KennethT

I agree - I always "toast" the tomato paste. Usually I'll saute the onions/garlic, then bank them around the sides of the pan while I toast the paste in the middle of the pan in a little oil. Once it's most of the way there, I'll mix it all together and let it go a little longer till the paste is done, then start incorporating liquids.

That's sad. I had met him once at the Big Apple BBQ (back before the lines became ridiculous, even with the Fast Pass)... he seemed like a nice guy, and he sure did know his stuff. His ribs were fantastic.

Thai shrimp stir fry, pad goong nam prik pao

This was a relative express Bolognese - tomato was in 2 forms -a little paste and then some Rao's marinara sauce...

Spaghetti with ground bison and dried porcini sauce. Kinda sorta like a Bolognese... kinda.

Can we come over? Black sesame buns are my wife's favorite dessert! Yours look great. @heidihThat choux looks really good, but not enough black sesame.... hehe

ha!! But you're right - I had forgotten how small the kitchen was - we haven't been there in quite a while...

ladybugs go where the food is. If you have plenty of aphids, just scatter around and they will find them. It's actually better to release a small amount of ladybugs every once in a while rather than waiting until you have a large amount for them to eat. By that time, it's hard for the plants to bounce back as quickly. If you take care of it early, the ladybugs will scatter and disappear once they're gone, but it's hard to take care of an infestation once it really gets going.

Like @Duvel said, I'd be surprised if they weren't cooked to order just because they cook so fast. When I've made them in the past (my cooking professor in college was German and had me make it one day just for fun), once the batter is made, you just scrape into some boiling water for a minute, then scoop out with a spider and immediately throw into the butter and saute. In a restaurant situation, I'd assume they always had some boiling water going, and they'd have a large batch of batter in the refrigerator. Really fast to cook to order.

How did reheating the spatzle work? I wonder how it didn't solidify into a giant mass before you could fry it

Over the years my approach has changed. I think most of it is scattered through the gardening thread(s).

I rarely have pests in my indoor garden. Pest control is best done preventively, rather than reactively. Gnats/fruit flies aren't problems in actively growing plants - instead, we have aphids, white fly, etc. Many of these problems are soil born (the eggs are in the soil) so growing hydroponically solves that problem. If growing in media based hydroponics, like in coco coir, one key is to not over water - soggy soil/coir is home to many pests. Keeping the top 1" of media dry solves that problem. If they pop up, issues like aphids can be taken care of with Integrated Pest Management - like using ladybugs to eat the aphids. This way you don't need any chemical pesticides or anything else to be sprayed on the leaves of the plant. But, like anything else, you need an experienced person to check things out and look for problems quite often - once a day, which is a lot of labor on a large scale. Most indoor growing facilities take big precautions in not allowing pests in - making employees cover their shoes/clothes/hair before entering the growing area, screens on all intakes/exhausts on greenhouses - or in the case of indoor facilities, having no fresh air enter the space which makes sure no pests can enter also. Having a small setup in a grocery store would be much more challenging from a pest perspective - especially if the customer is allowed close access to the plants rather than being behind a counter and having a store employee "harvest" for them.

I, too, was of the understanding that Asian noodles were not cooked in salted water. With that being said, whenever I make noodle soups using the fresh Shanxi knife peeled noodles, I cook them in salted water so that I don't have to oversalt the soup to compensate... If I don't, the soup will taste great when tasted before adding to the noodles, but soon after, it will taste flat.

https://www.producegrower.com/article/gotham-greens-2020-new-funding/

https://www.producegrower.com/article/consumer-corner-inside-farmones-in-store-farm/

Check the gardening thread - he posted photos of his build a while ago

In general this is true, but with media-less hydroponics (like NFT systems), the weight is considerably less than it is with traditional soil. Yes, you still need to find a building that has a strong enough roof to withstand the weight, and the proper logistics but it's not impossible. Not all buildings use cooling towers - many warehouse buildings either do not have cooling at all or use a standard refrigerant HVAC systems. Also, with recirculating hydroponics, waterproofing the roof is not an issue since the nutrient is in a closed system. Gotham Greens has a lot of rooftop greenhouses - one of their founders is a botanist who developed recipes for different plants (lettuce, herbs, etc.) for hydroponics that match the specific plant's nutritional needs. In hobby type recirculating hydroponics, it's common to dump the reservoir once in a while because when adding a general hydro fertiliser, over time you get imbalances as the plants use more of some nutrients than others. These imbalances can cause lockout and deficiencies. What Gotham Greens does is feed a specific nutrient mix that matches the requirements of each plant, so they never have to dump the reservoir - the nutrient mix always stays in balance.

Doesn't the WF in Gowanus have a big greenhouse setup on their roof? We (a friend and I) led a few tours for the IACP years ago (2012), when the conference was held here in NYC. We got to tour the infant greenhouses of what I believe was Gotham Greens, when they were pretty much in their infancy. As for me, my indoor gardening is limited to bean sprouts. Yes, Gotham Greens partnered with Whole Foods and put a greenhouse on top of the store in Brooklyn.

Now you have me wondering whether we were served hoisin or tianmian in the duck restaurants in Beijing. I just assumed it was hoisin becaue I had never heard of tianmian. Hua's restaurant for sure didn't taste like hoisin - it had a medicinal herbal quality to it that reminded me of some TCM that I used to take years ago. But tastier for sure. I also wonder if what I had the other night wasn't hoisin either. It, too, wasn't very sweet and was quite good. And the fact that it's not in NYC Chinatown (which is predominantly Cantonese) makes the possibility greater.

Those plants look like they're hydroponically grown with no media - looks like an NFT (nutrient film technique) system where the plants sit in channels where a river of nutrient runs over the bare roots. It's a great technique for short lived plants - they grow really quickly due to the high oxygen concentration in the root zone. And it's easy to clean and keep clean. It's not good for long term plants because as the plant grows, so does the root system, and an older plant will probably clog the channel causing at best what's known as ponding - stagnant anaerobic nutrient in the channel and at worst a flood all over the floor.

We love traveling at Christmas time, especially to places that don't necessarily celebrate it. Maybe it's because I always felt a little left out growing up in a predominantly Christian neighborhood but not celebrating it myself.... But no travel this year so the virtual travel continues - South Indian shrimp for lunch, and tonight - Tom kha pla - Thai coconut soup with lemongrass, kaffir lime leaves and sawtooth coriander from my garden and some wild caught cod.

@Anna NI was just reading about a Whole Foods in Manhattan that was partnerning with a small hydroponic herb producer who sells (sold, prepandemic) mostly to restaurants.

seeds that I toasted, then added to my masala mix and ground.

Actually, the sweetness of the shrimp was perfect with it

Trying my hand at a South Indian style shrimp stir fry.... Using my home grown curry leaves I think I should have left out the fenugreek. I didn't use much but it was still overpowering.