KennethT

Today I had a delivery of yet a different mango variety from Fresh Direct - this one was a Francine mango - which after a bit of research, turns out is a Haitian variety. I don't know if these were Haitian grown though. What I do know about this mango was that it was, for lack of a better word, ok. Pretty good. It's a lot of "not"s... it's not very sweet, not acidic, not fibrous (but that's a good thing), not especially fragrant - there was a slight coconut/florality, but it was really slight. A decent sized mango - ripens to a yellow color. I would have liked it to get a bit riper, but it was already a little soft. Vibrant orange flesh

Indonesian chicken soup - soto ayam... I think I'll put what I did in RecipEgullet so I can remember what to do for next time... I didn't have any cabbage, so I used some baby bok choi (which is a type of cabbage)...

Insert groan button here!!!

Are you crazy!?! Of course! Electricity and water don't mix well.

Bookmarked and added to my Pocket!

Does anyone know where @Shelby's description of taking apart her CSO is? No matter what I do, I can't seem to find it. My CSO is still working, but it seems like it's using less water than normal, so I want to check everything out and see if there's any cholesterol in the tubing that could be causing the problem.

@liamsauntHappy anniversary! I hope you and your husband have a wonderful time!

A good use for chicken breast - Panang curry...

I agree - you definitely need to have some mango!!! But I'd avoid the Tommy Atkins mango - they're probably the most popular by volume sold in the US, but I'm not a fan - they're fibrous and mostly flavorless. I see that Misfits also has Kent mangoes - but I'm not familiar with them so I can't comment. If you're feeling flush, there's a Facebook group called "fruit 4 sale" that has a lot of growers in Florida who ship by Fedex or USPS. Some of these growers are fantastic, and their product is excellent. But unfortunately pricey. I've been putting off getting some, but I know that one day I'll succumb.

Ah! Now I get it... for some reason, I assumed you were deep frying them...

I remember as a kid spraying weed killer on quite a few of those in the middle of the lawn. Who knew you could eat them!?!

Vietnamese style grilled cod with mango salad and rice noodles. I marinated the cod in a paste of black pepper/dried chilli powder/lemongrass/cilantro stems/garlic/fish sauce/turmeric, then wrapped in banana leaf and grilled. Mango salad with herbs was made with the ataulfo mangos - even though they were soft, they still didn't compare to the other mangoes I had earlier in the week - so they needed quite a bit of enhancing. The dressing was black pepper/garlic/cilantro stems/fish sauce/tamarind water/lime juice/palm sugar/thai chilli/fried shallot. Herbs were mint and rau ram (laksa) from the garden plus cilantro and garlic chives. My building has no gas service, hence the portable stove top (15000 BTU!) The plating was crappy but I didn't care - it was late and I was starving!

I'm excited to see what you think.

Sorry - that's not what I meant by explosions. Sometimes, when frying things wrapped in rice paper, there's a little free water there from wetting the rice paper to get it flexible and those drops of water cause explosions! Once you wrapped the rolls, did you blot them dry or anything or do a really efficient (no extra water) dipping job? Or just get lucky? 🤣

Has anyone ever grilled a fillet of cod (without the skin) without a grill basket or anything? I was planning on grilling some mahi mahi to have with a mango som tum, but it turned out that I don't have enough of it, so I defrosted a couple of pieces of cod. Thinking about it now, I'm wondering if it's just going to fall apart completely on me and that maybe I should rethink this a bit... maybe wrap in banana leaves prior to grilling? If it matters, it's indoor grilling on a grill pan.

I don't know if the Colombian Sugar mangoes are sold near me - I've never seen them before, either in person or online.

What's the difference between your dumpling and a vietnamese spring roll? Seems like the same thing except for the filling and dipping sauce. How did you fry them to avoid the explosions?

Lemongrass shrimp vietnamese bun. 4 herbs - cilantro, laksa (rau ram in Vietnamese), garlic chives and mint.

As we were walking around doing errands, I wandered into Lady Wong for a minute. It's a beautiful store and have quite an assortment of traditional kuih. Before I got a bunch of them, I decided to get 1 to try. I got the Talam Gula Malaka and Salted Coconut - their photo is better than mine: https://ladywong.com/products/talam-melaka It had a very subtle sweetness and really good palm sugar flavor which went well with the slightly salted coconut. The texture was a very nice kuih texture - stiffer than a custard but not bouncy. I will be back to try some of others. Unfortunately, they didn't have any pulut inti today, which are favorite type of kuih.

Please update with results!

I used to live in that neighborhood - and years ago, my wife and I would go there pretty frequently - I haven't been back in a long time, but we used to really like the mushroom pizza - 4 different types of mushrooms. I also liked to sit at the bar so you could watch the action.

Try a search for DLI - Daily Light Integral. It's a cumulative measure of how much light a plant gets for the day. Another way to tell if it's getting enough light is to measure the internode space - the distance from one set of branches to the next. Shade has a higher proportion of far red light which promotes stem elongation. If it's outside, it shouldn't need hand pollination but if you have no bees around, rather than flicking, a better method is to use an electric toothbrush and hold the neck against the flower truss once the flowers are open. You should be able to see the pollen falling out. Best to do either in the morning or evening rather than mid day.

The Fresh Direct South Asian mango was much better than the Kesar. This mango, while smaller in size, reminds me very much of some of the mangoes I still dream of in Thailand. This was a minimally fibrous mango (really only right near the pit), with really strong aroma of coconut. Nicely sweet and still slightly tart. I'm glad I got 2 of these, and am looking forward to the second one. It would be really good as mango with sticky rice as the mango itself is already scented of the coconut and palm sugar saturated sticky rice. I wish it was a little juicier though.

Nyonya kari ayam buah keluak (without the keluak).... coconut-free chicken curry made with pork stock and tamarind.

That could be true, but I've had lots of (really expensive) heirloom tomatoes from the farmer's market that had no flavor compared to what I grew myself. I don't know if that stuff was refrigerated, but I do know that it was not picked super ripe - because if they were, by the time they got to the market they'd be mush. I have 2 thoughts - first, most heirloom tomatoes taste like nothing but because they're technically an heirloom variety, growers can get a lot of money for them, plus they look the part - they're irregular, different colors, etc. Very few heirlooms have been bred for flavor. Those that have been are notoriously difficult to grow - they are super susceptible to blossom end rot, mildew, poor water/nutrient uptake, pests, you name it. Because of this, even the best ones on grafted root stocks you basically get only 50% of their fruit being marketable in the best of conditions. The second thought is that between what I grew in my living room and my experience as a kid with my father's tomatoes (he grew lots of them in our garden every year, but all hybrids) is that a tomato's full flavor only comes about in the last couple of days on the vine. They don't really get any riper once picked - even though you can gas them and cause them to go from green to red, but you'll never get the sweetness or the full flavor profile of a completely vine ripened tomato. These are impractical to sell at any market more than 100 feet away since if you breath too hard they get damaged. @Margaret PilgrimSure, you can add a bit of sugar to them which will help bring out the perception of sweetness, but I don't think the flavor profile will be like it should be when completely vine ripened - it's not all about brix levels, it's also about ripening the phenolics and developing all the esters/aldehydes etc that contribute to the aroma and flavor. The same is true of ripening wine grapes. If you get a really hot/dry season, you can get full brix levels much earlier before the phenolics ripen, which will cause an unbalanced wine. If you let them hang longer to ripen the phenolics, you wind up with super high alcohol levels (because of the excess sugar), or you can harvest early but the tannins won't be round and ripe. Sorry for the rant.