KennethT

It's hard to believe that my lemongrass plant looked like it was on the verge of death a few months ago.... I think some tom yum is in the near future...

A while ago, New York City instituted a trans-fat ban. News stories abounded about how KFC and others that fried in trans-fats now had to scramble to adjust their recipes to deal with the new law. One news station interviewed the CEO of Popeyes about how they were dealing with the change, to which he responded that they didn't have to change anything - they've never fried in trans-fats, they've always fried in lard...

@Duvel Looks good, but it will never taste like Popeye's unless it's fried in lard. That's their true secret ingredient!

maybe... but I haven't been to that many better sushi places. As a treat, we usually go (went) to Blue Ribbon sushi in Soho - and they did it. They also have this amazing Hokkaido uni that I love. The only other high class sushi place we've been to was years ago when we used to go to Sushi Yasuda back when Yasuda-san was there - we'd always sit at the sushi bar and chat with him. But there, I never chose anything as he would just surprise us... along with like 3 or 4 types of uni. I was always surprised by his memory - we only went there a couple times a year, but every time we sat down he'd look at me, smirk and say "sea urchin coming..."...

I've never seen dried curry leaves. I alwasy get them fresh. But now I just do a little snip snip, rather than paying $5 for 4 sprigs...

I used to love going to this one sushi place - when you ordered the sweet shrimp (botan ebi) which are raw, they deep fried the head and served that too.... drool...

Also, if you remove the heads, you can make "shrimp head fat" which was used in a bunch of some of the most well known Pad Thai places in Bangkok... I think they actually cooked the heads in pork fat... even better...

Love head-on shrimp. When I had more time, I used to get them all the time from my local H-Mart (Korean grocery). Now that I'm strapped for time, if I make shrimp at all, it's the IQF deshelled deveined kind. But I love using the head-on ones in curries (great for sucking the head).

We get delivery from our local Sichuan place at least once a week. We've also been trying to support our favorites, like a small Yunnan restaurant in the East Village every time we can. I don't know if New York City Chinese restaurants were hit as hard as ones in other parts of the country, as compared with other types of restaurants in the same locales... I don't think He Who Shall Not Be Named affected NYers affinity for Chinese food...

You can top it and it will split. Tons of videos growing curry plant on YouTube. Depending on environment, it can go from a short twig to a bush in a year or so.

I love curry leaves. Depending on the size batch, I will use at least a sprig, maybe 2. If you have a curry plant, you never want to pick individual leaves leaving "skeletons". You always want to take a branch from where it emerges from the stem. This will also have the benefit of spurring the plant to put out more branches! 2 birds....

Many years ago, my father and I had a multi-month long "duck-off" where we made competing versions of whole roasted ducks. The best way, by far was a real pain, but worked really well. I gave it a short dunk in boiling water - maybe about 5, 10 minutes or so (it started boiling, but only got back to a simmer by the time I took it out.) After I let it drain, and then air dry on a rack in teh refrigerator for 3 days. Then a low/slow roast. Most of the fat was rendered, the skin was crispy, and the meat was good.

I'm right there with you, but I think they should be put in the fireplace and burned in effigy as a warning to the rest of the vile red creatures lest they cross your threshold.

I just remembered that I have some powdered egg whites in the pantry... I'll probably use that

Strange question: I have potatoes, I have onion. I have no eggs. We don't keep eggs in the house. Around me, the cost of eggs is seemingly ridiculous compared to what I remember in the supermarkets as a child. Any thoughts on what I can use as a binder to replace the eggs? I have an old packet of methylcellulose F50 (or something like that - it hasn't been used in forever so it is buried somewhere) that I once used as a binder for some kind of fried meatball thing that worked pretty well. Any other thoughts?

Yeah - amybe like a gastrique - the slightly sweet and sour. I've made a brown duck sauce, added some raspberries, and some raspberry vinegar. Was very good, but the OP wanted to stay away from fruit.

Don't get saucy with me, Bernaise!!!!! Sorry... someone had to say it....

I like mushrooms with duck - so a wild mushroom sauce?

I believe this was something postulated by either Modernist Cuisine or Dave Arnold (I don't remember who) - the theory is that when you cook dried pasta, the vast majority of the time in the boiling water is not cooking the pasta, but just rehydrating it. The cooking is done in the last couple of minutes (as if you were cooking fresh pasta). So, by soaking overnight, you take care of the rehydrating step in advance. One of the things that they did at the time was using different soaking liquids in order to flavor the pasta. Other than that (and I don't really see the need for that either), I don't really understand why someone would bother with this. It requires you to decide to make pasta the day before. And how much time are you saving? In the end, getting the pot of water to boil takes a lot longer than cooking the pasta itself. So unless you're a restaurant where you always have water boiling for pasta, so it reduces the cook time from fire to plate, I don't see the need.

most red wine (or wine in general) has quite a bit of acidity, so I wonder if taht's what's cooking the exterior of the meat, rather than the alcohol? I've made gravlax before that has vodka or gin as part of the cure and it doesn't cook the fish.

No reason not to, I had just never heard of it before. Interesting!

three cup vegetables?

I've been pinching the basil flowers for over a month!

hyper-local! I wish you could have had some of the basil when the plant was in its prime - leaves the size of your fist... I think it's time to either plant another or clone the one I've got going and start over... this plant is just way too big, flowers too frequently and the leaves aren't as big and beautiful as they used to be...

I've never done so. My wife is not a huge tabbouleh fan, and the type I usually like is more parsley heavy than mint. I do make a lot of Vietnamese dishes, which is why I decided to grow it.