe promised. Watch out for the cooking time, though.I found that with my oven, I needed 1.5 hours rather than the recommended 45 minutes. I'm pretty sure, however, that that's just my oven.

You'll see from the pictures that my cake was cooked in a heart-shaped tin. Just so you know, this was down to expediency (i.e. it was the only tin I could find) rather than a sense of romance. I'd actually made it to be the centrepiece and dessert in belated birthday celebrations for myself (yes, I recently gained another year...)

The cooled cake on a plate.

  

A very simple ganache made with chocolate and cream

Happy belated birthday to me!

I had an alfresco dinner-party on a warm Spring evening and I finished off the feast with this cake and coffee. There was enough of it to serve 12 and give some to guests to take home.

And despite the fact that I think it is grown-up cake, the children loved it too.