KennethT

This makes a lot of sense.

I was surprised at the original post that you could get stems but not the leaves. To be honest, those leaves look like they've seen better days!! But I also understand that sometimes beggars can't be choosers and it's definitely better than nothing.

Bison mapo tofu with Korean leeks

Southwestern bison burger with guacamole, chipotle sauce and cucumber salad.

True, but the aW of pure chocolate is practically 0 so does not allow bacterial growth, so why would you need to heat treat? I understand ganache and similar, but you can definitely heat the cream to almost if not boiling prior to incorporating the chocolate and then keep in the guidelines, right?

Gorgeous. Looks like a fine dining restaurant. I've never seen pink peppercorns fresh on the vine like that. What are they like when fresh?

We stayed at the Cambridge many years ago. The place must have really changed. Years ago, the main restaurant that was indoors was really stuffy - we must have been the youngest people there by several decades. A few of the men there were wearing ascots!!!! Ascots!!! I was looking for local dishes and they were serving beef wellington. They had an outdoor restaurant that was more casual and had more local types of food, but tropical storm and all.....

If you've never had durian, their durian serimuka is great way to get into it. I also love their pandan serimuka.

I don't think the kuih are that high in calories. Certainly their savory offerings in puff pastry or what I've named the burroti (chicken curry in roti prata burrito) have a lot of calories and some of their more western style desserts do too.

What did you get? We've been trying to lose a couple pounds so we haven't been in a couple weeks, but we're due back this weekend.

That's unfortunate. It's really hard to descale a piece of fillet without getting the scales all over the flesh or without mushing it up too badly.

We have dried facing heaven chillies but not fresh. When I make the Sichuan dishes, I use a combination of the dried facing heaven chillies and Sichuan pickled chillies.

I'm very happy with their grouper, barramundi and the 4 different kinds of shrimp I get. Maybe next time I'll get some skinless fillets to give them a try.

What did you think of the WF salmon? I ordered it once but never again. I was annoyed that they didn't descale the skin on fillet pieces. And did not do a good job removing the pin bones either.

Once you wind up using enough, I'm curious as to your opinion of them.

Barramundi with North Sulawesi (Indonesia) style sambal dabu dabu made with mediocre mango.

One day, but this trip will be to Indonesia. We went to Bermuda to snorkel many years ago. Unfortunately, an unpredicted huge storm dropped in on us at around 3AM the first night we arrived and basically left the night before we left. Luckily, they were able to clear the downed trees from the roads so we could get to the airport, even though it was a lot slower than normal. Wetsuit!!!!!! 😆 The food looks great so far. Any conch fritters to look forward to on this trip?

Everything looks great. How does the tempura hold up as take away?

Teochew style bak kut teh made with super rich pork stock. Here's the chilled pork stock: It supports the weight of the ladle!

Yes. They're soaked for about 20 min, drained then chopped and pounded a bit, then fried until crunchy.

If this is the "not bad", what's the spectacular view? 😁 Seriously, thanks for bringing us a long once again. I always look forward to your trips, especially as I'm getting ready to go on a SCUBA trip in the summer!

Singapore night, brought to you by: dried shrimp, it's the best shrimp in town! Black pepper shrimp with belacan bok choi.

That makes sense. I think the reason people talk about them here so much is that they're the predominant hot chile in the US and the easiest and most reliable to be able to find in grocery stores here. Here in NY, our hot chile selection is pretty abysmal. Practically every store has jalapenos, most probably will have serranos as well as habaneros. After that, probabilities go way down. Next in line are probably the goat horn chillies or Anaheims. Large red chillies like you find in Thailand and SE Asia are much less common - I can only find them in a few stores and lately not very reliably which is a shame because I use them the most out of everything.

A kilo of chillies is a LOT of chillies!!! Personally, unless you're making a lot of Mexican food, I'm not a huge fan of jalapenos myself. For either Asian or Indian foods I much prefer other varieties. But that's not really your question.... While many say that you can freeze chillies with no issues, I think it depends on how you plan to use them. If you plan to mash them up into a paste, then yes, freezing is just fine. If you want to chop them to add to a fresh tomato salsa and you want the crispness they can provide, then no, freezing isn't so good as when they defrost they'll be mushy. I've kept other chillies in the refrigerator's crisper drawer for maybe 3 weeks, but by the end, they're really starting to look sad - slightly shriveled and wrinkly and definitely not as crisp as when fresh.

Neither my wife nor I like beans either (other than peanuts), but we love dishes made with black beans. As @liuzhou said, they don't taste like beans at all. If/when you cook with them, if you give them a rough chop before adding them in, they really get lost in the dish - although their texture is very un-bean like. For some reason, I always associate their aroma with dark chocolate.