The scattered schizophrenic

Focus lack much

Macaroon review! This is mostly me practicing my writing chops, and more specifically my food review/tasting/writing chops. I realise that EVERY SINGLE PERSON THE WORLD OVER has food blogged at some point, but you know, practice. Also, resolving not to use the word lovely in this entire review, which is harder than it sounds given that a) i'm doing a review of macaroons, something so damn English it more or less totally fucking implies the word and b) just by thinking about not using it, all I can think about is using it.

DON'T THINK OF AN ELEPHANT

I probably should just done the review, then retroactively removed all instances of the word, but that feels too much like prescriptive rhetoric, and that's totally gross.

Okay i'm done with asides/fucking with cognition.

What i'm reviewing: Macaroons from Adriano Zumbo's, which you all should visit sometime and sample egregiously.

Macaroon the first: Blue Cheese. This probably does sound like a weird choice for a macaroon, and it is. But by god it is delicious. The perfectly mild blue cheese cuts back the sweetness of the macaroon to create this tangy kaleidoscope of flavour right in your mouth.

Macaroon the second: Earl Grey. In the interests of full disclosure, mega-kudos for using tea as an ingredient. That being said, a little underwhelming. It's basically a chocolate macaroon with tiny amounts Earl Grey tea leaves baked into the biscuit. It's great as a chocolate macaroon, and the tea adds a nice touch of tannic astringency and texture to the biscuit. Either way, I will continue loving it obstinately due to my largely unsubstantiated love of tea as an ingredient.

Macaroon the third: Feullitine. It is as difficult to pronounce as it is delicious, which means that if you have a sufficient grasp of French/Romance languages, you probably won't find this very delicious. This is what you get for learning crazy foreign tongues. Given my very weak capabilities in aforementioned contexts, I found this to be exceedingly yummy. It's a strange little baked good, as it's not quite a biscuit due to the fact it's actually full of praline. It's almost more a cake, what with the way it's layered and how it's much more crumbly than soft and chewy as per all the other macaroons. A welcome alternative to plain ol' chocolate.

Macaroon the fourth: Liquorice. In addition to the somewhat unusual colour (it's coal black with a pale yellow ring running around it), the flavour is pretty funky. As expected, it's quite liquoricy, but it's also quite sweet. I understand that liqourice is an acquired taste and all, so any closet liquorice junkies might find their cravings satisfied. I'm not quite in that camp yet, so I was just left a little mystified at how any of those people can like the taste of aniseed so damn much.

Macaroon the fifth: Yoghurt and Chilli. This one is currently winning in the interestingness scale, and probably one of the more bizarre food experiences i've had. It starts off quite tart, almost sour from the yoghurt, which progresses into a sweet, lemony middle and then just ends in a full blown blast of chili right onto your tongue. It's wonderfully disorientating. Does the yoghurt or the sugar or something numb the particular receptors on your tongue for tasting chili or something? Definitely worth trying. I have no idea on whether a repeat performance is required though.

Macaroon the sixth: Pineapple and Ginger. Bewildered and still smarting from that little burst of chili from the previous macaroon, I stumbled onto this very sweet morsel of pineapple and a whole lotta ginger. It probably tasted much sweeter than it does due to the contrast effect from the previous macaroon, but I really liked it. There's lots of zesty pineapple flavour in this, and you better love ginger; I found a crystallised piece of ginger within the filling, which just amps up the sweetness factor of this.

Did I mention how much I hate doing conclusions?