An eventful weekend

I believe in having a voice. 

I also believe strongly in baked goods. 

So I was absolutely delighted to have my opinion piece published in the Sydney Morning Herald this weekend. 

It has been a strange week in Australia - first the budget was announced including a hidden statement that Australia will not open its borders till mid-2022, then there were different perspectives and new words like "Hermit Kingdom" and "Fortress Australia" were hurled into Australian consciousness. 

I had written my own piece in the forty minutes before sunrise on Thursday. The pandemic has changed my sleep pattern drastically and I often wake in the dark now. I thought about the days and months stretching into the future, it felt like a grey amorphous mass. When will we open up again and rejoin the world? Why are we locked up in Australia like we are criminals, and treated like criminals if we want to return home? I felt waves of despair, hope, overwhelm, and confusion. So I decided to get up and write down my thoughts. 

For me these feelings had been percolating for some time, but the straw that broke the camel's back came when the government threatened Australian citizens who return from India with imprisonment. Let's get this straight: 

1. Australian citizens of Indian descent gave up their Indian passports to become Australians. 

2. They cannot hold dual Indian and Australian passports and do NOT have another "home".

3. Citizenship as defined by human rights is the right to reside in and return to that country. These people have become temporary refugees by the law of Australian government. 

4. What kind of country imprisons its own citizens for returning to its own country?

The most incredible thing was not just this extraordinarily racist law that was introduced, it was the fact that the government representing the majority voice expected this to just slide right in and potentially win them more votes. Many people thought this was fantastic and the government was doing great to keep the Indians out.

I have been boiling with rage for a couple of weeks now about this and the opinion piece slid out from my soul effortlessly. I don't know what motivated me to send it to the newspaper, it was a small impulsive moment. I hit "Send' without proofreading it and went to work. I was surprised to hear the same day from the SMH Opinions editor.  

This is my voice, and I am proud to speak the minority voice. 

I was also stoked to go to a tart course at the Australian Patisserie Academy and work with dough! 

They have some serious machines for mixing here... 

It all starts with pate sucree, the traditional sweet shortcrust pastry for tarts. Our teacher gave up heaps of tips and it came together like a dream. We made a plain one and a cocoa one for two large tarts. Once blast-freezed, the dough rolled quite easily, much easier than my previous attempts at home!

They had also an industrial rolling machine, but I wanted to try it by hand. It worked out pretty well and she gave us lots of tips on how to get the tart shape just perfect. 

And of course she was right! most of our tarts did not even shrink even though we did not blind bake them, apparently if you make the shape properly it is not necessary!

Here is my cocoa crust after baking, I was pretty happy with the evenness of the crust!

We filled the plain crust with a passionfruit filling and the cocoa crust with a chocolate coffee ganache - so yum but we were not allowed to lick the spoons! 

We also made these little tarts with the leftover filling, and the pink one is a raspberry filling that we made separately. The passionfruit mini tarts were topped with a passionfruit gelatine glaze, and the raspberry one with piped white chocolate mousse and fresh berries. Don't they look divine! 

And here the piece de resistance - the passionfruit tart with Italin meringue. I'm not the biggest fan of meringue so I did a decorative border. The passionfruit filling was intensely tart! 

And the second  piece de resistance - the chocolate coffee tart was topped with coffee chantilly cream, dollops of dark chocolate and hazelnuts. 

What a great day's work!