Favourite cuisines, bursting freezers and return of the mojo…
Dec 16th, 2007 by Dani
What is your favourite cuisine? That is not a rhetorical question, I really want to know, so please tell.
Mine, without a doubt, is Vietnamese. Perfect food. Asia meets France, what could possibly go wrong? I’ve just borrowed Into the Vietnamese Kitchen from the library and I NEED a copy of my own. Not too sure where I heard about it, maybe Sticky Rice? Anyway, by the time I’d flicked through I had a little scrap of paper in probably 95% of pages denoting recipes I simply must try. So thank you Andrea Nguyen for returning my cooking mojo.
With pho lust in my soul I abandoned the Bread Winner and Ankle Biters yesterday for a midday onslaught on Preston Market. It’s crazy, possibly dangerous but well worth the effort.
Wes the butcher starts to auction off his meat at around midday on Saturday’s. It’s a case of sharpen your elbows and muscle your way into the crowd of Islanders, Greeks, Italians and the odd WASP. Trays of meat get plonked on the scales and Wes starts his auction talk, “$55 going for $40, $30, $25″ at which point all interested parties jump up waving arms with money as high as possible. He works through different cuts reasonably methodically and sometimes it means standing through endless trays of sausage, marinated ribs (best in store apparently), burgers and chops until he gets to whatever it is your heart desires.
In my case it’s the beef. Massive big chunks, 5 - 6kg of gorgeous rump for $20 - $20. I can make a LOT of pho with that. Plus nice big rolled roasts that I can easily get 4 or 5 roast dinners out of, massive trays of nice lean mince for $10. It was a rough half an hour but I spent $50 yesterday and came home with a total of 12kg of lovely, lovely beef. I then struck it lucky around the corner and manged to get just over a kilo of Otway free range diced pork for $10. Unheard of value and perfect for an upcoming Viet feast.
From carnivore heaven, I launched myself on the Asian grocery. Bliss. It is simply not possible to enter that store with a pram or free range young children. So I took advantage of my lonesome state and bought up big. Fresh noodles, fresh tofu, dried noodles in all shapes and sizes, dried mushrooms, black fungus, shitake, white fungus. Tins of straw mushrooms. Soy sauce, hoisin sauce, Chinese cooking wine. Rice paper wrappers. Dried shrimp. Rice, rice flour, glutinous rice flour, tapioca starch, corn starch. Lemon grass, coriander, Vietnamese basil, Chinese broccoli.
Child free shopping time used well.
After all that, plus quickly approaching Christmas, both my freezers are filled to bursting. Beef, smoked salmon (i bought a side for Christmas from a local wholesaler), berries, bolognese sauce (made a big batch yesterday with Wes’ mince), butter, milk, beef, watermelon icy poles (the kids love them in hot weather), pork and beef. I could really use a third freezer at times like this. Lucky that mojo has returned!
Fantastic! Can’t wait to see what you come up with. I know nuffin about Vietnamese cooking. Some quick low-fat healthy recipes please! xx
Hmmm, quick and Vietnamese aren’t the best of friends. Unless you get a good supply of stocks in the freezer, then some of the soups could be quick. Good one meal dish type soups. Yum. Once you try it, there’s no turning back!
I love cooking Chinese. I love the miles of preparation, and the short cooking times. i also love Italian, and German cakes, and French cooking books (expecially Elizabeth David), and Thai. Enough?
Mmm, Thai is about 3 on my list and French 4. Yum Cha is actually as much a favourite (or possibly more) than Vietnamese. I’m just not a fan of cooking it myself.