Shanghai nights

It’s a wet, filthy night in Shanghai and I’m wide awake and hungry.

The streets of Putuo are unlit and I’m dodging faceless black figures sailing past on bikes; others, on foot, in huge, trailing cloaks slosh through puddles on the road and gutters.

There are no cars. It’s quiet for the persistent patter of rain. Most shops are shuttered up; the few still open are spot-lit shells with little sign of life.

It’s so dark, I almost walk into three huge steaming pots on the narrow pavement outside a noodle shop. I duck inside. Its three tables are stained with orange smears, there’s murky vinegar in white teapots and soy sauce in plastic coke bottles.

Hunched over one table are two women shelling sunflower seeds, crunching and cracking through the dusty grey pile. They look up then continue their task. Beside them, on the floor, a fire burns in a metal cylinder, its glowing orange embers within almost too bright for such a dismal night. On another table, tinny music is coming from an abandoned laptop.

There’s no menu so I order from a picture on the wall. An aproned man appears and starts thwacking dough on a bench by the window, pulling, stretching and twisting it. Longer and thinner it becomes and, like a skipping rope, he swings it high and low.

I look up briefly as three women walk past me, staring down, then walk down a corridor past my table. When I look back to the bench, the dough has been cut into a long, fine fringe: noodles. They’re stretched some more, then thrust through the open window to an old man in the street, who drops them into one of the pots I nearly tripped over.

Two minutes later, a bowl of hot noodles in a dark sauce is put down before me. Emerging from the liquid is a little cold sliced beef, coriander and shredded bok choi. A second smaller bowl contains a clear broth with floating ringlets of spring onion and droplets of oil.

The steam rising from both is enough to warm your face and hands. It’s all much too hot to eat straight away and when you do it’s oily-slippy and spiked with garlic but it’s just what you need on a night like this.

Another day, another blog

I haven't logged a blog for a while. That's because I've been busy working. Find out what I've been getting up to by logging on here, my new blog. See you there!

www.thecafecook.blogspot.com

Hoovers, dogs and a spot of rain

Today I decided to hoover my car. Well, I never actually decided to do it, as I would've definitely changed my mind and decided not to. One minute I was walking home from the supermarket, the next I was sprawled between the front and back seats of the motor with a hose under my armpit.

It was shockingly filthy; I’ve hoovered it once before, so am no stranger to the maddening, unreachable gaps between the handbrake and seats which, since 1990, have been the belly-button equivalent of the Honda.

Surely the sensible thing would be to make everything detachable so you can hoover a carpeted square-like box, then clip everything back in. Though no doubt that would lead to safety issues when, for example, you didn't secure the driver’s seat and ended up driving from the boot or forgot to put the gear-stick back in. Besides, there’d probably be some law whereby you’d have to enlist a mechanic to undertake the entire hoover job which would be an expensive exercise. But think how clean and it would be!

At some recent and considerably lengthy period of its service, this particular Honda has provided shelter and transport for what one can only presume was a large wire-haired dog. In fact, the further under the front seat I hoovered, the hairier the floor became and it flashed through my tiny mind for a brief second that the creature was possibly still there, in a secret metal dog-well between the carpet and road, existing on dropped apple cores and rain water at traffic lights.

After 20 minutes of dog-hating hard hosing, ungainly clambering and wretched seat-manoeuvring, it suddenly dawned on me: this is why people have children! 10p well spent, I’ll say. Cursing all dogs and nearby children who I could hear playing – yes, shamelessly playing! - in their gardens when they could have been helping me, suddenly, as luck would have it, it started to rain.

Now, you don’t need to be or even know a mechanic to know that hoovers and rain don’t mix. So in a great hurry, I packed up and resigned to finish the job later. Though I think the forecast is bad. Shame for the kids stuck indoors, too.

Another day, another challenge

Today’s challenge - which I not only accepted, I invented it, too - was to move house and go on holiday on the same day.

Now, this isn’t something I would recommend in a hurry, particularly should your method of transport for the house-moving section be a reliably dilapidated motor that skims the road by a centimetre even when there’s nothing in it, never mind when crammed with boxes and bags.

Another tip - should you defy my most sensible advice and take up the challenge yourself - is to drive the car up any nearby volcanoes (aka the drive) first before loading it. And - this is the most important bit - don’t do any of this during rush hour.

I can’t remember if I’ve ever complained about Auckland's rush hour before but, the truth is, I’ve never been in it. I just always thought I was in it at 7am, but in fact, it doesn’t really kick off and get really good till around 8, which was around the time I decided to hit the road (quite literally with the underside of the car) and move house.

I passed a fair chunk of the stationary on road tedium trying to fathom whether the ever increasing headache was from last night’s wine (surely not!) or being awake for at least an hour without having had a coffee… 35 minutes (or 1.2km) later I was still quite sure I had woken up feeling normal, so concluded caffeine deficit. Unless it was some kind of reverse hangover, which increases as the day progresses until your head explodes.

So, one house-move, two coffees, a ferry-ride and an airbus later, I would like to say I arrived at the airport refreshed and alive with the challenges and promise of the day yet to come (please! no more…) but quite frankly it’s as much as I can do to sit here between Taste of Asia and Café Down Under in the Jean Batten Food Court, no less, instructing my fingers to hit the right keys – or even just keys – and wish the nasty smells would go away. At least the headache’s on its way out.

The big question now, is: noodles or coffee, or both?

Fancy a coffee?

Today I went to a barista jam in a café called the Grind.

It was all about milk.

So you rock up with your milk - rice, soy, organic, boggo blue-top - jump onto a coffee machine, get steaming and compare notes.

Organic is a tricky customer, especially if it's not homogenised (how silver-top used to be in the good old doorstep days). The fat molecules aren't incorporated into the protein, so it's hard to achieve a smooth texture. Often it's a rougher finish with more air bubbles. Though, texture aside, you can't beat it for creaminess and it comes from happy cows, let's not forget. Or so we like to believe.

Rice milk, another challenge. Low in fat, it froths up fast but collapses all too soon. Fat's handy for keeping things stable. Far from creamy, it's more like a sweetened cardboardy rice, like hot liquid Rice Krispies. If you're into that sort of thing.

Steam your milk to the right ratio of froth to liquid and you stand half a chance of pouring a good latté art - the pattern on top of a coffee. A good definition between creamy white milk and nutty-coloured crema creates the sharpest pattern.

The best baristas pour free-hand so there's no fiddly mucking around once the milk hits the cup. Once you start pouring, there's no going back.

Though you can always make another one.

One hardback meets another

There's nothing worse than sitting down to an eagerly awaited home-cooked dinner only for the phone to start ringing. Grrr. You know it's probably nothing that can't wait but you answer it, just in case.

If only it was just the phone ringing.

Here's a story:

The other night, just as I sat down to my weekly steak and fried potatoes I caught sight of something scuttling across the floor towards my bedroom. It didn't take me long to identify it as a cockroach. In 2002 I'd shared a hostel with other living examples of its kind on the West coast of Australia. My reflexes kicked in. I dived ahead of it and slammed my bedroom door shut in its face.

But no! my worst fears were realised... the two inch gap between door and carpet wasn't going to deter it. Moments later, it cleared it with ease and was through to the next round. My bedroom.

(There was a short interlude here of 10 minutes plus half an hour whilst I decided I may as well eat my dinner and watch the end of Hotel Babylon and plot my next move. The Dog was out and I didn't know what else to do.)

I'm pleased to say the cockroach was to come off worse. Fortified by a medium-bodied 2006 Marlborough Riesling (me that is), I found it sitting by the foot of my bed, whereupon I dropped a very large, very heavy National Geographic hardback on top of it when it wasn't looking. While I would like to say that I deeply regret my actions, I don't. It felt no pain and shall be missed by no one. Plus it meant I was able to sleep in my own bed that night.

It wasn't a pretty picture though.


The End

Lipstick to go?

There's nothing wrong with a bit of lippy on your lid. Just remember to reapply as soon as you've finished your coffee.

For a coffee to end up as a latté or whatever in a cup with the milk, the espresso has to be good enough in the first place. It's like the base of a recipe. If it's not up to scratch, the rest of the dish will suffer.

Unlike a chef, checking the seasoning on each dish before it goes out, we can't taste every coffee before handing it over to a waiting customer. If that was the case, today I would have tasted around 250. And shared every customer's coffee.

So instead, we have to be confident that each espresso that comes out of the machine is good enough to be sold. That's well-balanced - there's more to coffee than bitterness. A tiny 30ml (2 tablespoons) shot of espresso should also be be bursting with sweetness, acidity and body.

Often, the way it trickles out of the machine is a good indication as to what it might taste like. If it runs out too quickly, it's likely to be under-extracted and lacking in depth and flavour. Too slowly, and chances are you're looking at a syrupy, bitter offering that not even 200ml of steamed milk can disguise.

So sometimes we slurp a few shots during the day to make sure we're on the right track. It can get quite messy.