Foodie beware

Note: Alice doesn't like pretentious foodies.

Times of indulgence

There's definitely no shortage of sugar quarries in the city: places to mine for sugar hits. With chocolate cafes taking over a la Starbucks of the early noughties, I'm already beginning to see the appeal of something that's just a little bit different. Throw in a wine bar and I think we're on a winner.

Bacco Pasticceria at Chifley Plaza, Chifley Square, Sydney

Walk into Chifley Plaza at lunch and you won't miss the queues for panini at Bacco Pasticceria. With the more formal Bacco Wine Bar set inside the plaza a bit more, one is spoilt for lunch choices amid high end retail temptation. I'm keeping my eyes on the sugar as that's a little more wallet-friendly than some of the other stores, but sweet temptation nonetheless.

Selection of cakes

Pretty pastel macarons

Lemon torte and brownies

While the oversized sandwiches look like a great lunch option, it's all about the ecstatic and intoxicating properties of the cake and pastry case.

Bacco cake box

Ricotta cannoli

I will admit to a soft spot for crunchy cannoli; under some delusional notion that deep fried pasta dough is healthier yet just as tasty as full cream and sugar heavy delicacies. Plus I used to have such fun filling them with vanilla and chocolate custard back in the casual cafe job days. This shell is filled with a sweet ricotta and pistachio mix; not so sweet as to be naughty but creamy enough to be a slightly wicked indulgence.

Bacco (left), brownie (back) and lemon torte (right)

And uncovering the pretty cake box, there's trio of treasures waiting to indulge: the tri-layered Bacco slice, a massive chocolate brownie and the floaty-looking lemon torte. Five forks pause with bated breath as a few quick pics are snapped and then it's all in. The cake attack is fast and fierce, with forks crossing, lots of thoughtful tasting and re-tasting, and immediate reviews and favourites.

Somewhat disturbed by the Bacco slice, we all taste it numerous times as a whole and in its separate layers. It looks a lot like the luxuriously deadly Mortal Sin cake but in the end we conclude that only the bottom dark chocolate layer is worthy.

The brownie is topped with a delightful chocolate frosting and whimsical little balls of chocolate crackle - almost like minuscule Maltesers. We revel in the minature cracling more than the fairly standard chocolate cake studded with walnuts.

The lemon torte is the saving grace of the box: a short pastry case filled with a tart, cheek-pinching lemon curd and topped with fluffy, soft meringue.

This sweet indulgence was, admittedly, administered after a big meal but I think we did as well as we could. There's always a time and place for indulgence of the ecstactic and intoxicating kind.

Aftermath of Bacco session

Pasta masters

Like many others, I've been taking more than just a bit of inspiration from the land of television. Luckily I don't watch too many gory crime or medical shows, but cooking shows I'm definitely a fan, and I have them to thank for propelling a few mates to making fresh pasta one night.

I've always wanted to make my own pasta and it didn't seem too difficult, aside from a hectic gnocchi I once made. Armed with a few bottles of wine, nothing's impossible as we work with a few basic ingredients: egg, flour and elbow grease.

Egg yolks and flour in the bowl

The decision is made for a richer pasta dough; hence the concentration of egg yolks. Unsurprisingly this results in an eggy pasta, which we do two ways as seems to be the trend these days.

Mixing eggs and flour

Voila! Pasta dough

The first is a simple fettuccine, fed through the pasta maker to produce beautiful thin ribbons. After a brief initial period of making someone stand holding the fettuccine for drying, two chairs ingeniously take their place as innovative rests for our curtains of pasta.

Drying out fettucine

Although the making of pasta takes infinitely longer than opening a pack of dried pasta, the cooking process is a slight redeemer.

Cooked fettucine

The simple things in life are best - isn't that what they say? Then topping off our freshly made/cooked pasta with a simple tomato and red wine sauce, fresh basil and parmesan is the way to go.

Fettucine served with a tomato sauce, basil and parmigiano

That's the simple out of the way. Now to the more complex home cooking that makes you realise and cherish the value of restaurants. As tough as it is to accept, not everyone is a master of everything in the kitchen.

Making veal ravioli

We're attempting to make the second course of ravioli filled with a veal mince. To be honest, ravioli seems easy enough - little square parcels of meat, not unlike a Chinese wonton. The process is, however, a little more labour intensive than initially thought. At one point, we had a conveyor belt of three people making balls of mince, cutting the pasta and enclosing the edges while the others cooked the ravioli in batches.

Ravioli ready for cooking

They end up looking pretty decent, but the difficulty of eliminating air bubbles in the filling makes me think Latina isn't so bad afterall.

Veal ravioli with a burnt butter sauce and caramelised balsamic

We 'plate up' eventually and it doesn't look too bad. Topped off with an attempt at a burnt butter sauce, caramelised balsamic vinegar and a couple of fried basil leaves, we contentedly eat our combined efforts in conjunction with more wine, store-bought desserts, random trivia and DVDs. We may not quite have mastered the art of pasta making, but we certainly know how to enjoy ourselves in the process and a lot of national flags that contain the colour green.