Tonight for dinner I decided to cook up some pork chops. Pork chops are a favourite of mine since they taste great and are quite easy to prepare. I just grabbed some pork chops and coated them in a little olive oil, some rosemary and generously seasoned with salt and pepper. It then went under the grill under golden brown.

To accompany the pork chops were peas, a potato, pumpkin and carrot mash and some apple sauce. All good and hearty.

We had dinner at Wendy’s place last night and she made us this delicious Malaysian style chicken curry served with rice and a side of stir fried okra (aka lady’s finger) which was also very tasty. The chicken was cooked perfectly and just fell right off the bone. Very good eating indeed.

For dessert we were served an absolutely amazing sticky date pudding which she also made herself. I’m generally not a massive fan of sticky date pudding but this was just so tasty. There couldn’t have been a better way to top off an already great meal.

I had dinner tonight at Hao Phong, a restaurant specialising in Vietnamese and Chinese cuisine located at 136 Hopkins Street in Footscray.

I ordered the sugarcane prawn (bún chạo tôm) which is a Vietnamese dish of grilled prawn paste wrapped around sugarcane with rice vermicelli. It was served with bean sprouts, shredded carrot and lettuce, mint and crushed peanuts all dressed in fish sauce (nước mắm). Compared to sugarcane prawn I’ve had at other restaurants in the past, I would rate this one as a bit ordinary.

I had dinner at Ha Long Bay restaurant tonight. They are located on 82 Victoria Street in Richmond and specialise in Vietnamese cuisine but they also have Chinese dishes as well.

Tonight I opted for com tam (cơm tấm) which is Vietnamese for broken rice. It was served with a grilled pork chop, thinly shredded pork and pork skin (bì), fried egg, pork meat loaf, picked carrot and sliced cucumber. It wasn’t the best com tam I’ve had but it wasn’t too bad either especially since it only set me back AUD$8.50 (about USD$8.13). With the soaring food prices in Australia it’s getting harder and harder to find a decent meal under AUD$10.00 these days.

I had Chinese fried rice noodles (aka chow fun and kway teow) for dinner tonight which are stir fried rice noodles served in a meat sauce with beef, fish, prawns, fried fish cake and Asian vegetables. Usually, thick rice noodles are used for this dish but this time thinner noodles similar to those used in the Vietnamese pho noodle soup were used instead.

This particular rice noodle dish is of Chinese origin but rice noodles are common to many South East Asian dishes.