Afternoon tea & canapés

So what has everyone been up to these past couple of weekends? Whilst the weather may not have been that great, please spare a thought to our neighbours up in Queensland who have sadly once again faced with torrential rains and flooding. The overcast and generally miserable Sydney weather does make for ideal conditions for staying indoors and general lazing about however. And, after 3 weeks of both the husband and I being sick with a cold/throat infection/allergies, we are now finally well enough to engage in some social activities. Any longer without social contact and we would’ve started our transformation into hermits!

Cooking is always a labour of love and I do put more effort into cooking for those whom are nearest and dearest. (On the contrary, when I don’t care as much is when I do stupid things like leaving out key ingredients – stodgy, eggs-forgotten choc mudcake, anyone?) Wifey and Mistress are two of the most supportive and important women in my life, and I may just have gone a little overboard when planning our late lunch/afternoon tea menu.

Lazy weekends of brunch and afternoon tea

Everyone has their own daily stressors to deal with and, when we manage to steal ourselves collectively away from them, more often than not the important women in my life will gather around to dissect and analyse life over cups of tea or coffee and plates of food.

We especially love afternoon tea, for it is the experience as much as the food – afternoon teas are always offered in such calming surroundings – that makes it so enjoyable. The physical act of making tea – steeping, pouring, stirring – is therapeutic in itself, and sets the atmosphere for the languid conversation which follows.

An afternoon tea enjoyed months ago at The Gallery Tea Lounge of Sheraton on the Park, was preceded by a shared club sandwich. (Club sandwiches are such a delight at hotels.) Savouries were bite-sized and tasty, but the scones were disappointingly dense and powdery. The top tier of petits fours entirely redeemed this whilst some of the handmade chocolates were rather intense in flavour.

High tea at Atlantis Seafood Restaurant

It’s funny how you can pass through the same area for years and not actually notice the specifics of what is there. I have been along the section of road where Atlantis Seafood is located a countless number of times and yet have never known that a restaurant there even existed. As part of the Quest Serviced Apartments complex, underground parking is available for overnight guests as well as diners via a down ramp which isn’t signposted but buzz the intercom to reception and you will automatically be allowed entry.

The husband and I are here to try out their high tea through a Groupon deal – only $35 for two – which is normally priced at $29 per person ($36 for sparkling high tea, or $45 with a glass of champagne). We’re not usually subscribers to group-buying deals because the husband’s previous rotational work schedule made it difficult for us to forecast too far ahead our availability to comply with validity periods. Besides, often the deals offer only a restricted sampling of an establishment’s menu when we prefer to have the freedom to sample from a greater range.

Simmone Logue, Cammeray

I first became acquainted with Simmone Logue’s cakes years ago through working close to a David Jones Food Hall, which meant that office birthdays and departures were commemorated with an amazing selection of cakes. Someone I worked with raved endlessly about her banana cake, but what I didn’t know is that Simmone Logue also offers catering services as well as a sample of her wares through two café stores.

The Cammeray store is situated in an open air shopping mall and was first visited for a girls’ lunch. We’d missed out on trying the breakfast menu due to the time of day, but the “Grilled ham & cheese” served with side salad offers the same satisfaction as a croque monsieur. The chicken “Soup of the day” is on the oily side but full of flavour, while the “Spinach & fetta filo” is light and flaky.

The Tea Cosy, Irish Tea Room

After a rather filling breakfast, which was actually consumed at a normal breakfast hour (unusual for me), Monsieur Poisson and I ambled through the city admiring the stores and skipped lunch before heading down to The Rocks to meet Weirdo and Ms Sourdough for afternoon tea.

Specifically, for an afternoon tea of scones.

The Centenary

Somehow amidst the business and rush that we modern society people know as life, I failed to appreciate that my previous post was my big one-hundredth. What should have been a major triumph and milestone got lost in my current lifestyle of settling into a new job in an entirely different industry to what I am familiar, a new living arrangement and the planning for my upcoming wedding.

As a result and without much fanfare, I share with you a recent in-home afternoon tea where we had the always pleasant company of Ms Sourdough and Weirdo as guests. They were not long back from a trip overseas to both the United States and New Zealand and had a bounty of photos to share with us – mostly of which were of food! We had a wonderfully relaxed afternoon of sharing food and conversation, and where Ms Sourdough had brought over beautiful friands made from a recipe in the Bourke Street Bakery cookbook.

The following ‘recipes’ are more a suggestion rather than instruction as you can obviously feature whatever finger food you wish. Even better is when you have a baking friend, like I do in Ms Sourdough, who is more than happy to bring along some goodies to help out. This is what I enjoy about life – the moments where there is friendship and love and calm, low-effort pottering about the kitchen. And the resultant food that you share together, of course, is a most welcome by-product!

Mini Sausage Rolls (makes 9)

Ingredients:

·         2 sheets of ready-rolled puff pastry, thawed

·         6 medium store-bought sausages (whatever variety you like), casings removed

·         1 egg yolk beaten with 2 tsp water

·         2 tsp nigella/poppy/sesame seeds (optional)

Method:

1. Preheat oven to 180°C. Cut each sheet of puff pastry into 9 evenly-sized squares.
2. On each square, place approximately 2/3 of a sausage worth’s filling and roll up to enclose. Seal with a little eggwash if necessary.
3. Place sausage rolls seam-side down on a greased or lined tray and brush tops with eggwash. Sprinkle over seeds, if using, and bake for roughly 20 minutes. Remove from oven and let sit on tray for 5 minutes before serving. 

Finger Sandwiches (makes 12)

Ingredients:

·         8 slices of white sandwich loaf, crusts removed (TIP: I blitz the crusts and keep them frozen for when I need breadcrumbs)

·         …and whatever fillings you desire! (I had egg salad with chives and ham, cheese and tomato.)

Method:

Butter the bread if you like. Sandwich in the fillings. Season if required and slice each sandwich into thirds to produce neat fingers.

Thin Cabanossi & Haloumi Frittata

Ingredients:

·         1 cabanossi stick, sliced on an angle

·         handful of button mushrooms, sliced

·         4 eggs, lightly beaten

·         1cm thick slice of haloumi, sliced into matchsticks

Method:

1. Preheat grill to 200°C. Heat a non-stick, ovenproof pan over medium-high heat. Throw in cabanossi and cook until crisp.
2. Add mushrooms to the pan and cook until slightly wilted. Pour beaten egg over the top, reduce heat to medium and cook until egg begins to set at the edges.
3. Sprinkle haloumi evenly over the top and carefully transfer pan to the grill to finish cooking. Remove pan from grill and let sit a few minutes before slicing into wedges to serve. 

happy cooking!

A chooky kind of day, 10 Oct 2009

 

When it came time for the wonderful Mistress to plan my hens day, I had only one activity in mind that was a must. No strippers or getting drunk for me, thank you. In keeping with my love of food, my only stipulation was to enjoy a morning or afternoon tea at The Tea Room, Queen Victoria Building. Like The Tea Room, Gunners’ Barracks, it is elegantly decorated with beautiful wallpaper, an ornate ceiling, tasselled hanging light fixtures and rich velvet textures throughout. It is a place where I would love to have my wedding but seeing as this will not be the case, a gathering of my female collective made for a pretty good consolation prize.

As we have a group of more than ten people we are required to all pre-order the same food and pre-pay prior to the event, plus there is a time limit due to the popularity of it being wedding season and, hence, hens day season. The time limit was enforced and we were reminded close to the time that we needed to finish up and get going, but in no way was this request rude nor were we rushed during our time there.

It is mid-morning but we all have the ‘Traditional Afternoon Tea’ resulting in many three-tiered stands dotting our round table. The top tier has crustless finger sandwiches – the egg salad ones and ham ones are on white bread, while the tuna ones are on wholemeal. There are also polenta tartlets alongside with thin, crispy cases holding a smooth and creamy polenta filling topped with snipped chives.

The bottom tier has The Tea Room’s famed, crumbly scones served with berry conserve and clotted cream, as well as some spinach pastries. But – aaahhh! – what we’re all looking forward to is the middle tier of miniature sweets. There are tiny strawberry and cream tartlets, macarons, dense chocolate bites, passionfruit shortbread sandwiches, raspberry mousse cake-bites and tiny almond cakes barely the width of two of my fingers.

As we make our way through our tiers, a waiter wanders past with a tray of sandwiches and asks us if we would like a top-up but by this stage we’re all rather full and it’s time for us to leave anyway. We make our way across to Swissôtel where Mistress has arranged for us to enjoy some cocktails at Crossroads Bar. I know I said there were no plans to get drunk, but that doesn’t mean we weren’t going to drink!

We are shown to a rectangular table surrounded by couches and armchairs. We place our order for a range of cocktails and when the waitress returns it is apparent she doesn’t want to serve us. She stands frozen, at the perimeter of our seats, balancing a platter full of drinks and seems to find it too much trouble to place them down. Granted it is difficult due to the number of people with the resulting restricted accessibility to the table, but we would have been happy for her either pass them to us directly or place them all on the table for us to pass around ourselves. We see her rolling her eyes, sighing audibly in exasperation and she was really quite rude.

This contemptuous behaviour continues when we place our order for a second round of drinks and Ms Japan tells us she thinks the waitress looks familiar to her. She thinks they might have gone to school together and we jokingly ask if she had offended the waitress in the past for us to be receiving such shocking table service!

We linger at Crossroads for a few hours, some friends leave and the rest of us order some potato wedges to nibble on. A few more hours pass by quickly amidst much conversation and laughter, and it’s time to move onto dinner at Macchiato. It’s a Saturday night and they’re busy so it’s lucky that Mistress has made a reservation. Food is ordered to be shared across the table and we start with salt and pepper calamari that has lightly dusted calamari served on salad of rocket, tomato, cucumber and red onion dressed with aioli. The mixed dips plate has tzatziki, hummus and taramosalata served with a side salad and plenty of toasted pitta bread.

Then it’s Caesar salad with a creamy dressing and plenty of cheese over the top as well as grilled haloumi that is served with slices of Roma tomato, olive oil and lemon wedges. Salty, squeaky goodness – yum!

As Macchiato is famous for its woodfired pizzas and because they are such a great sharing food, we order four for the table. The ‘Macchiato’ has roasted pumpkin, roasted capsicum, grilled onion, eggplant, mushroom, fetta (which we discover is made from goats’ milk through taste), mozzarella and rosemary. The ‘El-Chorizo’ provides smoky spiciness with Spanish chorizos, capsicum, mushroom and basil, while the ‘Atlantic’ is much lighter with garlic prawns, baby rocket, bocconcini and sundried tomatoes. Then there’s the ‘Hawaiian’ with smoked ham, pineapple and mozzarella for universal appeal.

We finished the day full of food and not at all late into the evening. Some ladies had left newly married husbands at home while others had left children in the care of husbands, so I sincerely hope all involved had a good time. I would like to once again thank Mistress for organising everything and for all the attendees forbidding me from paying for any of the day’s activities. I had a truly enjoyable day surrounded by the women I love and went home with my tiara still firmly in place.

The Tea Room at Queen Victoria Building

Level 3, North End of Queen Victoria Building, 455 George St (btwn Druitt St & Market St), Sydney NSW

Tel: (02) 9283 7279

Opening Hours:  7 days  11am-5pm (lunch menu 12pm-3pm only)

Swissôtel (Crossroads Bar)

Level 8, 68 Market St, Sydney NSW

Tel: (02) 9238 7082

Opening Hours:  Sun-Thurs  10am-11pm

                        Fri & Sat  10am-12am

Macchiato

Cnr Pitt St & Liverpool St, Sydney NSW

Tel: (02) 9262 9525

Opening Hours:  7 days  7am-late

happy eating!

T2 Teahouse, 17 April & 25 May 2009

I enjoy drinking tea but would not consider myself an expert by any means. Whether it be a hot cup of black tea with milk and sugar on a rainy afternoon, chamomile with honey to soothe the soul before bed, Chinese tea to wash away greasy foods, Japanese green tea to cleanse the body, berry tea to lift the senses or cooling flavoured iced tea in the hotter months, there is just something so distinctly comforting about tea. It un-tenses the muscles, unclenches the jaw and un-grits the teeth.

I have always enjoyed wandering into the ever-expanding chain of T2 stores, with their massive range of teas from all over the world in their simple yet colourful packaging. In each store is a display table with samples of tea leaves in little cups for viewing, feeling and sniffing. The ornately decorated stores feature Chinese newspapers, both commercial and free, as their wallpaper along with interesting lighting fixtures which have a Moroccan or Turkish feel.

I happen to be wandering through Macquarie Centre one day and come across a T2 within quite by accident, and have to do a double-take when there is an identical looking store directly opposite. Like a stunned rabbit caught in headlights I stand firmly planted in the one spot whilst glancing from side to side in confusion.

Then, the light bulb moment: one of the store signs says T2 Teahouse!

I wander inside in amazement, wondering how long T2 had had this teahouse concept and discover that there is another at Westfield Hornsby. The interior is the same as any T2 but more colourful, no doubt aided by the selection of various sweet things on offer at the counter. There are some red stairs leading up to a small mezzanine level at the back sectioned by a red, Chinese-style railing.

I call Monsieur Poisson and invite him to lunch. We order our food at the counter and choose a table near the entrance along the bench seats. First to arrive is my assam tea along with a bowl of irregular white and raw cubed sugar. The spoon in the sugar bowl has a cute little teapot at the end of the handle! When I glance around at other tables I notice that there is a variety of teapots, sugar bowls and spoons – what you end up with is completely random.

Monsieur Poisson has ordered a glass of ‘Peachy Perfect’ iced tea which is served in a Bodum insulated glass. His drink is soon followed by his toasted turkey sandwich and my potato frittata with bacon and leek. The frittata bears more resemblance to a Spanish tortilla but is nice regardless. With a side salad of rocket sprinkled with toasted almonds, it is a steal at only $8.

Whilst eating I notice some chalk scribble on the wall opposite advertising ‘high tea for two’ for $30. With this sort of pricing I openly declare that I must return to give it a try! And a month or so later I do.

The $30 price-tag includes two large pots of tea which makes for rather good value. The crustless sandwiches are cut square instead of the usual slender finger-shapes but are triple-deckered! There are two savouries which look like shrivelled walnut shells, but turn out to be quite tasty with a cheesy filling inside. The mini-cupcakes are buttery but are topped with a bit too much icing for a non-icing girl like myself. The macarons are brightly-coloured, light and crumbly. It’s a shame that Turkish delight isn’t my thing as there are two plump pieces – one rose-flavoured and the other orange. There are three scones on top to round off proceedings, accompanied by cream and a chunky blackberry jam.

I leave a happy girl after indulging in economic value without economising on quality. Wish I could economise on the calorific intake though!

T2 Teahouse

Macquarie Centre, Shop 440, Cnr Herring Rd & Waterloo Rd, North Ryde NSW

Tel: (02) 9888 3665

Opening Hours:  Mon-Wed  9am-5:30pm

                        Thurs  9am-9pm

                        Fri  9am-5:30pm

                        Sat  9am-5pm

                        Sun  10am-4pm

happy eating!

The Tea Room at Gunners’ Barracks, 3 May 2009

After driving down the short and slightly winding Suakin Drive, we found ourselves perched atop Georges Heights looking out across expansive views of Sydney Harbour. It is Mistress’ birthday and she has requested our presence for a bit of glamour and romance at The Tea Room Gunners’ Barracks. After frequenting The Tea Room at Queen Victoria Building for quite a few years and loving everything about their very English-style afternoon teas, I now understood why Gunners’ Barracks was also such a popular choice for weddings.

We are seated at our reserved table in the beautifully wallpapered (I have since read that they are Florence Broadhurst) and chandeliered dining room, after having foregone a reservation on the covered terrace for fear of cold weather. It is autumn in Sydney after all, and it can get bitterly windy near the harbour. Water is brought to our table along with the menus and we pore over the contents, even though I long-knew before arriving that I’d be having the afternoon tea! I’m quite taken by the design of the menu cover with its engraved pattern, as it is different from what I had previously seen at The Tea Room Queen Victoria Building.

Mistress and I both order a sparkling afternoon tea each, whereas Batman decides on a lunch option. While waiting for our orders we’re presented with an amuse bouche of parmesan crisps with semi-dried tomato, anchovy and basil which are salty and pungent.

Batman has her meal brought out first which, from memory (apologies for lack of photos), is grilled lamb loin with braised faggots on kumara purée topped with celeriac chips and drizzled with a jus. We had all had a bit of a giggle at the menu description and were intrigued by what food a faggot could be! The lamb is a medium pink in the middle but there is no sign of anything on the plate that we could not identify and deduce as being a faggot. The purée is smooth and the celeriac chips well-drained and crispy. Unfortunately our non-foodie friend Batman leaves the latter two untouched and a gentleman, who we assume to be the maître d', comes over to enquire if there are any problems with the meal upon spotting half the dish untouched. I’m impressed by this as I’m always appreciative of attentive service which, in the end, is what sways my decision in how much to tip.

Mistress and I are brought our glasses of sparkling white wine prior to our afternoon tea which arrives on a classic, silver, three-tiered tray along with jam and cream. We ooh and ahh over the cute bite-sized, colourful morsels before clinking our glasses together in a mini-celebratory toast.

We start off with the warm items first – there are spinach pasties as well as tomato and fetta tartlets cupped by multiple layers of filo casing – before moving onto the classic, crustless finger sandwiches of creamy egg salad topped with cress, and smoked salmon with capers. Then it’s onto the sweet stuff! There are fruit tartlets, passionfruit shortbread sandwiches, raspberry mousse cake-bites, mini-almond cakes, mini-gâteaux opera (Mistress’ favourite) and – the pièce de résistance – scones with jam and cream. The scones are beautifully crumbly and the little cakes all pack a flavour punch despite their diminutive stature.

Before we make it through all the cakes, a staff member approaches us to ask what teas we would like to finish off our meal. I opt for the Assam tea while Mistress chooses English Breakfast. If mashed potato is the comfort food of choice for most, then tea would have to be the comfort drink of choice for me. And with our respective pots of tea we continue with our conversation of the past ten years that is ever-changing in topic, ever-evolving but never-ending.

The Tea Room at Gunners’ Barracks

End of Suakin Drive, Georges Heights NSW

Tel: (02) 8962 5900

Opening Hours:  7 days  11am-5pm (lunch menu 12pm-3pm only)

happy eating!