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His Nibs

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    quiz on dining cultures

    in Food Traditions & Culture

    Posted

    The China one is wrong.

    You're supposed to finish your rice.

    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.

    Wackiest thing you've ever eaten

    in Food Traditions & Culture

    Posted

    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)

    Making Limoncello

    in Spirits & Cocktails

    Posted

    Bah.... if I was back home in s'pore, Kalamansi-cello! That would be interesting :biggrin:

    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.

    Press Pot/French Press Coffee

    in Coffee & Tea

    Posted

    I'm looking for a grinder that will give me an even grind, like the kind in the supermarket or in good coffee shops.  I wonder if these are prohibitively expensive.

    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.

    Press Pot/French Press Coffee

    in Coffee & Tea

    Posted

    How many teaspoons does you use per cup?

    At home, we use about four teaspoons per cup and generally brew French Roast.  It's very full bodied but a bit bitter.  That's how my wife likes it so that's what we go with, however.

    Depends on the size of your cup, I generally use 4 tablespoons of whole beans for 750 ml of water.

    One more press fan here.

    Is four minutes the accepted standard? I drink a fair trade coffee, and I find even 4 minutes to be a bit too long...it tastes so bitter and acidic at that point that's no fun at all.

    With a simple cuisinart blade grinder, what's a decent grinding time for Bodum? I lost the manual :(

    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.

    Singapore: Whisky Shopping

    in Spirits & Cocktails

    Posted · Edited by His Nibs (log)

    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.

    Making Limoncello

    in Spirits & Cocktails

    Posted · Edited by His Nibs (log)

    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 :angry:

    Taking 7.1 s per drop :lol:

    Dark Soy Sauce

    in Kitchen Consumer

    Posted

    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.

    Tubers

    in Food Traditions & Culture

    Posted · Edited by His Nibs (log)

    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

    Absinthe Homebrew

    in Spirits & Cocktails

    Posted · Edited by His Nibs (log)

    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 :wink: 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) :biggrin:

    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)

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