No More Eating

Happy Birthday mum! Sunday was her birthday with a picnic in the park, naturally too much food, all delicious of course, the crazy Russian friends and relos, her ex showing up, dogs running around, vodka. She had a good time so I'm happy, although I'm not so happy at the amount of food I ate. Have a wonderful year to come my beautiful girl!

Saturday was up early for the Growers' Markets and I knew it was going to be manic in junction with Good Food Month and the gorgeous weather, but I never imagined it would be insufferable. Why Sydneysiders queue up 50-deep for a coffee is beyond me. The crowds were beyond me and A who joined me was more than happy to leave. We went to Fratelli Fresh and had a delicious brunch upstairs, of goat's cheese frittata and my beloved five cheese zucchini flowers. Stocked up downstairs then headed home to make some goodies for the picnic. I made mini peach cupcakes with the first peaches of the season and panzanella. But first I started with the pistachio macarons (it took an hour to grind and sift the pistachios and almonds and still they weren't that fine) and they just didn't work. The tops cracked all over, drying them out, and hardly any frilly feet. They worked beautifully for the trial and failed for the real deal - very upsetting. I think because it was so hot and humid and I used a different recipe which had a lot of icing sugar in it that made them very, very sweet. I'll go back to the original recipe and try to alter it for different flavours.

In the evening A and I went to The Bentley for the degustation - he buys dinner, I buy drinks, as that's all I can afford at the moment. Having tapas there last year blew me away so I couldn't wait to see what the rest of the menu was like a year on. It was really good, though the service was endearingly kooky (forgot our cheese course; forgot to charge us for the dessert wine; poured my beer with too much head; called the squid ink "black stuff"). Two dishes in particular wowed me: a pocket of steamed white fish with an avocado and jamon serrano sauce. I need to replicate this immediately. The other was the dessert, which A didn't really like but I thought was so interesting and fun. A tube of white chocolate encasing a fizzy sherbet sorbet, with a quenelle of mandarin icecream on the side and the plate sprinkled with dark chocolate cake crumbs. It looked so pretty - dark brown, white and pale pinks - such a great colour combination - and a spectrum of textures.