xmas lunch 2010

Let me ask you a question, are you a pineapple snob? Do you always tut-tut your friends when they put pineapple in their savoury foods, like pizza? Well, you might as well close this blog post and read my other posts, because I’m about to commit a cardinal sin with this one.

The day before Christmas, my older sister and I have made a date for us to have Christmas lunch together. What could be more perfect for an Australian Christmas to have prawns for lunch, so I went to the local supermarket and bought myself a kilo and a half of prawns (Australian this time, not foreign). I also bought a pineapple and some garlic to go with the prawns.

kailis bros fish café blue crabmeat & linguini pasta

A week before Christmas, my sister rang up Kailis Brothers Fish Café to book us a table for Christmas Eve at 6pm. She was told that it’ll be super busy and that we have to be prompt if we didn’t want to lose our table.

We were a bit surprised when we arrived at the restaurant in the early afternoon at about 5.50pm that the restaurant wasn’t that crowded, with plenty of empty tables all around. The waitperson showed us to our table as soon as we told them who we were. My nephew and brother-in-law went next door to have a look at all the seafood in the Kailis Bros Market, meanwhile I accompanied my sister to our table.

viet hoa bò viên

Continuing on my recent foray into the Vietnamese pho, I visited Viet Hoa in Northbridge during a particularly ravenous state as I foolishly skipped breakfast that morning.

I was in the neighbourhood running some errands. When I finished getting the things I needed to get, my stomach was my next urgent priority. I carefully looked at a few restaurants before settling on Viet Hoa. About 7 years ago now, I went there with my parents, and we did not have a particularly good meal / experience, we never came back since. But I thought I should give it another try, seeing as 7 years is probably about enough for holding a grudge, not that I let go of my grudges very easily.

san churro churros for two

A recent article in the New York Times, talked about a form of dieting, whereby you imagine eating the food before you eat it. They call it the Imagine Diet (link here while it lasts). The Imagine Diet works this way: before you want to eat that chocolate truffle you're really dying to eat, first you would imagine devouring one chocolate truffle after another, imagining the smell, the texture in your mouth. This apparently will take the edge of that craving and therefore make you not want to eat it as much. So, theoretically, instead of eating three choco truffles, you'd end up having just one.

This mental dieting is probably something that I should have put into practice before I went to San Churro. For the sake of my companions, more than for myself.

trà vinh phở bò viên

Trà Vinh is one of those places that I have been meaning to review but never got around to do it. So, here goes.

toast & tender at the bone

I love food, I love books and I love books about food. The public library is a frequent hangout of mine. The good thing about the WA public library is that you can borrow books from all over the state, so it doesn't matter when my suburb's public library doesn't have a copy of a book I want, they'll get it from another public library in the state.

I have always been an average writer, which is why I'm always envious of people who can write beautifully. I wanted to share with you two of the books from these talented authors and hopefully they can inspire you as they have inspired me.

Toast by Nigel Slater is a book about the author's childhood food memories in 1960's Britain. There are a lot of references there that I didn't quite understand, but that's when google came in handy. The book is not all about food, bits of it are actually a bit risqué. Here are two separate paragraphs taken from the book.

napa cabbage clear soup with prawns & vermicelli

When I was in Beijing, China for a year to learn mandarin, I went through a phase of eating lots and lots of napa cabbage, either fresh or in kimchi form. I don't eat as much of them now as I did then, but they are still my favourite vegetable.

So, why do I love this vegetable so much? Napa cabbage, or wombok, has this natural sweetness that I really like. Unlike other cabbages, the napa variety does not smell funny (normal cabbage), nor does it taste bitter (brussels sprout).