KennethT

@BonVivantThanks for yet another amazing trip! So glad I could experience it through your lens.

Made a couple dinners this past week, we've been busy with work right before vacation. Grilled barramundi in the Lombok style - barramundi bakar taliwang. Grilled mahi mahi in the Manado style with a raw sambal called dabu dabu, which means chopped, made with mango. Mahi mahi bakar dabu-dabu (that's fun to say)

There's lots of greenhouse grown tomatoes available here - I don't know if they're necessarily the Mucci brand - it seems they have quite a few brands under their umbrella. Campari tomatoes are an example of greenhouse grown tomatoes (I don't know if they're Mucci or another company though)

The grower of these is Mucci farms - a large greenhouse grower in Canada. Over the last several years, there's been great strides in greenhouse cultivation - primarily due to the decreasing cost of LED lighting that is used as supplemental lighting in greenhouses. Now it can be summer all year long in the greenhouse with much less energy expense and lot less excess heat. There have also been a lot of advancements in breeding cultivars that grow really well in greenhouses that have more flavor, as well as being more resistant to greenhouse issues like mold and rot.

@blue_dolphin When I did them deep fried, I split the shells, removed the vein and then sliced from the back almost all the way to the other side but stopped before I got to the tail. That way, the meat is even thickness all over.

oh yes, we've been gorging ourselves on the Chinatown ones. My wife has been been going back there every other day. Last week at our preferred vendor (SE corner of Mulberry and Canal), the Thai mangoes were $1 each, and then a couple days ago, there wasn't much left and they were $0.50 each!!! Needless to say, we cleaned them out.

I am soooo jealous of those prices!!! Pompano for 3.88/#???!!!???? <<<feints>>>

I have no idea. I'm not a fan of social media either. The only people I'm 'friends' with on FB are people I know in real life - so like 12 of them! But I do belong to a few groups - one being this fruit group, the others are gardening/hydroponic groups which have been very helpful to me over the years.

I'm trying to look them up but I can only find an Instagram, etc. no website. Do you mind giving me an example of the prices of various dishes - or at least a range of prices?

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).