KennethT

One question for wok users about braising things - one of the curries I make has tamarind in it, which is acidic. I'm concerned about cooking this dish in my well seasoned carbon steel wok because I'm nervous that the acid will break down my seasoning and A) make me have to reseason every time I make that dish and B) will taint my curry with dissolved seasoning! Are my concerns unfounded?

My recently purchased wok came with a solid aluminum lid with wooden knob... not that I've used the cover yet... lately, anything that needs steaming gets done in the CSO

@liuzhou What is the difference between cooking and eating chopsticks? I assume they're longer - but a different material? What about tongs?

Tangled up in blue is one of my favorites of his...

Yeah, I'm pretty happy with the electric service, but it would have to be pretty beefy to get away with having no gas service. Our building is a 100 year old industrial building - it used to be a tailoring company. It was converted to coop residential units in the late 70s/early 80s. So I imagine that the building already had a powerful main feed to run the industrial sewing machines,etc. Hot water, heat and A/C is included in our maintenance (which is pretty low) - each apartment has a fan coil unit that takes heated/chilled water from the roof - although I gather they'll be changing over to a heat pump system soon. Before I demo'd it, the apartment had a 20 year old electric coil top range. When I was growing up, my parents had a coil top electric range and I hated cooking on it, so I was really happy to get that thing out of there - I wound up giving it to one of the maintenance guys who wanted it along with all of the kitchen cabinets.

Deep fried with salt, they're not too bad, but I wasn't a huge fan of the aftertaste

Hilarious... I just wish there were photos!

My building has no gas service, so everything is electric. A standard US electric oven uses both 240V (for the heating elements) and 120V (for the controls/convection fan, etc). I decided not to get a standard US oven, which typically utilizes a 240V 40 or 50A circuit breaker (I use my CSO - there's only 2 of us - the amount of times I really need a full size oven I can count on one hand, especially since we're no longer having big parties and I'm cooking for liek 12 people at once or apps for 40) - so, instead, I had them install a 240V 30A breaker that just feeds a duplex 240V outlet (with 6-20R receptacles) which I will use for 2 240V induction burners. I got one 3500W cheap one - great for bringing a pot of water to boil, etc. and I'm going to get a Vollrath 2600W fancy induction unit which you can vary the power level in 1% increments or use temp mode and set a temp - it has both a pan sensor (supposedly the most accurate in the industry) and also a liquid probe which will be great for deep frying. it's like a control freak but 1/2 the price. They make it in 3500 and 4600W power levels, but I don't think it's necessary to have 2 super high power ones. I think the 2600W one will still be more powerful than the gas burner in my old apartment. Finally, I got a 15,000BTU butane burner (liek what she uses on hot thai kitchen) and I've used it a couple times - it was great for stir frying in the wok (albeit a little light, so it wants to move around a bit) but was almost too powerful for simmering a curry - in fact, I haven't taken it past 1/2 power yet because it makes so much heat, the sauce splatters all over.

for my mise, I usually put separate piles on a small plate, then use the sled to push each pile into the wok as needed. BTW, speaking of wok, I just got a relatively inexpensive 240V 3500W induction hob. It's not that controllable, but from the little I've used it so far (I've stir fried some morning glory and some bok choy), it's great with my carbon steel wok. I can get a great sear and char on things, then turn it down so it doesn't light the whole place on fire....

@liuzhouI am sorry to hear this, but I am glad you got to see her relatively recently. Like others, I really enjoyed reading about your trip and loved seeing the look on your mother's face when she first saw you.

I use the wok sled all the time. I can't read all of your hieroglyphics, but the middle says Hong Kong.

I used an angle grinder with a 1/16" metal cutting blade. It cut like butter. Then I rounded off the edges using my grinding wheel and wire brush.

Wow... looks great. What is at the bottom of the first pic? Are they mantis shrimp? We had them once in Hong Kong and were very disappointed - hard to peel and not much meat for all the work - but they also might not have been prepared very well.... Also, that's a very interesting example of seafood in the middle... I guess floating on top of the water counts? haha...

It looks to me like a red wax ginger. I think this is one that I saw in the Singapore Botanic Gardens years ago (2012): I always loved the ginger family, but as gorgeous as some of the inflorescences (is that a word?) are, the edible gingers are very plain looking - with the exception of the torch ginger...

Finally made it back to Chinatown...

Finally able to head to Chinatown to pick up one of these (yes, I know they're available online but I wanted to support the Thai store.

Sorry - I didn't mean to ask if it was difficult to follow the instructions, but the GE filter was extremely difficult to insert enough to be able to twist. Difficult as in one needed to be Magnus Ver Magnusson* to be able to do it easily - especially when you have to crawl under the sink to get to it. *https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnús_Ver_Magnússon

Interesting - I've gone through a bunch of under sink filters - I used to use a GE single system but if we ever had any turbidity (which could have been often since they were doing construction on the water mains a few blocks away) the filter would clog in no time - a filter that was rated for 6 months would decrease to a trickle in a week). So I'm always on the lookout for a good filter that won't clog on me. The "nozzle" on your filter looks similar to what I had on my undersink GE model - I found it was a real pita to change filters once the system was mounted. I'm curious as to your experience when you get around to changing the filter(s).

That's fantastic. Once I get my current plants into their permanent home, I'm going to either plant some ginger, or more likely some galangal. Ginger is pretty cheap and easily available, but galangal is a lot more expensive and I have to get a ton of it so I wind up freezing a bunch, but I've never been happy using it once frozen. Also, once we're completely settled (that'll be a few months) I'm planning on building an ornamental plant wall, and either plant some heliconia psittacorum (they're in the ginger family but not edible but I love the look of their flowers) or some torch ginger which are pretty and edible.

here in Manhattan, NYC, we have great water, but for my plants I need to get rid of the chlorine. I use a hydrologic small boy - it's a dual stage filter that removes sediment and chlorine as well as a bunch of other stuff. It's working well so far. https://www.hydrologicsystems.com/collections/dechlorinators/products/small-boy

and medieval torture devices. The plant of a thousand papercuts (plus a bit of sticky resin). It makes me wonder about an experience I had in Thailand years ago. My wife and I were offered free foot massages from our hotel. The first thing they did was wash our feet with a broth of lemongrass, galangal and kaffir lime leaves, scrubbing our feet with lemongrass leaves scrunched up like a sponge. I don't remember getting papercuts on my feet - it actually felt really good, and smelled good enough to drink (until my feet got in there!)

I just finished repotting my lemongrass plant. 1 small plant wound up completely filling a 1 gallon fabric pot - it was completely root bound. I separated the plant into 3 plants - which was like wrestling a tiger made out of razors - I've got small paper cuts all over my arms! Now, the 3 plants are in a 3 gallon pot - I really need to get back into cooking just to use some of this - it's growing faster than I can use it!

That's a BIG jar of capers!

I live in what is arguably one of the most culturally diverse, high quality food neighborhoods in NYC, possibly the US and maybe the world - NYC's East Village. Within a few blocks of me is a decent representation of food from almost any country (or region) you can think of, all of whom will deliver to my door (actually, the front desk in the lobby due to covid restrictions). With that being said, after roughly 6 weeks of eating almost nothing made by my own 2 hands aside from a salad (due to packing/moving/unpacking/and rehabbing the old place so I can get as much of the security deposit back as is possible after living in a place for 15 years), I was so happy last night to finally make a homemade dinner - and one I've been especially jonesing for - a Nyonya chicken curry called Ayam Buah Keluak - chicken in black nut curry. Well, sort of - I have no access to the keluak (the black nuts) that I'm aware of, and I certainly don't yet have the week it requires to process the keluak so it's not poisonous. The curry has no coconut milk - it's made with water or stock, and a paste made from the SE Asian kitchen sink - lemongrass, galangal, chillies, curry leaves, shallots, candlenuts, tamarind just being the beginning and one of the dominant flavors - shrimp paste, called belacan (pronounced bla-chen) in Malaysia/Indonesia. I make a large batch of the rempah (the spice paste) since it's time consuming, then portion and freeze - I usually get about 8-9 meals for 2 out of 1 batch of rempah, and had 2 meals worth left in the freezer. I also don't have the new kitchen fully set up yet - there are still boxes everywhere, as well as a partially assembled kitchen cart (thank you Wayfair for sending 2 of one piece and 0 of another) so it took twice as long to make as normal, but I am already loving being in this kitchen. I don't even have my induction hobs yet (there's no gas service in this building), but I did get a 15,000BTU butane powered camping stove that I used for the first time last night. Holy crap that thing is powerful! It is a lot more powerful than the largest burner in my old apartment. Most of the time I had it barely on to keep a perfect simmer, but was able to crank it up when stir frying the veggies in my carbon steel wok.

I've never used the fruit - from what I am to understand, there's very little juice in a kaffir lime, and what juice there is is very bitter. But the zest and sometimes even the rind are a common ingredient in curry pastes. I am growing my tree for the leaves, but it started flowering a while ago (the flowers smell amazing) and while I pinched 99% of the flowers to stimulate more leaf growth, I let one flower stay on just out of curiosity. I've seen kaffir limes sold in the Thai store, but they're always pretty old so I had no idea what a really fresh one was like.