Kitchen Hand: When life gives you bones

And by 'life', I mean your butcher.

When I buy cut meat from my butcher - diced chuck steak, gravy beef, beef mince - I think it's fair to say that I don't expect any bones in it. So imagine my surprise when I opened up the bag of diced lamb shoulder from my butcher, only to find that he's diced everything (presumably with a band saw) with the bones in. The vertebras and everything! I can see where it happened: he was only selling the entire shoulder of lamb, and I had requested diced shoulder. When he said that he could do that for me, he just went out the back, took a band saw to it and gave it to me in a bag.

Prince Restaurant, Parramatta

I've heard many recommendations to try the Yum Cha at Prince Restaurant in Parramatta, and one Sunday, I decided to walk down there to get my Yum Cha fix.

It was extremely busy, and the hustle and bustle of ordering families and trolley ladies really got me excited for a great meal!!

A large hotplate of various delights greets you near the entrance, and I really love the look of the food being fried/cooked in front of you. It gives me a great feeling of immediacy of the hot steaming food.

What I ate: Squid ink pasta and crabmeat aglio e olio

Sometimes, you just want a light lunch. Sometimes it's nice to pretend that it's still spring and immerse yourself in punchy fresh flavours that make you forget that you had to drag yourself out of the warm cocoon that is your bed to face the day.