This is, in fact, a picture of a kremna snezna rezina, a specialty of the spectacularly beautiful consequently tourist infested mountain town of Bled in Slovenia. With due respect to the culinary heritage of the Julian Alps, I wished to God that I hadn’t ordered it as soon as I saw it and once I had polished the lot off, deeply regretted doing so. The snezna rezina is pretty much what it looks like: a whipped custard (vanilla) layered with whipped cream (more vanilla) held together by flaky, crumbly sheets of pastry. The only thing that really captured my interest was the question of how they had sliced the pastry without the custard and cream oozing everywhere. Not bad, just, well, let’s call it a vanilla essence rather than a vanilla bean experience.Fortunately, I didn’t go to Bled for the pastries, I went for the views. The thing that one does in Bled is hire a rowboat, row to the island, and ring a bell. I wanted to get far away from the alarming number of middle-aged folks from some godforsaken provincial British town wearing tracksuits and ‘just retired!’ smiles and flapping and yapping and moaning so I chose to walk around the lake instead.
As I walked, I got to thinking about just how good the good old vanilla slice can be. Custard which is so cheery and sweet and yellow that you forget how gelatinous it must be in order to hold fast as it does. A really thick and shiny veneer of bright pink icing, more sugar and cheer. Pastry (usually, I suspect, the leftovers from making the sausage rolls) whose only purpose is to aid the transport of the custard in the form of the vanilla slice into a paper bag to which the icing inevitably sticks and out of the bakery. I’ve never seen a vanilla tart eaten with a fork but there’s merit in the idea given that they collapse as soon as they are bitten into. Ah, culinary nostalgia. I’ve been out of Sydney for almost six months and clearly, a little homesickness is starting to nibble.
And how could I forget the autumn colour?
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