When you’re travelling with kids there are obvious culinary allowances you have to make, especially in south east Asia. Our kids go to bed pretty early so we can’t eat late. We tend to eat at relatively ’safe’ (read: sanitary) places and have to avoid stuff that the kids may find too freaky or spicy. Plus, the kids tend to want to do things other than eating (weird, I know) so we will have to save the major culinary excursions for when the kids are old enough to leave with the grandparents for several days at a time.The Hong Kong bender for my 40th and Pete’s 50th birthday has entered the planning stage… » Read more: Balinese chicken salad
Archive for the ‘Asian’ category
Balinese chicken salad
April 27th, 2010Lions head meatballs
February 19th, 2010The greatest culinary crisis in my life came when I first started seeing a doctor of Traditional Chinese Medicine. This came after months of health problems that involved a large number of increasingly intrusive tests. When I finally got sick of being prodded and probed I took myself off to see Melbourne’s legendary Professor Lun Wong. » Read more: Lions head meatballs
Mango rice with sweet curry sauce
January 10th, 2010My kids (currently aged 3 and 5) are pretty good eaters. This is certainly not to say that they will eat anything or everything that’s put in front of them but they are interested, enthusiastic and comfortable with a wide variety of flavours and ways of eating. We all eat together most nights of the week and by and large I haven’t altered my way of cooking terribly much since we became parents. Sometimes with more challenging meals, I’ll make an easier dish to go with it or make a separate kid-friendly version just for them. I figure that this way they can be introduced a wide range of food types without the pressure of having to eat a whole plateful of it. Food fear and pressure are unwelcome guests at our table. » Read more: Mango rice with sweet curry sauce
Pork patties and pineapple salad
January 7th, 2010In keeping with the family food vibe bit of this blog, this is really one for the kids. We had LOTS of guests over this Christmas / New Year which of course meant lots of cooking and drinking and drinking and eating (more highlights from this later). I’m on a real South – east Asian bender at the moment and much of this involved uncharacteristically hallucinogenic levels of chili and so could not really be considered family food. » Read more: Pork patties and pineapple salad
Salted Chicken
December 7th, 2009There is a place on Russell Street (I know many of you know it),wedged unpromisingly between the porn shop and the disposals. It’s called Nam Loong and, on an analysis of cost to gastronomic return it is hands down my favourite Chinese restaurant. Pete introduced me to it when we first met nearly 18 years ago now, and he was introduced to it by his biological father who had been going there for god knows how many decades since he moved to Australia from Malaysia. » Read more: Salted Chicken
Cambodian lime and black pepper sauce
November 4th, 2009I haven’t done much traveling, but since the kids were born we have managed to get to south east Asia a couple of times. Our first trip was to Siem Reap in Cambodia, the town outside the temple complexes of Angkor. I loved the Cambodian food – very delicate and fragrant and not too heavy on the “big” flavours of ginger, chili and garlic (not that there’s anything wrong with that!). I also have to admit that I’m crazy for that whole Asian / European colonial thing – all amazing architecture, dark furniture and lazy ceiling fans which parts of Siem Reap have in abundance. Drinking huge iced glasses of sweet lime juice in the midday heat in this kind of environment is just my sort of decadence. » Read more: Cambodian lime and black pepper sauce
Vietnamese chicken (or tofu) and mango stir fry
November 3rd, 2009So mum and dad flew out to Singapore yesterday to stay with my brother. Dad is a south east asian stir fry master and in his absence I have kindly organised to babysit his favourite cookbook “Green Mangoes and Lemongrass” by Wendy Hutton and published by Periplus. Tonight I tried my first recipe out of this, a chicken stir fry with mangoes, cashews, snow peas and tomatoes. Basically it’s a very subtle and quite sophisticated sweet and sour and was very popular all around (most particularly with Alex (5) and I, I think). The pool of sauce at the bottom of the plate was an absolute sensation and finished with the taste of lime and black pepper which sent me straight back to Cambodia and memories of eating at a street stall in the pouring rain outside the Bayon temple. » Read more: Vietnamese chicken (or tofu) and mango stir fry
