KennethT

It's variety dependent. The mangoes that I like have a very flat seed and it's consistent among every individual mango of that variety.

There's a Facebook group called Fruit 4 Sale. Started by some guy who loves to eat fruit. Now it's got a few thousand members - some of which are growers/sellers and others are people looking to buy. It's a great resource.

Since it's the season, I got a box of Nam Doc Mai Thai mangoes from a Vietnamese farmer in Florida. All tree ripened but shipped hard. In storage waiting.... On the counter. The on one the right has been a couple days, on the left from last night.

I cut them vertically. Most of the time I can get very close to the seed. On a green mango, once I've cut up the cheeks, I'll lay the seed with some flesh on it flat on the board and shave off whatever is left. If the mango is ripe, it is sometimes too soft for that, so instead I'll just stand over the sink and take off the remainder with my teeth (the sink is necessary if the mango is really juicy).

I've only had them the one time, so I'm no expert, but how the waitress taught us (actually showed us since she only spoke Basque) was that you pinch a small leathery part by the toenail and tear the leathery skin off then eat it like a popsicle. It was tender and briny, but really hard to describe because it was like nothing else I've ever had.

OK, where the hell was this??? How are prices? Oh what I would do for some percebes. Best percebes ever was at Etxebarri in Spain - grilled percebes over their custom charcoal was amazing.

I would kill for some live prawns... it's probably a common sight in your neck of the woods, but I have fond memories of a restaurant in Singapore that had maybe 30 different tanks of live seafood and the "fisherman" would go out with a net when an order came in - the prawns would literally jump out of the tank!

You're right - I love head on shrimp, but then again I love eating just the shrimp heads. If you're going to eat the whole head, the best thing to do, imo, is to deep fry them. If you deep fry the whole shrimp shell on, you can eat the shells also. Just make sure they're really dry or they tend to splatter a lot. First take a scissor and cut the shrimp head just after the eyes - you want to cut off the pointy thing on top that can be super sharp. If frying the whole thing, I tend to cut down the back and then slice about 3/4 of the way through the meat so it cooks evenly. When frying shrimp, I don't really measure the oil temp but it's probably around 375F or so - definitely not hotter than that. Also, if you fry the shrimp heads, I like to save the oil - it becomes orange and has a nice shrimpy flavor - it saves in the fridge for a long time as long as you strain it first and is a great thing to add to fried noodles - I learned that from a famous pad thai place in BKK that makes it with shrimp head oil. You can also cook the whole shrimp in a broth or sauce of some kind - the heads will flavor the sauce and then you can suck the heads like a crawfish. It's not as sweet as a crawfish head and it's really earthy/shrimpy - my wife isn't a huge fan but I like it.

Wanted something fun before my COVID booster.... sambal grouper with cucumber salad.

like a dry sukiyaki?

@liuzhou Are bing the same as jianbing? Lately, here in NYC, there has a been a jianbing craze (associated here with Beijing street food) with several storefront restaurants popping up devoted to it. In Beijing (as in the places here), the jianbing were like savory crepes, made with a batter rather than a yeasted dough and stuffed with various types of savory fillings - either egg based or meat/vegetable. @Mianbao I'm sorry that this discussion may have left you with a bad taste in your mouth (please excuse the horrible pun) but I would point out that @liuzhou is quite an authority on rougiamo as he was apparently quite an addict while living in Xi'an - their ancestral home. He has made them at home and displayed them here many times and have always looked just like the ones I had while in Beijing. By the way, @Tropicalsenior yours look fantastic as well! I am by no means an authority on anything other than maybe some esoteric electrical stuff, but I appreciate your vote of confidence!

If you add pineapple, it becomes American Thai fried rice.

I haven't tried them myself, but according to people in the fruit group I belong to, there are a few Florida growers who grow 2 different varieties that are both very sweet. The 'Sweetheart' variety seems to be the best one and also has a very small seed. It actually looks pretty much how yours look in your photo. The other variety is 'Mauritius' which is sweet, but not as much as the sweetheart and has a larger seed. I think the Sweetheart season in Florida is just ending, but Mauritius is still going strong.

Nice plantings! I'm glad the deer haven't made a buffet of it yet.

Have you tried slightly wetting the bowl? That usually keeps rice from sticking.

What about something like a coffee cup? I've used stuff like that before with no problems. In order to make it not sticky, just wet the inside just before filling. I like to fill the cup with hot water, then dump it out and fill with rice (my rice cooker is right next to the sink).

My YouTube feed has become saturated with videos of Indonesian people making popular Indonesian food. Go figure. One of the dishes that has popped up several times is this one - a grilled chicken dish that seems to be common on the island of Lombok, right next to Bali. At this time, I've never been to Lombok, nor have I had this dish anywhere in Indonesia but it just looked so good I couldn't resist watching a bunch of the videos and then coming up with this recipe which is like an amalgamation of them. Most of the time, it's for grilling a whole, spatch-cocked chicken, but it's just two of us so I adapted it to make 4 chicken thighs. Ideally cooked on a wood burning grill, I have to make do in my apartment with a cast iron grill pan. I imagine it would also be really good on chicken wings and also fish Marinade: 1 t powdered dried turmeric 1t salt about 2 ounces of water Bumbu (spice paste): 2-3 fresh long hot red chillies (like Prik chee faa in Thailand) 2 fresh/frozen Thai chillies 2-3 fresh Cayenne or other long, red, skinny chilli. I can't get that here, so I used a couple of dried ones, soaked until soft 4 small shallots 4 cloves garlic 1 inch fresh/frozen kencur - substitute the same amount of galangal if kencur is unavailable 2 candlenuts 2t Indonesian or Malaysian shrimp paste (terasi or belacan respectively), toasted then crumbled 1t salt 2oz oil for frying 8oz coconut milk 2t palm sugar 1/2-1t white sugar 1/2 lime 1. In a small blender or mortar grind the bumbu into a fine paste 2. In a wok or deep pan, heat the fry oil until shimmering then add the bumbu paste and fry, stirring constantly, until the oil starts to separates back out of the paste. 3. Add the coconut milk and stir to combine and bring to a boil. Add the palm sugar and white sugar and simmer and stir constantly until much thicker and you start to see oil separating out of the liquid. Set aside. This is now the sambal used for grilling and dipping later. 4. Preheat your grill to medium heat and mix the marinade ingredients in a small dish 5. Once the grill is hot, brush the marinade on both sides of the chicken and place on the grill, skin side down. 6. Flip after a few minutes and cook on both sides until about halfway cooked through. 7. Using a brush, brush the sambal on the chicken then flip, and brush more on the other side. Continue brushing/flipping until the chicken is cooked through. 8. Squeeze the lime juice into the remaining sambal (sauce) and serve on the side.

To many, Memorial Day means grilling. Who am I to argue? Indonesian grilled chicken - ayam bakar taliwang. This was a keeper - next will be to try it on some wings or fish!

Javanese chicken soup

Yesterday we went out for lunch (and actually ate at the restaurant!) to a place I've wanted to try for a while - Atla. Guacamole Ceviche P Potato and cheese flautas - there were unremarkable. Chilli rubbed branzino grilled. This was awesome. We even got dessert - the best churros on the face of the earth. Freshly fried and so light I thought they'd crumble under their own weight. Chocolate sauce was practically unsweetened and had some coffee notes - so good with the cinnamon and sugar. Then I finished the remaining sauce using my finger.

We have a Venchi shop a few blocks away from me. Just North of Union Square. They also have gelato!

Sambal grouper with stir fried baby bok choi

When I was a kid, I had godparents who lived in a suburb of Boston. We visited them usually twice a year and always stayed at the HoJo's motel in the area, and had breakfast (and sometimes lunch) in the restaurant. Being a picky kid, I usually got the hot dog for lunch, but I remember my father always getting the clam strips.

Staff note: This post and the reponses to it have been moved from the Lunch 2023 dicussion, to maintain topic focus. Is Howard Johnson's still around?

Quite a few restaurants in NYC have a card with a QR code in a plastic stand on the table. It started here as a COVID thing - one less thing for people to handle and supposedly have to sanitize before being given to someone else. I imagine many restaurants have found it cheaper, especially when having to print menus that change from time to time. Some of these restaurants do have hard copies if requested. Personally, I find the QR code menus a real pita, but obviously they haven't had too many complaints. And I'm sure the young people (in their 20s) love it as they're glued to their phones anyway.