Sunday Market

OK. Technically this is not part of the Sunday market, other than that I saw it walking home. The picture reminds me of one of my absolutely favourite childhood books - tile,author, long forgotten - in which a postman, so as to deliver the mail during a local flood, removes the tires from his bike so he can cycle along the power lines.

I haven't succumbed yet, but it's a cute idea. Actually, I did see one at the market, with a tow-along cart, the roof of which was constructed from photo-voltaic cells. Quite neat.  I don't know if the electric bikes convert the spare rotational energy (as in going downhill) into electricity. They should. Anyway, one way or another, Sunday markets bring out the locally ingenious.

We've been patronising this market for about, maybe, eight years? Since it started. It limped along for an awfully long time; failed to survive a few winters and then finally, in I think the hands of its third lot of entrepreneurs, has really kicked into gear. Most summer days it's absolutely packed and even in winter there is a pretty fair turnout. This is the middle of the food section. I think Sunday markets say something about the demographic of the neighbourhood. They are a luxury product, despite their down-at-heel charm. For example, dumplings at the Chinese dumpling stall cost more than any Ashfield restaurant. The meat prices would make my local butcher blush. But that isn't really the point. Charm is what's on sale, and there is plenty of it. Plus, undeniably, there are things you get here that you just can't get anywhere else.

Take the cheese man for example. It's pretty hard to find good cheese in Sydney; the Greek deli has some, but the range is pretty narrow and they don't really understand blue. This guy, on the other hand, is a fanatic. And he has some fantastic cheeses, from Australia, Spain, Italy, France, South America. It probably is expensive ($70 a kilo is about his minimum charge) but I have no idea where to get cheese this good, and I don't need a car to get it. I just buy $10 worth, big lump or small, and enjoy it. My favourite cheese story is the morning/afternoon cheese; in each round the bottom half is morning milk; then a layer of ash; then the top is filled up with evening milk.  I hope it's true, but I really don't care that much if it isn't. It's a fantastic cheese, irrespective of the story, sort of a mild Tilsit.

Liz is the mushroom connoisseur. I have to admit that they look fantastic - in salads maybe it's possible to tell the difference. The way I cook, I'm not sure that I'm doing them justice.  The only thing I know about mushrooms is that shiitake contain natural glutamate - which is allegedly the "fifth flavour", very "in" at the moment. Tomatoes contain it too; that's why everything made with tomatoes tastes good. Shiitake have replaced salt in my cooking.

It kind of reinforces the boutique luxury product ambiance, though. Think authentic.

Once you move beyond the food section - Mexican, Chinese, organic, Nepalese, Turkish, Malaysian, Chinese, three bakers, the bratwurst man, Indian, scone/muffin/cake stalls, cheese times 2, meat twice, pickles, nuts and finally olives: this is the winter list - you get to the stuff section, clothes and junk. This is my section of the junk, although I'm trying not to buy books at the moment. The patch of grass you can see in the background illustrates that the weather today is not encouraging. If the sun were shining there would be no grass un-stalled.


I've left out the picture of the fruit and vegie stall (there are three) where we do the weekly food shop. I get to practise Chinese; really, simple repetition is the best practise plus you actually learn useful things like the names of food in Chinese, stuff that is in no text books, but is so fundamentally basic you can't imagine why not.

Croissants

Among the many weaknesses in my character, the elevenses croissant is relatively recent, although the breakfast croissant stretches back to 1989 and La Cucina on Chapel St when I was working for the ANZ around the corner. Every morning I'd clock on at 8 & then duck out for an hour to read the paper, drink coffee & eat a croissant. That job was probably worth ten of the 100-odd kilos I used to cart around. Anyway, even 1989 is recent compared to the espresso coffee vice, which dates back to 1978 (it was an instant coffee vice before then).

The idea of elevenses (one of the great words) was pretty much absent from my life until I started eating breakfast in 2008, after about a 30-year gap. One of my objections to breakfast had always been that it made me hungry at 11, and curiously, despite being 20 kg overweight already, I was worried about putting on more. It's a kind of pseudo-logic; ignore the idea of a healthy eating pattern on the grounds that adding two meals into an unhealthy diet will only make things worse. Sort of like comparing apples and, say, lard.

Getting back to the main line, eating at 11 is a side-effect of eating breakfast and it just happened that when I was experimenting seriously with breakfast I was living in Guangzhou, and bizarrely Guangzhou is one of the best places in the world to buy croissants. Bread is pretty haut-moderne in big Chinese cities and as a luxury good they take making it very seriously, part of the justification of the unbelievable (in relative terms) price. A good croissant in Guangzhou costs as much as a cheap croissant in Marrickville, that is, around AUD $1.30. (Most food in Guangzhou costs about 1/3 to 1/2 of what it would cost here) But that Guangzhou croissant is a helluva thing. It's fantastic.  (This continues a trend of China supplying some of the best European-originated experiences I have had - three of the best four coffees, for example.) They're light, fluffy on the inside, crisp on the outside, a little bit flaky, an ambiance of butter, damn near perfect. Perhaps, carping, fractionally too small. You can in fact try one in Sydney (probably in Melbourne too) at one of the Breadtop franchises. Breadtop croissants tend to be a little overcooked, IMO, but it only affects the outside. It is an amazing tribute to their franchise quality control that this is as true in Sydney as it is in Guangzhou (at a total of about seven outlets altogether - I'm sure it would be true for all of them).

So, thanks to Guangzhou, I'm a croissant-at-11 addict. Now still, if I'm in Sydney CBD, Haymarket particularly, I'll go looking for a Breadtop croissant. But in the Marrickville/Enmore parts of Andrewsville, there are no Breadtops. But there are still croissants.

Peter's croissant on kitchen table

Peter's (the local milkbar) gets them in from somewhere, they're excellent and cheap. But he doesn't get in that many & if they're gone, I have to duck in to the newsagent. There, they're more expensive, and sometimes a day old. Beware a place that offers to microwave your croissants and looks surprised when you say no - a failing of 2204, the most local coffee shop (pretty much their only fault, other than expense) as well.


Moving on from the croissants that are less than 2 minutes away, there's a fork in the road at Victoria St. Left, up the hill to Enmore, and neither of the two bakeries up there that I frequent does an outstanding croissant (one does an outstanding donut, but I haven't eaten donuts for about three years). Adequate, so if I am there for other reasons I don't see any reason to forgo morning tea, but not at all outstanding. Right, down to Marrickville proper past Mitchell St and the Bourke St bakery (it's a franchise - guess where it started?). I'm a bit ambivalent about the Mitchell St croissants. On the good side, they are big and fluffy. On the other side, for me, they are a little bready, not as light as I like and they don't have enough butter, or, more accurately, they don't have the right butter taste. They tend a bit towards the Breadtop colour, which suggests overcooked, and they are, as befits an East Sydney franchise, the most expensive croissant for miles around, by some margin. Bourke St do a bunch of things - sourdough, tarts, bakery coffee - outstandingly well, but their croissants are only adequate by comparison.

Heading into Marrickville Rd you can easily walk past the first bakery, it's tiny. Whether or not they have croissants is random, but when they do they are very buttery, and cheap. They don't do service with a smile, but I guess if I was 70 and had to get up at 3am to start a 17-hour working day, I might be a bit grumpy from time to time.

Opposite them but a bit further up the hill is the Paris Bakery; the winners as far as I am concerned. Their croissants are not quite as light as the Breadtop version (really, those Chinese croissant bakers do magic on that score, it's not just Breadtop) but they are light, they don't feel like bread, they have plenty of butter & they are not burned. They are also cheap - sometimes I buy two.