KennethT

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!

Plantains cooked in lard!!!!!! Arrrrrggghhh........ drool...... mofongo, tostones...

You need Samuel L. Jackson for this....

When the supermarket runs out of chicken, what is one to do? Bison burger with avocado on pretzel rolls... Served with a salad with a garlic-lime juice 'vinaigrette'

You peel the leathery skin off and eat the inside meat, using the "toenails" as a handle... I had this little guy in a restaurant in the Basque area of Spain - there were a few on the plate, but I remembered to take a photo after I finished most of them... the waitress showed us how to do it (she didn't speak English or Spanish) - you peel back that leathery looking part in the middle, from left to right, towards the nail looking stuff on the right. All that peachy colored stuff is meat to eat...

Dinosaur toes!!!! They're actually quite mild in flavor. I had them just simply grilled once when in the Basque area of Spain...