KennethT

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.

I liked your post because I feel like the time together is most important! But sorry the offerings were disappointing, that's always a nice bonus.

@Anna N Wow, that is quite the haul!! I've said this before, but if everyone had a friend like @Kerry Beal, the world would be a much better place. All of those chocolate pieces look amazing - those are some talented folks.

I'm not very familiar with prawn masala from South India, but I'd assume it's a bit different as I believe that this is more Chinese influenced. Recipe here.

Singapore style sambal grouper with cucumber salad.

This was an experiment. Indonesian fish (mahi mahi) curry without a specific recipe, but with tomato and maitake mushrooms. Came out tasty. Now if I can only remember what I did! Ikan mahi mahi gulai.

Absolutely. That one outlet is on a dedicated 20A circuit breaker. Currently, the load is nowhere near that, even though it looks like a lot of plugs going into it. One of those cords just powers an Arduino which uses less power than your cell phone.

Oh yeah. Hard to believe since I'm only a 1 day shipping point and they shipped yesterday. They must not have supplemental lighting in their greenhouse - but you'd think by this time of year it would be getting plenty of light anyway.

Lemongrass and sawtooth coriander

I just received a couple herb starts for some things that don't grow from seed (easily). I have to say I'm disappointed - hopefully they'll perk up a bit soon.

So I went there tonight and picked up takeout to bring home (I live 2 blocks away). I got the poached chicken rice with some extra "yu choy". BTW - what I got was not yu choi but was gai lan (chinese broccoli). Well cooked and tasty but not yu choi. The poached chicken's texture and skin texture were excellent. The rice had good flavor but I thought the texture was a touch mushy but certainly not unforgivable. @weinoo Did you get a container of the grated ginger? They originally gave me 1 container each of chilli sauce, grated ginger and sweet soy sauce. The sweet soy sauce was watered down so instead of being thick and syrupy, it was liquid almost like a dark soy sauce. The tiny container of chilli sauce was only half full so I asked for extra and he happily gave me another. Even with the two containers and all of the ginger (which was mostly liquid ginger juice) I still had a bit of range anxiety as I was getting to the bottom of the sauce while I still had a good 1/4 of my portion to go. So I had to ration... The chilli sauce was ok - it was more heat than chilli flavor, but that's not uncommon, even in Singapore. All in all, it was pretty good - but they had stopped the discount by the time I got there. For 50% off I would have been ecstatic. At full price, it is not something I'd get all the time but I would consider it when I had a strong hankering and was too lazy to make it myself. @weinoo FYI - I don't keep chicken rice chilli sauce around all the time - it doesn't freeze so well - it definitely loses its freshness so I make it fresh when I make it. It's not hard to make it though - you can make it yourself!!! See here.

😲 Sure it's a lot less, but that's still insane!

I didn't look anything up yet - I'm going to get takeout there tonight on the way home from work - hopefully they'll still have some left by around 7PM or so. But if they're asking $17.80 for what you had, I don't think I have the stomach to look at what they'd charge for a whole chicken. But it's New York, everything is expensive. Compared to Singapore (which is also considered expensive, haha), where at my favorite place, it's like $7 Singapore dollars (so maybe $5.20 US) for the same quantity that you had, but in a sit down restaurant with service (and no tipping).

@lindag To make the rice for chicken rice, once the rice has been washed it is traditionally lightly fried in chicken fat with garlic and ginger. It is then cooked using the liquid used to poach multiple chickens - which is essentially chicken stock - but is also flavored with garlic, ginger and green onion. Also, some pandan is traditionally added to teh rice cooker which helps perfume the rice further.

Thanks! I had no idea. When we lived in Murray Hill we would go to US Vanderbilt once in a while for lunch - there was a decent fried chicken sandwich place there, but it was always a bitch getting seats. I checked out the Union Sq one a while ago and nothing really piqued my interest, but that chicken rice place might change that. Although I will say that the amount of chilli sauce provided is exceptionally stingy - can you get more? One of the things I love about my favorite chicken rice place in Singapore is that they have a large container of their chilli sauce, extra grated ginger, sweet soy sauce, etc. on each table (it's a sit down restaurant) - you can take as much as you want, which is (in my mind at least) how it should be.

Yes, it's very salty which is the reason I don't use it either. The green "premium" version (it's like $1 more) is not nearly as salty. In fact, when I use it, I still have to add basically the normal amount of salt I'd use without it.

I have it but never use it. I much prefer the LKK "Premium Chicken Bouillon powder" and use it all the time. It looks the same but the label is green instead of red. I don't use much at a time - maybe 1/2 teaspoon, but you'd be surprised what it adds to vegetable stir fries.