haresfur
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Posts posted by haresfur
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3 hours ago, KennethT said:
As I'm sure @liuzhou has as well, I've spent a decent amount of time in SG - basically, EVERYONE speaks English. There is no language to learn because there are so many different cultures there - if you were to walk around getting snacks everywhere, you'd have to learn like 20 languages! Which is why they all speak English.
More important that the actual words are where you plan to spend your limited time there! So much great food, so little time!
Oh I know that English is an official language and that I don't need to learn anything else to get by. But it is toe into learning about the culture. Just as there are a whole variety of coffee drinks in Australia, I think it will help me to know the kopi drinks in Singapore. I'm trying to memorize kopi siew dai. I don't expect to be able to get a flat white.
I'm now regretting not scheduling more that a recovery day between intercontinental flights but it will be a very long trip as it stands. Maybe I'll be able to go back and spend more time.
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11 hours ago, liuzhou said:
The de facto main language in Singapore is British English followed by Mandarin Chinese. Most schooling there is done in English.
菜饭 (cài fàn) is Mandarin and simply means 'food', in Singapore especially hawker food. It may be well economical, but the word doesn't hold that meaning.
It fascinates me how these words and phrases can change meaning as they change location. Of course as an outsider I don't know the nuances of "what it originally meant" vs "how it is used in SG now". Or for that matter if the words have the same origin at all.
It seems from Wikipedia that its usage in Singapore originates from Singaporean Hokkien not directly from Mandarin.
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36 minutes ago, heidih said:
Interesting. I have to say that most in Singapore speak English very well so the bits of language you learn may be more for personal use not necessity. Enjoy the beautiful food of the blended cultures and post some if you have time. I was ony there once after a nasty divorce. I purloined all the Amex points and ran off with my son for a week. It was great.
I am sure I can get by. This was in part inspired by a question from someone who lives there who wanted to improve their chit-chat in the hawker centres (and maybe get a better portion of food). So that brings me to one of the other tips:
Most commonly used when ordering "cai fan" aka "economic rice", because most of us don't really know the actual names of the dishes lol, and there are so many of them.
zhe ge is 这个 "this" in chinese
na ge 那个 is "that" in chinese[another commenter] Same for malay dishes. Sometimes, i just say ini and itu hahahaha this and that too
So now I know to look for cai fan
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On 3/15/2023 at 2:11 AM, blue_dolphin said:
Butter is my microwave nemesis. I know this well. I use a cover. I choose a low setting. I stop and mix often. And yet....BOOM!...it's everywhere!
It takes a little longer but my new induction hot plate has low settings that are great for melting butter and chocolate
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I am stopping over in Singapore for unfortunately only one night and have been reading up on the food, particularly hawker centres, and how to order it. I'm sure I would be able to get by with English and pointing but I find their crossroads culture fascinating and I always like to learn a tiny bit of the language wherever I go. So it is part practical, part cultural. I realize that I am not getting pronunciation from internet sources but I have started to compile information, that may be interesting to others here, in a text file.
What other food-related language in Singapore do you know? Obviously much originated with Chinese, Malay, and other cultures and I would be interested in similarities/differences in the language.
Rather than a total dump, here is what I have thus far on coffee and tea. Even more complicated than ordering coffee in Australia or at Starbucks!
Kopi (coffee with condensed milk & sugar)
Teh (tea with condensed milk & sugar)
Kopi o (coffee with no condensed milk, still has sugar)
Teh o (tea with no condensed milk, still has sugar)
Kopi o kosong (coffee with no condensed milk & no sugar)
Teh o kosong (tea with no condensed milk & no sugar)
Teh c (tea with evaporated milk & sugar)
Tak giu (Milo)
Diao yu (tea bag in hot water)
Ditlo - no water added to your coffee or tea
Kosong (no sugar, usually for beverages)
Siew dai - less sweet
Siew siew dai - less than siew dai
(Malay stall usually go with ‘kurang manis’ than ‘siew dai’)
Peng (Bing) (beverage with ice, Eg. kopi peng, teh peng)Teh tarik: Pulled tea. It is the national drink of Malaysia (Indian origin)
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Maggie was wonderfully inspiring and really made eG great. I miss the Daily Gullet. It must have been a huge undertaking.
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My first carbonara along with over-large greenbeans from the garden fried with toasted almonds. A friend gifted us this piece of home-cured porky goodness and I cheated and used parmesan instead of pecorino. Whole eggs since the most Italian recipe I found was adminant that you don't need to a dd yolks. I got a bit too much pasta water in but it was still creamy and not curdled so I'll call that a win.
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Might be really good for North African preserved lemons
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10 hours ago, rotuts said:
Ive seen pans in commercial kitchens
w the blackness problem.
I wonder if commercial gas cooktops
leave a residue when cranked up ' high '
ie when more heat gets the dish done faster
but combustion , for some reason is incomplete
at those max outputs.
it might be easy to test :
turn a burner to its max setting , hold a pan over the burner , maybe a bitt avoce
an see what happens.
Actually you will get incomplete combustion at lower levels when the flame turns yellow. High heat will generally keep the flame blue and oxidizing unless you boil over and get water into the burner
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This seems like as good a thread as any. I took one for the team and ordered some duck wings and duck tongue at the Korean takeaway:
Not a lot of meat, lots of bones so I understand why the owner said they like to sit around eating these and drinking beer. They were ok but I probably won't be ordering them again.
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On 2/9/2023 at 3:41 PM, liuzhou said:
油浸烟熏牡蛎罐头 (yóu jìn yān xūn mǔ lì guàn tou), smoked oysters in oil with kelp slivers 海带丝 (hǎi dài sī).
A new addiction.
Those were a lunch staple when I was doing geology in northern Canada. But I would just eat them out of the tin by stabbing them with my sheath-knife. Here they often come in plastic vacuum packs. I think I have one in my fridge.
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3 hours ago, KennethT said:
Did you season your Yixin teapot? Also, it's typical to only use that one pot for a single kind of tea. So, if you use it for oolongs, don't also use it for green or red teas, etc.
I believe you don't season tea pots - just use them and over time they become better - especially for unglazed pots. Rinse them out and call it good.
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7 hours ago, eugenep said:
Recently, I broke my $200 special clay teapot. It kinda looks like the pic below but much better looking. It happened in like 5 seconds when I dropped it in the sink and it was crushing. I got a cheaper one for $33 from amazon that should come in the mail today. I don't want to get another one and break that too.
Sorry you broke your special pot, but thank you for supporting potters by doing so
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8 hours ago, Kim Shook said:
The "L" in salmon bugs me, too. As does a friend's pronunciation of "almond" - she says the "al" as in the man's name "Al' and then "mond".
I was at a wedding in California where the bride's uncle told me he was an Amon farmer, then translated, "You would say almond." I told him, "You grow them, you get to decide how to say it."
eta: If I remember correctly, he used a hard A
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First greenbean harvest. Not sure what has been eating them - only on a few beans. I cut a couple open and didn't see anything moving so only composted the worst ones. The rest had the everloving heck fried out of them with slivered almonds toasted at the tail end.
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For sharpening with less fuss, I think the Spyderco Sharpmaker does a decent job. As a bonus I have been using light strokes on the fine rods for honing
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Here is the Sakai Kikumori "Nihonko" SK-carbon steel Petty 150mm that I got for Christmas. The choil shot is from the website because I'm terrible at photographing knives.
My impressions so far is that it is great for its purpose. Came very sharp. I'm not used to a knife of this length and it drew first blood immediately. The pokey bit is farther away than I expected. I wash and dry my good knives right away but it is already developing a patina. Fine by me. I'll let it do its thing as long as it doesn't rust.
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12 hours ago, paulraphael said:
Edited to add: lots of restaurant cooks like the simple carbon steels that you like. They just sharpen after every shift.
From my reading, there are a number of non-stainless carbon steel alloys that are extremely hard so it gets confusing. I actually lean towards tougher and easier to sharpen but that may well change if my sharpening skill comes along. I have a long way to go.
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I think brining inhibits crispy skin
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2 minutes ago, paulraphael said:
We just bought a house with one of those. I drag my iron pans across the top with impunity. Could I be secretly hoping it breaks so I get to replace it?
Replace with induction then polish the outside of your cast iron?
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I bought salt and pepper grinders not too long ago and the salt was clogging up with fine dust. I was cleaning it out when I discovered that the grind could be adjusted. So I guess there is a reason to pay for the fancier grinder. The cheap one I bought for white pepper doesn't adjust as far as I can figure out.
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Important local news from the Betoota Advocate
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22 minutes ago, heidih said:
An ad for S&W canned(!) heirloom beans popped up yesterday . Appears introduced in 2019. Really? Hardly competition but drafting on RG trend. https://www.swbeans.com/products/heirloom-series/ https://www.facebook.com/SWBeans/videos/
Now that's a sign of success for heirlooms. Seems worth a try
Dinner 2023
in Cooking
Posted
Pasta primavera. All the veg except the onion is from my garden