KennethT

I understand this. To me, a standing rib roast (my family always called it Prime Rib) is a rich cut by its nature. If they prefer a less rich beef, rather than the tribulations involved in picking just the right Prime Rib that isn't that rich, maybe it would be better to get a different cut for your roast. What about what my family always called Shell Steak roast - which I later learned is a NY Strip roast - great flavor but definitely not as rich as Prime Rib.

Did we skip over the neck or doubling back to get there?

MSG?

Looks good. If you enjoyed the rendang (I'm currently rendang-ed out as I had it almost every day for a week for breakfast while in Malaysia recently) and want to know more about it, I'd recommend some YouTube videos featuring William Wongso - he is considered the foremost authority on Indonesian cooking and is a huge promoter of rendang to the rest of the world.

Out of sheer curiosity, how many calories do you think are in that pizza? Between the lard/butter crust and the 8000 pounds of cheese... yikes. Diet food it is not!

I've never seen goose foie outside of France (doesn't mean it doesn't exist) but goose foie IS even better, if you can imagine it

Singapore Airlines Penang to Singapore... Even though the flight is barely an hour long, they felt compelled to offer a snack with a drink. I was surprised to see my old friend Old Chang Kee. The preboxed version isn't nearly as good as what you get at their stand, and personally I'd rather get the prawn or crab nuggets. There were 2 of these in the box.

We should land in about an hour, then a 3 hour layover during which we need to go through immigration and get our bags to change airlines to get to Penang. We'll also get dinner, even though we were just served this 20 minutes ago:

Dinner was served.... Stir fried prawns with yu choi and carrots. Appetizer was a decent smoked salmon with dilled potato salad and a brownie with caramel sauce.

And now for a snack that's a little more local.... Holy crap this was tasty! Dried anchovies, onion, chilli and garlic in a slightly sweet yeast roll.

Currently over Turkey... With some crisps

Currently en route to Penang, Malaysia via Singapore on Singapore Airlines. It's currently 3:30PM NY time but I feel like it's 3AM as it's been a ridiculously stressful week. So much so that basically the first time I've had to research food is by renting wifi on the plane! Anyway, lunch for me was stir fried chicken with ginger and scallions, served with rice, Chinese broccoli and carrots. "appetizer was a smoked chicken salad with orzo and dill. All quite tasty. A snack of "margherita pizza" is up next. Vanilla flavored ice cream. Somewhere over Normandy, France

I thought all Westerners ate was steak?

I always have these in my refrigerator. I get them from the Hmart - normal supermarkets don't carry them. As the week goes on, they really perfume the refrigerator!

Maybe this is just me, but when I think of yellow onions, I think of the smaller size - about the size of a baseball, as opposed to the Spanish onion which is about the size of a softball. Do many people here have large size yellow onions available?

I used to have a large-ish Cuisinart and like many here never used it. I've now brought it into the factory at work - every once in a while we need to clean baked varnish off of our industrial walk-in oven's floor. I get pellets of dry ice and turn them into snow in the Cuisinart and spread on the varnish. Freezes in no time and cleans up much easier. BUT, I've been getting more and more into making Indonesian food (as well as other SE Asian foods) which would make lots of use of what @gfweb is talking about. Look at any YouTube video of people in SE Asia making SE Asian curries and all you see are things that look like the Bullet type blender or very small chopper. Currently I'm either doing it by hand with a mortar/pestle to make me feel like a SE Asian grandmother or I make a big enough batch to use my normal sized blender - but then I have to either add water or some oil to get it to blend properly.

Getting summer rolls for delivery or take out is always a problem. They're really meant to be eaten as soon as they're made. Have you had pho from this restaurant before? I don't know whether it was somebody's error that day or if that's just how they make theirs. We were at a pho place in Saigon which was really strong with star anise... that was just their style and it seemed like the people who went there went there because of it!

Healthy? Really? If this were true I'd be the happiest guy in the world!

A ramen-ya here in NYC has a noodle machine in the basement that you can watch working. Pretty cool.

I love pigeon (yes, usually called squab here). They're usually only found in either Chinese restaurants (typically the Cantonese roasted style) or in a French style served in a more rarefied way (and a lot more expensive). Either way, they're delicious. I used to always have a few in my freezer, but they've gotten way too expensive lately - over $10 a bird!! And yes, one time I did see a few Chinese people ina park witha net trying to catch wild pigeons! Hopefully they weren't intended to go to a restaurant in Chinatown. In your pigeon soup, is that a dried morel?

I don't think I've ever had purple rice. Is the rice itself purple or do you add something to make it that way? How is the taste/texture different from white rice?

Central Vietnam style Bún Tôm - noodle salad with shrimp - unfortunately, I can't really get bun here (the round rice noodles) so I used some narrow phở noodles instead. Using homegrown herbs. The shrimp was cooked with some of my reserved shrimp head fat from last week!

@Duvel I agree with both of you - I've had Paul stuff several times, but always in the airport and have been impressed with the quality - especially in the airport! But it is really the only option there so that's not saying much. I do still dream about a small boulangerie in Beaune where we got an amazing epis de ble (no knife required) to have with some local Epoisses...

What did you think of the bread from Paul? I've only had it in the airport.. CDG..

Fantastic... thank you so much for this. You've made me hungry to go there!