KennethT

Arrrrrggghhhhh!!!!!!

I"m not a fan of Tabasco either - but I love Crystal - which is a common hot sauce used in Louisiana, and NOLA...

That kueh in the middle photo is my favorite!!!

@Allen89Thanks for your input... I appreciate your thoughts.

I LOVE mangosteen - it is my absolute favorite fruit. Unfortunately, it is almost completely unavailable where I live, unless you consider the frozen kind, which I don't because they're disgusting. I'll be in Vietnam in a couple weeks - hopefully I'll be able to find some when I'm there!

The Japanese are really the most advanced when it comes to hydroponic greenhouse strawberry cultivation. I've been researching growing strawberries hydroponically, here in NYC, and most of the information is coming from research done in Japan.

Mornings are also best for harvest as the produce has the highest water content, before the heat and sun pull moisture out.

I finally received my new blade this weekend. I, too, have kept the old blade (which looks perfectly fine) as a backup.

During my senior year in college, I took a professional cooking class at the hotel school. Our first task was chocolate chip cookies. A few of my classmates' cookies spread like these and the chef said that they had overcreamed the butter. He didn't explain what caused it though.

I don't know if there's already a topic devoted to this, but I saw a few of these bottles and had to share...

Is it possible that the butter was over-creamed?

@liuzhouThank you so much for taking the time to post all the photos and provide the (sometimes hilarious) commentary. This made my day!

hi Warren, I'm sure I speak for many here who would love to see some of your local foods and the techniques/recipes you apply to them!!! Welcome!

My dwarf lime tree in silhouette.

The wrapper looked like brique pastry - sometimes called feuillete de brique...

som tam is a thai salad - typically made with green papaya or green mango. The main ingredient is shredded and lightly pounded in a tall m&p (so stuff doesn't escape) with chiles, palm sugar, limes, etc. The Thai also use a smaller, granite m&p for grinding their curry pastes..

I agree with @JoNorvelleWalker. When I was in Thailand, I saw a lot of curry pastes made by hand with m&p that looked EXTREMELY smooth.... - and when made into a curry, the paste basically dissolved into the coconut milk - there was no grainy-ness whatsoever. A good, solid m&p and lots of time and arm-grease can make a very smooth paste - much finer (and drier) than my blender can do. I've been thinking about those Indian motorized stone wet grinders typically used to grind lentils et al. Like this: https://www.google.com/#q=ultra+pride+wet+grinder But I have no idea if it can be used to make pastes out of harder ingredients such as galangal, which can be quite hard and woody. Plus, they're pretty expensive, unless you're making pastes all the time.

That is really frustrating... I hope they can shed some light on this.... I'd be curious as to the solution.

@liuzhouExactly - NYC has very clean air for a big city, but I still wouldn't want to moisten them with the dew here! Plus, living in an apartment with no balcony would make it difficult anyway.... one day I'm going to experiment with the steamer method.

When we were in Saigon, last year, we saw a few uses - I've been meaning to do some experiments at home, but have not gotten around to it. In one area, they put the rice papers out on racks either at night, or very early in the morning, and allow the morning dew to soften the rice paper. They don't get as soft and flexible as if dipped in water, and they have a slight but pleasant chew. It is great to use as a taco of sorts - add various meats, veggies, herbs, etc. and then dip into some kind of watery (consistency-wise) sauce. You can also take the slightly softened papers, but them into quarters and deep fry them for a very nice snack. Now, I think it goes without saying that no one I know is going to go through the effort of trying to soften the papers using the morning dew... my experiments were going to be to try to mildly steam them in a low temp. steam environment.... ETA: we're going back to Vietnam (central Vietnam this time) in late June/early July - maybe we'll get some ideas then?

I hate to say this, but did it come with an instruction manual or is everything done on screen? I'm wondering if there's a button you need to hit between to steps, to let it know that you completed that step. For instance, it tells you to add sugar - so then it has to wait for you to do that, and then receive a command that it's been done. Then it tells you to add water, and wait again for the command to tell it that the water was added... etc etc..

I don't know about using it for fish specifically, but in general, batters made with alcohol (like vodka) as part of the liquid turn out crispier than those without. This may be harder to find, but I gather using Trisol as part of the dry mix makes things really crispy also, and it supposedly stays crispy too.

My basil "tree"...

powerful vacuum or compressed air

Thanks so much for posting this! Loved it! I still can't imagine what sake flavored kit kats would taste like though... if you have time can you talk about sushi prices? Did you go to "average" sushi places, or more high end? It all looks like great quality...