KennethT

Please... I've seen much more interesting things on the street than that! No one would even look twice at a tomato snake...

Yeah, I like that rigid container idea... but it can also be in the form of a cardboard box. I saw this thing in Japan where they were selling $20 strawberries (each berry was $20) - it came in a rigid cardboard box filled with that plastic bedding material that you see around Easter time, and the strawberry was nestled in there... granted, strawberries are a lot lighter and so easier to protect one by one, but I think something to that idea would work well.

I think that would be great, but it has to work on induction

I'm not a fan of Maesri in the tub - it tastes mostly of salt. The best premade pastes I've had were Nittiya, which must be kept refrigerated. Next to that, I like the Maesri in the "cat food" can - since it's canned, they don't need to use as much salt to keep it shelf stable. I'm a fan of hot-thai-kitchen.com and her YouTube site... very informative...

Yes, it is grilled.

What about yakitori?

Fantastic! Thanks as always for taking us along!

I have an industrial grade vapor degreaser that I imagine would work very well! Seriously - what about "degreaser in a can" - usually available at autoparts stores, or maybe oven cleaner?

Does the A4's griddle pan fit in the CSO?

Those dumplings look good - too bad the company has such an unfortunate name!

Yes, I love the combination of green peppercorns, kaffir lime leaf and grachai - which is sometimes called lesser ginger... it has a very distinctive flavor and tastes nothing like ginger... it is similar to galangal but different... hard to describe - I've never tasted anything like it, but now keep a package of it in my freezer.

I love fresh peppercorns in the cluster. One of my favorite (but now closed ) thai restaurants used to serve a few dishes that use fresh peppercorns - I don't know where they got them from - but they weren't preserved, they were fresh and had such a fantastic flavor... very different from the dried or preserved ones... before that place in NYC, the only place I had seen fresh peppercorns was in SE Asia. At one point, i was actually thinking about growing them!

I love percebes - it's a bit of a pain to deal with (like peel'n'eat shrimp) but totally worth it in my opinion.

@Duvel I will also miss your Asian adventures, but am looking forward to your European ones.

I've heard reports that carbon steel (especially Darto pans) sometimes doesn't work on induction. Can anyone verify that?

@Duvel Love these pics... you can never have too much Khao Soi when in Chiang Mai... when we were there, our hotel was about a 20-30 minute ride away from Chiang Mai proper, and they had a shuttle that left every hour. We wound up missing said shuttle from the night market to get back to the hotel because we got distracted getting some great mango with sticky rice from a vendor, and then basically had to run back to the meeting place, only to get there like 5 minutes late... But that mango with sticky rice was totally worth it!

Chicken thighs in the CSO with home made Sriracha

Was one of the sausages a sai oua? I love those - I had some amazing specimens in Chiang Mai around 13 years ago... and khao soi!

OK, I'm now a convert... 425 steam bake chicken thighs for about 28 minutes worked great... the skin blistered and was super crisp, and the flesh was completely juicy and succulent... and it was practically no effort. I did it on a rack over the baking tray and set the main rack on the lowest rung - but I think I'll put it up a notch next time to get a bit more color on the skin, even though the texture of it was perfect. The only issue is that the bottom of the thighs had no color whatsoever... maybe next time I'll put it directly in the baking tray without the rack, and reduce the time a bit since it may be cooking from both sides a bit faster. Pics to come in the dinner thread... coming soon

hmmm... unfortunately, Japanese is not anything I have attempted to learn (yet)... but it seems that the recipe is to marinate in the bag for 30 minutes, then drain on a rack for 4 minutes, then brush with the marinade... Where are the Japanese reading folks when we need them? @Duvel ??

@Anna N Looks like a marinade bag to me...

Damn that looks good. The texture on that bread looks very reminiscent to what I saw all over Saigon... too bad nothing like it exists anywhere in NYC (at least anywhere I've tried - I'm always open to suggestions!)

Years ago, I also snapped the handles of a lime squeezer on an especially dry lime. Hurt like hell! Now I'm a lot more careful when I use its replacement.

Actually, my wife is a little odd (she would be the first to say it) but she doesn't like her english muffins toasted - she doesn't like the possibility of the toasted bread scratching the roof of her mouth as she tastes a lot of wine for a living and having a scratched up mouth could be either painful or cause her to not perform as well as normal.

When heating things for short periods of time (like some have suggested defrosting bread products at 300 bake steam for 3 minutes), do you count the time from the moment the oven turns on, or do you wait for it to preheat first? I tried defrosting a frozen english muffin at 300 for 3 min - I put the em in the oven then pushed start. By the time the 3 min was up, I don't even know if the oven was at full temp yet, and the em was still frozen in the center and wet from condensation on the outside. So I tried a few more (cooling the oven and keeping the door open to get rid of the steamy environment each time). I found the best results with 5 min at 275 - this gave it enough time to fully defrost, and for the surface liquid to disappear.