Kent Wang

I thought it was going to be you.

Yes. I often satisfy it with salumi.

Was that so in Shanghai? Or which city/region? I have not seen such in the streets of Hong Kong (grilling oysters/scallops/mussels/clams). Shanghai, yes. I would've guessed that it would be common everywhere though.

Caperberries are like olives except you don't even need a spear as they come with a stem.

I read an article about the live crab vending machine but it was quite clear it was for taking home and cooking. Just because it's in a vending machine doesn't mean it's for immediate consumption. I've had crabs cured in rice wine, which leaves the meat with a raw texture. Koreans have a similar dish too. Quite interesting, so I imagine live crab would be similar. People in China eat live shrimp. I'd give it a go.

On the street, you can find vendors grilling oysters (and scallops, mussels, clams) topped with a bit of sauce and a mount of minced garlic.

I could drink this straight on ice all day long.

Wouldn't it be more clear to call it just a cranberry syrup? On another note, not all pomegranates are the same. Here in Shanghai I can only get these crappy pink pomegranates which produce pink juice. The flavor is not nearly as good as the usual red stuff.

I've made one with maple syrup. I called it a maple old fashioned, not sure if everyone here would agree with the name but I'm sure you would agree that it's very tasty and a perfect fall/winter/holidays libation. What did it look like? What did the label say? I'm in China and the brown sugar here looks just like the fake stuff (white sugar plus a bit of molasses) back home.

I have some flexible silicone "bowls" that are made especially for poaching eggs. They work fairly well, but now I just sous vide.

But pre-batching is different from plain aging as as it exposes the lime to alcohol.

Papa John's is here now too, and is positioned as more upscale, much more so than in the US.

I thought this technique I came up with for trapping shrimp tomalley to make a shrimp "butter" was a bit molecular. How could I forget soup dumplings. Bo Innovation in Hong Kong even makes a molecular version using spherification (the method for El Bulli's olive sphere).

Very clever, and you don't even need a grill. You could just put the steak on a metal tray. Very portable, affordable, doesn't even use very much charcoal.

Tell me more about roasting strawberries. They don't look very different from non-roasted.

In Chinese it's called ba si, literally "pulling threads". I prefer the taro version. I think it's best when you have a whole lot of the syrup so you get a lot of threads and then you dip it in the water so you get a bunch of hardened threads. Hard to do, and the dish can't have sat around for too long.

Even just in the fridge it lasts forever.

I bought some cheapo silicone ice trays in Shanghai and am having a hell of a time with them. Being in China, I have to use bottled water, so I can't just turn on the tap, fill willy-nilly, splishy-splashing. But you're right, it is indeed only a bit harder and annoying. I might just get the maid to do it instead (the upside of living in China). Also, the silicone trays I have are real floppy so it's hard move them into the freezer without spilling. Do you put these on a metal tray and transport them that way?

I wonder why all silicone ice trays are like this. Could I cut a little bit out of each divider to create a channel? Would that compromise its structural integrity? I don't want to trash a $12 ice tray.

A problem I have with silicone ice trays over the regular rigid plastic kind is that they don't have a channel that allows water to flow from one cube slot to another. With a regular ice tray, you can just pour your water into one slot and the overflow goes over the channel to the other slots. With silicone trays, you have to pour each slot individually. Is that indeed the case with the Tovolo? BTW, Aviary, the cocktail bar by Grant Achatz of Alinea posted a using the Tovolo tray.

How about muddling the leaves as you would a mint julep, a kaffir julep if you will. Also, it seems that many of the cocktails that use lime seem to do so because of historical, geographical reasons: margarita, daiquiri, caipirinha all originating in the tropics where lime trees are more prevalent. In the rest of the cocktail world, lemon dominates. So why not try any of the classic cocktails that call for lemon with lime instead? Conversely, I've had to make daiquiris here with lemon a few times, though that's for another topic.

Oddly enough, there is a quite a wide selection of rhum agricole in China, even though the selection of all other spirits is limited. Even the larger supermarkets carry them. Of the whites, we have Damoiseau, St. James, and JM. I've really enjoyed Damoiseau, more so than 10 Cane, and the two occasions that I've had Barbancourt white. The other two I haven't tried. Those three companies also have their aged rums here. Opinions?

Aren't the flare-ups preferable, when there's not an excessive amount? I've read that much of the aroma imparted from a grill is actually from the flare-ups and not as much from the fuel (gas, charcoal, wood) for something you cook as quickly as a burger. Is there an easy way to discern a top-broiled burger from a griddled one? With a grilled burger, there are the grill marks.

Surprisingly enough, here in China real limes are hard to get. Many places have green lemons which look like limes on the outside but are yellow on the inside and lack the funkiness of real limes. You have to get the imported limes from Brazil which are around $0.66 each through a delivery company. That's pretty tough when I'm used to paying $0.20 a lime or even less back in Texas. That said, has anyone tried kaffir limes in their cocktails? I used to have a kaffir lime tree. I think Chris does. The leaves muddled or steeped into an infusion would be promising.

Over in the infusions thread, we're discussing using nitrogen cavitation with the ISI whipper to do (near) instant infusions. Richard, I know you're really into tea. Matt Kayahara said he did a tea infusion this way. I'm keen to hear your thoughts on that.