KennethT

nothing worse than a pissing contest - especially from someone who hasn't even sampled the wares yet! Personally, with that kind of attitude, I'd make him a tuna fish sandwich and call it a day, but I understand that he's your son's friend and you're a great dad so you don't want to step on anyone's toes. With a guy like that (seemingly) I don't think anything you would do would make him change his mind. Besides, why wouldn't a white guy in KC make good bbq? KC is known for its bbq!!!

I had been growing turmeric for the leaves (hydroponically, indoors under artificial lighting) and it was going great but lately, it stopped putting out new leaves and the old leaves were turning brown. I was wondering what was going on - thinking there was possibly root rot or something so I pulled the plant out of the fabric pot and started to dry root it to see what was going on. Evidently, it's time for harvest!!!! All of this came from a single 3 inch long piece of organic turmeric that I got from my local Indian grocery store. I assume turmeric freezes well - especially since I always crush it into a paste anyway. So I'll freeze most of it and replant one of the ones with a lot of sprouting sites to get a new plant and start all over again.

I make my own Nyonya spice blend which has a lot of ingredients - I make a large batch, then portion into ziplock or vacuum bags and keep in the freezer. A year later, I can't tell it from the freshly made.

On a cold, rainy Sunday, there's nothing better than Indonesian Padang food. This is a padang classic - ayam goreng serundeng - fried chicken. This version simmers the chicken in a spice paste made from shallots, garlic, ginger, candlenuts, turmeric, coriander powder and a lot of galangal, and then shredded coconut. Once the chicken is done and tender, it's removed and the solids strained from the liquid. The chicken is then deep fried and once the chicken is done, the solids are deep fried to a golden brown and then drained. It's a lot of work but so worth it! Served with homemade sambal ijo - literally green sambal made from 3 different types of green chillies, garlic, shallots and green tomatoes.

We have been missing some Singaporean specialties, so.... Old lai huat style sambal grouper Quick pickled cucumber salad

Whenever I grind coriander seeds, I can never get them as fine as when I buy preground coriander powder. I assume the pros are using a burr grinder rather than a blender type grinder. What do you use? Also, when using things like cardamom, do you remove the seeds from the pods prior to grinding or do you use the whole thing?

@rotuts For that space, I have one word: carousel! Seriously, I would consider getting rid of all of the shelves and put in a multi-tiered lazy-susan / carousel, from floor to eye level... Just my $0.02

I don't think I've ever seen a grilled lobster served out of the shell before.

Good luck getting home!

What was the conch salad like? I think I've only had it in fritter form...

Looks like a nice little hideaway! I hope you enjoy.... although that must be the smallest snapper I've ever seen! But certainly enough for 1 person - most snappers are for 2.

As @liuzhou suggests above, there is also an Indonesian bay leaf, locally called Daun Salam (syzygium polyanthum) (daun is a word for leafy things), which is very commonly used in many Indonesian dishes and is quite different from any of the other leaves that we call bay leaves.

It makes a good mash with a lot of butter and a bit of creme fraiche. You can puree it in the blender and the texture comes out great. David Bouley would say that it was also good to add about a half teaspoon of Vitamin C powder while blending which keeps it from turning brown. Or, you could roast it like a restaurant in this post did (last photo of this post) in southern Iceland.

Just an FYI to the recent few posts for clarity of nomenclature - the liquid inside a coconut that you can drain or drink with a straw is coconut water. Coconut cream is made from shredding the white coconut meat and squeezing. Coconut milk is made by adding some hot water to the already once squeezed coconut meat and squeezing again.

Mapo doufu

Being in NYC, earthquakes aren't a problem. He has a bigger chance of knocking it over by bumping into it or his cat knocking it over somehow!

Malaysian bison keema - like a dry curry, ground bison cooked with typical rempah plus homemade curry powder, with homemade roti canai and cucumber pickle.

We only went to Kopitiam once but we were definitely underwhelmed. The highlight was their curry puff, which was amazing and we went back at the end to get a second round. Their kueh were ok, but Lady Wong's definitely better.

The NYC Penang has been closed a long time. I used to go there a lot many many years ago (late 90s!) Nyonya is still there - and we go there from time to time - it's ok, but all things being equal if I had the time, my versions of what they make are better - but I don't have to worry about sky high rent, or wage increases and profit.

I like croissants also, but I prefer to have whatever is local since I can get croissants very easily at home (even though I don't! ha!) In the city of KK, mosquitos are not an issue, however, in the jungle area, they are around, although not as bad as I thought it would be. When we were in that area, we used a bug repellent that was 25% DEET as mosquitos can carry lots of diseases. I don't think malaria is a huge problem anymore there, but there's always dengue, zika and other viruses that are mosquito borne. So it's important to protect yourself from being bitten - especially after sunrise and around sunset when they are most active.

I understand that - and it's funny because a friend of mine who's also been there, upon learning we were going there, was like "RENDANG!!!!!" But, to be honest, when I think of rendang, I think of the original North Sumatran (Padang) version, which is quite different from the Malaysian or Peranakan versions. All of them are delicious, and over the years, we've had quite a bit of rendang all over, but we've had very little opportunity to have Peranakan classics - especially the buah keluak. And after having it, I would make a trip to go there just to have it again.

@rotuts@Shelby Yes, that last meal was by far and away the best meal of the trip - I still dream of it. It also makes me think that we need a trip back to Singapore sometime in the not so far future as we haven't been there for real in years and there's so much more we haven't eaten/done/seen. Kota Kinabalu is not nearly a food city like Penang is - but as much as we enjoyed it a couple years ago, getting sick puts quite a damper on it. Hopefully that's in the past from now on! Fingers, toes and whatever else crossed.... The heat and humidity here was not easy. One day, the weather app said that it was 100% humidity, and it wasn't raining! How is that possible? So that's how it was 90 degrees but the heat index said 110. Then again, that's gardening weather for you Shelby! But we also had some great dives - I'm considering getting an underwater camera for the next trip, and seeing the orangutans and sun bears up close was amazing. A couple years ago when we were in North Sulawesi (Indonesia), we saw a sun bear but it was so high up in the trees, you needed binoculars to see him. Unfortunately, most of the sun bears in Sepilok will never go back into the wild - they've been conditioned too much to be around humans so they're more open to poachers, or they have other behaviors, like pacing, caused by being in captivity (as a house pet) for a long time. The sun bear sanctuary just got a new bear in (not ready for the public yet) who was a pet for a famous Malaysian singer (famous to Malaysians, I never heard of her). A month or two ago, one of her people called in and said they "found it on the side of the road" (it's technically illegal to keep them as pets and there are severe fines/jail penalties if caught) but it was obvious that it had been kept indoors as a pet for a long time. They call this bear the actress since she likes to pose when there are people at the viewing platform:

Our flight from KL to Singapore landed just after 4PM and our flight home didn't leave until around 11:30, so we had plenty of time to go through immigration (their automated gates took about 2 minutes), get our bags from Air Asia in Terminal 4, then transfer to Terminal 3 to check our bags into Singapore Airlines and then lounge around the Jewel. Changi Terminal 4 baggage claim: I was hoping to spend some time wandering around the trails through the forest of the Jewel, but it was closed for maintenance... Since we were finally here and had time AND weren't sick(!), I made a reservation for Violet Oon. In my opinion, she is like the Peranakan equivalent of Lydia Bastianich as she has several restaurants, a line of take home packaged foods, TV cooking shows, etc. We had been looking to try her restaurant for YEARS and finally made it - spoiler alert, it was totally worth the wait. So many choices, such limited stomach space.... Nyonya food is not known for being particularly light! Singapore Island Iced Tea - like drinking liquid kaffir lime leaves. Homemade ginger beer Kuay pie tee - so savory - strips of turnip and bamboo shoot poached in prawn stock, put into the fried cups, topped with a perfectly poached shrimp, with chilli paste and fruit syrup. So delicious. One of the reasons why I wanted to come here - Ayam buah keluak. This version was much more thick than the one we had years ago in a family Peranakan restaurant in the city. This one was such a great mix of savory (from shrimp paste) and sour from tamarind. There was a lot of chicken buried in there, plus 3 keluak nuts, which the interior looks like this: They provided a small spoon to dig out the keluak meat, the flavor of which is completely unique, complex and utterly delicous. Hints of chocolate, a bit of a tang of alcoholic fermentation - so hard to describe. The texture was silky smooth. Chicken and potato curry. The curry sauce was thick and luxurious with lots of coconut cream. One of the reasons I wanted to try this is because it is similar to one of the curries I make - curry powder and coconut milk. So good. By this point, we were almost bursting at the seams, but I felt that I needed to try this: Pandan and gula Melaka cake. The cake was super light and the butter cream had great gula melaka (a special palm sugar from Melaka) flavor. Totally worth all the sugar and calories. Since we still had a couple hours before we were to board our flight and it was already past our bedtime, we got some of the Darjeeling tea: Afterwards, we waddled out of the restaurant and took our time wandering around before getting to Terminal 3 and our gate. Food on the Singapore Airlines flight home: and So that's it... thanks for reading along!

The next day we had to leave early (before they opened for breakfast) to start our long journey home. A quick snack in the Sandakan airport, waiting to go to Kuala Lumpur: pandan and chocolate cake. The cake was not particularly light or dense and was a bit oily but tasty at the time. Not many options in that airport. Kuala Lumpur Int Airport T2 doesn't have many decent food options - there's a main food court in the security area that mostly had American fast food - McD, Burger King and A&W! There was an Indian place and this Malaysian place: The name of the place is a play on words as the word for chicken is "ayam". Before I get to the food, the guy at the register seemed like he hated us patrons just for being there. Maybe he was just frustrated because half of the menu that they had by the register was out of stock (at 1 in the afternoon). You order at the register and they give you a placard to put on your table for the server to identify you - but they forgot to give us like half our order so I had to go back and bug the guy to send the rest. Cucur bawang - onion fritter with peanut sauce - somewhat soggy. Tofu ayam - fried tofu stuffed with chicken and potato - quite soggy, served with the sambal hitam (black sambal) in the photo below which was incredibly spicy once it crept up on you! Chicken samosa - about as good as the other stuff we got! teh tarik As we were leaving the food court, we saw this store, almost completely devoted to durian... After lunch we were leisurely making our way to our gate. As we were almost there, we noticed that Air Asia or the airport changed our gate, which happened to be on the total other side of the terminal, which is HUGE! About halfway to the new gate, we started running as it was about to start boarding! All thoughts of not being all sweaty for our 18 hour flight home were dashed during our run!

After lunch, we went back to the orangutan center since the entry ticket is valid for the full day. In the afternoon, the pigtail macaques decended on the area... which the orangutan largely ignored... Dinner back at our hotel: Grilled chicken lime juice nasi goreng Breakfast the next morning: This time I got a danish... although afterwards, I wished I got the croissant again Another popular thing in Sepilok is right next door to the orangutan sanctuary and share the forest (sometimes you seen an errant orangutan there but we didn't): As the sign says, the Bornean sun bear is the world's smallest bear - it gets to be around the size of a labrador. As they look so cute and cuddle, they are commonly poached to be sold as pets (very illegal) and if they are recovered, they are sent here. About half of the sun bears who come here will never be released into the wild completely as they don't have the skills to survive on their own. As you can see in this sign: sunbears are named because of the gold markings on their chest. No two bears have the same markings - they are individual like a fingerprint is. As you can see, the bears live partially enclosed, unlike the orangutans who can roam as they like. and climbing back down again - you can really see his markings in this one: After watching the bears, we walked to a different hotel for lunch. Views from our table (we were the only ones there): Lime juice Chicken wrapped up in a roti prata with curry sauce this was interesting - like a Sicilian rice ball made with nasi kunyit (turmeric rice) and topped with sambal fried chicken and potato with curry sauce Then, dinner back at the hotel: Char kway teow nasi goreng (again)