KennethT
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Posts posted by KennethT
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12 hours ago, heidih said:
But not used in isolation. The beauty of spice paste is the interplay of flavors.
True... but galangal is not always used in paste form. Many times it can be added in sliced form - like in Tom Kha. But also I can't think of a time when galangal is eaten raw, either in pounded or sliced form. Cooking changes these flavors - like shrimp paste - it smells putrid raw, but cooked it's a thing of beauty.
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Galangal, even fresh, is like a woody ginger... and it has a scent I can't quite categorize - almost medicinal
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48 minutes ago, weinoo said:
Where do you find that?
The frozen stuff I get at Hmart in Ktown looks like that... also, when I used to go to Chinatown and the SE Asian store on Mulberry or the Thai store on Mosco. The fresh stuff at Hmart in Ktown can be pretty decent, but sometimes it's not there at all or is old.
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4 minutes ago, dtremit said:
I've noticed that the galangal I can buy fresh is way more "mature" and fibrous than the stuff I have bought pre-frozen -- the fresh stuff is sometimes a challenge to slice through at room temp. I'd be a little afraid to try to do it frozen solid, though maybe the freezing helps break up the fibers.I've done it - I kind of saw through it with a big chef knife and shave off bit by bit. Or, if I have a big enough piece to hold on to, I'll use the chef's knife like a cleaver and hack off pieces. It's woody in the best of times.... when I move, I'm considering adding it to my stable of plants - I gather it grows pretty easily.
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30 minutes ago, dtremit said:
They all freeze *really* well, for what it's worth. Slicing the galangal before freezing makes it a lot easier to deal with.
Weirdly the cilantro roots are the hardest for me to source. Hit or miss from the same places. I think the cilantro comes from the supplier with the roots and some places just chop them off. They seem to be the least important, though -- if I can't find them, I just use stems.For normal curries, though, I am generally pretty happy with well-sourced, made-in-Thailand commercial pastes. The scratch green curry paste I made was good but not nearly enough better to justify the effort. I mostly save the ingredients for less common pastes like hung lay that aren't as readily available.
I never tried freezing galangal presliced - I always worried about it drying out or getting freezer burn. In the Pok Pok book, Andy Ricker recommends freezing the galangal whole (or in chunks of manageable length) adn then slicing while still frozen to add to the mortar. I've done this and it works pretty well. Especially when the only galangal I can get is already frozen...
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He is actually stepping away from the restaurant entirely.
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@dtremit you could also try a folded towel underneath the mortar to reduce vibration...
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I've walked by a few places that have beautiful outdoor setups... Scarpetta is done really nicely. I know it's not nearly as nice as you're looking for, but the setup is surrounded by flowers, adn the tables have white tablecloths... it's a pretty pink theme.
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Thanks to @Chris Hennes efforts, photos are uploaded!!!!
@weinoo's much maligned Bond St.... personally, I love the look of the cobblestones - sure it may be a pita for bikes (women with high heels) but sure does look cool....
Fresh squeezed limeaid with butterfly pea flower
shrimp chips with nam prik pao
yum pla - the kind of fish salad I can really get behind! The fillets of gourami (a type of fish) are fried in Thai style - which basically means "fry the crap out of it" so that you can even eat the bones in the fillet - they turn crunchy and tasty.
Fried fish with cashews and herbs
Gaeng khua - snail curry. Snails were super tender and the curry was like a Panang curry with kaffir lime and ground peanuts. Included some raw veggies (including what was billed as green mango, but was really an in-between mango - not green, but not really ripe either).
My favorite vegetable... pak boong
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@Eatmywords do you add your own shrimp paste? Their paste lacks it (due to allergies probably) so to make it taste right you need to add your own. Also, to the Panang paste, I add more dried spices as well as a few tbs of ground peanuts (not peanut butter) as well as the shrimp paste...
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12 minutes ago, shain said:
Rigatoni with previously frozen rose sauce. A few blistered cherry tomatoes and a lot of chives (which works great with rose sauce).
Rose sauce? Made with rose water?
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Homemade bun shrimp!
4 different herbs from the garden, plus homemade fried garlic and homemade Viet pickles.
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15 minutes ago, TicTac said:
Came as literally one lone twig, the ‘little engine curry leaf plant that could’ came roaring back to life. Methinks it enjoys this rather hot summer.
Nice... In my research, it seems that they can typically drop all their leaves when it drops below 40F (as long as it doesn't freeze) but will completely come back once it warms up. My curry plant is very sad - it's one of the few that I'm growing that isn't doing so well... I actually ordered a replacement from Logees - their plants are older (about a year old) than the one I got (about 6 mos), and I gather they really don't start taking off until about a year old... and I'm sick of waiting!
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Pai is great. I don't contribute to many Patreon, but I do to hers... I've gone through her site so many times, I definitely get my money's worth.
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1 minute ago, liamsaunt said:
I've gotten that error before and have found that resizing the photos to be smaller fixes it.
Thanks - that's what I thought too but it had no problem with other the other photos that are the same size or even slightly larger... weird... I was hoping @Chris Hennes could weigh in when he gets a chance; I'd imagine he would know the exact reason why this happens.
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2 hours ago, TicTac said:
In a car, I can understand the cursing that might ensue.
This street is basically blocked off to traffic - that's why the city allows them to put tables in the middle of the street like that - otherwise, they would have to put up barriers at least 18" wide to separate the tables from traffic
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We enjoyed the beautiful weather last night at a Thai seafood restaurant called Fish Cheeks. Definitely was not disappointed - it really hit the spot!
Tables were spaced nicely apart making us feel safe and once it got dark, eating under the light of the streetlamp brought back memories of Thailand.
I'm having trouble uploading some photos, so I'll edit this post once I find out how to get it working...
shrimp chips with chili dip
Fried fish with cashews,some green-ish mango, lime juice... fantastic..
The rest of the photos failed to upload - all giving me the same "-200" error... I tried doing it from my phone and also my desktop computer... @Chris Hennes Is there something I can do to fix this problem? Thanks!
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@Kim Shook The Caribbean lobsters are spiny lobsters. I agree - they're delicious!
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Even at the height of my non-smelling (and before that) Sichuan peppercorns made my mouth numb. At the height of it I couldn't deal with eating most things just because everything just tasted bitter. And not good bitter like radicchio but gut churning bitterness that made me just not want to eat.
Stay safe everybody - I don't recommend the COVID diet.
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Ordered in from our local Sichuan place...
Dumpling in chili sauce - a nice dose of vinegar in there
Mapo tofu... My wife loves it but it's got a bit too much Sichuan peppercorn - my mouth always goes numb midway through...
Pea shoots with garlic
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54 minutes ago, scamhi said:
We had a socially distant dinner party last night at a friends house. I made everything except the clams with chorizo.
grilled zucchini with buffalo mozzarella dressed when hot with olive oil, a minced garlic clove, parsley, wine vinegar
clams, fennel, shallot, a little tomato and chorizo- sauce was good.
@shain baked pasta with spinach and feta- I used a spring form pan and some of the egg leaked out. served over tomato sauce with garlic and some balsamic vinegar
Grilled lamb kebabs
and 2 killer red burgundies
Wow!!! That's quite a lineup! Love Domaine Leroy.... I actually had the pleasure of seeing her specific rows of grapes in Clos de Vougeot years ago.
ETA - seeing her parcel sparked a huge debate among us about biodynamics in Burgundy... As we were looking at her plot, a guy was spraying the crap out of his own plot about 15 rows away, and the wind carried it straight at us, past us and beyond!
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@heidih I wonder if my aversion stems from being young and my mother would boil or steam it to death, and then cover it with Velveeta (which I also can't stand). Broccoli is barely tolerable if blanched briefly, then sauteed with a ton of garlic and chili...
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BROCCOLI!!!!! I am to broccoli like @liuzhou is to corn. I'm trying to find data showing that broccoli is the true cause of COVID-19 and should be eradicated. Other forms like rapini are not so bad, and "chinese broccoli" (which tastes nothing like broccoli) is great and should be saved from the mass extinction.
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@heidih I think your phone is wrong... first of all 70C is just crazy - was that a typo? It's currently 70F and raining... certainly not sweating weather!!
Food in the time of a pandemic
in Food Traditions & Culture
Posted
Nice haul. I got those mini-heirlooms from Fresh Direct last week. While I thought some of them better than others (the round orange ones I found really sweet), all in all I was slightly disappointed because none of them had that intense tomato flavor that I got when I grew my own in my living room. Then again, those probably wouldn't have survived shipping 100 feet, forget about from upstate! But I guess I let my expectations get the best of me. Or maybe it was just me and my slightly out of whack sense of taste/smell... But they were the same price as the Campari tomatoes I usually get (when they're not on sale) so at least they weren't horrendously expensive.