More food excursions

Bear and i had another big day out yesterday, we went to the Simon Johnson store at pyrmont, then walked to the fish markets.

It has occurred to me that our weekend activities are increasingly driven by the pursuit of chocolate. And other increasingly expensive foodstuffs. I don't know how far we should let this go, because when you can (will) only eat valhrona and can no longer even stomach the taste of toblerone, not to mention cadbury, life could get very poor.

Oh well! I shall tell you what we bought. Simon Johnson has a little store in pyrmont, and its kinda crowded and cramped and woody and is quite charming i suppose, with all kinds of stuff everywhere in sacks and bottles and barrels full of colourful sweets and lollies... We spent an hour in there, going over the produce several times, musing over the coarsely ground cacao beans, the array of infused oils, the pasta section, the tea section, the locked cupboard ($5000 per kg for whole truffles! teeny little bottles of vanilla extract for $50!), and then the chocolate wall, where we collected several items... and then Bear found the Cheese Room.

It was a little intimidating. We just sortof looked at the blocks/rounds/logs of cheese sitting around on tables, some oozing away quietly, others shrivelling up into blue-grey moulds as we watched... In the end, we decided on a small little sheeps milk camembert, and a jar of marinated goats cheese from Meredith Dairy, which was the Most Beautiful Cheese i have ever had! You get a little taste of it, and you go HMmmMmm! and then you look at the jar in awe for a few minutes... and then you insist Bear has to come into the kitchen and try some.

Apart from the two afore-mentioned cheeses, we finally emerged from the cheese room with a wedge of Parmigiano Dolce, which was really mild and sweet, as well as a slice of Reggiano Roca, which turned out to be sortof dry, and deep flavoured (fruity, said Bear)... I am under the impression that these two cheeses are types of parmesan. Can anyone correct or confirm this?

In addition to cheeses, we also had to have several items from Valrhona, including two bars of their 66% caribbean chocolate, a bag of their 100% cocoa powder, a block of orange flavoured dark cooking chocolate, and a bar of something called Grand Couva, which is described as a "vintage" chocolate made only from beans grown from some plantation in Trinidad, harvested by machete and probably hand-made by virgin albino monkeys who happen to be born blind and therefore have an exquisite sense of smell but despite all that, it is easily one of the best chocolates i have ever had. Sigh! It was a day of bests. And spending money. We also took with us a skinny little bottle of terrabianca truffle-infused oil. I am a little obsessed with truffles now.

Then we went to the fish markets. But enough about food for now. Suffice it to say, there was fish and we ate some and then we brought some others home.

There was also a great big wooshing wild storm on the way back, which was scary in parts because visibility was about 50% and then hail started pelting down on us. Especially scary because my insurance doesn't cover hail damage, but we got home safe and unshattered.

And then we had cheese for dinner.

Yay!