Shop 329-330 Level 2, Harbourside Shopping Centre

Located side by side with the famous Criniti’s Italian Restaurant in the heart of Darling Harbour, Thai Foon restaurant have a tough job to attract the innocent-no-clue walk-in customers. But for those who know, a reservation is the only way to guarantee nice outdoor table (undercover) over-viewing the famous Sydney Darling Harbour.

Sydney skyline and Darling Harbour over your table

Before The Main

Delicious Spring Roll

The table will greet you with 2 stacked platea a la Thai, one on top another. The top (smaller) one is supposed to be use for eating Entree. And when you finish with it just the waiter will take it to get ready with the main.

You can order variety of Entree from the classic spring roll to the signature Thai dishes such as “Money Bag” (similar to chinese’s fried wonton only different look), from the chunky chicken satay on skewer to the exotic Papaya Salad (“Som Tum”). Yes, vegetarian entree is also available.

Tasty Coconut Milk Soup

Our entree order come very fast, it’s literally 1 minutes flat and we are chrunching the yummy Money Bag and Spring Roll.

While you can order your favorite drink, the waiters and waitresses also have a hawk eye to maintain your complimentary chilled water always full in your glass. They use the surveilance to check your entree as well. As soon as we finish the entree, they come to our table and prepare it for the main.

Have to Come Twice

Unique Basil Fried Noodle

Just by looking to the menu on the card, I will recommend to come at least twice to satisfy your curiosity on what is being offered. Really. Only a meal will not enough to get the decent try.

We first know this restaurant around 9 years ago and never disappointed us. Every time we come back we always got a dilema to order the previous one that we know it’s very good, or try the new one. Fifty – fifty is our compromise.

One thing that always satisfy my taste bud: the gorgeous BBQ Beef with special sauce. This dishes they call “The Crying Tiger”. It’s definitely one of the nicest dish they have. Not just ordinary barbecued meat.

The Gorgeous Crying Tiger

Yes, I agree the price is not the cheapest. But with the premium vantage point, it’s definitely worth the treat. Remember, sometime you get dissapointed to pay such premium meal with only half decent food and very stingy portion, well, try it yourself, you will find the food is really also premium in taste and quality with such generous content.

Want more ? Check out their website at http://www.thaifoon.com.au/ for further detail and offer, including perhaps  free parking !

7 Spatha for Thai Foon

Eat to Live

Want to know the real meaning of “eat to live”? Just try to go to hunger-stricken country where children and adult died because they cannot afford or cannot have enough food to eat an sustain healthy condition. This is the real unfortunate condition that you can talk about “eat to live”.

“Eat to live” implies survival and could be interpreted as: just eat anything as long as you eat. Is that the real message that all those marketers wants ?

I guess the message that they want to convey is “do not overeat, just eat enough for your body need so you don’t become overweight” -or- “Eat the right stuff, if you continue to eat this you will not live that long”.  Then, this is exactly the opposite of what “eat to live” means.

Live to Eat

Yes, we are all should do “live to eat”. No, not encourage you to become professional food taster/critique – although nothing wrong with that profession – it’s actually one of exquisite profession you can choose, but we should understand the true meaning of “Live to Eat”.

If you live to eat, you will only choose food that delicious, with high quality ingredient and will not bother with all those junk food. Isn’t it ? Imagine that you are the king of some far far away land that only live to eat. Will you bother to eat low quality food? Of course not! Will you select that food that you eat carefully and intentionally so you can get the best of it ? You betcha !

And, even if you only live to eat, it does not means that you don’t care about your health. It’s actually the opposite. Since you know exactly, for example that the next 2 weeks you will only eat fatty food, then you can anticipate with more exercise. In order to be able to eat properly, then you need to be healthy (sick person cannot eat that many choice of food, isn’t it ?) and vice versa, the food that you eat should make you sick as well.

“Live to Eat” implies choices and abundance. You have the ability to choose whatever you want to eat and of course, the amount. Is this exactly what everybody should do ? Yes, of course.  Once you understand the gist of this concept, then you should take control of what you eat , when you it it and how much you will eat it. Remember that you cannot eat too much as the next meal you need to eat another round of quality food…. And so on, and so on…

And that is what supposed to be happening all around us.

Remember, eating one kind of food as much as possible continuous is not “live to eat”, it is actually “eat to die”.

So, change your limiting belief ! You need to enjoy life and enjoy all the food along the way.  You need to “live to eat” without giving up your health. Choose only quality food that you are happy with, which also make you continuously healthy – that’s the true meaning of “live to eat”.

Marvelous  Human Body

As conclusion, remember that human body is marvelous system. It actually self regulate and adjust to the environment that it is in. So, make use of it but do not abuse it. Eat all the food in the world – try it all, but eat it in moderation. And just like drinking alcohol, you need to know your own limit. Do not over stuff your self with food as you will not be ready for the next eating time ! (You live to eat , remember?).

Happy Eating !

Simple Soy Chili BBQ Sauce

Ingredient

Ingridients for Simple Soy Chili Sauce

• Chili, you can choose the kind of chili that give you max fire or less fire (pictured is one of the hottest chili around – make sure you are  ready for it)
• Red Onion
• Sweet (thick) Soy Sauce
• Salt to taste
• Vegetable or other cooking oil

Equipment

• Pan Fry
• Spatula
• Stove

Method

1. Chop chili and red onion about the same proportion (50 – 50)
2. Heat small amount of cooking oil on your pan
3. Put all chopped chili and red onion on the pan. Saute until they are soft and blended together. Make sure don’t overcook until it’s too dry…
4. Put all while hot in a small bowl
5. Pour the sweet soy sauce on top of the mixture, mix well. (The oil and some juice from the onion/chili will make the soy sauce not too thick)
6. Ready to be served !

Serving Suggestion

Simple Soy Chili Sauce

• Eat the sauce with meat such lamb, beef, pork or even chicken as “topping” sauce
• You can make the sauce for your frid tofu as well
• I love to eat the sauce with bull eye egg on a plate of steam rice. Yumm!

That’s all ! not difficult isn’t it ?

6 Spatha for Simple Soy Chilli Sauce

Rose Gonzaga did that well, when we force her to reveal her secret recipe below. Take note and print it  before this post will be forcefully remove after cease and desist letter from her solicitor

Tasty Spinach Dip

Tasty Spinach Dip Recipe

Ingredient

• one red onion
• a tub of sour cream (~250 grams)
• “French Onion” Simmer soup from Continental
• a box of frozen chopped spinach

Spinach Dip Ingredients

Equipment

Stove, Simmer pan, Knife, Spoon

Method

1. 

   Chopped Red Onion

   Defrost the spinach (From your supermarket fridge, don’t put it back to the freezer, just let it thaw while you are ready to cook…)
2. Chopped the red onion into small pieces. Half should be enough.
3. Make the simmer soup. Put all sachet into a simmer pan and put only 200 ml/cc of water (instead of the recommended 1 liters). The reason is you don’t want the dip sauce become to watery or runny. If it turn out to be too thick you can put additional water later.
4. Put the chopped onion into the soup and heat the pan until it almost boiled. Stir the soup gently to blend the onion flavor into the soup..
5. Squeeze the excess water from the spinach and put them as well into the simmer pan into the soup. Stir well.
   The heat from the pan will help molten the excess frost dust.
6. Put now the sour cream , one spoon at a time until all thick enough and well blended.
7. Remove from heat and serve cold.

French Onion Simmer Soup with Red Onion and Chopped Spinach

Serving Suggestion

• Get a bread roll and serve the dip on it (pictured)
• Enjoy it with your favorite corn or potato chip (pictured)
• Put it as your tasty salad dressing

And don’t forget, do not tell anybody about this webpage. Otherwise they will know your secret.

Enjoy your break !

Recipe by Rose Gonzaga.

7 Spatha for Tasty Spinach Dip

Yes, what you “know” could be different each time a new scientific result is published. And which one is the real truth is anybody guess. The question is now how we take all of those “knowledge”….

Bacon and Egg, Good or Bad ?

Bacon, Egg and Milk….

That’s probably the ingredient of most people in western civilization. Since I have mentioned them, let’s take a quick look about some controversy around these common foods.

Bacon

• Against: Full of fat, high in cholesterol. It’s cured meat, hence contains nitrates that may link to COPD (Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease), also pancreatic cancer. It also has high amount of sodium.
• Pro: About half of the fat contains in bacon is monounsaturated fat. (Unsaturated fat is considered “good fat” and should be part of your healthy diet) So bacon will lower cholesterol level. And, no, the nitrate on the bacon is the one protects our heart from heart attack. Some even dubbed bacon as “super food”.

Egg

• Against: High Cholesterol especially the yolk.
• Pro: Contains all vitamin and mineral essential to live (remember, chicken egg can be a chick?), actually lower cholesterol (because low in saturated fat) and lower the risk of heart attack, good for the eyes.

Milk

• Pro: This is the most common what we hear about milk: healthy food, “perfect” nutrient, full of calcium – good for bones and teeth, protection against osteoporosis, reducing heart disease risk, even help burns fat, etc..  Some of the keys references is here.
• Against:  Milk is the worst choice source of Calcium as it also rich in protein. This animal protein produce acidic ash (as opposed to alkaline ash if protein is sourced from plant/vegetables). To neutralize, the body will withdraw Calcium from bone which will weaken it, i.e.: osteoporosis. (So, causing osteoporosis instead of protecting us from any). Furthermore, Cow’s milk is for cow, not for human and some other consequences.

There are many other contradiction that will never end to discus here: Is fat good or bad ? Is vegetarian good or bad ? Butter or Margarine ? Soy milk good or bad? and so on. I am not to convince you that one argument is better than the other as they will show you the corresponding data for each that support their conclusion, my only point is: if even the expert cannot agree on things that they are expert in, how do we take it ? What we are supposed to do, then ?

The fact is, your body will know….

Yes, this is actually an easy and the ultimate solution. Human body is the most complicated system that even human themselves have not fully understand it all. And to make it more complex, every single one of us have unique (not exactly the same) capability and behaviour of our internal system of the body. Agree?

Some of us have certain sensitivity of particular food, other people maybe do not have it all. Yes, this is makes medicine or nutrients science become complicated as they try to generalize everything into one common theory that can be studied more systematically. And of course there are some commercial interest as well: milk industry will say milk is good, egg association will say egg is good and bacon industry will say that bacon is good. That’s pretty easy to understand, right?

But, in my opinion, the safest thing to do for each of you is to listen to your own body. If certain type of food giving you problem, no matter what other people say, it’s not good for your body. On the contrary, even a food is said to be bad, if you already consumed it for years and did not giving you problem, then it’s not bad for you. As easy as that.

Why didn’t Eskimo/Inuit who eat blubber, raw meat and fish did not usually get heart attack because of their eating? (Try to eat the same for some long period if you dare, I bet it will deteriorate our health) – that’s because their bodies have adjusted to the culture and custom. Probably if they eat less than that they might get sick. This is just to show how marvellous is our own human body.

Remember:

1. Because it’s natural (not man-made, from nature), it does not mean it’s good for you: poisonous mushroom, venomous snake, etc.
2. Because it’s being processed, it doesn’t mean the natural form is better for you: almond (poisonous without heat treated as contains cyanide), bacon(!), etc

Listen to Your Own Body

Listen to your body means you know yourself what’s good or bad for you. If you don’t know, then just try. As long as you take it gently, your body will tell you whether that particular food compatible or not with your existing system. Yes, it is beneficial also to know the common knowledge, but make sure you don’t get obsessed by it.

The fact that somebody publish the latest research contrary with what you do, it does not have any effect at all to your existing body. For example, I have been drinking coffee the whole life and have no particular problem with my health at all. Now that somebody conclude their research that drinking coffee is very bad causing this and that, will that mean that I suddenly get sick ? Of course, not… If you wait enough, the next research will tell you that drinking coffee is the best thing that you could do… See, it will never end…

So, remember you are supposed to be the most knowledgeable about your own body. Not your doctor. Your doctor only say something or advice something based on the knowledge (remember generalized knowledge) that he/she got from the medicine school. Of course, most of it it is beneficial to follow the advise but do not blindly obey. Understand what it’s all about, compare it with your own experience so far, if you then do what the doctor said, that’s because you have decided that the advice makes sense. If in doubt, get a second opinion from similar field or alternative advise.

The main thing is follow your heart, listen to your body and enjoy life….

Gorgeous Egg Dish of Omelette

Some people have negative approach when talking about eating egg. But most of it will be because they don’t know the real value of egg, Egg is one of those “complete food” that not only gives  11 different vitamins and minerals, high quality protein, healthy fats (including omega-3) and important antioxidants, but also tasty and easy to cook into variety of dish. For more information about egg and it’s nutritional value: just check here.

Let’s get into this omelette noodle.

Omelette Noodle Recipe

Ingredients

• 4 eggs (free-range is recommended)
• pinch of salt
• pinch of pepper
• few spoons of milk (optional)
• cooking oil or butter

Equipment

Stove, a frying pan, spatula, knife, bowl and fork (to beat the egg)

Method

1. Make the “Dough”

• Crack all 4 eggs into a bowl. Make sure the bowl is not too full, if it is get a little bit bigger one
• Add (optional, only if you like it) 2 spoon of milk into the bowl, to give just a hint of creamyness. (If your eggs are not that big, maybe 1 spoon is enough, you don’t want the “dough” become watery)
• Add salt and pepper to taste. (don’t make it too salty !)
• Beat the egg with a fork (or if you have hand mixer, it will be useful – but simple fork with do). Make sure the “dough” is mixed properly (become only 1 color, the white and the yolk mixed together) and you get a bubbly “dough”

2. Prepare the Frying Pan

• Heat a frying pan on your stove with medium heat
• make ready your favorite cooking oil. I would recommend butter to give you maximum taste. If you don’t realize, butter is healthier than margarine contrary to popular belief. Read this healthy cooking oil article for further info.

3. Make a stack of thin omelette

• Put your butter/oil on the frying pan only on thin layer. Use spatula to even them up.
• Wait until the oil heat up
• Pour small amount of your “dough” above enough to cover the whole frying pan, but not too thick
• Immediately flip the omelette on the other side once form a layer.
• Take it off from the frying pan once you have the brownish color all around (see picture below)

Thin Omelette

• Repeat making thin omelette above until you finish the dough
• Put it on a stack, layer after layer as pictured

Stack of Thin Omelette

4. Make The Noodle

• Tidy up your stack of thin omelette to more less align each other
• Roll into one side (as pictured below)

Roll the Stack Of Thin Omelette

• Then cut with sharp knife a narrow slice to make it like a noodle (see picture)

Cut Thin Slices Of The Omelette Roll

And You are Done !

Some serving suggestion of Omelette Noodle

• Serve it with thin slice of tomato (as pictured – maybe more of it) as one dish
• You can just eat this dish as snack while watching TV (kids would like it)
• Serve it as a topping of other rice or noodle dish – it will be good addition as decorative feature and boost the taste
• Stuff it inside your sandwich
• Just eat this with steam rice like I do ! One of my favorite breakfast !

You know why people like omelette? One of the reason is the smell and taste of slightly burnt egg on both side of omelette. And on Omelette Noodle you are not only have 2 side of surface of that tasty burnt side, you have heaps of the, So, Omelette Noodle maximize this tasty bid of egg dish.

Not difficult, isn’t it ? Enjoy the Omelette Noodle !

7 Spatha for Omelette Noodle

Max Brenner Parramatta

We visited the Parramatta branch which is embedded together with Westfield Shopping center just opposite the Parramatta Train Station. The decoration and ambiance definitely casual and rebellious. It’s quite a full house for 4pm session.

If you are not familiar with the center, it probably quite uneasy to find it as it literally at the very edge of the complex bordering and have direct access from the station.

It has outside seating as well although I would not recommend it as it also near the bus hub. Unless you are quite diesel tolerant, just take the inside seating..

max brenner's suckao

You can find all kind of standard chocolate drink and dessert from cookies, fondues, waffles and choc cake to the very exotic signature dessert..

One of the signature drink is “Suckao” (Suck Kakao) where a candle is lit on the bottom of the glass practically become a burner for a shot of milk.

Then you can melt yourself some dark chocolate chip with the thickness that you can decide yourself. You can go to melt the whole serving of the chip and make it super dense hot chocolate. Or just give a hint of chocolate in the milk and enjoy the choc chip like a peanut….

You can choose among dark, milk or white chocolate. This drink will set you back $6.50

We also order a Tutti-Fruti Waffle where a piece of crusty Belgian waffles was drizzled with pure melted chocolate, serve with fresh bananas, strawberry and chocolate ice cream.

The Waffles

This fruity dessert cost you $13.50. You can also order double size for additional $4. I have to say that the waffle is superb but enough just with the chocolate. The rest of the serving did not really belong.

As the maximizer, don’t forget to order “Chocolate Lick” your personal pure melted chocolate for your licking !

Overall, while cannot really complaint about the dessert serve, but to serve all of our order no less than 40 minutes is pretty ordinary.

It seems although the number of staff is quite abundant, the serving speed need to be given more attention as none of our order is required any brewery. Just take from the self. Yes, the guest was quite crowded, but there is plenty of room for improvement.

Chocolate Lick

Other than that small whinge, we have a great afternoon.

6 Spatha for Max Brenner

Cooking A Meal

I guess this is a question need to be answered by chefs and confirmed by his/her audience. But let us start with some interesting aspect.

Repeatability of A Dish

In my other world of engineering, there is a method call GR&R (Gauge Repeatability and Reproducibility) to determine whether an instrument produce consistent result measuring the same item several times by several different people. Unfortunately, in tasting a meal, this become very complicated as different people will have different taste and subjective opinion when it comes to tasting a food.

There was a period when I quite periodically go to local restaurant and from time to time pretty much I order the same meal over and over again. And liking the dish very much, I cannot really spot obvious difference among those meals. But that’s more because human brain is doing its great in adjusting the expectation based on the experience or simply because I am not a trained food taster?

Or it could be, in a commercial food production as a restaurant, a repeatability of a dish will probably under strict control. The component that you read on a recipe “salt to taste” probably being specified to quite a detail. As different chefs on different shift and days should produce more less the same dish.

So, in gauging whether or not mood and passion of a chef a comercial environment probably not the best place.

The art of cooking?

Okay, now we have a chef friend cooks for a family gathering. If that chef just gone trough a nasty divorce, will he/she cook differently compare to the situation when he just won $100,000 lottery?

Does it tastes sweeter when the chef is in love, or more spicy if he/she is angry ? Does a chef cook more consistently if the kind of dishes is his passion meaning he/she will cook more ‘careless’-ly if the dishes is not his/her forte ?

All these question will lead to bigger question: is cooking an art or just method/procedure?

If cooking is an art and the dishes is one of a kind, then this masterpiece dish probably is not really repeatable. But if cooking just like “printer” who can produce same item over and over again then it’s not really an art, isn’t it ? Or is the art is the recipe itself, not the execution?

So there you are… What do you think? Voice your thinking on the comment section below !

Fried Rice Culture

a plate of fried rice

If I have to select 1 dish only to represent the eastern eating culture that I know of, it will be the humble fried rice. A plate of fried rice is one of common meal – in term of frequency and variety – on most dining table – restaurant or homemade.

But a few interesting thing we can extract from a serve of fried rice:

1. The dominant content is steamed rice, which is a carbohydrate item (carbohydrate-centric)
2. The additional ingredient will be the “good stuff”: chicken, pork, or even seafood variety
3. The spices are complex and will be different from table to table.  Some time, exotic ingredient can be incorporated
4. The quality of the food is heavily depended to this expert skill from the chef. You can follow the exact recipe, but the result will be completely different
5. A dining usually just one course with steam rice as main and several dishes serve at once and each individual can choose their preference.
6. In a party situation, the quantity of of it being consumed is the indicator whether or not the guest like the food. The host will be flattered if a guest ask for some more and he/she will do everything on his/her power to make sure enough inventory are ready.

In general, the usual modus operandi of eating will be everybody to get their own of steam rice as the main meal and the meat dish or soup or something else to be the flavour of the meal.

Meat Salad alternative

a bowl of salad

On the other hand, I will represent a more westernize eating culture with a meat salad dish, which is similar in proportion with a serve of steak. Basically the highlight will be:

1. The dominant content is the focus of the meal “the good stuff”: chicken, fish, beef, pork, etc (protein-centric)
2. All others are just the additional side, including rice, veggies, potato, soup, etc
3. The spices are much more simple and easy to be reproduce even by novice chef
4. The quality of the food is more on the quality of the raw material and the variety of it.
5. A dining usually consists of several courses with different kind of food served each.
6. In party situation, every guest will have approximately similar portion. Quantity consumed is not really matter

In general, the main meat will be the focus and the rest is just the additional variety.

Quite a different

The background of socio culture will influence the eating culture. As you probably know, some of the eastern country in Asia is economically still under development. While they are themselves are the primary producer of the primary food, most of the time buying a meat is something of a luxury. Therefore, the tendency is to eat more rice to fill your hunger more effectively and the meat and all other extra is just for the taste and variety. So, eating is more on keeping you full. Also need to remember, that some of these countries has endured some starvation period on their history where food is very precious and not everybody can have access on it.

satay on skew

But on more economically advanced western civilization, eating is more of enjoyment. Not only the food , but also the accompany of each other. Yes, eating is still to conquer hunger but not so much to stuff up your tummy. I mean, once you finish that slice of steak, that’s it. There isn’t much spare. But if you eat steam rice with a fried chicken, you can always serve yourself with another portion of the rice while managing the amount of the chicken that you have.

Let see this gorgeous chicken satay barbecue on skewers on the left here.

Westernized culture people will just enjoy to eat skewer after skewer with just some salad as side. Yes, I can do this now, I have changed my eating culture a bit. But before, if I got this plate, I will make sure that I have rice to eat it with. Maybe it can be split into 2 meals: for lunch and dinner (as I can just eat few skewers for each).

And there is a saying, “before you eat with rice, then you haven’t actually eat anything”. Quite a different isn’t it ?

The Bird Nest

The Bird Nest: Crunchy Egg Noodle with Seafood

The name of the menu card is “Crunchy Egg Noodle With Seafood” but it really remind me of a bird nest. Beautiful setup. The deep fried crunchy noodle form a circle with thicker edge, similar like a donut only the middle it’s not really a hole. The “topping” is of some seafood ingredients: prawn, squid, fish ball, mixed with a serve of stir fry veggies.

The serve size is really generous. Even a big man like me has a bit struggle to finish it off. Really value for your money as you can share this meal with your spouse or friend and still satisfy both.

Although it was deep fried, you cannot really feel the oily part. So, don’t worry about excessive fat from the oil. It is well drained. Eat it with sliced chili or chili sauce accompany with hot chinese tea, this dished will satisfy your taste bud and made your day!

The Restaurant

Saigon BBQ, Homebush West

When I say “takeaway” above, actually it’s not quite precise. The restaurant is quite decent size hosting around 15 tables. The name of the restaurant is “Saigon BBQ” . Yes, it’s a Vietnamese style cuisine located on the suburb of Homebush West. The address is 8/90 The Crescent, Homebush West, around 12km west from Sydney CBD.

8/90 The Crescent, Homebush West, photo: Google Map

It’s literally just a cross the street from Flemington station (hence, Flemington market) on the south side of the railway (not the market side). So, taking the train could be a straight forward idea.

It’s just a stroll away from Hudson Park Golf Course and it is in the middle of local shopping precinct. So, there are plenty or parking although it’s quite busy with the locals, but you will find one without sweating.

After meal, you can do a little bit Asian grocery shopping around the area.

Of course as a Vietnamese restaurant, you could order the usual Vietnamese beef noodle, Pork Chop with Fried Rice, and all other vietnamese meal and dessert. But for me, “The Bird Nest” was the highlight.

It’s not that difficult to make this dish at home, although a little hurdle will be to have a big wok full of oil to make the crunchy noodle.

6 Spatha for The Bird Nest