KennethT

@Dejah For me, it depends on how old the water spinach is (when it was harvested). When I grew my own, I could pick it relatively young and just stir fry it with garlic and a splash of stock. I'd still separate the tougher stalks from the leafy parts and cook the stalks first then toss in the stems and the stock. If it's older and more woody, you can separate the stalks from the leaves, then blanch in some water with salt and a bit of baking soda which will help them keep their green color. Remove to a cold water bath to stop cooking then drain. Then stir fry. The blanching time depends on how tough the stems are. Hope this helps. You can also check out this video but I'm not a fan of splitting the stems like he does as you don't see it that way in SE Asia. They're usually just cut into 3-4" lengths.

Old Lai Huat style sambal barramundi

In Beijing, we went to a very popular hot pot place, HaiDiLao, with about 900 restaurants world wide, definitely has a sesame based sauce and there is a bunch of ingredients you can mix into it at their self-serve area. In addition to what we made ourselves, our server made us a few of her favorite "recipes".

Manado, Indonesia style chicken rica rica. This is traditionally super spicy but I used mostly big red chillies to make it edible.

Back in 2012, my wife and I took our first trip (of more than a stopover) to Singapore. After about 25 hours in transit (including changing planes in Hong Kong with some good airport dim sum and a really good loose leaf tea selection), then walking around all day, we decided to spend our first dinner at the closest restaurant to our hotel: The magic of Chongqing hot pot. This was our first hot pot experience (ever!) and our waitress was very patient in explaining everything to us. The purpose of this long winded story is that she said that the sesame dipping sauce is the "magic sauce" - maybe she was referring to the soul of it? Magical sesame sauce bottom right; bottom center is chilli sauce to add to the magical sauce - makes it more magical?

If I was there, those would be gone in less than 5 minutes... I can get them fresh here in NYC now, but they're really expensive so I feel very guilty gorging myself. Hopefully I'll find a good fruit market in Indonesia in July.

Looks great! How did the potato scales stick to the fish?

@Kim ShookI hope you and your family feel better soon!

Malatang is a little different - it's not a stir-fry/grill/plancha setup, it's like an individual sized hotpot. Normal hotpot is great with a big group of people - it's very communally oriented. It can still be fun with only 2 people but there's a limit to how many different items you can get as each one comes as a whole plate so you can't try very many. So malatang solves that and also makes it possible to have hotpot if you're by yourself or want it to go. It's not a communal experience like hot pot is and since you're selecting the ingredients individually, you can select whatever you want. So it's more like all the flavor of hotpot without having to sit down with a bunch of people for a few hours.

That's starting here too. This place opened recently in my neighborhood. When I pass it by, there's consistently a line out the door of young Chinese people - most likely students at NYU (New York University, which has a lot of Chinese national students for some reason).

thyme?

Not only that but even if it was "legally indefensible", it would requiring hiring a lawyer to dispute it which can be costly, to say the least.

Got it. So it's like a traditional gravlax but truncated.... hehe.

I'm excited for this. I visited the Big Island many years ago as a kid back in the 80s when Hawaii was in the process of being purchased by Japan. If it's not too much of a bother, I'd love to see some non-food related photos too. It seems to be fine as long as at least 50% of the content is food related.

What do you do for the quick cured salmon?

How do you cook the fresh noodles? Do you boil/drain then add to the stir fry or stir fry directly? Do you need to do anything to keep them from sticking in the wok?

Here (at least in every store in NY that I've seen) the bin that holds shallots contains a mix of your original photo and the Spruce Eats one. And you have to feel all of them up to find ones that aren't too old....

They look exactly like what they call shallots here.

Penang Nyonya chicken Kapitan curry

While Lay's is an American brand, I don't think I'd find Lemon Chicken flavored potato chips (crisps) anywhere here, other than in Chinatown and it's been imported from overseas!

I've added extra grease filtration to my over-burner vent. Because I live in a relatively small apartment with the kitchen open to the rest of the space, I really wanted to minimize the aerosolized grease that not only smells for days but eventually leaves a sticky residue everywhere. So first, I upgraded my vent to a 600CFM model which can suck up any smoke faster than it can be made by the food. It is much stronger than a standard kitchen vent which is usually around 250CMF. Does it make a lot of noise? Sure it does, but I only turn it up when doing something that would make a lot of smoke like high heat stir frying which doesn't take a lot of time. The next step depends on whether or not your kitchen vent vents outside or is recirculating. If it vents outside, that's all you need to do - get the air out as fast as possible. I have no access to an outside vent so mine is recirculating. So here I've had to take some extra steps. If you remove the original grease filter from the vent (mine are baffles, but many use the coarse steel wool type) you will see the fan motor inside the vent housing. I add a couple layers of steel wool grease filter to both intake sides of the fan. If your fan is a long barrel type rather than a short/squat version, you might only have 1 intake to the fan. So that's the secondary grease filter. After months of use, you see plenty of grease buildup on this secondary filter - which would have been in your air and deposited on anything in its path. Finally, I put a tightly woven cloth bag over the vent exhaust - make sure it fits tightly to the exhaust pipe. This catches the last little bit. After all this, will you still have the lingering aroma of cooked beef? Somewhat, as some aroma particles are tiny and fit through the pores of most things. Sort of like when you presmoke some food and then put in a plastic bag and cook sous vide, the bath water will smell like smoke afterwards as some of the aroma particles are so small they go through the pores of the plastic bag. But, you won't have to clean grease from your cupboard doors or, in my case, my TV, couch, piano, walls and everywhere else!

Yes, I always thought it was interesting that corn tortillas had no added fat while flour tortillas are traditionally made with lard. I guess if there was no fat in the flour tortilla it would turn out like matzah!

I'd assume it was the fat as well.

What is the seasoning on the chicken?

I didn't realize that cake flour had corn starch added.... I don't think my typical cake flour has it... http://smartlabel.swansdown.com/product/4199979/ingredients?_gl=1*x3hyo*_ga*OTg1NzExODUxLjE3MTI4NTU1ODQ.*_ga_RZ14C79VEE*MTcxMjg1NTU4My4xLjEuMTcxMjg1NTYwNy4zNi4wLjA.