More Cat's Vom.

I have about a zillion recipes for awesome food. Really REALLY awesome food. Food so good it will make you weep and hear heavenly choirs. There's just one unfortunate thing about some of these recipes.

They pretty much look like a cat has vomited on a plate.

Which, given that no one has invented Smell-O-Vision for Blogger yet, means that providing you with a picture will pretty much have the opposite effect I am looking for. Dry retching over your keyboard is NOT the effect I was hoping for.

So you'll need to use your imagination on this one.

When I was married to the Wasband, we had a dear friend known as Mr Yum-Yum. He would come over regularly and cook these awesome Vietnamese dishes. It was Mr Yum-Yum that first introduced me to rice noodle soup, wet cake and hair vegetable, now more than 20 years ago. He was Chinese-Viet, and learned watching his Grandma cook, back in Saigon.

This is my very favourite Mr Yum Yum recipe, and was a staple dish during my pregnancy with the Lima Bean. Think a sort of Vietnamese laksa or Tom Gai.

I have no idea what this is called in Viet, and a quick Google of "Vietnamese Sweet Soup" yielded nothing, so if the recipe is familiar to anyone, do drop me a line in the comments section and tell me about it.

Mr Yum-Yum's Vietnamese Sweet Soup. (feeds 4)

1kg chicken legs/drumsticks with skin on. Each drumstick chopped into 3-4 pieces with a freakin' big Asian cleaver.

Marinate in:

1tablespoon curry powder (I use Hoyt's for this, but Clive of India is good too) and a goodly slosh of Vietnamese light soy. Grate a knob of fresh ginger and 2 cloves on garlic. Add chopped-up chicken and marinate for 2 hours.

In a large, heavy based pot, bring 2 tablespoons of peanut oil to a gentle heat, add 1 stick of lemon grass bashed and smashed. Sloooooooowly simmer the lemon grass stalk, trying to render the essential lemon grass oil into the cooking oil. This usually takes about 10 mins on a gentle heat, stirring constantly.

Remove lemon grass stalks from oil

THIS NEXT STEP CAN BE OMITTED IF YOU CAN'T FIND ANNATTO SEEDS,
Gently infuse a teaspoon of annatto seeds in the lemon grass oil until the oil is a deep orange/red. Be very careful, as overheating the seeds means they will burn and the oil will be bitter and unusable. ALSO, overheated seeds tend to "pop" and leave scorchingly hot, bright red stains all over your kitchen and you clothing. This is a "do-not-want" situation. Once the oil is the right colour, let it cool and remove the seeds.

Bring the now-seedless oil back to a nice high temp and add the now-marinated chicken. Fry off until brown and add 1 whole diced sweet potato or 4 diced waxy white potatoes. Stir until coated with oil.

Add 1 can coconut milk, 1 can of sweetened condensed milk and a litre of chicken stock. Drop heat down to a simmer and cover. Cook for about 30 mins or until potato is tender.



Add 250g of fresh okra, peas or beans, and cook a further 5 mins.

Slop into huge big Asian-soup bowls, and serve with a crusty Vietnamese roll.

Ok, it will LOOK like cat's vom, but it will taste like majik.

What the Phở?

image courtesy of androog, via Wiki CC licence

Greetings. My name is pg and I'm a Phở ho. Or a "fur hur" is we're going to be a stickler for pronunciation.

There's been a lurgy going around THOFAPL over the past 10 days. And rather that put you, dear reader, off your food, let me just best describe it as "gastro"... Gastro that lead to me spending 8 hours in Rosebud Base hospital on Goodness Friday. Gastro, that like a bad house guest has sorely overstayed its welcome and is now just pissing me off.

I have, effectively, made myself lactose intolerant. Meaning much my staple menu is now out-of-bounds. I mean, really, spag bog without the Parm Reg, is really NOT worth the effort.

So we've been "dining" (for want of a better word) on rice, white bread and Maggi noodles.

However, Furry has recently been experimenting with home-made Phở and offered to cook us a pot.

Now you must all sing the "Furry's Majick Phở" song.

"Phở, Phở, Magic Phở"

This is, however, only amusing if a) you know the song I've referenced and b) if you get your pronunciation correct.

Furry slow bakes osso bucco until the fat is rendered and the bones are browned. The bones are then scrubbed under running water and placed in a pot of fresh, cold, water and simmered for several hours. He doesn't seem to worry too much about skimming, and the stock turns out pretty clear. He adds a cinnamon quill, some garlic, some ginger, a few Schezhuan peppercorns, cardamon, coriander and a clove.

Once the broth is fragrant, he adds finely sliced steak and diced chicken. A block of silken tofu always gets diced and added, too.

because this was a sickness Phở, he left off the seafood and the fish balls which I usually love. When I dine out for Phở, I love the tendons and the pizzle and the fatty brisket bits, but this is medicinal Phở, and we thought, under the intestinal circumstances, that it would be best to leave them out. We also eschewed the vinegary white onions. and the fried whitebait that I usually love to add.

Vietnamese dishes are meals typically served with lots of greens, herbs, vegetables and various other accompaniments such as dipping sauces, hot and spicy pastes, and flavor enhancements such as a squeeze of lime or lemon. The dish is garnished with ingredients such as green onions, white onions, coriander, Thai basil (húng quế) (should not be confused with sweet basil - Vietnamese: húng chó or húng dổi), fresh Thai chili peppers, lemon or lime wedges, bean sprouts, and cilantro (ngò rí) or culantro (ngò gai). Although cilantro and culantro have similar names and similar flavors, they are completely different plants.

I like my Phở with bean sprouts, basil, mint, coriander, lime and Hoi Sin sauce. (i usually add a fair dollop of siracha, as well.. but under the circumstances.....) The Phở toppings (Phởppings?) are what makes the dish, making every mouthful a different textural and taste experience. Many an heated discussion has been entered into on "traditional" Phở, in both ingredients and pronunciation, but suffice it to say, that while Furry's Majik Phở (furryfur?) may not win any authenticity competitions, it is nourishing and easily digested. Phở is also an awesome excuse to get into growing herbs, coriander and mint pretty much grow on the back of your neck, here in the Melbourne climate. Both Thai and Vietnamese mint grow well also. There is nothing more satisfying than not just making your own Phở, but pottering down the back steps to pick your own herbs for the Phởppings.

The other secret benefit of Phở, is seeing how many puns you can make on the name.. pho shiz, what the pho, Mo Pho, pho king, absolutely ph0-bulous, 9021 pho... oh, the puns just keep on coming!

Hard to be sick, with a bowl of majick pho in front of you, and your punster son making the above cracks!

More evolution!

Our youngest has often been a "problem child" when it comes to food. When I met Furry he was 6, and frankly, had no interest in anything other than chicken nuggets and frozen pizza. If Furry and I were never going to be compatible in our relationship, our children's attitude to food was going to be the primary cause of any disaster.

We have always, from the very beginning, always talked about OUR kids. We went into therapy very early on, knowing we basically had one chance at "blending" our families. It's not the sort of thing that if you bugger it up, you can turn around and say "oops.. sorry about that, we'll try again next week"

So it's always been OUR kids, never YOURS or MINE.. except in the food department. My kids grew up with Kalamata olives as a treat for being good, with a food obsessive as a mother, with rarely a meal cooked from anything but fresh ingredients (which was more about me being a single mum at full time Uni, rather than any SOLE notions, BTW!). My kids were restaurant-savvy by 5.

Furry's kids had table manners that left MUCH to be desired, thought chicken came in little squares from a Black and Gold box, and refused to believe that Cos was lettuce "cos it doesn't look like it". Without a word of a lie, the first time I served a whole roast chicken, the food was first sniffed and then rejected, as it "didn't look like chicken".

Jump forward 6 years, and we'll bypass the tears and the tantrums and the threats (mostly thrown by me), to last weekend. When OUR youngest declared that he wanted Vietnamese Rice Paper Rolls for lunch.

AND WANTED TO COOK THEM.

Firstly, we got out the rice paper, and prepared it to soak.


Then we steamed and sliced the chicken. Daddy did all the vegetable prep on the mandolin. As chuffed as I was that Master 12.5 wanted to cook, the thought of sending him home to his mother sans a couple of fingers, was more than I could bear.


Little 12.5 y/o fingers get ready to rock and rice paper roll!!



Furry father fingers give a hand

And voila! the finished product. Served with either sweet chilli dipping sauce or a light soy, rice vinegar and lime juice dipping sauce.

While Maccas and hot chips still feature heavily for Master 12.5 as his preferred fave food, I can now proudly say he has been to Yum Cha with me, has cooked pizza from scratch with me, asked for a chicken Makhani curry from me, has rejected Kraft Singles in favour of marinated Fetta, likes to order roti Channai at Nudel Bar and now has mastered his own "sig dish"

He still gets grossed out when I eat chicken's feet, but does like to tell his mates that he's REALLY seen his Evil Step-Mum eat them ("It's like, totally gross, dude. She hold's 'em in her chopsticks and waves them at me, shouting "It's the CRAW!!")

The tunnel has been VERY long, and VERY dark, but there definitely light ahead.

Oh, and as a side note, when his 16y/o sister said she didn't want any, I have to admit I felt quite vindicated when Master 12.5 looked crestfallen and said quietly "... but I made them myself......"

Proud Peacock.

Last night, fellow blogger and all round funny guy, Thanh, from "I Eat Therefore I Am", popped up to Proud Peacock Vietnamese restaurant in GW for a quick bite.

I told Thanh that I new a lovely young SINGLE Vietnamese girl who ran a resto, so what male, single foodie WOULDN"T jump at the chance to hang out with Furry and I, and also check out some luuuurve ack-shawn???

Proud Peacock

Ph: (03) 9560 6661; shop 6, 53 Kingsway, Glen Waverley 3150

I freely admit I am an inveterate match maker. It's the wog in me. Along with telling Thank he was **insert elderly Greek lady accent** "too skinny", I also told him he was about to meet the mother of his children.

Well, imagine Thanh's suprise when we walked into the resto, and this delightful young woman walks up to him and says "Hi!! apparently we're getting married and making pg and Furry lots of babies".

Ummmm, yeah.. we'd kinda... maybe mentioned Thanh to her. Maybe.

Ahem.

To the food.

I apologise for the quality of the photo's, but Thanh and I had shared a bottle of THIS before we headed up to the resto, so most of the photos were a bit dodgy.

The Proud Peacock (the restaurant, not Thanh!), is a little hole in the wall, in The Kingsway, GW. Formica tables, concrete floor, a few posters of Vietnam on the walls. In short, MY kinda place. The food is hearty, simple, made by Mum and Dad out the back, and the portions are huge. And it's cheap. Under $50 for the three of us.

We ordered a plate of bai cuon, spring rolls and goi cuon, and everything came out with a huge plate of various dipping sauces and condiments.



goi cuon (shrimp rolls)



dipping sauces:



My pho:



I didn't manage to get a decent shot of what Furry and Thanh ordered, as hunger overrode my command not to eat until I'd taken a pic, and all the photos were blurry action shots.

A complimentary fruit platter, complete with warm gulag jalmuns completed our meal!




Thanh won't be blogging much over the next few months, as he'll be off awoo-ing and making Auntie PG and Uncle Furry lots of beautiful Vietnamese/Chinese babies to play with.

I'm wearing purple to the wedding.

What about you??