Perhaps this wasn’t the best week to document all food consumed as I’ve been getting ready to go to India for a holiday. Therefore I haven’t been to the market or bought anything interesting, as I usually would have.

Monday May 31st, 2010
Today I went to work and lunched with 3 colleagues at Truc Bach Lake.

Breakfast: Fresh pineapple and mango, orange juice, coffee

Lunch: Pho Cuon: lettuce, beef, rice noodles, carrot and green papaya, Fried noodles: onion, beef, garlic, green vegetables, egg, rice noodles, Fried Sticky Rice: mung beans, sticky rice. Truc Bach Lake.

Afternoon snack: Banana, pineapple, watermelon, rambutan, chocolate and dried apricot biscuit.

Dinner: Dahl (onion, spices, ginger, chilli, masoor dahl, tomatoes), 2 toasted wheat tortillas, cucumber and red capsicum salad.

Dessert: Frozen yoghurt (nothing fancy, just a pot of sweetened vinamilk yoghurt bunged in the freezer), the last chocolate and dried apricot biscuit

Tuesday 1st of June
Last half day of work before my 2 month holiday. Aww yeah!

Breakfast: coffee, natural cereal with milk (pepitas, rolled oats, sunflower seeds, sultanas)

Morning tea: Yoghurt and avocado (bo dum sua chua)

Lunch: pho xao (beef, onion, tomato bean sprouts, greens, garlic, ginger, pho noodles, schallots, pickled cucumbers). Eaten on Xuan Dieu st.

Afternoon Snack: Dahl (onion, spices, ginger, chilli, masoor dahl, tomatoes), 1 toasted wheat tortilla, 3 rambutans, watermelon, pineapple.

Dinner: Viet BBQ on Ma May st. Beef, onion, carrot, eggplant, tomato, beans, spring onions all grilled up and dipped in a chilli, salt, calamansi sauce and eaten with banh mi.

Dessert: Chocolate celano, acornetto type ice cream, pretty similar, but missing the chocolate cone at the bottom. What? It is freaking HOT here!

Pho Chien Trung and Pho Cuon.

Wednesday the 2nd of June
HOLIDAYS!

Breakfast: small bowl of natural muesli with milk, black coffee.

Lunch: Bun Bo Nam Bo (beef, rice noodles, bean sprouts, lettuce, herbs, peanuts, fried shallot, lemongrass, garlic, chilli sauce)

Lunch Dessert: Everything che. And I mean everything! Jelly, grass jelly, red beans, lotus seeds, funny sticky balls with sesame seeds suspended throughout, coconut, ice.

Afternoon tea: Raisin snail, fruit (pineapple, mango, watermelon, rambutan), milky tea.

Dinner: Salad with sauteed bean shoots, bacon, garlic, cucumber, tomato, capsicum, coriander, bread.

After dinner I was summoned to the pub by my Mum to meet Luke Nguyen. I sat, chatted and drank a beer.

Thursday the 3rd of June

Breakfast: Coffee, orange juice, small bowl of cereal.

Lunch: At the local Com Binh Danh shack: Rice with salty peanuts, stir fried garlic beans, tomato and potato thing, bun cha pork patties, stir fried chinese cabbage.

Lunch Dessert: Sua Chua Nep Cam (yoghurt with fermented red sticky rice)

Afternoon tea: mango, watermelon, rambutan

Dinner: brie, smoked beef, salad (tomato, red capsicum, sauteed garlic bean sprouts, cucumber) with tortillas.

Dessert: Frozen pot of yoghurt, slab of very average and exceedingly rubbery chocolate and zucchini cake

Friday the 4th of June
I cannot believe it is Friday already. I still have so much to do!

Breakfast: Mango and natural muesli with milk, black coffee, orange juice

Lunch: Toasted tortilla sandwich with brie and smoked beef, tomato, avocado. Lychees.

Afternoon tea: Milky tea, Sua Chua Nep Cam (yoghurt with fermented red sticky rice).

Dinner: Salad: bean shoots, garlic, tomato, red capsicum, avocado, carrot. toasted wheat tortillas.

Dessert: Frozen pot of yoghurt.

Pho Xao on Xuan Dieu

Saturday the 5th of June

Breakfast: Natural muesli with milk, black coffee, orange juice. Mountain of Lychees.

Morning tea: Mum and I stopped by a second hand shop down the street. It is basically a mountain of clothes inside an ice cream shop. Totally awesome, am I right? Along with some great pre-loved clothes we had a sugar cane juice. Pleasing taste, some monsterism.

Lunch: Pho cuon, again. Lettuce, herbs, beef, garlic, rice noodles. Pho Chien Trung, egg fried noodles with beef: beef, egg, onion, choi sum, tomato, rice noodles.

Afternoon tea: Sua Chua Nep Cam (yoghurt with fermented red sticky rice), sweet cereal with yoghurt

Dinner: Eggplant Parmiagana (eggplant, tomato sauce, basil, mozzarella and parmeasan) – surprisingly tasty. Side salad, though I only ate the cucumber and tomato, the rest was covered in a scarily pink mayonnaise.

Sunday the 6th of June

Breakfast: Natural muesli with milk, black coffee, orange juice.

Lunch: White cloud vegetarian. Brown rice with beans, steamed cabbage and tomato, fried corn cakes (so good), tomato and cucumber with tomato and this tasty but strange seaweed that looks a little bit like green peppercorns, omelette filled with mushrooms. Tea

Afternoon snack: Prunes, tortilla toasted with brie, smoked beef and tomato, chocolate celano ice cream

Dinner:green tea, iced lime juice Farewell dinner with Mum at a local (and packed) Japanese restaurant. Edamame (super salty), tempura fish and vegetables (onion, eggplant, green capsicum, floury sweet potato, carrot), teriyaki chicken and rice, miso soup.

Conclusion:

The actual food that I ate in the past week cannot be compared to the week I documented in 2008. This is because I am now living in a different hemisphere, instead of rugging up and eating mandarins and baked pasta, I am shedding clothes and eating tropical fruit and salads.

- I am a creature of habit when it comes to breakfast. I wake up ridiculously hungry and boil the kettle sleepily, stomach growling.

Out of 21 meals:

- 11 were vegetarian meals

- 9 were eaten out: 9 (compared to 5 last time)

- 7 were Vietnamese food: 7

- 5 were cooked at home (Last time I cooked 7)

- and I ate leftovers once (compared to 3 times in my documented week in May 2010).

There is the spectacular Chocolate Mousse and wonderful caramels from the new Delicious Days book that I won (won! me!), as well as the abundance of organic produce at the Lismore Organic Markets.

But I am on holidays, soon to be in Vietnam, so stay tuned for spicy delights!

Yeah, I know, I’m supposed to know all about it, but that TAFE course was years ago, and I was never good enough to cook meat in the restaurant – too much responsibility for me to handle, I presume. But I don’t remember which cuts are good for what, especially as everyone seems to call the same things something different.
Anyway, I chose rump, and racked my memory (and the internet) for pointers. So, some steak rules:

- Let meat come up to room temperature before cooking.

- During cooking, only turn it once.

- REST IT! In a warm place for at least 5 mins, preferably longer, after cooking.

I had read alot about salting the meat, and because rump is flavourful but can be tough I thought I would give this technique a try. It seems the opposite of everything that I have been taught about steak, but boy does it work.

I massaged the salt in, left it while I prepared some veges (roasted sweet potato, and potato, green beans and mushrooms for sauce), then washed and dried the meat thoroughly and slipped it into a hot, oiled pan. The smell and the sizzle bought F running. The idea of the salt is to tenderise and season the inside of the steak through some fancy chemistry, and I admit, it worked a charm. Tender enough to cut with a butter knife the steak didn’t even require the mushroom sauce I made for it (I’m glad I was too lazy to make Cafe de Paris Butter).

I removed the cooked steak to rest and added a little water (I would have added wine, though I doubt the Rose we drank would have done this rich sauce justice) to the same pan to get all the beef cooking flavour into the sauce. To that I added 1/2 a chopped onion and a few cloves of garlic, then a whopping pile of sliced mushrooms and some seasoning. Cook these down until soft and stir in a lump of butter and any extra steak juice and spoon it over the steak.

What else can I say about this steak, other than try it. TRY IT! This meal was a revelation, many vegetables, no fancy seasoning or technique and sweet potato, did I mention the sweet potato? No? Well I’m sure that you’ll hear about it soon, because in tackling steak and the old ‘Meat and three Veg’ I rediscovered sweet potato (now I just have to find something interesting to do with it).

It is my turn to cook dinner. Early evening, on holidays, relaxing. Its a few years ago. I hear the roar of the old motorbike and a lug hits the back veranda. I go out to investigate and everything I asked for is present and accounted for, freshly harvested.

Earlier Dad had asked me what produce I wanted, then at the very last minute he picks it all and speeds it back to the house. In a few minutes it will be prepared, cooked and eaten.

Now I live 700kms away, so the process isn’t so easy, and the produce isn’t so wonderfully fresh, but when it arrives it feels like christmas.

Last week Dad called and asked what I would like brought down, see, this time he was driving to Sydney, so space was not an issue. I asked for avocados, garlic, asparagus. “Sorry”, he said, “the asparagus hasn’t started yet”. So I was happily surprised when a handful of impossibly fresh thin spears arrived. “The asparagus started two days ago”, he explained.

When I was young, it was an avocado farm. I took them for granted, during the season anyone who visited left with bags bursting with these wonky orbs of deliciousness. When I left, I missed them dearly unable to bring myself to pay $2 for one.

This garlic reeks. Wonderfully. Dad didn’t grow this, he exchanged something for it at the organic market where he sells all his produce.

I left the beetroot and nubbly lemons, I had more than I could carry, and now to figure out what to do with my lucky haul.

The past few weeks the strawberries have been divine. Heralding the beginning of spring and on sale everywhere. Strawberries, which all too often disappoint, are packed with flavour and unbelievably fragrant.

Standing in the fruit shop, nose hovering about the air holes in the plastic punnets, I have almost swooned on more than one occasion as this seasons offering are wonderfully aromatic. Many punnets have come home with me, to be eaten simply sliced alongside rich chocolately desserts, or paired with banana and mixed through yoghurt, sultanas and rolled oats for a simple and quick breakfast. I have yet to actually cook anything with them. These specimens are just too perfect to mess with.