KennethT
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Posts posted by KennethT
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1 hour ago, rotuts said:
Or just vibrate the truss with an electric toothbrush. Do it once a day - vibrating until you can see pollen falling from the flowers.... you'll probably only need to do it twice or three times per truss (if that) before you see the fruit set.
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Weekly salmon, this time with Thai fried rice, with kaffir lime leaves, shrimp paste, lime juice and "bok choy tips", whatever that is... but they were tasty.
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I'd tend to say it would be ok also. The very conservative US FDA food code says that food should spend <4 hours between 40F and 140F... but they're not taking SV into account, which can pasteurize at around 130. Since the power was only off for 4 hours, I'd say the bath was below 130F for less time than that...
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I'm curious about this also, as Taiwan is high up on our list. I've flown on EVA and connected through Taipei more times than I can remember without using fingers but we've never seen the country. What we've flown over looks beautiful. I've heard some people say that you could spend a week in Taipei alone, but that the rest of the country (especially the south) should not be missed. I may be mistaken, but I believe @BonVivant wrote up some of her trip to Taiwan - but I could be confused with other locales....
We've been to Din Tai Fung (it's a Taiwanese chain with lots of locations) in a few places - I gather some of them are franchised, which is why some are better than others. We fell in love with DTF in Hong Kong, but were disappointed by their selections in Singapore and Beijing. Yes, they're best known for their XLB, but many of their other offerings are great (in the good locations). I don't know how they compare to other Taiwanese dim sum type places - I gather there are tons of them.
I'll second @Beebs recommendation for oolongs - Some of the best lightly fermented oolongs I've had have been Taiwanese... I even had a decent pot of loose leaf oolong in the restaurant we frequent in the airport, pretty inexpensive too.
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Hallelujah! They had Crystal hot sauce for the gumbo!
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The results from freeze dried and the other kind of dried are totally different. One wouldn't use one process instead of the other.
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huh... Back when I ordered from Laurel's, I was able to order 1 plant. I ordered a Goose Creek plant, and it was, by far, the best tomato I ever tasted. And it was grown indoors (in the corner of my living room) under lights and a sunny window. It provided about 1-2 tomatoes per day (perfect for the two of us) for months until the plant got so big I had to kill it. (It took over the whole living room). Upon taking it all down, I found quite a few "overly ripe" tomatoes lurking inside all the foliage.
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3 hours ago, heidih said:
On line (think Kenneth T in New York has ordered) is my local tomato person Laurel . The Berkeley Tie Dye was amazing one year. https://www.heirloomtomatoplants.com/
Yep. That was me. I haven't ordered from them in a long time, but when I did, they were great!
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40 minutes ago, Kerry Beal said:
I used to have a vacuum microwave - picked up from ebay I think. It would have worked for something like this. I put a vacuum jar in it, attached it the vacuum tubing that ran from the jar through to the back wall of the microwave to a pump, then microwaved on very low powers for short bursts. I never recall doing any herbs in it. My aim at that time was to concentrate liquids.
Thanks. I've read a bunch of research papers talking about using vacuum microwave (sometimes called vacuum ovens) to dry herbs.
Do you recall from your time using it how it worked for your purpose?
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I've been using that chili garlic sauce for a long time - it's a great quick addition to other sauces. If I'm out of fresh chilis, I'll use a spoon of this in a thai som tam, just as one example. I also like their sambal oelek.
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Need to get the tent cleaned up for a new season.... As I was cleaning, I was reminded how it would have been SO much better to have done this a lot earlier - like as soon as I harvested my plants!
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Chicken thighs quickly marinated in soy, black vinegar, shaoxing, cayenne and five spice then dried skin side up in the fridge. With smashed cucumber salad...
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@Duvel Haidilao does take out?
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14 hours ago, Dejah said:
Try to make childhood favourites for lunch when the kids come home. My Mom used to make these for them when they were little.
Char Siu Baos. Made my own Char siu but bought the ready mixed flour.
I made 3.5 dozen with the filling. Had dough left over, so steamed some Chinese sausage and wrapped them with the rest of the dough.Kids will each take some home.
I wish you were my Mom!
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Interesting Green Champa Garden... the first dish looks distinctly Viet, but the second two look distinctly Thai... I guess that place does both? I know the Champa people were in what is now Southern Vietnam and Cambodia (they built the temples at My So'n near Saigon and Angkor Wat in Cambodia among others) - but I didn't think they were in Thailand as well...
ETA All that being said, the dishes look tasty!
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Also, after using the stick blender, you may wind up incorporating a lot of air which will take the vibrancy of the color our - so if you have some kind of vacuum chamber, you can run a short vacuum on it and bring back the vibrancy.
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Nice... to be honest, I don't know if I'd go back. The quality was decent, but just as good anywhere else in Chinatown for 1/2 the cost.
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Wow - I didn't even realize he traveled to Africa!
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Has anyone experimented using a vacuum chamber to dry herbs? Herbs dried the traditional way (low humidity, elevated temperature) take on a different flavor than when they're fresh. Drying under a vacuum can be done at lower temperatures, maintaining a more similar flavor profile.
There has been some research done on this that I've read here and there, and there are some "vacuum ovens" that integrate low power microwaves to speed the process slightly, but they're very expensive.
I'd be curious to know about anyone's experiences....
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That's interesting... I never knew he did a set in Israel... I'll have to check them out when I get some time. I've enjoyed a bunch of his videos in Thailand and Vietnam...
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This place has been all over the NYC food media lately. It started as a stall in a mall in Flushing and has now expanded to Manhattan - on Canal St. in a fancy new food court right near the 6 train. They make a big deal out of the fact that they grind their rice daily to make their batter.
Prices are pretty expensive - they range from $7-$10 or so for one plate of rice roll - elsewhere in Chinatown, it would be about half that. We had just had lunch elsewhere, but I wanted to try it so my wife and I split a shrimp rice roll as a snack. Due to all the price and hype (and long line) I was expecting the best rice roll I've ever had. It was good, but didn't blow me away. I actually thought the rice roll itself was a little too chewy.
Please forgive the red hue in the photo - the lighting in the seating area was really funky...
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So my wife and I finally made it to the new incarnation of Kopitiam. We went there once when it was in the old space, which was basically a closet with 4 counter stools about 2 feet from the register and were underwhelmed, but now that they have moved into a much larger space in the LES and have received TONS of great press, we decided to give it another try.
The new setup is quite nice - it's a lively room with a good amount of seating - there are both tables for 2 and 4, a large communal table, and some counter seats at the window. The ordering scheme is similar to the standard kopitiam (coffee shop) in Singapore/Malaysia - you order at the counter and tell them where you are sitting, and then they bring you the food when it is ready. Once nice thing is that they won't let you order at the counter until you have a seat - and people waiting to sit don't hang over the diners like vultures - the very nice staff will help with the seating arrangements. Once seated, they don't rush you out either - in fact, there were a few times when I was about to ask the wait staff if they had forgotten to bring one or two of our dishes. There's also a decent amount of space between tables - it's nice to be in a casual place and not be on top of your neighbor or hear their conversation more than your own.
The new menu is quite large - much larger than in the previous space. It is broken up into snacks and larger dishes and then a selection of kueh which are like sweets. Some items are made in batches - like the kueh and the curry puffs. When they sell out, it can be a long time until they are refilled.
It's hard for me to judge this place as a typical New Yorker would - as someone who loves Singapore and its local food, my expectations of both flavor and value don't necessarily translate here. If I had never been to a typical kopitiam, I would think this place was excellent and might return often. But as it is, it is a little hard for me to reconcile my idea of value - but then again, real estate prices in SG/Malaysia are not NYC either...
Otak Otak - this is a mousse made with fish, egg and curry paste, then steamed in a banana leaf. The texture of this version was much looser than we've had anywhere else - like it wasn't quite set yet. The flavor was ok - but very strong on the chili which basically overpowered everything else. It was ok when had with the rice, which you had to add for $2 extra.
(sorry for the view of the eaten chicken wing!)
Pulut Inti - this is my wife's (and mine too) favorite kueh... It's made from sticky rice stained blue using a butterfly pea flower, cooked with coconut milk, and topped with dried coconut shavings cooked with palm sugar. The rice should be slightly sweet and slightly salty. This one, the rice had almost no flavor of it's own, although the palm sugar coconut shavings were good.
Curry puff - this was the best thing we had... I went back on line to try to order another (or two) but they were sold out and it would have been at least 20-30 minutes for them to come back into stock. This was probably the best curry puff I've ever had, anywhere. The crust was delicate and flaky, and the potato filling had a great curry flavor. When ordering, you can get it room temp or heated - I opted for heated.
Belacan chicken wings - if you didn't tell me, I'd have no idea that belacan (fermented shrimp paste) was anywhere near these wings. You could barely get a sense of it... I was hoping the belacan would come through a lot more. Plus, it was like $6 for 5 tiny wing forearms...
Kaya toast - in Singapore, this would be called "Bread Toast". The bread here was a little too dense for my taste, and the butter was completely soft and melted. To me (and many Singaporeans I have talked to) a proper bread toast should have ice cold pats of butter, in the warm toast and room temp kaya (coconut egg custard). I love the contrast between the cold butter and the warm kaya and toast. The kaya here has decent flavor (they also sell it by the jar), and the butter is really good, albeit too warm to the point where it almost squirts out when you take a bite.
Teh tarik - black tea pulled with sweetened condensed milk. This was reminiscent of what it was supposed to be, but I was longing for a much stronger black tea, and a bit sweeter condensed milk flavor. This one was on the watery side.
Total cost was about $35 before tip. In SG, this would have probably cost $10 if that, but again, NYC real estate so I understand... All in all, while we were a little disappointed that the dishes didn't live up to our expectations, we enjoyed ourselves there and would go back again. I am also curious to try some of their larger dishes - it looks like they had a shrimp laksa (but they didn't call it laksa so maybe it's just a shrimp noodle soup) and a beef rendang that I'd like to try. I also need to have another of those curry puffs!
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7 minutes ago, DiggingDogFarm said:
FWIW, faucet powered aspirators and medical aspirators are generally considered the safest.
But medical aspirators can be quite expensive!
In the following post I PROVE that a $25 faucet aspirator is just as good at compressing as an $850 chamber vacuum sealer—AFTER someone told me is wasn't possible!..
I've done this with a faucet aspirator also - the biggest problem with it is the huge use of water.
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@CanadianHomeChef Years ago, I grew an heirloom tomato plant hydroponically in my living room. After a few months, it was huge - drinking over a gallon of water a day. The roots grew so well, they wound up clogging the inlet/outlet of my flood/drain setup and when the pump turned on, it caused a leak in the piping at one of the joints and caused a lake of 30 gallons of nutrient water in the middle of my living room floor! So I'm not surprised that the tap root found its way into the wicks...
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The Hot Sauce Topic
in Kitchen Consumer
Posted
I agree also - but the problem is that non Rooster brand Sriracha is practically unavailable in the US.