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KennethT

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Posts posted by KennethT

  1. Just an update - tonight was the first time I was able to try the most ripe of the rawit chillies.  It is now obvious to me that chilli plants do not require heat to make the chillies spicy - just lots of light.  This one chilli was fantastic - lots of flavor but also, quite spicy.  One mashed up chilli amongst a pound of smashed cucumbers definitely made itself known....

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  2. 10 hours ago, liuzhou said:

    Continuing the chocolate theme, we have 巧克力脆皮榴莲冰皮月饼 (qiǎo kè lì cuì pí liú lián bīng pí yuè bǐng), chocolate crispy durian snowy mooncake. It is basically the same durian cake I mentioned before but coated in chocolate with nuts. I’ll pass. Chinese chocolate is not generally good, at all.

     

    WeixinImage_20251001003757_686_9.thumb.jpg.3cff99c13dc8bf7dcbd9bf254f0f4629.jpg

    I'm trying to imagine the flavor combo of chocolate and durian... and am having problems doing so.  I'd think that the durian would either overpower the chocolate and teh combo would be a little weird.. but then again, when it comes to chocolate, I'm a purist - I'm not a huge fan of chocolate and fruit together.

  3.  

    My rawit chilli plant is finally ripening the chillies. For the longest time, it was putting the flowers out and the flowers would turn into chillies (after I hand pollinate them) but the chillies would be staying green, seemingly forever. Also, the plant kept trying to get taller and taller.

     

    So this past weekend, I figured what the hell and trimmed all of the branches that were getting too tall, and I added extra light. My keriting chillies only need one light and ripen just fine, but I thought that maybe the rawit needed more - especially because the internode length of some of the branches was so large - that usually means there's not enough light.

     

    And yay!!! The chillies are finally ripening well! Going to harvest the first one soon...

     

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    • Like 8
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  4. 35 minutes ago, weinoo said:

     

    It just got "reviewed" on Eater - for whatever that's worth! (Basically, nothing, as eater, in my opinion, is gasping for air).

     

    https://ny.eater.com/restaurant-openings/404894/time-out-new-york-market-union-square-kebabwala-lori-jayne-kam-rai-thai-taqueria-el-chato-fornino-patty-palace

    We were planning on Thai - specifically the fried chicken and a khao soi.  They were out  of the khao soi, so we got the Northern Thai sausage.  The fried chicken was ok, but not even close to the best Hat Yai fried chicken we've had and the puck of sticky rice it came with should have had them cowering in shame.  It was so overcooked that the individual grains fused into a single gummy mass.  I can't blame it on the fact that it may have been sitting around as I remember getting a mango with sticky rice in Chiang Mai where the vendor dug teh sticky rice out of a cooler that was probably sitting there for hours and it was perfect.  I had mistakenly thought that the sausage was sai oua - a type of Northern Thai sausage and asked for it.  The manager who took our order knew what I was talking about, but didn't correct me in the fact that what they were serving was definitely NOT sai oua as I knew it both from Chiang Mai and at my much missed Pok Pok whose version was just like we had in Chiang Mai.  Saturday's version was a uniform fine grind, very one note, and they happened to burn the crap out of the sausage casing....

    • Sad 1
  5. 1 hour ago, weinoo said:

    Was that at the new Time Out Market food hall, which took over the old food hall on 14th?  Did anything t else look interesting?

    Yes - it used to be an Urbanspace.  There's an interesting looking Indian place called Kebabwala from the Unapologetic Foods group and a Jamaican patty place from Kwame Onwuachi (from Tatiana).  Less interesting is a pizza/sandwich place and a burger place.  I think I'm forgetting one...

  6. After a very disappointing Hat Yai fried chicken from a Thai vendor in a new food hall, I had to make the king of fried chickens.... Padang fried chicken with sambal ijo and merah.

     

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  7. 31 minutes ago, liuzhou said:

    I said few days ago that that the trend in 2025 is for mixed nut mooncakes. Now I’m re-considering. It seems it may be being evasive about what kind of mooncakes you are actually selling!

     

    These are described as 奶酥皮紫薯雪媚娘 (nǎi sū pí zǐ shǔ xuě mèi niáng), which translate as ’creamy crusted purple potato and snowy bride’, whatever the hell that means. No further information available.

     

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    By "purple potato" do they mean ube?  Ube has been really trendy here - mostly because it's so 'Instagrammable' due to its vibrant purple color... otherwise, it tastes like nothing.

  8. 1 hour ago, FauxPas said:

     

    Wow, you have done so well with that plant! You must have been treating it right.  🙂

     

    Will you dry the peppers or freeze them or ???? 

     

     

    Freeze....

     

    PXL_20250928_001824558.thumb.jpg.4d7e2f6b2da5ba97b6731b8cc2e27b41.jpg

     

    and waiting to be bagged...

     

    PXL_20250928_001846375.thumb.jpg.edae8b83148c65a5d2929122a7ef7cbd.jpg

     

    This is all in addition to the ones above.

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  9. We rarely get farmer's market chicken, primarily because I would rather pluck out my toenails one by one with a rusty pliers than go through my local farmer's market (the most popular one in NYC and packed with slow moseying tourists) on a weekend (when I do my shopping).

     

    Also, most of what I make are "boldly flavored" so I think I'd probably lose the nuance of a high quality chicken.

     

    But, one attribute that is important to me when picking a "supermarket" chicken is that it's air chilled.  Not only is it theoretically a lot safer (bacteria-wise) since it doesn't get chilled in a river of punctured innards, it also has a lot less absorbed water so it has more concentrated chicken flavor than an equivalent supermarket bird.

    • Like 2
  10. Hey everybody, I've been thinking about making an Indonesian dish called dendeng balado - beef jerky with chilli sauce.  While dendeng typically translates to jerky, it's not an air dried beef jerky that most people in the West would know, but thin slices of beef that have been braised in an aromatic sauce, drained, and then shallow fried until dry.

     

    I've had it looking like this:

     

    PXL_20250704_065318821_MP.thumb.jpg.2d97a3fd1da6313638dd0ab648c680b1.jpg

     

    or this version (less dried):

     

    PXL_20250707_051932816.thumb.jpg.3ebd4ed8783a37e4853c536fc7f17f78.jpg

     

    So, my question is, what cut of beef do you think I should use for this?  I imagine that it shouldn't be too tender or expensive of a cut - maybe a sirloin?  All of the Indonesian references that I've seen refer to cuts that don't exist here or don't even refer to a specific cut at all - just say "take a chunk of beef", haha.....

     

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  11. For the past few years, I've been watching a lot of Indonesian/Malaysian YouTube videos of people making various dishes.  Most of these dishes are some form of braise, starting with frying a spice paste in oil over relatively low heat, then adding a liquid to the braise.  Every single video has them cooking in some kind of wok - and like you say, most of those woks are lined with a non-stick material.  For that type of cooking, I don't think the non-stick is much of an issue because it doesn't use high heat that can damage the coating. 

     

    I used to do my braising in a standard 8qt sauce pan (looks like a mini stock pot), but lately, I've moved to a small, cheap stainless steel wok I got off Amazon and found that it works much better.  Even making a small quantity, I don't need a lot of liquid to cover, and it's easier to stir things around, especially when there's large chunks in there.  And it's vastly superior to the standard sauce pan when you need to reduce the liquid.

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  12. 18 hours ago, weinoo said:

    Resupply...

     

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    Vietnamese jasmine rice?!?  I need to resupply my jasmine rice - last time, I bought a 25 pound bag from Weee (new crop from Thailand). It was basically the same price as I can get in Chinatown, but it gets delivered so I don't have to schlep the 25# sack.

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  13. On 9/18/2025 at 5:50 PM, gfron1 said:

    Every year I have a few of THESE sent to the US from Malaysia. This year is particularly challenging with new tariff and shipping rules changes. Two years ago every one of them had a finger pressed in - later we learned that was the FDA/USDA? shoving a finger to prove there was no egg yolk inside, which is illegal. I find hers to be gorgeous, interesting but not out there flavors, and actually enjoyable versus the more traditional Cantonese style. [ETA for my poor sentence structure - salted yolk filling is illegal to ship in without prior approval, not shoving a finger in my mooncakes. That's perfectly legal.  :)]

     

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    That sucks.  In the future, another option may be to get them from Lady Wong, the NYC Nyonya/Malaysian bakery - you can get their moon cakes (and other desserts but I don't think their full catalog) on GoldBelly.

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  14. Here in the US, instructional cooking shows on the Food Network have gone the way of music videos on MTV.  It's all competition shows now.  There may be some "dump and stir" shows still on during daytime on weekdays, but definitely not primetime for a longtime.

     

    I think PBS still shows some instructional shows - or at least they used to the last time I watched broadcast TV - but who knows long PBS will last for nowadays...

  15. @Duvel I have very little biology knowledge (aka squishy stuff) so I was wondering - is it even possible for mold to grow on a piece of dried kombu?  I always thought that mold needed a certain amount of water to grow, but the dried kombu I have is like thin slices of wood and really brittle which makes me think that the water activity is very low. 

  16. Also, I've never done anything with the marrow - I just squeeze the bone as a test to see if I've extracted as much as I can.  I don't add marrow to the stock as it makes it cloudy.  But also, there isn't enough in there to try to actively remove to eat and would probably require a dentist's pick to do so.

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