KennethT

I guess the texture can be a little similar to some of the better scallion pancakes I've had in Chinese places... but I think it's more chewy which I think is a better vehicle for teh curry. I can't see your article - I think it's behind a paywall as I can see it for a second, then it disappears...

Not folding like a croissant - the dough requires stretching so that it's super thin so you can see through it. The professionals do this by constantly flipping it over an oiled steel table, but I am not nearly experienced enough to do that, so I put the rested dough ball on an oiled countertop, smush it into a disk, then going around in a circle grab a piece of the edge, lift and then pull, going around an around until it is stretched thin. Then take a bit of oil and smear it on the top surface and roll the stretched sheet into a snake - you can also fold it - say 2/3 over, then the other 1/3, then roll into a snake. You then take the snake and coil it around and tuck the tail underneath. Press teh coil into a disk and fry with a tiny bit of oil on a medium/medium-high pan, flipping once. I think the video I posted above shows her stretching the prata, near the end of the video....

I based the curry on this video... but I make the rempah, fry it, add the coconut milk and simmer for a bit, then divide and freeze to make it easier for myself - also, we're only 2 people so we typically make only 4 thighs at a time (a lot less than a whole chicken) so I find that if I double her proportions (eyeballing) I make 4 meals worth. I also dilute my curry out of the freezer with about a cup of water since my curry for the freezer is a bit reduced. Otherwise it's way too thick for prata, but would be good with rice. That's also why I needed to add the 'fresh' coconut milk which perks it up again. I also marinated my thighs with a bit of salt, msg, sugar and turmeric powder before adding to the curry to cook. I'm not a big fan of her prata - she does hers the more Malay style using condensed milk which I think makes the prata too sweet. The Singapore style is typically not as sweet as the Malaysian. If you make the prata, make sure it rests for a few hours between kneading and stretching otherwise it will never stretch! It'll be like a rubber band!

I think it depends on your AP flour. The King Arthur all purpose flour that I have says that it has an 11.7% protein content. The flour company that supplies basically all the prata guys in Singapore says their prata flour is 10.8%. Is that close enough? I have no idea and not nearly enough prata (or any bread for that matter) experience to say... So I did what most engineers would have done, I created a 10.8% flour as a mixture of the KAF 11.7% and some cake flour to bring it down. I've read that, depending on manufacturer and time of year, AP flour's protein content can vary quite a bit, so yours might already be where it needs to be... In the past, I've done it with regular AP flour, but then I also used a LOT more oil at that time. As you might imagine with over 10x the amount of oil, that dough was very relaxed and easy to stretch (to the point of maybe being too easy and the layers all recombined after folding). This dough was not easy to stretch at all and I was quite worried about it, but I can't argue with the results... I would try to make your own though - it's a lot healthier. Most store bought prata use margarine or other trans fats which are horrible for you. Doing it yourself, you can control what type of oil to use. I probably could have used olive oil - as long as I had one that didn't have a lot of flavor.

To me, some of the best part of khao soi is the interplay between the curry, the roasted chili paste, raw shallots and the pickled whatever...

Thanks! For the curry, I made the rempah and cooked a quadruple batch of the curry (without the chicken) then divided and froze. That's what I usually do. This time I added a bit of new coconut milk during the cooking of the chicken which really perked it up. It was just as addictive as I remember it being in a kopitiam in Singapore. For the prata, it's actually a relatively lean dough. For this version it was 600g flour with approx 10.8% protein. I made this using 118g 7% protein cake flour and 482g of 11.7% KAF all purpose. To this about 1t salt 1T sugar 15ml grapeseed oil 300ml water and 1 egg. Mixed by hand and let sit covered for about an hour or so. After that, I could actually knead it without using any extra flour. I kneaded it in several sessions of about 5 minutes each, separated by 20 min of rest. Divided into 8 balls, rolled in grapeseed oil, then sit in ramekins covered for a few hours. Then sit in the fridge overnight. This afternoon I froze 6 and stretched 2 a few minutes before the chicken was finished. Cooked until brown on both sides on a med-high pan with a bit of grapeseed oil. I think the key is lots of kneading interspersed with lots of rest to relax the gluten.

Finally, after 5 years of trials, I got this dish where I want it.... Singapore style chicken curry with homemade roti prata and stir fried gai lan

Maybe... I've always thought they poured boiling water over, drain, the put in jar with vinegar salt and sugar

I just ordered some plant starts from Well Sweep herb garden for things that are either too slow to grow from seed, stuff I can't find seeds for, or stuff that's just plain hard to find in general... I ordered a curry-leaf plant, lemongrass, sawtooth coriander (culantro), kaffir lime (I don't think it's a whole tree - probably a cutting from a tree, which is fine since I only want the leaves), and some rau ram (vietnamese coriander). They're in NJ and I asked them to ship on the days that seemed like they'd be the warmest this week so they survive the day in transit

The pickling liquid is totally different. Plus, sauerkraut is typically fermented whereas the pickled mustard greens are not.

Thai Chicken noodle soup with Chinese broccoli, garlic oil and fried garlic. Prik nam pla and roasted chili flakes not shown...

Personally, I've always found that the overriding flavor of pickled mustard greens is the pickling itself... So maybe some type of cabbage?

I get it. To be honest, if you look at a lot of my photos, the plates are chipped, and some photos have a lot of extraneous crap on the sides if I can't crop it out. Our everyday plates are over 20 years old - I got them from BB&B when I first moved into the city in 1999. We have "nice" plates that are handmade celadon that we brought back from Thailand on our honeymoon but I'm afraid to put them in the dishwasher so we only wind up using them rarely.

on a serious note, do you know anyone who can help schlep it up the stairs? Maybe the super?

Not necessarily. The rated wattage is typically the max power consumption, which would be if the compressor and all other fans etc are running simultaneously. So I imagine the compressor is quite a bit less than 1/4 hp to account for the fans... It is a BLAST freezer, right?

Unless it's the size of a toaster. Do you know the horsepower of the compressor? I have a 1/10th hp water chiller that doesn't weigh more than 30 lbs

That is an extreme closeup!!! Whooooooaaaaahhhhh!!!!!!

Years ago, a friend of mine gifted me the Veal stock one of these since earlier I had complained that it was so time consuming and expensive to make veal stock on one's own... I quite enjoyed it.

Bastardized fettuccine cacio e pepe

I make it 2 different ways, depending on how much time I have. The fast way is not nearly as good, but it's much quicker and easier. For the fast way, I just combine a few tablespoons of bottle chili paste - like a sambal oelek, with a few cloves of garlic and a shallot that have been pounded into a paste. To that, I'll add a few tablespoons of the chicken rice poaching liquid (basically a strong chicken stock with ginger, garlic and green onion), a touch of lime juice if needed, and then a small amount of roasted sesame oil. Of course, salt/sugar to taste. Just before serving I'll grate a few inches of ginger into the sauce, and add sweet soy sauce to taste. Some people like to drizzle the sweet soy sauce over the dish, but I prefer it mixed in with the chili sauce. The long way is similar, but rather than using a bottled chili paste, I'll put a bunch (maybe 6-10 depending on size) of red spur chilis, the garlic, shallot, poaching liquid and sesame oil in the blender and blend until smooth. Then continue as normal - it's longer because of the blending and cleanup of the blender, but I like it better because it has good chili flavor without being as spicy as the bottled chili paste can make it.

Singapore style Hainanese chicken rice.... Not nearly as good as my fave Wee Nam Kee but since that's about 10000 miles away, I'll have to settle for this....

My favorite way to enjoy ginger is with the Singapore version of Hainanese chicken rice. Ginger in the rice, ginger in the poaching stock and ginger in the chili sauce.

What's funny is that much of our collection wasn't purchased (at least by us)! Years ago, when my wife was taking wine education classes, we would hold a weekly tasting group in our apartment so that she and some of her fellow students who she became friendly with (and me by default since I live here too and like to learn) could study wines from a different region each week to be able to do a really deep dive. Many of the people who came were very appreciative of us opening our home like that and would constantly bring gifts. And also, through other stuff, wineries would send us wines directly... so we've got that going for us... which is nice...

We've done a similar thing with our wine fridge, which holds about 200+ bottles. Each shelf is numbered, and we have a spreadsheet sorted by color, region, sub-region, producer and vintage. Very fast and easy to find something specific.

Braver than you realize - harvesting them is incredibly challenging - they usually are stuck in between rocks on the coast... check this out!