Bau Truong, Cabramatta

One of the great things about Sydney is it's cultural diversity. I love how there are little pockets of Sydney where there are large ethnic communities, meaning that you can go to that suburb of Sydney and allow yourself to be immersed in a different culture for a day. To me, Cabramatta is one of those suburbs. Known as Sydney's "Little Vietnam", it's home to many Vietnamese Australians and lots of Vietnamese food!

Today we're here to grab some lunch and some snacks. We start off at Bau Truong, one of the more well-known Vietnamese restaurants along John St. Even though it's quite late the restaurant is still brimming with people. The service is brisk and we're quickly ushered to our table and given menus, and the waitress comes back several times to try and get our order.

Beef noodle soup - $10.00

Eventually JC and B both decide on getting the beef pho, the beef noodle soup which is a quintessentially Vietnamese dish. The rare slices of beef cook in the hot broth, and underneath the garnish of coriander and spring onions is a mound of slippery rice noodles. The broth is deep and flavoursome and both JC and B are happily slurping away whilst Queen Chu and I await our dishes.

Special BBQ pork chops with rice - $12.00

Maggie Beer's Country Chicken and Mushroom Pie

Today is the first birthday of Penguin says Feed Me and we're celebrating with a new banner and PIE! It really does not feel like it's been a year since I started this humble blog of my eating adventures, and I still remember starting up this blog and writing up the very first post thinking that no one was going to read it anyway. I never in my dreams thought that anyone would even read my blog, let alone meeting new people through it, but probably one of the best parts about blogging is meeting and forging friendships with the other awesome Sydney food bloggers (I love you guys!).

I'd like to think that I've come a long way since that first post. Reading other blogs and marvelling at their photographs or cooking prowess has inspired me to improve my own photography and challenged me to further my cooking and baking skills. I've gone from simple apple crumbles to rainbow layered buttercakes, and although there's been a few disasters along the way, I think this blog is what gets me to push the limit of my abilities. Hopefully one day I will master the art of baking as I keep trying new things (why oh why did I choose to take on macarons?!)

One new thing that I've learnt to do is make pastry from scratch. When I first started this blog, making pastry from scratch seemed like the most daunting task - I mean, isn't pastry something you buy from the freezer aisle in the supermarket? But once you get the hang of it, it's not difficult at all, and it is truly satisfying when you can proudly present a pie or a tart and say that you made it all by yourself (or in this case, with the help of Sir D).

Since seeing Maggie Beer's pheasant pie on Masterchef, I've been wanting to make her sour cream pastry and it is so easy to work with and very forgiving. I didn't know where to get a pheasant from so I used another of Maggie Beer's recipes and made her Country Chicken and Mushroom pies with the same flaky and buttery pastry. It was so nice to be able to take a beautiful golden pie out of the oven and very satisfying to eat it, knowing that I had made it from scratch. This is what keeps me cooking and blogging :)

EDIT: Just realised this is also my 100th post!

Roast Chicken #1

The title of this post isn't implying that this roast chicken is the best or "number 1", but that it is my first ever roast chicken. I don't usually cook with meat (that's not to say I'm vegetarian - I'm just more of a dessert-cooking person!). If I do, it's usually something simple with bite-sized pieces of meat or minced meat. Never before have I cooked with a giant leg of lamb or a large piece of beef or even a whole chicken.


After watching so many MasterChef successes in the kitchen on TV, it's definitely inspired me to be more adventurous in the kitchen and explore outside the realm of desserts and other sweet things. So with the help of a few friends, I set out to roast my first ever chicken!

Queen Chu's sweet potato mash

We roasted two small chickens with some root vegetables and Queen Chu also made mashed sweet potato. The aroma of the roasting chicken was amazing, and the flavour of the lemon and herbs shone through. The chicken was quite moist and succulent, with only a few dry bits around the breast and the drumstick. Evidently I still need more practice but for the first time I thought it turned out pretty well!