KennethT

Not a cocktail, but I'd use the Raynal cognac for some sauteed pears. Peel and slice 1/8" thick. Saute in butter with lots of black pepper, then flambe with cognac.

I had a chicken curry for breakfast several days in a row at the original Killiney's Kopitiam - it was one of the tastiest things I had on that trip, which is saying something. When I got home, I tried to recreate it many times but could never get it right. But I think I did it last time.... even if it's not an exact recreation (I haven't had the real thing in 2 or 3 years), it was really tasty. While I've never written a recipe in RecipeGullet before, I have written recipes down for myself - mostly notes of quantities of ingredients.... this one is difficult for me because I didn't really measure anything while making it - so the quantities are going to be REALLY imprecise - to tell the truth though, I don't think exact quantities matter all that much in this case. Makes 4 meals for 2 people each - I cook the rempah and make the curry itself in one large batch since it's a bit of work, then portion and freeze. While it's not typical, it makes fast and convenient meals for us during the week when we don't have that much time. Because I don't like to freeze and reheat meat, I'll make the curry with everything except the chicken in advance and freeze, then I'll defrost one batch in a pot - once simmering, I'll add the chicken. Rempah: about 10 shallots, peeled, chopped very roughly about 10 cloves of garlic (a little less than a head), peeled, chopped roughly about a 6" piece (or bunch of pieces adding to it) fresh turmeric, peeled, chopped roughly about 5T belacan (dried fermented shrimp paste) 6-8 dried puya chiles, destemmed and seeded, chopped roughly (or snipped with scissors), then rehydrated and drained 4-5 dried thai chiles, destemmed and seeded, chopped roughly (or snipped with scissors), then rehydrated and drained a large handful (how do you like THAT for a measurement!?!) ground coriander a small handful ground cumin a small handful ground fennel 3/4C grapeseed oil (or other neutral oil) 2 stems curry leaves, stemmed 1 3" stick of true cinnamon (not cassia) 2 star anise 3 cloves 2-3T coconut cream Curry: 8 yukon gold potatoes, peeled, quartered and par boiled 4C coconut milk about 1T salt about 1T sugar Chicken (for one meal for 2): 4 chicken thighs (we usually only get the thighs as my wife is not too fond of the legs, and it's a lot juicier than white meat) salt 1/2C water (optional depending on thickness of coconut milk used - the curry shouldn't be thick, but more viscous than water) Method: 1) Traditionally, you would pound the first set of rempah ingredients (without the oil) in a mortar/pestle until a smooth paste - but I don't have the time for that... so I use a blender - the results may not be as good, but it works pretty well. To do this, add all the top section rempah ingredients to a blender jar in order. Blend until smooth. 2) In a deep pot over medium heat, add the rempah paste plus the second set of rempah ingredients and fry until the oil separates out and the paste moves around in a more or less solid mass. You need to constantly stir and scrape to make sure it doesn't burn on the bottom. If you made the paste with mortar/pestle, add oil to the pot first, then add paste when hot. When it's done, it should look like this: 3) Add the potatoes, coconut milk, salt and sugar, and simmer for a few minutes 4) Chill, dividing evenly into 4 portions; refrigerate overnight, and then freeze for later. 5) To make the complete meal, add one frozen portion to a 4 qt saucepan and add 1/2C water (if needed to adjust consistency) - cover and cook over medium heat until simmering. 6) Meanwhile, salt the chicken and let sit until curry is simmering 7) Add chicken to curry and make sure the meat is submerged. Cover, and simmer for about 8 minutes. At this point the chicken should be mostly cooked through - if so, turn off the heat and leave covered for another 5 min. or so while prepping vegetables etc. 8) Eat with french bread to dip into the curry, or Singapore style roti prata.

ETA - next time I may omit the curry leaves. While I love the flavor and complexity they impart, I don't think they're typical in the "authentic" dish...

I'm sure I've posted this before, but we're creatures of habit... Nyonya chicken coconut curry

I saw this on PBS the other night. I enjoyed watching it.

I typically dislike peppers too - not so much because of flavor, but they tend to give me heartburn for some reason.. But, oddly enough, I love chili peppers! But, they're not the same animal...

That space looks like my entire kitchen!

For your fallen homies?

Thanks for posting this - a very interesting read....

Just thinking about this - I wonder if it was freeze dried tomato water, pulverized to a powder?

I don't quite understand - it was a dry type of caking powder? Was it room temp? It melted in your mouth, right?

looking at the photo makes me think of snow made by using a pacojet... making a superfine snow that would melt instantly in your mouth.

OK, I'm back, by popular demand! hehe.... After being back for 2 days, I'm still struggling with crazy jetlag and exhaustion - so please bear with me! This year, for our Asian adventure, we went to Bali, which for those who don't know, is one of the islands in Indonesia. Bali is a very unique place - from its topology, to the people, language, customs, religion and food. Whereas the majority of people in Indonesia are Muslim, most people in Bali are Balinese Hindu, which from what I understand is a little like Indian Hinduism, but has more ancestor worship. Religion is very important to many people in Bali - there are temples everywhere, and at least in one area, there are religious processions through the street practically every day - but we'll get to that later. Bali has some food unique to it among its Indonesian neighbors, but like everywhere, has seen quite a bit of immigration from other Indonesian islands (many from Java, just to the west) who have brought their classic dishes with them. Basically all Indonesians speak Indonesian, or what they call Bahasa Indonesia, or just Bahasa, which, anyone who has read my prior foodblogs wouldn't be surprised to hear that I learned a little bit just before the trip. Unfortunately, I didn't get to use any of it, except a couple times which were totally unnecessary. When speaking with each other, most people in Bali speak Balinese (totally different from bahasa) - many times when I tried using my bahasa, they smiled and replied, and then tried to teach me the same phrase in Balinese! As time went on, and I used some of the Balinese, I got lots of surprised smiles and laughs - who is this white guy speaking Balinese?!? Seriously though, tourism has been in Bali for a very long time, so just about everyone we encountered spoke English to some degree. Some people spoke German as well, as they supposedly get lots of tourists from Germany. As one of our drivers was telling us, Bali is heavily dependent on tourism as they have no real industry other than agriculture, which doesn't pay nearly as well as tourism does. While there are beaches all around the island, most of the popular beach areas are in the south of the island, and those areas are the most highly touristed. We spent very little time in the south as we are not really beach people (we get really bored) and during planning, decided to stay in less touristed areas so we'd have more opportunities for local food... this didn't work out, as you'll see later. So, it wouldn't be a KennethT foodblog without photos in the Taipei airport and I-Mei Dim Sum, which we called home for about 4 hours before our connection to Bali... Beef noodle soup: The interior: This was the same as always - huge pieces of beef were meltingly tender. Good bite to the thick chewy noodles. Xie long bao (soup dumplings) and char siu bao (fluffy barbeque pork buns):

@Kim ShookYes, the rice was pressed into a heart shape... hilarious... It's funny - we had been looking into going to Bali for about 13 years now (it was originally going to be part of our honeymoon) but never made it for one reason or another. I had always heard that it was beautiful, but actually, many people I had talked to online, who spend time at the beaches, say that the beaches aren't that great, as compared to the Caribbean or something. It is a very popular beach vacation for Australians, probably due to proximity if nothign else. Also, some of the beaches get quite strong waves - so surfers like to go there.

@rotuts Thanks... probably not until next year!

@TicTac Did you read the Mayo clinic article I linked? They say that most food born illness presents in about 24 hours, which is about exactly the amount of time it took. But at the end of the, that's the problem with food borne illness - it's practically impossible to find out where it comes from unless many people present who all ate from the same source.

@TicTac hmmm... research i've done in the past indicates that food poisoning can present itself even 36 hours after ingestion... some bugs even longer after that! From the mayo clinic: https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/e-coli/symptoms-causes/syc-20372058

I'm not quite sure. But some of them were really impressive, carrying them on their head using no hands for stability. One woman even walked up stairs with no hands! We saw women carrying all sorts of things on their head - evidently it's very common in Bali. Women walking down the side of the road with a basket, on the head. Hotel staff bring in a tray for room service? No cart... on the head...

We woke up early so we could go out for breakfast before coming back to pack, check out and get to the airport for our 1PM flight. We got the last table, and after we sat down, there were a bunch of people waiting They are best known for their bread toast: Interior shot - there are two large pats of cold butter and a smear of kaya coconut jam type spread. The bread is toasted over charcoal at this location. kopi (coffee - thick with sweetened condensed milk) teh (strong black tea with sweetened condensed milk) They may be best known for the bread toast, but I love their chicken curry: You can get it with french bread for dipping, or my favorite, the roti prata: You can see how the prata are grilled, not fried as is typical. Really flaky and chewy... just perfect with the curry. OK, so back to the airport to go home... boo!!!!! This is the departure area for Terminal 3: Beautiful living wall... and evidently, you could enter to win a car. All over the place are kiosks where you can enter your feedback about the airport. They're in the bathrooms, right after passport control, etc. More features of Terminal 3: There is a free swimming pool and changing area in the Transit Hotel.... but we like the butterfly garden: All that wandering around got me a little peckish, which is convenient as we passed: This food area is set up like a hawker center. At the front is a counter where you pay for a prepaid card (none of the vendors accept cash). When you're finished, you return the card and get the balance refunded. There are a whole bunch of different stalls, with lots of the Singapore hits: I decided I would get the bak chor mee - or minced pork noodles, since I haven't had anything like it in a long time. Yellow wheat noodles with fish cake, fish ball, pork ball, liver, and a couple of whole shrimp. Oh, and also the minced pork... I asked for the noodles dry, so the soup comes on the side so you can add as much as you want to moisten... lime juice, of course.... from concentrate. 4-1/2 hours later, we landed in Taipei and didn't have time to stop for dim sum before we had to make our connection to NY... Hope you enjoyed the short tour of Bali, and even shorter trip to Singapore... I know I did!

We landed in Singapore's beatiful new, Terminal 4: baggage claim. Singapore continues to amaze me. We made it through customs in less than 10 minutes, and our bags we basically waiting for us on the carousel when we got there. Jumped into a waiting taxi 5 minutes later, and 20 minutes after that were at our hotel. We were checked in and in our room less than an hour after our flight landed. OK - we're in Singapore for less than 24 hours.... what to do???? First up - chicken rice! To my favorite place, Wee Nam Kee. It was just as good as I had remembered it... It was quite busy - we had to queue up for about 10 minutes condiment tray - I really like their chili sauce, and love how they provide a container of grated ginger so you can add as much as you like. soup lime juice (from concentrate, obviously from the neon color) stir fried baby kailan chicken - comes room temperature chicken rice.... After dinner, we went to the ION centre mall on Orchard road: in the daylight after dark... specifically went there to get some tea: TWG teas are ridiculously high quality, but also expensive. I'm glad they don't have an outlet in NY! (they actually do sell some teas there, but only their bagged teas, not the ridiculous selection of loose leaf)

The next day, we woke up feeling much better... back on the horse!!! Unfortunately, we had to check out to make our flight to Singapore that afternoon... so breakfast, and then lunch at the airport was the last of our Balinese food... Mango (the last of the trip, sigh) Laksa for me - this was awesome - really flavorful. I was surprised that it was a coconut laksa, but very happy with it. Poached egg with the green goddess sauce for my wife. After the laksa, I was still hungry, so I got the vanilla spiced french toast. It came with shaved coconut, more mango, a passionfruit curd and a palm sugar syrup flavored with vanilla, clove and star anise Once checked into the airport: we went to Made's Warung, the balinese restaurant there... I got the nasi campur - it was ok, but not that great... but I guess you can't expect much at the airport... My wife got the fried rice/ gado gado We boarded our Air Asia flight to Singapore... I had never flown them before - their prices are really cheap - our flight was like $50 each for a 2-1/2 hour flight... which is why I guess they need to supplement ticket prices with ads...

We decided to stay in the hotel and order room service for dinner. We were both still exhausted from all of our recent physical exertion (contrary to what you may think, neither my wife nor I are very athletic!) and from getting over being sick. I tested the waters with a burger My wife just got some lumpia (spring rolls)

By the next day, my wife was feeling better, and I was slowly on the mend. For breakfast, I just had a couple slices of toast with some butter. My wife had a more interesting poached egg with green veggies and "green goddess sauce"... neither of us were in the mood to take photos of it though. We basically stayed in the hotel room for most of the day, just leaving around 3 or 4 or so to wander the grounds for an hour so they could clean the room. I had originally had such high hopes for that day - we were planning on having lunch at Ibu Oka, a warung known for their babi guling (roast suckling pig)... but there was no way my stomach was ready for that by lunch time (they close around 5 or so) - I wasn't even ready to walk around the town, which while beautiful and interesting, does have a lot of hawking and is packed with people milling about. By around 5PM, we went for a drink while we were waiting for our room to be cleaned... lime juice and mint mango/orange/pineapple juice fried chili salt squid with chili mayo dip My stomach was feeling better but I was a bit nervous about the squid... but going slowly, it went down fine, and stayed there! Things are looking up!

The next day, we woke up ridiculously early to hike up Mount Batur (also called Gunung Batur) a volcano that last erupted in 2000. Most people traditionally hike up to the top so they can see the sunrise from the summit, which basically requires you to leave your hotel around 2AM to get to the parking area by around 4, and then up to the top by 5;30 or 6... Personally, I don't care for that so much, and since the weather was what it was (variable and partly cloudy), we figured we'd go as late as we could because there is a chance we wouldn't see the sunrise from the summit anyway. I'm glad we did, because that was exactly what happened. Plus another benefit of getting there late was that we could hike up by ourselves (with our guide) rather than with the throngs of people who go for the sunrise. So we left the hotel around 4AM (still ridiculously early) and started our hike around 5:30 or so... The hotel gave us pastries and fruit for us to have on the drive there, but it was dark in the car, so no photos... Hiking in the pitch dark, with flashlights, is quite odd, to say the least... Sunrise from the trail: Batur is a double volcano - the outer caldera was formed thousands of years ago and contains a caldera lake, but the inner one is more recent. The above photo is inside the outer caldera, hiking up to the peak of the inner one. Our guide stopped to make an offering about halfway up the trail - evidently, this happens a lot based on all the old offerings littering the ground at this spot. I'm glad we left late, because it was getting a little cloudy as we got closer to the top: Yes, our guide was hiking up the trail (which was quite rocky and actually a bit difficult in some spots) wearing Keds. As we were getting closer to the summit, there were a lot of people coming down. At the top, we were greeted with quite a few people who were hanging around hoping the clouds would clear out, as well as more monkeys - some were quite agressive! It's hard to capture the secondary caldera from the top... but after a while, the clouds thinned and we got a great view of the primary caldera and a sliver of Mount Agung just behind it. Inside the primary caldera are 4 different villages and quite a few farms. We got back to the hotel around 10:30 - just as breakfast was about to close, but they kept it open for us which was really nice of them. pineapple and mango nasi lemak - rice topped with tiny fried fish, with a corn fritter, veggies, chicken curry and beef rendang. Awesome... After Breakfast II we relaxed a bit, then took a walk around the center of Ubud seeing various temples. We also saw a religious procession going through the street which then closed off traffic We also stopped at a market and picked up some mangosteen at a local fruit market (yay!!!) After we got back to the hotel, we relaxed and I enjoyed some of my newly aquired fruit. We were getting ready for dinner around 7, when trouble started. Both my wife and I started having shall we say intense intestinal problems... There were times I wished that we could get a hotel room with 2 bathrooms... Even after a few Immodium, the problem had not abated at all, so we canceled our plan to go out for dinner, and just decided to order in something from room service. My wife wanted comfort food, so she got a chicken club sandwich... I figured I'd get some Jewish/Balinese penicillin and voted for a nice bowl of soto ayam - chicken soup flavored with lemongrass and turmeric. It arrived like this, with a carafe of the soup on teh side: Unfortunately, my soto ayam was not happy in its resting place as it was refunded a few hours later... Fortunately, I was the only one who was refunding out of both ends (sometimes simultaneously) - my wife was actually not that bad off. It's very hard to tell where these types of things come from, but the only thing that we didn't share equally were those chicken satay from the night before (I had a lot more of it than she did).

The weather there is highly variable. This time of year is just getting into the dry season - so there can be periodic showers. Otherwise, it was probably in the low to mid 80s during the day, and upper 70s at night and pretty humid. There are, of course, all the tropical flying friends - mosquitoes, dragonflies, etc.... and they supposedly do have zika there... so we brought the heavy duty bug repellent with us and used it - especially in the morning or evening when the biting is the worst. Also, every hotel kept a can of bug spray for you to use in the room. It was not nearly as heavy duty as the one we brought with us!