KennethT

Last airline meal for a while - Sing Air Singapore to Jakarta - 80 minute flight: "Carrot cake" with prawn, fried shallots, lontong (rice cake) and radish (that's the carrot part). All fried in lard... A Singapore specialty.

I think it depends. We've had some duck breast in various places in France, years ago, that was rare and really tender. It has to be the duck because one of the places was a Burgundian fondue place where you cooked your meat in a pot of hot oil on your table. Also had Charolais beef and lamb. I'd love to go back to that place.

2nd meal of Sing Air (about 8 hours later): Appetizer of citrus grilled shrimp salad with ginger balsamic vinaigrette. My wife got the duck confit from the standard menu. It looked a little tough. She said it was ok. I got the shrimp/pork wonton noodle soup. This was really good - super thin wonton skin, perfectly cooked shrimp, noodles had good texture in a nice chicken broth with not over cooked Chinese broccoli. They topped it with fried garlic chips and some fried garlic oil. Then came the dessert trolley: I got the apricot tart. Just in case there wasn't enough, they came around with a tray of chocolate...

In addition to the menu choices they have something called Book The Cook - a bunch of choices you can pre-order up to 2 days before the flight. And you can view the standard menu items at the same time so you wind up with maybe 12 choices of meals, plus the special meals like vegetarian, kosher, low salt, etc.

Singapore Airlines NYC-SIN. This time is something special - we were able to upgrade to Business class with our miles... Menu for dinner (served around 1AM Ny time) First course: Salad of smoked trout with micro greens, pickled onion and spiced hazelnut. There was a choice of breads - I took the garlic bread - really garlicky and nicely toasted. Chicken rice with chilli sauce, sweet soy sauce and lots of grated ginger. It was quite good, although I don't think Wee Nam Kee has anything to worry about. Chocolate ganache cake - holy crap this was good. Inside was a nice orange compote of some kind - not too sweet and not too orangy - just a hint.

@dcarchinteresting - I had never heard of that before.

My keriting chilli plant is going crazy and now we're going away for almost 2 weeks. I'm not worried about the plants dying (automatic watering) but what's going to happen to all those chillies on them? And no one around to hand pollinate the new flowers.... Oh well - we'll see in mid July!

Sort of. My parents had hosta beds that the deer LOVED. My father and I put electric fences around everything but we constantly needed to maintain them as the plants grew because the leaves would touch the wires and create a short (especially if rainy). Plus the beds were maybe 10 feet in diameter and the deer would always try to jump the fence to get into the interior... many times with disastrous consequences.

Even better (and traditional in Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia) would be steamed rice cakes called lontong.

+1. Shallots, garlic, potatoes, ginger - all in a rattan basket.

All this talk made me go to my local Xi'an place... Wife got a rougiamo with cumin lamb

For those growing chillies, how does one know when they are ripe and ready to be picked? By feel? Also, if looking to pick them green, how do you know when they're ready since they stay green for quite a while before ripening?

It seems like chilli peppers in general like lots of light and are heavy nutrient feeders, so I am giving them a lot of light and am using a strong bloom formula nutrient, so yeah, I'm really happy with the way this plant is working out. All the leaves look great - no sign of nutrient deficiency which also means that the roots are in good shape as well. I think I'm going to harvest a bunch of the chillies green - maybe today... and then freeze them since I don't have much time for cooking this next week. Hopefully that will make the plant want to start flowering again as flowering has really slowed. I'll let the rest of the chillies ripen on the plant - hopefully they won't get too far while we're away starting in a little over a week.

The first of my keriting chillies has started ripening!

Steak-Umms were present in my NYC suburb in the early '80s as well. They were always in our freezer - although we never had anything as nice as a plancha or the Blackstone back then! We just used a frying pan... evidently, since the 80s, they've expanded their product line to a chicken version (using breast/rib meat) and an Angus version!

I just saw this now.... as I'm sure you know, cilantro doesn't like too much heat or light or it will bolt. So, it makes a great houseplant! It loves normal room temperature and will love a north or east facing window. No preservation required!

Thanks a lot for this. I'm sure it entailed hours of research and writing - I, for one, truly appreciate it.

hmmm.... thanks. That helps a little. I'm still a little embarrassed but no longer completely shamefaced.... 😁

Please tell me that that feast came from a restaurant. If you had made all of that from scratch after just home from holiday, I will hang my head in shame forever that I would not even attempt such a feat!

According to Andy Ricker, the term laap refers to the sound the cleaver makes while chopping. He also, not surprisingly, recommends chopping finely with a cleaver as opposed to a meat grinder.

What do you use for the wrap itself? Is it a flour tortilla (like you'd use for a burrito) or something else?

I remember those from my college days... One bar made it with Blue Curacao as the triple sec.... I can't imagine how many of those I had over the years there....

Thanks. I have 2 David Thompson books but don't remember much from either! Then again, I don't make much Thai food anymore....

I enjoy sticky rice - especially with anything Northern Thai or Isaan - the home of sticky rice and what would traditional be served with laap. But I agree with @C. sapidus, it requires forethought for the soaking which I rarely think far enough ahead to do. Hence why my ziplock bag of sticky rice sits in the back of my cupboard! Although Pai from hot-thai-kitchen.com provides a "fast" method for dealing with sticky rice, but she says it doesn't come out as good so I've never tried it.

No sticky rice!?! Criminal!! 😂