KennethT

before use, it needs to get thoroughly cleaned and seasoned as you would with any mortar/pestle. So far, I've given it a VERY thorough wash, and ground some kosher salt into powder a few times. The first time, the salt turned grey - obviously lots of stone in there. By the last time, the salt stayed white. For some reason, many people grind kencur - sand ginger - which I also happened to bring home more of, as part of the "seasoning" process. I don't know why they say to grind that - it's kind of like ginger, but we'll see.

You don't eat it...

I brought this back from a recent trip to Indonesia: This is a cobek (pronounced cho-bek) and ulekan - a mortar and pestle style used there, parts of Malaysia and Singapore. Like practically everything there, it was really cheap - about $6 - even though it is hand cut, solid stone.

It was completely serviceable. Was it NY pizza? Absolutely not, but perfectly tasty especially on no sleep for a long time!

Just before landing

Breakfast: Book the cook with decent croissant and Singapore bak chor mee - it's no Hill Street Tai Hwa bcm but pretty tasty for the plane

I'm thinking about it - it would be a bit more brief than normal. Dinner, Singapore to Newark (NY area): Book the cook - braesola salad with grilled pears and marinated manchego, garlic butter focaccia and pandan chiffon with coconut cream with: Chicken biryani

Slightly hungry while waiting for our flight home, so a quick nibble of crab and prawn nuggets

Singapore Airlines, Jakarta to Singapore (about 1h15m flying time but of course they need to feed you dinner: Nasi lemak - coconut rice with chicken curry, fish cake made with spice paste/kaffir lime leaf, ikan bilis (small dried fish) and peanuts.

I wonder what they were arguing about.... Oolong!!! No, green tea!!! No, red tea!!!!!

Has anyone seen one of these? Evidently, it's a water purifier to make previously undrinkable tap water drinkable. This is in our hotel in Jakarta. Inside is a carbon filter and UV which is used in the output. The company claims 99.9999% reduction of bacteria. I don't know what the hotel is filling it with, but the output tastes fine and I haven't thrown up yet!

This looks like it's filled with some kind of liquid cheese - I'm thinking like Velveeta or the Indo equivalent....

Bread filled with chocolate and cheese, yes please!

Possibly the last airline flight of the day. Even though this flight is just over an hour long, doesn't mean SA won't feed you... Fried carrot cake with prawns. Contrary to what a western person would think of carrot cake, this is made with turnip and typically fried with lard and includes fried shallots, chilli and dried shrimp in addition to the fresh prawn (which are cooked perfectly btw). It is addictingly savory.

I'd be happy to show both you and @Shelby around - no charge.... Hehe. Not that I'm an expert - I just do some research! ETA: Jetlag not included....

Just some snacks before our next flight: Awesome chicken rice (about $6 each) Crab nuggets and prawn nuggets

In the airport now....

A refresher served about an hour and a half before landing: It's no NYC pizza but completely serviceable. Surprisingly I wasn't hungry enough to get any other snacks during the flight, although I was curious about this chocolate bun, but there's always next time, plus we're going to (hopefully) get some fun stuff in Singapore airport while waiting for our connection, plus they're going to feed us again on the 2 hour flight to Jakarta!

Breakfast is served about 7-8 hours after dinner (there's always a wide variety of snacks available in the back - but sadly no sambal ikan bilis buns). Stir fried chicken in oyster sauce with noodles - these noodles also have some cabbage and shiitake mushrooms hiding. I ordered this in advance off the "inflight menu" My wife got: Pork congee

It varies depending on your flight's point of origin. From NY, there aren't that many selections from the book the cook service - maybe 7? Ranging from several western choices to Asian stuff. For flights originating from SG, there are a ridiculous # of choices - maybe 15 or so? This is in addition to the choices available on the "inflight menu". You can order from book the cook maybe 3 months before your flight (I think) but about 3 weeks before you can also view the inflight menu and make your choices from both. I don't know if you can look at the full menu online, but if you go to Singapore Airlines website you can find out a lot more detail.

Singapore Airlines JFK-SIN non stop, premium economy (there's no coach on this flight) - we took off not long ago - around 10:30PM NY time. My wife and I both got their "book the cook" where you can order in advance.... "Braised E-fu noodles with chicken". Very tasty - surprisingly, the Chinese broccoli was nicely cooked and the noodles were not mushy. The salad at top left is a cold shrimp, baby greens with capers and lemon. Dessert is a bread pudding in a nice caramel sauce. My wife got a steamed chicken with dried lily flower. If you didn't order in advance, your choices were either Thai red curry chicken with rice or braised beef in red wine sauce with potatoes.

Green or green-ish tomatoes are used quite a bit in Indonesia as a sour component. It is raw (but with a bit of hot oil poured on top) in sambals like dabu dabu from Manado in Sulawesi, and other times cooked down to a puree in stews.

what are teh sauces that came with the branzino?

Thanks for doing this on such an eventful trip!! Your flight must have been REALLY close for Sing Air and the Singapore Airport to delay your bags - both that airline and airport are the most efficient I've ever seen. We use them all the time going to SE Asia as they have a direct flight from NY to Singapore - which I'm looking forward to in a couple days - to Indonesia. I hope we can find as good looking mangoes as you seem to have had. How were they? Were they very sweet? We've had some that looked like that and were very ripe and juicy but were completely flavorless. I've seen the fried brown cakes in your last market visit as well when we were in North Sulawesi - over there they were made with palm sugar and had a nice spiced flavor - mostly cinnamon and some clove. Very nice on seeing the proboscis monkeys! I hope we see them when we're in Sabah come Christmas time. In addition to being in Kota Kinabalu for a few days (primarily for scuba diving), we'll then head to the east side of Sabah to Sepilok and the Orangutan and sun bear rehabilitation and conservation centers. There's also a proboscis monkey sanctuary in the area so we're hoping to be able to see them all.

This is the link to how I learned - https://hot-thai-kitchen.com/pad-see-ew-new/ I've found that most of her instructions are well thought out and lead to good results. ETA: She has this broader topic: https://hot-thai-kitchen.com/rice-noodles-101/ which covers how to cook most rice noodle types.