disappointments and condensed milk

well there have been some disappointments this week. Of course in the land of electoral stuff everything went to shit.

And in the food universe - Cafe Armenia was closed when we tried to go there on Saturday. We reached the end of a 4 hour op-shop trek well and truly ready for some cherry dumplings but it was not to be. Lucky I scored that great tuxedo and hot-pink cummerbund to cheer me up. So it was off to Grandma Kimchi again and some very satisfying lunching was done there. I think their cucumber kimchi is mindblowingly good - crunch, hotness and cooling perfectly matched.

Wednesday night me and Nell trooped off to Ong's food court (under the Mercure Hotel, Lt Bourke St btw Swanson and Eliz) to see if it could be the place to move our regular weekly dinners. Goldan Fork , which is a branch of the brilliant Bismi provided dinner. I love this place - you can watch them making roti and dosai on the big grill in front of you. Watching the chef turn a ball of dough into a giant crispy thin pancake or a sweet flaky soft roti is great.

We had Chickpea Masala Dosai. These are one of my favourite finds of this year. $5 gets you a footlong crisp dosai pancake (about 200gsm thick) wrapped around a moist chickpea and potato curry. Sambal, coconut chutney and chilli sauce round it out. So damn fine. And finally, who knows why, I had room to try the Roti Bom. The roti here are always awesome - you can get them stuffed with curry, or garlic, or tamarind... But the sweet ones have been disappointing so far, even the milo one was dry and had hardly any milo. Roti Bom is a winner though - wrapped around butter and sugar and drenched in condensed milk. Yes, it could stop fragile hearts.

We decided against moving Wed night dinners to Ong's. Although there's a lot of good food there the atmosphere at night is really lacking and it seems that with everyone ordering their own food from the different outlets and jumping up to get it when it's ready we'll lose what's nice about all sitting down together and sharing a regular meal.

Last night I remembered how good spring is and how wonderful risotto is. While Sammy and Shane drank beer and entertained me I stirred. A plain risotto made with Massel's fake chicken stock and just a few asparagus, a bit of zucchini and broccoli thrown in towards the end. So velvety and perfect. The key I think is to have good stock (even if it's powdered) and throw in lots of butter and parmesan to melt in before serving. Won a few fans in the loungeroom with that.