Hai Au - Canley Vale

I actually went to Hai Au a while ago, and never had a chance to blog about it. Why? Errrrrr......I didn't actually know where I was.... *cough* I mean, I did get a lift from a friend to another friend's house. Then we jumped into another car and went somewhere where there was a detour and then it got dark and then I just got lost! *LoL* Plus my friend had no idea what the restaurant was called. She just knew how to get there!

Anyway, thanks to Google Maps and Streetview, I finally figured it was Hai Au! I rarely EVER come to this part of town, especially on a week day, ESPECIALLY at night. So I was quite surprised how many people were actually in the restaurant, including a huge party of about 15-20 people. It took me 30mins to realise that party of 15-20 people was actually my friend and her family!! haha

Anyway, because of the detour and us getting lost, I was ravenous by the time we got to the restaurant. Even though there were 3 of us, we insisted on order 4 main meals! Never let me order when hungry!

Firstly, let me explain that I rarely, if EVER have Vietnamese main meals. 95% of the time I end up getting Pho considering how much I love it. The other 5% will either be noodle salads or other noodle soups. This is probably the first time I fully remember ordering mains.


So I had no idea what we were really ordering when we got the pork, prawn and lotus root salad. What came out was quite different to what I expected. Expecting the standard lotus roots, I was wondering what the heck those sticks of white stuff were.

The white stuff is actually pickled lotus roots. If you look at the ends very VERY carefully, you will see the same holes you find in the normal lotus roots. This salad was unbelievably refreshing! I absolutely loved the crunch of the lotus roots with the pickled daikon and carrots. The acidity cuts through the fatty pork and goes perfect with seafood. I enjoyed it so much I bought a jar of the lotus roots as well! I just need to know how to use it! hehe

Sour fish soup

This is one of my favourite dishes when I went to Vietnam. Its got the lovely sweetness of seafood, sour tang and loads of herbs giving the soup a perfect balance. I loved mixing the broth with plain boiled rice and eating it just like that.

Stewed pork belly and eggs with coconut juice

I was surprised how small this dish was compared to the others, especially the price they were charging. Its nice, but I reckon I make a much better version ;) With that said, the pork was melting in your mouth. Don't forget to cut the egg open and let the yolk soak up all the sauce.

Hot and sour beef

Another nice dish. Not sure how Viet this is. I didn't really eat much of this because by the time it came out, I was stuffed to the brim! This is the problem when you order 4 mains for 3 people! hehe

Hai Au Restaurant
48a Canley Vale Rd
Canley Vale NSW 2166
Phone (02) 9724 9156


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Indochine Cafe - St James Arcade

One of the things I don't like about working in the CBD is that its always so crowded. Come lunchtime, people come pouring out of every building all wanting to eat at the same time. The foodcourts are always packed, making it impossible to have a relaxed lunch to catch up with friends. You also don't want to have to go to a restaurant and pay $30 for a meal when most of the time it takes 20mins for the food to come out.

My friend had stumbled upon Indochine ages ago, and suggested we go there and see if we can find a seat. Because of the location, the restaurant wasn't that full. We were able to get a seat away from the big tables giving us more privacy to catch up. Indochine, despite the name, serves Vietnamese food. The price is more than you'll pay at your standard Vietnamese restaurant, but you also get more service than you normally expect.

Bun thang
Combination shredded chicken, pork & egg with rice vermicelli soup - $14.90

My friend wasn't feeling well, and opted for a lighter noodle soup. The clear light broth was exactly what she needed and wanted. That is, until she tried my bowl!

Bun bo hue
Special spicy beef vermicelli soup - $14.90

Basically a spicy beef noodle soup. Generous slices of beef, noodles and herbs sitting in a spicy aromatic broth. Now my friend was getting food envy! hehe Her bowl tasted bland in comparison, so she had to spice it up with a bit of chilli and other sauces. Kinda defeated the whole light soup to calm the stomach theory.

The food at Indochine was nice, not spectacular compared to some of the other cheap no nonsense Vietnamese restaurants you find around Sydney. However, its also one of the very few places in the city I can think of that is suitable for a Business lunch and has the ability to seat a big group of people. Its also spacious and quiet enough to allow a few friends to catch up without people hovering around you waiting for your seat.

Indochine Cafe
St James Arcade
Level Ground, Shop 14, 111 Elizabeth Street St
Sydney NSW 2000
http://www.indochinecafe.com.au/


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Home cooking mega post

I had an impromptu dinner party last night to show a few friends how to play mah jong. As I uploaded the photos onto my computer, I realised that:

1. I forgot to take a photo of the main, and
2. I took a photo of the exact same dish earlier
3. That photo was already processed along with a heap of other stuff I've been meaning to blog about

So here we are, my mega post:

Antipasto platter

Clockwise: Grilled Haloumi cheese, grilled eggplant and zucchini, shaved beechwood ham, semi sundried tomatoes, shaved danish salami, mixed olives, serrano prosciutto.

Centre: The wonderful wonderful sweet tomato and pistachio relish I got from Orange

All served with warm crusty bread straight from the oven.

Cabonara/Boscaiola pasta

This is basically what I served. Time was of the essence, less cooking, more mah jong. This was a super simple dish to make. Sautee bacon, mushroom and a touch of garlic. Add pasta, beaten eggs, cream and parmesan cheese. Toss and serve.

Stir fried glutinous rice

This is something I've always loved getting at yum cha, but they always use so much oil that it makes me feel sick after eating it. The home made version is super quick and super simple. Not much difference between making a fried rice, just a little more prep work.

Curry chicken and rice

This is the ULTIMATE comfort food for me. Curry chicken, soft potatoes, sweet onions on boiled rice. I've never grown up eating cereal and toast for breakfast, instead, I sometimes have a big bowl of curry chicken and rice for breakkie!

Thai noodle salad

I'm not sure how "Thai" this really is, but it was what I was aiming for. As it's nearing summer, I think I'm going to start making this for my Bentos as well. I soak some glass noodles in hot water, then rinsed with cold water and drained. I then browned some mince and prawns before letting them cool. In the meantime, chop up some tomatoes, cucumber, coriander, onions, chilli. The sauce was made simply from fish sauce, chilli, garlic, lemon juice and sugar. Toss it all together and leave it for a few minutes before eating.

Potato and bacon bake

Wayyy too simple to make. I like to sautee my bacon first whilst I slice some potatoes and onions thinly. Layer potatoes, bacon, onion and a sprinkle of cheese. Finish with a layer of cheese ontop. Pour in a mixture of cream, pepper and a little broth (I like to add chicken broth so its not so rich). Bake until potatoes are tender and you have a lovely golden crust on the top.

Central American Chilli with chocolate

Not much I can say about this, except that I used this recipe. This was my first time making a chilli, and it turned out really really well. The addition of chocolate gives this dish a deep complex flavour. I probably ruined it by eating it with supreme cheese doritos! lol

Potato and bacon pizza

I made this pizza as a part of a onling cooking comp. I didn't win, but did end up near the top end of the scale! This was basically a twist on a traditional Italian potato pizza, with the addition of bacon. You can't go wrong with adding bacon to things can you?

Chorizo, mushroom and prawn pizza

The competition only allowed one entry. But I couldn't decide what to enter so I made this pizza as well, but in the end I submitted the potato and bacon one. Basically just mushrooms, prawns and pan fried slices of chorizo topped with cheese.

Pan fried fish with home made wedges and salad

I was running late one day and the local fish monger closed, but I had a real hankering for fish. I ended up grabbing a few basa fillets from Woolies, even though they were frozen, they still tasted really nice. The fish was panfried with salt and pepper, and when the fish was almost cooked, I threw in some butter, garlic and parsley before deglazing the pan with lemon. Wedges were tossed with garlic powder, paprika, salt and pepper.

Fridge soup

I don't really know what to call this, but it was basically whatever I could find from the fridge thrown together. I chopped up some bacon (yes, I've been using ALOT of bacon) and sauteed them in a pan with garlic, carrots and potatoes. Add water, chopped tomato, asparagus, beans and mushrooms. I also added some red lentils to thicken the soup up. I seasoned the soup with salt, pepper and a dash of paprika. I could not believe how flavoursome this soup was. It was as if I had made it a whole leg of ham! It was brilliant!

Day 9 - The accident

We're up at 7am, and out the door by 8:30am. The plan was to find the first restaurant we see and grab breakfast there before heading to the Notre Dame church. Unfortunately, theres nothing open, and the few places I did find open, the 2 girls didn't think their bowels could take the risk. So there goes my idea of squatting on the street and eating.

We get to the Notre Dame church and take a few photos:



We head back to the hotel, in order to find food. Thankfully we walk past a Pho24 before we pass out from hunger.

Pho Duc Biet - Combination Beef Noodle soup

Ice soya bean and avocado shake

We get back to the hotel and relax a bit before we realise that we never ate the watermelon my sister bought. So she whips out her trusty chopping board and knife and starts hacking away. So imagine 3 chicks crowded around a bathroom sink, shoving a whole watermelon down their throat, 15mins before checkout.

Completely stuffed, we grab our bags and head off to the hotel.

The flight back wasn't too bad. We get home around 6pm and we're starving. After a quick shower, we all head off to a local hawker centre for dinner. The hawker centre is next to a playground. So whilst we let the kids run wild, the adults start ordering the food:

Sugar cane and lime juice

Hainese Chicken Rice

Boneless chicken feet

Chicken congee

Rojak

Satay chicken sticks

Laksa

After dinner, we go to the local bakery and load up on freshly made bread and buns for breakfast tomorrow. The traffic is atrocious and at a complete standstill. We wait at a park around the corner whilst my brother in law gets the car.

The kids are having great fun on the monkey bars whilst I stand there chatting with my sister, when next thing you know, my niece is on the floor. She had leaped up to try and grab the monkey bars and missed. She basically landed hands first onto the ground. She's screaming and crying like I've never seen before. My sister tries to calm her down as my brother in law pulls up. We jump into the car, and my niece is still screaming and crying the whole way back. I know she can sometimes be a drama queen, but we've never seen her behave this way before.

We get my brother in law to drop us off at the local medical centre and get her checked out by the doctor. The doctor suspects she's got a fracture in her wrist and probably sprained her other wrist and both elbows. He recommends that we go to a hospital and get it x-rayed. Meanwhile, my niece is in incredible pain. The doctor tried to find a sling to put her arm in, but would you believe that a medical centre doesn't have a sling? I ended up using my cardigan and turning it into a makeshift sling for my niece.

We drive straight to the hospital where it was a massive wait. It took us close to 2 hours before they would even see my niece (Even though 15people who arrived AFTER us got attended to first). And only because one of the other mothers saw my niece in so much pain that she went and begged one of the nurses for us. We finally get to see the doctor, and it took him less than 5 mins to send us to the x-ray department. And it was only then that they gave her any pain killers.

We get the x-ray done and then its another 30min wait for the doctor to check the x-ray. Unfortunately, she does have a fracture in her wrist. Luckily, its only a hairline fracture and won't require putting her arm in a cast. We go out and wait another 15mins to get her arm bandaged up and put into a sling before we're sent home. The whole process took over 3hrs and we didn't get home until about midnight. The bad thing is, its her first day back at school tomorrow. :(

Day 8 - The shopping spree and night river cruise

Oh the painnnnnnnnnnn! I wake up and find bruises on my arms and thighs from that damn massage last night. UGH. We open our safe and take all our money out. Today its all about retail therapy, I'm sure I'll feel better soon. We walk outside the hotel and found a shop close by for breakfast:

Steamed prawn rice paper

Steamed pork rice paper (My all time favourite!)

Mass amounts of herbs and veggies to go with the rice paper

My mud river crab noodle soup (I think its soft shell crab?)

Asking a local tour company where the lacquer factories were, they told us to go to the war remnants museum, and its just down the road from there. We cab it to the museum where we duck in for a quick tour.

To be honest, 5mins into there, it was just too shocking and depressing for us.

Landmines

Hand grenades

We left in search for the lacquer factory, where we were hoping to pick up a bargain or two. We ask for directions and end up going in circles for 20mins when we spot a tourist information centre. We go in to ask for directions, and they basically told us the closest lacquer factory was in Hanoi?? Excuse me??? They managed to find 3 lacquer shops and gave us the address, so we thought we'd hunt them down incase its a language barrier thing.

We get into a cab and find ourselves about 5mins walk from our hotel. And the address she gave us was to a major shopping centre, almost like Myers. My sister was about to hit someone. I thought the best thing to do in this situation is to drag her to Ben Thanh Markets for some retail therapy.

Along the way, we pick up a huge range of tshirts for the kids. I also stopped my sister paying 4 times the amount for a hammock. Why did she need a hammock.....thats another story. We get to Ben Thanh Market, and 5secs into the markets, I'm bargaining again. I taught my sister the code I use with Moishii. "I think BLAH would like that", which is my sign to start bargaining.

I picked up a really nice embroidered bag for 100,000 dong, which is around $6.50AUD. I spotted a similar bag at a different store, with a much more detailed and elaborate embroidery. I offered them 10,000 dong and was dead set on the price. 5 mins of bargaining and I walk away from the shop, only to have the woman come chasing me down. And still, I would only offer 100,000 dong. That is until she said "Miss, please, could you give me just another 10,000 dong so I can make a profit?". That's when it occurred to me, that she was asking me to give her another 65c. Of course I gave it to her, but when you're dealing in hundreds of thousands, you forget how much it actually costs you when you convert it.

We continue through the market, going nuts buying triples if not quadruples of everything. After awhile, we had to run across the street to an air conditioned cafe to have a break before we could continue:

Iced ginger tea

After we had a few drinks, it was back into the market for the rest of our shopping. We ended up buying about 4kgs of Vietnamese coffee between the 3 of us. We started going a bit nuts and just bought random crap. Chopsticks, coasters, paintings, magnets and anything else we could bargain down, we bought. I even got the Thai fisherman's pants??? Why?????

We're eventually so loaded up with goods, we could not physically walk through the narrow walkways of the market. It was a sign to go grab lunch.

My workmate highly highly HIGHLY recommended Pho 2000 to me. And that she had 3 meals a day there one day because she loved the food that much. We walk into Pho 2000, and its just as she described, Bill Clinton's photos all over the wall. And the pho? It was REALLY REALLY good:

We're exhausted by this stage, so we hop into a cab back to the hotel where we collapse into a heap. I quickly grab a shower and get ready for tonight. We had booked a night river cruise tour which takes you to a cultural centre with a traditional Vietnamese wedding demo.

Only me and my sister would be going on the tour, and they pick us up and take us to the local pier. We get out and next thing you know, my sister is shoving me infront of the boat taking photos:

Looks good aye?

Then the tour guide pointed out to us that we're at the wrong boat..... THIS was our boat:


It was a 1.5hr boat ride to the cultural centre, and along the way, all you can see are the various shacks that people live in. Its quite shocking for me, to see the most developed city in Vietnam to look like this.




We get to the cultural centre, and not without drama. My sister has a phobia of water at night, particularly dark water (Long story). So as it got later, she starts freaking out and I end up sitting on the floor of the boat with her.

We pull up the pier, and she practically shoves me off the boat. Meanwhile, she's got her eyes closed and both her hands on my shoulder so I could guide her. Except she kept stepping on me, and we're walking on this rickety pier that is about 1m wide. I almost fell in and took her with me!

We walk into the cultural centre and we see a massive outdoor grilling area. There was also many wok tossing stations etc. We thought we were in for a treat with all you can eat:


Unfortunately, we get ushered passed the stalls and into a hut where we sit for 30mins drinking tea. Only then did we get to go into the theatre to watch a reenactment of a Vietnamese wedding.

Opening dance

Picking up the bride

"Consummating" the marriage

After the show, we get shown our table where we get a "traditional" Vietnamese meal...we'll see about that.

Green salad?

Mushroom and white fungus seafood soup

Crumbed fried tofu

Fresh and fried spring rolls

Fish.....and chips....

Fried cheese stuff beef and glutinous rice balls

Steamed lotus leaf fried rice

It was fried rice, wrapped in lotus leaf and steamed. Errrrr....yeah....

Cauliflower and prawn stir fry

Fresh fruit

Luckily, it was only a 20min bus ride back to the hotel, rather than the 1.5hr boat ride. I'm sure my sister would've laid face down and petrified on the floor. We get back to the hotel around 10pm, and we went to Caravelle hotel where we had cocktails and enjoy the night view.

We finished the night up around 1am since we were leaving tomorrow.