Colourful Vietnamese Dinner

My parents served me the weirdest thing for dinner last Sunday when I was over for a visit.

Soi: purple sweet sticky rice, Nem: cured pork in garlic and chilli with Chua: pickled leaks, cucumber and carrots as condiment!

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CeCi Korean, Strathfield

Ceci is our favourite Korean in town.  Since we were introduced to CeCi over 3 years ago, we've been going at least once a month.

This is pretty much our usual order:

Spicy Kim Chi soup, although this is not the hot one.

Spicy fried dumplings.

Marinated chicken.

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Sydney Mandang Restaurant

Had lunch here today.  Our Korean friends took us here ages ago and it was delicious.

Today while it was nice, I couldn't say it was our favourt Korean in Sydney or even in the CBD for that matter.

Kim Chi Chi Ke was nice, the soup a little thicker than I'm used too.

The seafood pancake below was my favourite of the meal, especially with the dipping sauce.  I like these pancakes thick like here and also crunchy... sometimes they can be cold an soggy.

The marinated chicken was just fine.. maybe lacking a little flavour.... but still very nice.

An interesting twist is the omelette kim chi... different from the other varieties I'm used to.

 

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Villawood Anglican Church

Some of the best food you can eat are home cooking... well I think so anyway.  Today is the first day of the Lunar New Year, the year of the Tiger.

I went to celebrate the occassion with my parents at their church in Villawood.

Everyone brought a dish and it was a wonderful feast; bitter melon soup, prawn salad (goi), pickled pork (nem), cha, new year savoury and sweet rice cake (banh tet)... just to name a few.

The food just went on, and on and on...

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Hung Vuong, Cabramatta

Took a publishing friend of Walter to Hung Vuong a local eatery this weekend.



We all had Banh Uot, 'wet rice cakes' for lunch. It's basically rice noodles with nem (cured pork), chicken roll, lots of greens and fish sauce. This description is so lame, it actually tastes much nicer than that.

They do a roaring trade in take aways.



While we were there, we saw them make Banh Tet, glutonous rice boiled with soya bean and pork for over 10 hours to form a dense rice outer with the bean and meat inside... not for everyone, but a must at new years!

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Vietnamese Canh Chua, Canley Heights

My all time favourite dish is Canh Chua (sour soup). It's what you'd have at home usually with fried fish for contrast.

Canh chua is basically a sour soup from tamarind, pineapple and tomato. Then there's just too many Vietnamese mints added to name, bac ha, chilli, been sprouts, garlic and choice of meats; usually fish or prawns are popular but you can have it with chicken.

This dish is from Phuoc Loc Tho in Canley Heights... all the ingredients are raw, including the fish. The soup is in the centre and will come to biil from coal underneath... once it's boiling you just push all the ingredients into the soup stock in the centre and enjoy!

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Vietnamese Ice Coffee

Coffee drips into cup... layer of condensed milk... mix it all up and pour over ice... Vietnamese ice coffee, a traditional favourite.

This one was at Phuoc Loc Tho (PLT) restaurant in Canley Heights.

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