KennethT
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Posts posted by KennethT
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12 minutes ago, lemniscate said:
Pics of kumara chips?
We never had kumara chips, but we did have a nice mashed kumara one evening...
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OK - you'll have to forgive me for any typos or any statements that don['t make sense as I am exhausted right now. While NZ's time difference to NY is not that great (it's forward 18 hours, but that means your body only feels a 6 hour time difference, but the next day - so right now it's 10:30 AM in NY on 12/30, which means it's now 4:30AM on 12/31 in NZ), the amount of flying time (hence time not sleeping very well or at all) is really long. Air New Zealand doesnt' fly direct from NY - although that will change in October 2020, and the closest city that it does fly from is Houston, with a flight time of about 15 hours. But, flying Economy on Air New Zealand was about twice the price of Premium Econ. on Singapore Airlines (the NY - SG direct only has Prem Econ and Biz) but the flying time is a lot longer as SG is pretty far out of the way. Also, since we were going to South Island, we'd need 3 flights on ANZ (NY - Houston, Houston-Auckland, Auckland-Christchurch) which always makes me nervous that weather or something can cause you to miss a flight which could then screw everything up. The SG route has two flights as SA flies direct to Christchurch which is exactly where we wanted to start our trip.
For the food on teh flights, see
and
I am always impressed by the quality and selection of SA's menu. Plus, the service is really attentive, friendly and efficient.
The last time I flew the NY-SG route, it took us straight North out of NY, almost directly over the North Pole, however, this time, due to weather, they took an alternate route which crossed central Asia and the Middle East... looking at the map, it was hard to tell exactly where we were, but there was some nice scenery from 40,000 feet:
Once we arrived in Christchurch, we decided to have lunch in the airport as were about to start our road trip and had no idea when we'd find somewhere to eat.
We went to the noodle place and had a very lackluster bowl of noodle soup - above is a wonton-noodle soup - the broth had one flavor - salt - it was bit better when I added some chili paste to it. My wife got a bowl of katong style laksa, not pictured... she said hers was as lackluster as mine.
We then proceeded to rent our car and got on the road. We decided that we were awake enough to take a slight detour (about an hour each way) to see Kura Tawhiti, in Canterbury, on our way to our destination, Oamaru. You might recognize Kura Tawhiti from the Lord of the Rings...
View of the scenery on the other side of the parking lot:
Once we got to Oamaru and checked into the motel, we went out for a quick bite to eat. We were thoroughly exhausted, so I forgot to take a picture of the name of the restaurant, but it was pretty tasty and had a nice view....
Pork dumplings (recommendation of the waitress) - I think they were pork - they were pretty good, but kept falling apart.
Seafood platter for two. Crab, marinated shrimp, salmon, scallop ceviche, clams
came with garlic bread and regular bread. It seems that garlic bread is an appetizer at just about every restaurant we visited.
We were supposed to see the Blue Penguins, which Oamaru is famous for, at 9:30PM (they come back to their nest just after sunset) but we were so tired, we decided to skip it.
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18 minutes ago, TicTac said:
Does a bear shit in the woods!?
The nice thing about NZ is that many of the hiking trails have bathroom facilities... how does this happen in a remote area with no power or water service you may ask? The bathroom is basically a small hut with a hole in the ground and a seat over the hole. So maybe the bears use that? BTW, the huts do have an exhaust vent pipe, but the fan that does the exhaust is wind powered.... which is great when the wind blows - it doesn't really smell so bad in there, but if the wind doesn't blow - wow... I think the bears would have to go REALLY BADLY in order to be able to stand it in there.
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I was thinking of doing a food blog of my recent trip through parts of New Zealand's south island. Most of the food we had was nothing spectacular, but the experiences and various scenery we had over the trip were amazing. Is there any interest in this?
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The return journey - Christchurch, NZ to New York, via Singapore:
Mee goreng with shrimp/squid. As before, teh seafood was cooked perfectly. The mee goreng had a really good flavor - a little spicy and lots of spices used.
Dessert served after lunch
Ravioli bolognese - the meat sauce was quite good, and the pasta was nicely done - not mushy at all. The appetizer shrimp glass noodle salad had a vietnamese flavor to it. The dessert was also really tasty.
Singapore to NY:
Chicken biryani (book teh cook). My wife had gotten this on our last trip and really liked it, and I can see why - it was really good. Better than most biryani I've had in NY, I'm sad to say.
Stir fried chicken with garlic chives. This was also really tasty - chicken was boneless dark meat - noodles had a good texture. The croissant was really good, and the fruit was really good too - there were some chunks of pineapple that I was savoring...
Coconut mousse and passionfruit puree - I must have had 3 or 4 of these - if you took it out of the plastic cup and put in on a plate, you would think you were in a restaurant. The mousse had a great coconut flavor and was light and airy and the puree on top was sour in a really good way.
Mid-flight snack...
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Recently came back from New Zealand, via Singapore with Singapore Airlines. About 30 hours of flying each way. Singapore Airlines (SA) had great service and good food, as in the past. We flew Premium Economy, which is the lowest fair class in the direct flight from New York to Singapore (there's only biz and PE), which then put us in PE for the Sing-NZ flight, which has 3 classes. As I've stated before, there are a ton of meal choices on SA - in addition to the 3 inflight choices (which I was able to choose from in advance on their website/app), there are also about 8-9 choices that can be used on any flight from their "Book the Cook" series, which you order in advance on the website/app. On my last flight to Singapore, I chose 100% book the cook, but this flight, I mixed and matched.... So, without further ado...
The menu:
All flights started with:
I chose green tea, but you could have had your pick of beverages to go with your snack.
This was from book the cook, herb roasted chicken with potatoes, veggies - quite good - everything was well cooked, except the broccoli, which I didn't touch - not because of how it was cooked, but because it was broccoli. Broccoli is to me as corn is to @liuzhou.
Dessert after lunch.
Someone, I don't know whether it was teh in-flight staff or the caterers (they flight attendant said it was the caterers fault) made a mistake and made the Baked 3 cup chicken the lunch dish - but I had preordered it for dinner. So, when dinner came around, they did not have it prepared - so I was forced to choose another on the fly. I got the prawns with potatoes and veggies in a light cream sauce. It was tasty and the shrimp were perfectly cooked, even though the potatoes and veggies were a bit redundant, and I was looking forward to the 3 cup chicken. The flight attendant evidently relayed the situation to the head flight attendant, who came by and apologized profusely and then offered me a SGD$75 gift certificate good for anything in their shopping catalog, valid for a year. I initially refused it saying that it wasn't a big deal, but he wouldn't take no for an answer. I wound up using it on a gigantic bottle of flaxseed oil capsules on the last leg of my return journey.
Random snack:
Pizza and tiramisu. The pizza was serviceable but the tiramisu was really good.
Singapore to Christchuch (NZ):
Hainanese chicken rice (from book teh cook)... complete with chili sauce and sweet soy sauce. chicken was super tender and very tasty but the bok choi was not, unfortunately - it looks to have died a long time ago.
I wound up not getting the mid-flight snack as I was sleeping - by that time, we had already gone through an 18 hour flight and a 2.5 hour layover in Singapore, plus the time to get ready and to the airport in NY early enough, we had been up for probably about 24+ hours at that point.
Breakfast before landing in Christchurch - cheong fun with siu mai. Quite tasty - even the croissant was good - light and flaky.
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I used to use my Cameron stove top smoker all the time. Loved it.
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I've never seen it fresh, but have found it in small chunk form (about 15mm) which you can grind in mortar to make powder for thickening. I've only seen it in specialty stores so it's pretty expensive
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Beautifully shot. Thank you for sharing!
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@robirdstx How do you reheat the toasted ravioli? Do you bake them or fry them?
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@robirdstx Beautiful!
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1 hour ago, mm84321 said:
Thank you! I was there for 4 weeks, traveling from Tokyo to the southern region of Kyushu. Very happy to say I will return at the end of January to do some cooking/baking and give cooking lessons in a small village just outside of Nagasaki.Fantastic!
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1 hour ago, mm84321 said:
Thanks guys! Glad I could share it. 🙂
What a great looking trip! How long was it?
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My wife and I will be in Christchurch for one night in about 2 weeks. Does anyone have any current recommendations of restaurants for dinner? We'd love something that serves local/seasonal or things that would be hard to find outside of New Zealand. Thank you!
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11 hours ago, kayb said:
I think we're kin. I was prepared to type those very words.
I love setting people up for a joke, especially when they come through!
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4 minutes ago, Shelby said:
Hot wings, blurry fries and salad with some more of that cilantro lime dressing
What's the recipe for blurry fries?
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What's the difference between the backstrap and the tenderloin? Is the tenderloing a section of the backstrap?
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Memories of Viet Nam... Gỏi cuốn - summer rolls. Usually, this is served with a hoisin-like peanut sauce, but I like to do how it is typical in central Viet Nam which is a nước chấm with garlic and a ton of black pepper. So refreshing and healthy. Also it's typically done with pork or shrimp or both, but this is with chicken...
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1 hour ago, gfweb said:
Flat iron steak, parm crusted roasted cauliflower, spiced yam filled acorn squash
Is this a carbon steel pan? Is it a Darto? It looks great, and a great seasoning job as well!
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4 hours ago, Hassouni said:
I just got back from a short trip to Chengdu (and a day trip to Leshan) and was pretty underwhelmed by the "standard" tea. We went to a fancy tea shop and they did a full gong fu tasting for us and that was quite nice (and of course guilts one into buying tea, though I wanted to anyway), but most restaurants just unceremoniously plopped a large metal pot of barely lukewarm, preposterously weak tea down on our table, and at the famous and quite busy He Ming teahouse in central Chengdu, there were several choices of decent-sounding teas, and fair enough, the water provided was quite hot, but the amount of tea given in the gaiwan was fairly stingy for the 20 kuai they were charging.
I actually got one of those 茶π teas, the rose and lychee, from what looked like a fridge, but was heated to 38ºC. Not hot. Literally body temperature.
As I understood it, the Chinese drink lots of hot things (including lots of plain hot water), but it seemed that "hot" rarely exceeded slightly warm. Is this just a phenomenon in Sichuan?
I've haven't been to Sichuan yet, but maybe @liuzhou can weigh in?
On another note, when we were in Hong Kong, we went for yum cha several times and each time, the tea was as hot as normal and used a good amount of tea. Most of the time we would get lung ching (cantonese... long jing in mandarin - otherwise called Dragon Well). We also went to a tea class in a high end tea house where the tea master demonstrated how to make a few different teas - green, gong fu tikuanyin (oolong) and red teas, and all were what I would call perfectly done. The gong fu oolong was poured just off the boil then distributed using a small pitcher. The green tea was poured into two small cups - one was the smelling cup whcih was tall and narrow, which my wife dubbed the "finger burning cup" and after smelling, it would go into the shorter, wider tasting cup. Personally I didn't have a problem with the finger burning cup, but I drink a lot of chinese tea and am used to holding the cup by the edges - I think my wife held the cup further down the side where it was much hotter.
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1 hour ago, Shelby said:
I was slightly worried about a bus full of tipsy nursery school kids until I got to this part.
I was thinking that it would be a great way to get them to nap on the bus!
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1 hour ago, mm84321 said:
Song Fa was in the city near Clarke Quay- my first time having it, so no reference point. The chicken rice at Tian Tian was surprisingly fantastic (I got there just before they sold out), as was the chili crab at "No Signboard Seafood". Definitely check out the Jewel; Changi airport is immensely impressive.
Thanks. Tian Tian is actually one of my least favorite chicken rice in Singapore, although it used to be better years ago - the texture of their rice is great, and the chicken is good, but I'm not a huge fan of their chili sauce, and they're very cheap with it. Also, the last time I was there, it didn't even come with soup, which is ridiculous. My go to nowadays has been Wee Nam Kee - they're not in a hawker area but it's a restaurant (but I think their prices are less than Tian Tian). The rice and chicken are great, but also, their is a big container of chili sauce on each table along with containers of freshly grated ginger and a bottle of sweet soy sauce, so you can add as much ginger as you like and the same with the sweet soy sauce. Also, their chili sauce is better balanced - it has more chili flavor and is not super spicy. The last time I was at Tian Tian, they provided the same small dish of chili sauce that's in your photo, and they didn't have containers of sweet soy sauce anymore - when I asked for it, the lady scowled at me and then reluctantly found a bottle behind the counter and squirted a line of it on the side of my plate. You should have seen the look I got when I asked about the soup and requested another dish of chili sauce!
I've never been to "No Signboard" but have had teh chili crab at a few other places - love that dish!
Definitely interested in seeing the Jewel - although we'll be getting in just after they close the trails through the forest area for some event or something. But I love that airport - I usually try to see the butterfly garden every time I go! Plus, I'm still debating about where to go for dinner in the airport - I've whittled it down to about 5-7 choices, but the selection there is ridiculous.
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2 hours ago, mm84321 said:
Singapore-
Hainanese chicken rice, paper dosa in Little India, bean curd with pork, chili crab, bak kut teh.
You're killing me!!! Was the Song Fa bak kut teh in the airport? I'll be in Singapore for about 5 hours in a few weeks - not enough time to head into the city, but it's enough time to check out the Jewel and also grab something to eat before Singapore Airlines feeds me to death. How was it? Have you had bkt before? If so, how did Song Fa compare?
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4 hours ago, mm84321 said:
Thailand. Other highlights: Tom Yum, Miang Kham, stir fried morning glory, spicy mango salad, and southern crab curry. Thai food is amazing..I kind of figured Thailand - given all the Thai writing - can you be more specific? Where in Thailand? I'm curious because that lobster would most probably be in the south somewhere, but miang kum is traditionally a northern specialty....
Ahh.... the milky tom yum! I gather it's become a big thing there lately... it hasnt' really caught on in NYC yet...
Airline Food: The good, the bad and the ugly
in Food Traditions & Culture
Posted
They definitely feed you plenty... and if by some miracle you're still hungry, you can request snacks to be delivered to you, or you can go to the back of the plane where they have set up a station where you can get your own - all sorts of cookies, chips, fresh fruit, nuts, etc.