insomniac

a few years ago our family took the train from Montreal to NY and we stopped at the border, a customs team with labrador boarded..the labrador sniffed out our son's baguette (cheese and ham) and ate it in a flash.....the customs lady was very apologetic... the rest of us thought it was quite humourous as we had eaten ours...from reading this thread I now realise it was a supremely efficient way of preventing banned food entering the country

thank you Doc, this thread has been inspirational...one question.. the second marinade for the fish, when you say water, I presume it is to make a paste, was it quite thick? (2 marinades, what a great idea!)

I often use lime juice (along with fish sauce, sugar/palm sugar, etc.) to adjust the flavors of coconut milk curries just before serving. It may or may not be traditional, but it tastes good to me and the curry has never curdled. Perhaps that makes me a weirdo, too. insomniac, do you know which curries traditionally use lime juice vs. tamarind vs. something else as last-minute souring agent? Peter, I have eaten many delicious things that look a lot like your picture. Beauty is in the eyes (and tastebuds) of the beholder. ← hey Bruce, I guess my use of lime juice was a local habit, I certainly couldn't say that it was traditional as my friends are all my age and not living with their parents...all I have ever used as a souring agent are tamarind and the dreaded lime juice...

well, when I learned to cook with my friends in Rawai they did commonly use manao, thor thot ka OFB, I also speak reasonable Thai, sorry if I offended you, unintended, just passing on my experience over 10 yrs there

What's the problem? ← I'm used to coconut based curries and the addition of lime would curdle it wouldn't it? Make it look like off milk? *shudder* I think tastewise it might be good. Just concerned about appereance. Vain of me I know. ← lime juice is quite commonly added to certain gaeng 'curries' in Thailand...don't worry OnigiriFB, it won't curdle yr dish

Peter, when you say roasting eggplant 1) how do you roast? 2) what stage do you take the eggplant to (how does the skin look?) 3) do you remove the skin 4) do you mean blending the cooked result? is it wet? grinding says dry to me but that might be the English (rather than US) use of the word 5) then what? cheers

Same here Hiroyuki i'm loving this thread, can't wait for the next instalment. BTW cod sperm sac can also be called cod milt. I've never tried it raw but have all sorts of fish milt lightly steamed and it is delicious. ← you mean milt is sperm?............. OK..... edited for poor punctuation due shock

thanks for the recipe link Liuzhou, the translation is simply brilliant (if only my reverse efforts were so picturesque )

we had a power cut last winter so I cooked carnaroli in stock on the top of our wood burner and had to redo it with a more recent batch of rice as the bag I had grabbed in the dark had an expiration date of 2005 and it just crumbled away to the touch when I finally had a good look at it..... edited to add not that carnaroli is Spanish rice

ditto on the Chicken and Duck Talk, I had forgotten all about it....now I miss HK!

XL, just wondering, do you salt the cabbage and wring out the moisture before you use it?

sounds like the way laab is often prepared in Laos Susan..maybe not from a deconstructed burger but the meat is more charred/crunchy outside, soft inside..makes for a very satisfying contrast in taste/texture..

Yep. It was jason's starter, steven got fish, jason main and dessert is glyn. I'd say thats a frigging good menu and its representative of our cooking i think. I wasn't so impressed with the judging generally, oliver and prue have no concept of modern food. i think that the menu would be better with the eel fish course, its not a canape, if they could understand modern cookery then they would have seen that. ← agree it's a good menu however I can't quite see the Brit in a BLT and croque- monsieur, preferred the beetroot/apple eel 'canape'...would definitely order the main...

spot on DG, normally in HK you have to ask for a Filipino San Mig or you will get the vastly inferior local brew....big mistake for a beer drinker to make...

if doing hummus how about baba ganoush (sp?) complementary and easy

...whimper...

ah, the Gold Finch restaurant...right near my minibus stop...it and Sammy's Kitchen (not to be confused with Jimmy's Kitchen) in Western really take me back....strange, westernish food and the price is right! I've still got that tattered paper placemat somewhere...

Me neither, and I have been known to enjoy a nice mealie pudding with my mince and tatties... (and skirlie has been served at other times, but not breakfast-time) ... ... however including "white" pudding in a fried breakfast does indeed seem to be a particularly Irish speciality. ← I had mealy pudding after porridge with salt on the Isle of Skye in the early 70's at an old friend's croft.....apparently it was white pudding...I had NO idea until now..I like porridge with salt now, must come with age... i

does that mean that we will have to wait even longer for the 'weekly' blog...just not good enough......hurry up.....amuse us..... actually just my stupid sense of humour, I cannot tell you Susan how much I appreciate and will miss your tireless efforts to whip up support for the blog, not to mention postings of your time as a schoolchild in Bangkok with major beneficial ramifications for us eGers esp. on the Thai food thread while at the same time running your complicated household....'if you want a job done ask a busy person' should be your mantra.....I have always imagined you with a chainsaw or powerdrill in one hand and a butcher's knife in the other, cooking Thai food with the third and hacking up a cabin in the woods with your fourth....hmmm..hang on....... thank you Susan, waiting eagerly for yr posts...

I can finally see where those giant adult nappies would come in handy....

got to have ketchup!!!!! none of this brown sauce rubbish for me but I do come from the deep south...Oz that is, where tommy k. is the national drink!

you can certainly eat spicy globe basil; whether they are interchangeable or not is another matter...if you are thinking of cooking Thai food you will probably have to establish if your plant is holy basil (horapa) which is the purplish one used in curries, etc and I find that it can't be replaced by another type...or Thai basil (krapao) which is just green and doesn't have the aniseed hit...maybe you could interchange that one with spicy globe but not in Thai food....hmmm, have I confused you

you could grow some in a window box...we had great success that way in HK before we had a garden

brilliant report PC, doesn't Japanese food appeal on so many different levels, and I curse you and yr wife for your hyperactive Chinese metabolism.....if I had one wish......however for me the downside of being reincarnated east of Suez would be that pesky inability to metabolise alcohol ps. went to a whalemeat resto in Narita long,long ago...delicious; guess that was before rationing!

Is it the turkish bread with the really open texture? We used to buy this a lot in Sydney and it is really good for toast or griddled for bruscetta as it crisps up really well. I wouild love to find some more. I find a a lot of british breads, including british version of continental breads, quite poor. Usually thre texture is wrong, too dense, not enough air in the mix. Is this a artifact of industrial production? ← I'm in Oz twice a year and the pide there is defintely my favourite everyday bread.... and re bread in the UK totally agree Phil, in general the bread in the UK is execrable and the very small pockets of reasonable stuff are miles and miles from me...lucky I can DIY it esp. using the 'no knead' method..thanks to eG...