Dickson is the closest thing Canberra has to a Chinatown. The back streets there are lined with Asian restaurants, grocery shops, video and souvenir shops. It's not all Asian, there's a mix of others - Indian, Ethiopian and Italian spring to mind. Oh, and the eminently ignorable KFC and Maccas. Never mind. I regularly visit the pork butcher - who stocks frozen seafood and dim sum, too; the Saigon grocery (fresh veggies delivered Friday arvo); and the BBQ shop.
The Tak Kee Roast Inn, on Woolley St Dickson, is well known for its BBQ pork, duck and chicken. It's good food, and good value. They sell it by the kilo in takeaway containers. You might be inclined to overlook the chicken in favour of the more glamorous duck, but don't - the chicken is beautifully moist, quite outstanding. More adventurous people might like to try out the weird wiggly things - I recognise the pigs' ears, but some of the other things escape me. If you fancy eating in there, they do a nice line in noodles, soups and congees as well as a selection of the more common stir fry dishes. Bright fluoro lights, a waving cat statuette, laminex tables, soft drink fridges, and slightly confused but willing service by people with dubious English make this place very much not fine dining - just simply fine eating.
Today I just bought a carton of pork on my way home. I stirfried some noodles with sesame oil, garlic, ginger, onion, red capsicum, bok choy & beansprouts; tossed in some sweet chilli sauce and plum jam (cheat's plum sauce), and served it up with the pork. A nice easy dinner for a week night.
And since I didn't get round to my regular weekly cooking binge on Sunday, I needed to do a bit extra. I tried to rescue the vindaloo by straining the sauce off, adding potato, and returning a small part of the sauce. I'll freeze the rest in portions. I'm also simmering the lamb bones (I used BBQ chops) to get some stock; and roasting the leftover tomatoes from last week. I don't have any specific plans for them, but something will no doubt turn up.
Cooking today: stirfry veg noodles with BBQ pork; roast tomatoes; lamb & potato vindaloo; lamb stock.
1 comment:
Heh. Great minds thinking alike again. I discovered the Asian BBQ at Belco Markets and bought half a duck and two bits of red pork to use during the week in my fave "quick'n'easy" dinner - noodle soups. With veggies growing on the back doorstep, all I need to do is zap a few handfuls of the meat, heat up some stock (there's home-made in the freezer but the Campbell's stuff is ok for this too), sog up dried rice noodles, and then stack them in appropriate order, ending with the boiling stock to wilt the veggies.
It's always much more filling than you think it is, and one feels so _virtuous_ afterwards - all healthy and not overfull :) (esp. if large quantities of fresh coriander leaf have been involved :) ).
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