His Nibs

I'm of Chinese descent and that was what I was told too. Finish your Rice or your future spouse will have bad complexion. ← I thought you can't waste any rice (gotta finish it) as wasting rice is considered a bad thing in chinese culture. It signifies you may not have rice to eat next time, i think.

Most wierd stuff Snake gall bladder, pierced to allow the bile to flow out (kinda greenish looking). Temple street, HK Steamed eggs with grub worms, again in HK and the regular, pork blood, trotters, stomach, intestines Chicken intestines, chicken feet Goose intestines (best!), braised goose feet Tripe (got this wierd look from a french couple when i ordered trippa alla fiorentina in florence, cos i'm asian looking) bird nest soup slime of the snow frog (xue3 ha1) and didn't have the courage to try: dog (tons of these in the winter at beijing) cat (they hang these like roast ducks in teochew) snapping turtle (huasi street, taipei)

Bah.... if I was back home in s'pore, Kalamansi-cello! That would be interesting Anyway, wonder if the Kaffir lime leaf (that i see for USD 20.00 a pound) is fresh. They looked kinda spotty at my local viet supermart. Still haven't added the simple solution to my lemon infused vodka yet. Just wondering about how much to add. Do I add the remaining 375 ml of vodka to it prior to adding the simple syrup or vice versa.

one word.... METRIC! A normal mug contains ~250 mL No idea how many grams 4 tablespoons of whole coffee weigh but the main thing is to experiment.

I assume you are currently using a blade grinder. What you probably want is a burr grinder. These provide a more uniform grind with little to no dust. They are more expensive, of course, but definitely worth it. Recently I have been seeing more of these and the prices are much lower ($20-$50 at Costco, Target, etc…) than I used to find a couple of years ago ($150+). However, I am not sure how well these lower cost grinders work... ← There is a thread on this forum regarding obtaining a solis maestro burr grinder from costco.com. Also, you can purchase a rebranded solis maestro classic from starbucks (~$99). I use a cheap delonghi burr grinder (costco~ $25) for my press coffee and the starbucks one for my espresso. Another tip on using the blade grinder is to move it about while grinding. This ensures the blades hit most of the beans instead of pulverising a few beans to dust.

Hey.. at least you know your wort is free of any microbes if you do it in the autoclave!

Depends on the size of your cup, I generally use 4 tablespoons of whole beans for 750 ml of water. If it's too bitter, then you either : a) brewed it too long or b) power is too fine a grind. Since you are letting it steep for 4 mins, I'd say you are grinding your coffee too fine. From Good Eats' episode on coffee, I'd say 12 short pulses should do the trick. The consistency of the powder should be somewhat coarse.

It's tough to buy liquor in singapore. Most singaporeans will buy their liquor from the duty free shops when they leave the country. You might have a better chance of getting a good cognac than whisky though. If I recall correctly, I think I saw a bottle of Glenmorangie 10y.o. at the Cold Storage at Takashimaya for S$90+ (about USD 40-45). Other than that, you can find most blends (JW black being most popular, followed by the Chivas) and generic American whiskies (like Jack Daniels and Jim Beam). edit: Think there is a Macallan club in singapore though.

Costco site for the solis

K... thanks... I could get the bucks one for about 60 bucks Guess that's what's I'll be buying for my xmas present!

Just wondering about the difference between the Solis Maestro and the one Starbucks sells for $99. Think I read somewhere that the grinder Starbucks sells is either a refurbished Solis or rebranded solis? Any help illuminating this matter would be greatly appreciated!

Well.... my first batch of limoncello is filtering as I type (thanks for the recipe, Katie). The product looked kind of cloudy so I called upon the knowledge of having a year of O-Chemistry lab and used a whatman filter paper. Forgot that I used to have vacuum filtration available in lab but not at home, ended up doing it via gravity filtration. The resulting filtrate (before addition of simple syrup and additional vodka) did turn out a darker yellow than the villa massa I have currently in my bar. I wonder is it because of that 1 lime zest the recipe calls for? Anyway, to filter 375ml of limoncello is prolly gonna take the entire night and probably the whole of tomorrow Taking 7.1 s per drop :lol:

True true, there are gems all over the island! Nonya food in the katong/geylang area, hokkien noodles in Ghim Moh, grilled sambal stingray at serangoon gardens and prata at jalan kayu! Ask her to ask her local colleagues (that's the best way to eat )

The one that I'm using right now reminds me of the thick sauce that I use to get at good chicken rice stores in singapore. The brand is Yuen Chuen Longentivity (might have a spelling error there) brand Thick soya sauce. It has a picture of the happy buddha on the label and it is made in malaysia.

Macallan 10 Balvenie 21 Glenmorangie 10 Glenmorangie 27 Finlaggan old reserve

And since the mid autumn festival is next week, time to start looking for some mini yams

Well, the mandarin for these tubers are (numbers behind are the pinyin) Yu(4) Tou(2) （芋头） - Yam/Taro root Fan (1) Shu (3) (番薯） - Sweet Potato Mu (2) Shu (3) （木薯） - Tapioca/Cassava edit: and for the heck of it Ma(3) Ling(2) Shu (3) (马铃薯）- The good ole tater

Due to health concerns, many hawkers in singapore have left out cockles and fried lard pieces (they are not cracklings, i.e. not fried pieces of skin, but are cubed lard fried to GBD) in their char kway teow. The horror! Oh the horror!

Don't know if it's illegal or not but you can set up your own mini-scale still just by buying certain pieces of chemistry lab equipment. Had a prof once start off a lab by remarking making moonshine is as easy as perfoming fractional distillation. Methinks that a fractional column (the ones with filled glass beads and not steel wool) and a jacketed condenser (you can either water cool or air cool) would be the basic setup. Not suggesting anything but such gear can be easily procured on the web or any scientific equipment store Also, I did not spent o-chem lab trying to distill any drinkable product (though i steam distilled cinnamaldehyde from cinnamon and cassia as well as carvone from caraway seeds once though) edit: to get a better distillation, either include more layers in your column or have a taller column (industrial columns span over 5 meters if you take a look at the whisky plants)

Gotta be the small red bananas for the goreng pisang. Also, don't know if you have it in indonesia but in singapore they sell mung-bean cakes fried up goreng pisang style. Ah... to be back in singapore

They have it in singapore too! Another must try BK burger is the rendang double

Gin, tonic a dash of angostura bitters and depending if i have it, lime

Hmm.... Milo and Jabob's Cream Crackers! Yummy! That's comfort food! Make a good bowl of Milo (with condensed milk, not milk and sugar!). Get a coupla of Jacob's cream crackers, break crackers into pieces and dunk it in the Milo

*cringes* at the MSRP of the whisky $44 for a 10 yo

Vodka RIbena was a hit drink in Singapore back in the 90s (before the vodka redbull) =D Make sure your ribena is not too sweet!