KennethT

Herbal black pepper shrimp with 5 herbs (4 from the garden) and peppercorns from Sarawak, Malaysia.

Were the lily bulbs fresh or frozen?

Another night, another take out meals. Cold chicken Mapo doufu - very savory but with a real brightness from a lot of Sichuan peppercorns. I'm pretty sensitive to them - mouth was vibrating! Pea leaves with garlic And a green mango with freshly made chilli salt.

Back in the kitchen..... Sambal grouper with spicy cucumber salad.

This came from Bhatti Indian Grill in Curry Hill. I did see that Dhamaka started offering the Biryani to go/delivery that you heat at home. We were about to go away when they first introduced it but I'm considering it for one day soon. We do like ourselves some dum biryani. Yes.

Continuing the neighborhood tour of take out and delivery: Indian grilled chicken thigh South Indian chicken curry with coconut milk and curry leaves, both quite spicy but so different than the Hunan. Also, my favorite fruit vendor in Chinatown has green mango again!!!

Here they are but in other places, pea shoots looks like a week older than microgreens. In my local HMart, they're called Bean leaves or something like that.

At the request of the rural Kansas contingent, another take out dinner... Chicken "Dry pot" Pea leaves stir fried with garlic

Where did you get the scallops?

In don't usually post take out meals but I was discussing this with @liuzhou over here which got me in the mood for some.... Supposed Hunan bamboo shoots with pork underneath are rice noodles and it came with a side of broth to add to make soup noodles. Also hiding are more green and red chillies. It was quite spicy tonight, my nose was running for a good 20 minutes after. I'm sure something else will be running tomorrow morning... 🤣 ETA I ordered this "medium" which is 2 out of 4

@Shelby First, looking at the most recent photo, I'd say the tomato plant needs more light - the internode space (vertical space between the branches) looks pretty big. Like others have said, if it's an indeterminant plant (like most heirlooms), topping the plant will NOT help. Don't ask me how I know... ok, I'll tell you - I did it, and the tomato plant became this GIANT bush that took over my apartment. Pro tomato greenhouses train the plants to grow up a strong supported by the greenhouse ceiling. As the plant gets taller, they let out more string which causes the plant to lean. You can lower the plant a few inches a day to make sure you don't snap the stem. Over time, all the lower leaves on the main stem will die off leaving only maybe 5 feet of leaves, but tomatoes will actually form on the long main stem. Rather than leaning the plant straight as is done in the greenhouses (they've got lots of space) you can actually slowly wind it around the pot its planted in in a spiral so it doesn't take any extra space. Indeterminant tomato plants can get to be 30 feet long and will keep producing for a year, even though they start to slow production after 9-10 months or so. If it's determinant (most hybrids), then you can top it but it probably won't keep growing vegetatively after 5-6 feet or so.

Finally back from vacation (our flight home on the 30th was cancelled due to mechanical problems and we didn't wind up leaving until the 31st), so a NY buah keluak curry for lunch.

huh. I have a soldering iron that looks JUST like that!

Interesting. Are 'Gai ma' type dishes typical for the region? I don't know what gai ma means, but I assume it means some type of stir fry or something over rice or rice noodles. They actually do put in a lot of chillis - the majority of which are fresh green goat horn chilli and some kind of mildly spicy red chilli. They add chopped birds eye chillis (I think) to adjust spiciness to order. The first time I went there (years ago when they first opened) I ordered something "spicy" which is 3/4 on their scale and it was so hot I had trouble eating it. Eyes watering, nose running, the works. When I ordered it, the cashier asked if I was sure because she didn't know if I'd like it . Nowadays I order it medium (2/4) and add some of their roasted chili oil if necessary. They understand the NYC market in that many of their patrons are Chinese (my branch is right near NYU which has a lot of Chinese students) but they also get a few of us white people who aren't familiar with Hunan food and its spiciness.

My wife and I get takeout from a Hunan place around the corner from us probably once a week. I've never tried their version of Chairman Mao's favorite dish though. I'm curious what you think of their menu - https://silkykitchen.com/menu/ It's a fast casual place where you order at the counter and then they call your number (in Mandarin and then in English) when it's ready to pick up to either bring to your table and take away. I'm partial to the bamboo shoots with pork. When they first opened, everything came topped with a generous portion of pickled mustard greens but that stopped a while ago claiming they couldn't get them anymore. They were one of the first restaurants in NYC to use fresh rice noodles. Basically every menu item is served on either rice noodles (dry or with soup) or on white rice.

I don't know if we've had this discussion before but does your schmaltz have bits of rendered chicken skin and/or onions? If so, that's what my grandmother and father would call gribenes in Yiddish. Schmaltz was just the pure fat.

Many years ago I did lobster sv a bunch of times, following recommendations from the sv board here and also MC. To tell the truth, I was never really that happy with any of them. Out of the shell is good because they're sharp and like to poke holes in bags 🤣. Or cover the sharp bits with foil. Personally of all the ways I've done it, the tried and true Eric Ripert method works best - runs skewer through the tail to keep straight, add to a pot of simmering water with aromatics, cover then turn off the heat and let sit -like 10 or 15 minutes, I forget but I can try to look it up when we get home - it won't be until early afternoon on the 31st though. The recipe was in his book "A Return to Cooking" so you might be able to find it online.

We were in Hong Kong maybe 10 years ago (not quite sure without looking it up) but at that time we had a lot of dim sum - by then, most of the better places had gotten rid of the carts completely and solely used a paper menu that you checked off which dishes you wanted with the supplied pencil.

Actually, since they're hydroponic, pot size is less important - ideally you want a smaller pot size so you can fertigate more frequently and less chance of root rot, but I haven't automated these yet so they weren't completely taken care of properly. I have a giant sawtooth plant growing in a solo cup that's doing the best I've ever done with that herb, but it's fertigated like twice a day now! More frequent waterings increase oxygenation in the root zone.

@TicTac, @Smithy is the winner! Definitely root bound. Turns out that this is a really interesting plant that I'm discovering as I go as I can find literally no information about growing it. Even in Indonesian, although I did find a nice piece of research by some university there that was doing research on growing it in the field. From the main rhizome, a bunch of tuber-like things grow straight down from it (they're also really fragrant, btw) and also a bunch of fine roots. They definitely outgrew their 16 oz Solo cup.

My Indonesian kencur plants were feeling a bit constrained so they moved into a condo.....

This is many years ago so I don't know if they're still around or even as good, but we had one of the best meals of our lives at Akelarre in San Sebastian. They had 2 different tasting menus (both seafood heavy) and as a couple, we could get different ones - not the same one for the table, and since we share eveyrthing anyway, we were able to taste so many different things. I'd recommend it over almost anything else in SS if it's within your budget.

Unfortunately, I don't remember and I don't know if I kept the card that he wrote for us.

We can always wish for a species specific blight!

Amen to this. Regular broccoli is a vile weed and should be rendered extinct.