KennethT

@dcarchYou are correct, but a 400W LED puts out a LOT more light than a 400W MH... the reason why LEDs are so much cooler is that a 250W LED has the equivalent light output of 1000W MH. It is also true that the lifetime is based on the fan lifetime - but my small, 100W light has 3 small cooling fans that blow on the heat sink, and it has so far lasted for at least 5 years, during which time I would have had to replace a MH bulb 5 times. You need to replace the MH/sodium bulbs every 6 months or so because around that time, their light output is diminished by almost half, even though they use the same amount of power. LEDs do not lose intensity over their lifetime by any practical amount. Consider that the cost of 1 MH/sodium bulb is about the same as my whole LED fixture, and you can do the math... And while demand is higher (in some states) due to the legality of growing cannibis, I've found that LEDs are still coming down in price on a regular basis, or to put another way, you can get a lot more light output for the same $$. With the increased demand, there are also a lot more companies making LED fixtures, so there is no supply constraint that would artificially raise prices, and as the technology grows, the cost of each LED per W or per lumen is coming down all the time.

You can grow practically anything with hydroponics. A few years ago, on the other side of the large window from the lime tree, I grew a large heirloom tomato plant. It was so large and leafy that it used almost a gallon of water a day! I wound up getting a 30 gallon food grade drum to use as a reservoir - it's currently hiding behind my couch, and the 3/4" tubing is run along the wall that connects it to the area where the plant was. I've known other people who have successfully grown strawberries, chili peppers and a wide variety of other stuff - grown in rooms with no windows! In fact, with a lot of flowering plants, it's best to have a room with no windows so you can completely manipulate the lighting to the schedule you want. For most flowering/fruiting plants (but not citrus), you want to have 18 hours of light for vegetative growth, and then you switch the time to 12 light/12 dark to get the plant to start flowering. You would also change your nutrient from a veg. formula (high N, lower P) to a bloom formula (lower N, high P). So, if you have a large spare closet, or unused room (or basement even) you're good to go! Nowadays, LED lighting is much less expensive, and a couple of 250W panels would be plenty bright for a small room with no windows. Plus, their electricity use is a lot less than the old halide/sodium lamps - plus they don't make nearly as much heat, so you don't have to worry about cooling the room as much. You do need to do something about ventilation though - some kind of exhaust fan as a closed room will get quite humid with lots of plants, and some circulation fans to stop having a stagnant microclimate around the leaves. One thing to note if you're to use any kind of supplemental lighting near a window - they are bright! I can see my 100W LED light from the sidewalk across the street from my building - and my apartment is on the 21st floor!

@LindaKGrowing citrus indoors is a lot harder than almost anything else I've ever grown... It has a particular affinity to get pythium bacteria, which cause root rot. That's why any advice you see refers to planting in really well draining soil. I started growing dwarf citrus (I got the baby trees from Four Winds Growers) over 10 years ago. Back then, I followed their instructions and got these big terracotta planters, and drilled a bunch of big holes in the bottom, and elevated the pot off the saucer... the planting media was bagged soil amended with at least half it's volume with cedar/redwood shavings to help with drainage. I got a moisture meter, and watered about once a week when the meter said the soil at the root level was on the 'dry side of moist', but invariably wound up getting root rot. When that happens, the tree looks like it has a nutrient deficiency (they are heavy nitrogen feeders, so you see the N deficiency first) even though you are feeding it with proper fertilizer. You start getting chlorosis in the leaves, and then they start to drop off, and then finally, the tree puts out a ridiculous amount of flowers - that's when you know it's on its last leg. You can usually save the tree when the leaves start dropping off by unplanting it, shaking off all the soil out of the roots, and removing the slimy parts of the roots... then repot with fresh soil/wood shavings. No matter how much wood shavings I added, I kept getting spots that wouldn't drain as well as the tree wanted, and the process starts over. After killing a couple of trees, I started researching hydroponics - thinking that if I had no soil to compact around the roots, then I couldn't get root rot. I settled on the ebb/flow (also called flood/drain) method, since it was probably the easiest to make myself, and it look promising that every time the root chamber drained, it would suck fresh air into the root zone, theoretically eliminating any chance of root rot, since pythium is anaerobic. It didn't quite work out that way, but the tree certainly did much better than it did in soil. The advantage of the hydroponics is that I can check the pH of the reservoir very easily - when I see the pH dropping, I know that the root rot is starting (pythium creates acid, so when the pH suddenly drops, you know why!). So, at that point, I add about 8ml per gallon of 17% hydrogen peroxide, and that stops the rot right away. I also add some Hygrozyme (15ml per gallon) - which is an enzyme that is created by beneficial bacteria, that eats rot and cleans your roots. The enzyme also allows better nutrient uptake as I gather it chelates a lot of nutrients which facilitates transport into the roots. With regards to lighting, I am lucky that my apartment faces south and has large windows, so I don't need that much supplemental lighting. Years ago, I was using a 400W metal halide lamp as supplemental lighting, but as technology advanced, I replaced it with a 100W LED plant light (available pretty inexpensively on Ebay). Using a timer, I have the light on about 18 hours per day. If I didn't have the large windows, I'd probably use a 1000W metal halide lamp, or 250W LED - using those lights, I could probably grow the tree in a closet! Well, sorry for rambling on like this... I'm sure I went into way more detail than you were looking for...

One thing I love about growing a citrus tree... Every time I give it a haircut, I get a flush of new growth all over!

@ElainaA Rau ram is an herb - it is sometimes called Vietnamese coriander, although I don't think it tastes anything like coriander. It is also known as laksa leaf in Singapore and is an important part of the Singapore curry dish with the same name. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persicaria_odorata Kailan is chinese broccoli, but there are many variants of it, some more leafy, some more stemmy... I don't think it tastes anything like western broccoli.

After a few years hiatus, I finally cleaned my hydro windowsill garden for leafy plants! As you can see in the pics, a nice snowy day is the perfect day to think about gardening... and please excuse that magenta glow... that's the led plant light for the lime tree... Right now, I'm just running the system for a few days with some hydrogen peroxide (to sterilize) and another solution which will help break any bonds between any old, remaining fertilizer and the system components. Once I get my seeds, I'll plant them in my hydro germinator, and once the root systems are big enough, they'll be transferred into the windowsill garden.

ElainaA, I'm actually looking to grow some things that are not readily available near me.... so I'm looking to grow rau ram, sawtooth coriander, pea shoots, kailan... stuff like that.

Thanks @dcarch... I've seen other catalogs, but very few have a selection of the things I want... do you have any suggestions?

Has anyone ordered from Kitazawa? They have a few things I'd want to grow, and have a good reputation from what I can dig up, but I was curious if anyone here had any experience. I was going to order from Evergreen today, but they're closed for lunar new year and won't reopen until later this week....

Most people want their coconut milk to separate - it's called "cracking". What kind of coconut milk are you using? If you don't want it to separate, I'd recommend using a canned coconut milk that has some form of stabilizer in the ingredient list (which is most of them). Most people complain that they're impossible to crack, which would be beneficial in your case.

What a great way to eat butter....

I think the term 'best' is relative. Do you like your mashed potatoes creamy? If so, don't use russet or any other starchy potato... better to use yukon golds, or fingerling potatoes (or other waxy potatoes). I do agree with cooking the potatoes with the skin for enhanced flavor, but I'd get rid of the milk as well. I like to simmer the potatoes with skin on in just water. Once cooked, the skins will just slip off by rubbing with a towel. Or if you want to peel first, simmer with the peels. Put the skinned potatoes through a ricer and then put the riced potatoes into a dry skillet and cook over low heat, constantly stirring to remove a lot of the excess water. Once dry enough, you can whip in cold butter to form an emulsion. If you want to go very far, you can then run the potato paste through a tamis once or a few times to get it super smooth, then return it to a pot and heat and whisk in some of the potato cooking water until you reach the consistency you like. Season with salt.

Laut is not far from my apartment - we get delivery from them from time to time. Their chicken rice is not bad, but their rendang is on the sweet side, and not always very tender... I find. The roti canai is pretty good, but their curry sauce is not spectacular - pretty bland. I'm not surprised about what you said about Sanuria... it is located in Manhattan's chinatown, and I assume that most of their clientele are Chinese of some sort. They had handwritten signs upon walking in using Chinese characters, and English underneath explaining how they'd be closing for lunar NY and reopening on Thursday.

@huirayYour post perfectly illustrates my ignorance of these areas. Unfortunately, there are very few examples of any Malay or Indonesian restaurants in NYC, and even fewer in Manhattan. And like many NYers, I don't spend nearly enough time in the outer boroughs to sample what is here. Unfortunately, unlike while on vacation when I am perfectly willing to travel across the city for a particular restaurant or dish several times a day, in 'real llife' I don't have nearly enough free time, and I tend not to do so at all. I understand that there would be large differences between cuisines from say Bali, Java and Sumatra, but I don't think there are any examples of any specific regions here in NYC. The same for regional Malay... We do have some regional Thai restaurants - but unless it's Chiang Mai, or Isaan, it's also not represented. As for the specific restaurant last night, it's called Sanuria. Here It was our first time there, so I don't know who were the owners, or their nationalities. I couldn't tell for sure, but I thought that the patrons there (except for us) were Chinese, not Malay or Indonesian, and I had the impression that they were speaking some form of Chinese, but I could be wrong because I don't have a lot of experience listening to the Malay or Indonesian languages. The restaurant claims to be "Malaysian/Indonesian" and the menu itself doesn't distinguish between which is which... it's just broken down into beef, chicken, pork, seafood, etc. Plus, the menu they gave us was in English, but many of the titles were non-descript, like "Shrimp with special sauce" (we got that, and it was excellent - reminded me of a shrimp dish at a Malay mini-chain called Penang that used to exist but is no longer). Even the beef rendang wasn't called rendang, it was beef with dry curry - but when I ordered I ordered it as 'rendang', and the woman had no issue with it. It was quite good as well - not as sweet as it can be at other places which is more my preference. Anyway, definitely much more research is in order... and I'll have to head to the outer boroughs to see others out..... @Deryn, thanks for the link to that thread, I didn't find it myself. I haven't had a chance to read it yet, but I will soon.

I don't know if this is the correct forum for this topic, but here goes. Tonight, my wife and I went down to Chinatown in NYC to a Malaysian/Indonesian restaurant, which got me thinking that I don't really know that much about either cuisine. Are there a lot of similar dishes to these cuisines (like roti, rendang, etc) or is it just that this restaurant is trying to broaden their base by carrying both - like American-Chinese restaurants that also have sushi... ?

Enrique, you're correct on all counts, but in some cases it doesn't make much difference. Most of the sauces I cook in are not thick - they're either some form of stock, or like the thai curry discussed above. In the thai curry example, the curry is already pretty thin, so the chicken juices enhances flavor, but doesn't change consistency all that much. Plus, during the seasoning, I don't raise the heat that much since that will also affect the flavor of the lime juice, so I don't wind up with coagulation problems. I like cooking proteins in a flavorful broth - especially for making things like Hainanese Chicken Rice. In this case, the broth is used like a master stock, where each time being cooked enhances the 'chickeny-ness' of the stock before it. After each time, some of the broth is used to make the rice, and the rest is brought to a simmer and infused with more garlic and ginger. It's then chilled and frozen, ready for the next time. You are correct that the proteins coagulate during the simmer, but they're easily skimmed.

I commonly cook the protein in a sauce, for a few reasons: the sauce helps get the air out of the ziplock bag, the sauce flavors the protein nicely and it more closely resembles traditional cooking methods like braises, but it's a lot more convenient, and less cleanup!

Another good weekday meal, cooked in advance.... this was a thai curry. A couple weeks ago, I fried some NIttiya red curry paste (the best prepackaged curry paste I can find) in a little virgin coconut oil until very fragrant, and slightly darker in color. Then added frozen coconut milk (thawed) and simmered for about 5-10 minutes, adding a little palm sugar and about half of the fish sauce I normally would. This was then poured into a ziplock bag with 4 skinless chicken thighs and cooked at 150F for about 3 hours... then chilled and refrigerated, until tonight. Popped the bag into a 135F bath while the rice was cooking.... about 30 minutes later, the chicken was removed from the bag, and the curry was added to a saucepot for a final seasoning... a little more fish sauce, and lime juice. Came out really well - the chicken juices integrated into the coconut milk curry, and the chicken was juicy, tender, and full of flavor. The curry sauce itself had a great mouthfeel, and the flavor was spot on.

I'm also a fan of the Benriner (Super Benriner!)... I love the medium size julienne blade - it's great for making green papaya salad in a flash. But, looking at the Feemster online, it doesn't really seem any more or less safe than the Benriner... in fact, I think the Benriner with the julienne blade may be less safe as the julienne blades stick up past the slicing blade (depending on the height to which it was set).

Last night, we ate an experiment a couple days in the making.... skinless chicken thighs marinated in achiote paste (annato, coriander seed, cumin seed, allspice, clove, black pepper, roasted garlic and bitter orange juice). I marinated in a ziplock so I didn't need that much marinade. The next day, the thighs were smoked in my stovetop smoker for about 30 minutes with a combination of oak and mesquite, then transferred to a zip lock bag with the marinade and cooked SV at 150F for about 3 hours. Then chilled in refrigerator until last night for a quick after-work dinner. Bag was put in a 135F bath for about 40 minutes while finishing prep on the roasted garlic and habanero salsa, and heating the corn tortillas. Pickled red onion was brought to room temp. All in all, a great weekday meal... thighs came out juicy and tender, with good achiote and smoke flavor. There was liquid in the bag - a combination of marinade and chicken juices, which was chilled and frozen, along with extra unused marinade. The next batch of thighs will be cooked in this liquid making the zip lock de-airing a little easier. It could also be reduced to a sauce, but I didn't think it needed it. Maybe as I collect more juices, I can reduce some of it, remove the meat from the bone and toss in the sauce to make even more flavorful... but that's for another time... maybe in a week or two when we try it again.

That's true, the places on the Bowery definitely have cheap stuff... but you can't beat the prices (for decent quality) for things like sheet pans, silpats, various types of utensils (large spoons, spiders, chinois)... Even though it's pretty cheap, just about all of the stuff I've gotten from the place on Bowery just north of Houston has lasted a long time and works well... granted I don't give it a pro workout, but I've been happy with my purchases.

I haven't been down there in a while, but i think the rest. supply places on Bowery and Houston are still around... and I think there's another one on Lafayette and Houston...

I think Blanca is a good choice too... but I think it is best in the spring and summer to really show off the produce they grow themselves.

@ShelbyIt depends on the result you're looking for.... 24h at 131 will give a medium rare, steak-like texture. 141 for 72hours will be more of a fork tender texture... and then everything in between....

I haven't been to Lupa in ages... in all my past experiences there, the food was always really good but I stuck to their wheelhouse of pastas and charcuterie. The reason I haven't been back is because it's always a pita to get there and then have to wait around for an hour at the ridiculously crowded bar, constantly getting jostled and bumped, only to be shown to a table and be jostled and bumped from time to time as well. Unless, of course, you enjoy dining at 4PM.... It's also sad to hear that the last time you were there, Pan, the pasta was that salty...