KennethT

Last batch of kapitan chicken curry. I'm very happy with the curry, but my prata recipe needs work so I'm happy we finally finished all the ones I made (I make them in batches of 4 meals for 2 people).

Do you make the dumplings yourself? I never saw that combination in Hong Kong or Beijing before!

@BonVivant Like @ElsieD, thank you - I never considered Albania as a tourist destination, but your trip looked fantastic. I do have a question -what is the difference between kofte and sausage? They're both ground meat with spices. Is it how finely ground the meat is, or is the sausage smoked or cured in some way?

Last soto ayam (Indonesian chicken soup) for a while - I used the last large container of homemade chicken stock.

Wow - those price are even expensive for resort prices!!! I haven't been to HI since the late 80s/early 90s. Back then, there were tons of Japanese tourists (the Yen was really strong then and Japanese were buying up HI like crazy) so there was tons of awesome sashimi and sushi. Poke wasn't really a thing, but I imagine that it would be popular nowadays. There's a poke place practically on every corner here in NYC.

Here in NY, I've never even heard of Safeway!!! We have other air chilled stuff in the non-Korean supermarkets, but it's usually quite a bit more than I was paying from Wild Fork. Their prices are amazing!

No, I've never bothered doing that. I don't have a good bone cutting cleaver. Plus, I'm not a big fan of the whole lollipop thing that happens when you do it.

Nothing special - just normal commodity chicken from Hmart. They don't carry thighs only - just the leg/thigh combo or just legs hacked into pieces (aside from whole chickens hacked into pieces or breast meat). My wife isn't a fan of the legs but I like them, so the leg/thigh combo works ok. Unfortunately, the Wild Fork location that ships to NY has been out of stock of my usual air chilled, antibiotic free chicken so I have to make due. One of these days I'll check out Whole Foods to see what they've got and their prices. They used to carry Bell & Evans which was decent and moderately priced, but who knows nowadays. The dry rub was a combo of salt/sugar/Vietnamese black pepper/chicken powder/cayenne/garlic powder/onion powder/ginger powder/turmeric

Rau ram is really strong and distinctive. We just happened to fall in love with it when we first had it in Saigon - a good thing too since they provide it with EVERYTHING. But I can definitely understand if someone didn't like it.

I'm hoping to get back into cooking more often than once a week! Vietnamese "grilled" chicken over rau ram from the garden. Chicken was marinated with a dry rub for 24 hours - it was super tender and juicy. I think I'm a convert to the dry brining thing. Previously I would make this and add the seasoning a half hour before cooking. If I cooked it to over 165F or so, it started to get dry. By accident, these wound up getting to 180F! Crap! I was so sure they'd be bone dry, but they were, dare I say, succulent!

When wood is made into charcoal, does the type of wood used influence the flavor of what's cooked over it? I get that different types of wood when turned into charcoal burn hotter or longer than others, but I was wondering how it might influence the flavor. I seem to remember Modernist Cuisine saying that the flavor from grilling over charcoal is not coming from the wood but, rather, from the aerosolized fat as the fat drips onto the hot charcoal. Has anyone read or experienced anything contrary to that? I started thinking about this when thinking about all the different materials used for grilling around the world. Here in the US, I believe most hardwood lump charcoal is made from oak. Please correct me if I'm wrong. I'm sure they're not using oak for grilling in SE Asia. From what I've read, most grilling there is done over charcoal from coconut husks or maybe trees that grow locally.

I know how you feel. Many years ago I was in the hospital for 8 days with nothing by mouth for the entire time. I remember watching TV commercials (no real internet to speak of at that time and certainly no wifi!) for things I never would have normally eaten, like Burger King (not that there's anything wrong with it, but I didn't really grow up around them), thinking that everything looked just so good!!! I said to myself that the first thing I was going to do once I got out was go to a BK and get a Whopper. It was slightly delayed as when I was first released from there, I was on thin liquids only for the first few days, then thick liquids for the next few days... but after that I went to get that Whopper! I opened the package once I had sat down and was instantly disappointed - "that's not how that looks on TV!" - like I should have been surprised... ha!

Wow, that's a lot of work. I hope he comes through ok and isn't in too much "discomfort"...

Yes, I dug it out of the shells with the back end of a spoon.

What about a bit of aluminum foil?

The real keluak nuts have a hard shell and are about the size of a charcoal briquette and look kind of like the photo on top of this package: In the dish I was making, the keluak meat is removed from the shell, run through a tamis or strainer to remove any bits of shell, seasoned (sometimes with ground pork added) and then put back in the shell to cook in the curry so it doesn't just dissolve in the curry. I can't get keluak in the shell here. They're hard to find in Singapore/Malaysia/Indonesia. A friend of mine gifted me with a couple packages of already shelled keluak meat but I didn't want it to dissolve in the curry, so I wanted to put it in a shell to cook as if I had the whole thing.

Thanks. Yes, she is definitely a trooper, but she kept saying that she didn't feel that bad - she just got tired really easily which was kept in check by drinking tons of Kickapoo and going to bed early. Despite all the negative tests, I also think that we had COVID - maybe the XBB variant which is why my 5x vaxxed and 4x previous infected a$$ got so sick with it as it supposedly tends to evade previous antibodies better than the other strains. The doctor at the urgent care also thought that our symptoms were consistent with the new strain but could have been any number of other things as well. I wasn't worried about not being able to get home - the US (and pretty much all other countries) have gotten rid of the negative test before arrival thing so I could have had a raging infection testing positive 8 ways to Sunday and still wouldn't have had a problem, technically. The biggest thing for me was not just coming from a different country, but just the whole sitting on a plane for 18 hours thing, and being in a couple airports being who knows how far away from a bathroom and if there was a line at said bathroom, but thankfully, both the nausea medicine and Immodium (if you take enough of it) work wonders.

The end of the end! I woke up the next day feeling awful again. We basically stayed in the room for the rest of our stay, which is a shame because I had such big plans for the next day and a half. I had wanted to see a very popular local market called the Cecil Street Market which is a wet market and also sells housewares like cooking tools/utensils, clothes, etc. I had also wanted to go up Penang Hill which has tons of interesting planty type stuff. We basically ordered room service (mostly for my wife since I wasn't really eating at all) for the next day and a half and was the beginning of me not eating for roughly 5 days in a row. Most of the time I spent sleeping in bed. We had taken a few COVID tests that we brought with us, but all came out negative, but we still didn't really want to take the chance of getting anyone else sick so we basically didn't leave the room and didn't allow the staff in to clean. I believe my wife had a cheeseburger for at least one of the meals - she described it as more of a meatloaf burger (with Malay/Indian spices) with mayo (who puts mayo on a burger?) as well as a fried egg. Our plane back to Singapore didn't leave the next day until like 6PM - we were lucky that we were able to talk to the hotel manager (on the phone) and explain the situation so they gave us a late checkout so we wouldn't have to sit in the airport longer than we had to. Also, lucky enough, we wound up being Singapore Airlines Gold status (probably from the long NY-New Zealand via Singapore flight back in Dec. 2019) so when we did get to the airport (wearing major NIOSH certified N95 tight fitting masks just in case), we had a separate line (which had no one else on it because we were early) and we were able to sit in their Gold lounge where I could sit far away from everyone in a comfortable chair and just close my eyes. My wife enjoyed some of the food offered in the lounge: Some type of fritter with sambal made with dried fish and chillies - she said it was really tasty. We had a several hour layover in Singapore. I had originally planned for us to go through immigration so we could go the the Jewel (we didn't see everything there the last time) and have dinner in Violet Oon's Peranakan restaurant there (she's like the Lydia Bastianich of Peranakan cuisine in Singapore with multiple restaurants, a TV show, cooking videos online, etc.) Instead, we wound up going straight to the Gold Lounge (in the transit area) where I could sit in a comfy chair away from everyone and my wife was able to eat whatever she wanted as they had a decent size buffet. She didn't take pictures, but I know that there was a whole Katong Laksa setup and a large dim sum selection that was constantly being refreshed and rotated. Once on the plane, I talked to the head flight attendant and told her of my situation and told her not to bother serving any of the meals that I had preordered via their Book the Cook (which I had been looking forward to). She was fantastic and constantly came around to check on me throughout the flight, offering me water/juice/tea and also offered to bring my meals during non meal time if I ever got hungry (I didn't). She also brought me bottles of water so I could poke the top of the bottle under my mask to take a drink so I never had to take my mask off. All in all, it was a great trip, marred by unfortunate circumstances.... I'd love to know what I had. We got back to NY at like 5AM and I was still feeling crappy by that evening (now like 3 or 4 days without eating) so my wife convinced me to go to an urgent care, who gave me PCR tests for everything, and all came back negative.... oh well, I guess better that than anything else!

Breakfast the next day: Double order of roti canai Beef rendang. Below are some type of hash brown and to the left of them is some sort of fried starchy thing that didn't have much flavor, colored with pandan. Plate of pineapple Clear chicken soup with rice noodles, fish cake, fish ball, mushrooms and fried shallots After breakfast, we went to the neighboring city of Ayer Itam to see the Buddhist temple Kek Lok Si which, I believe, is the largest Buddhist temple in Malaysia. I thought this temple was amazing because it had the most amount of manicured plants that I've ever seen in a temple. It was just so relaxing wandering around the grounds... I could have stayed there all day. Some nice heliconia Giant bronze statue of Guan Yin After viewing the temple, we were walking around Ayer Itam and stumbled into this Laksa place for lunch. There seemed to be a good amount of locals in there (as well as some getting takeaway which is always a good sign) although quite a bit of tourists since it's not far from the entrance of the temple. Cendol is a common SE Asian dessert - it's basically some pandan flavored jellied squiggles in coconut milk sweetened with palm sugar. Ais kacang is shaved ice with flavorings. The laksa stall The mise en place - squirt bottles are full of shrimp paste syrup, the pink shredded stuff is torch ginger flower, then chillies and mint. Giant cauldron of broth I thought this version was better than the one we had a few days before. Bigger flakes of mackerel and better broth flavor. I saw a sign on the wall for this and was curious... Quite interesting - kind of sweet/sour but very distinctive - didn't really taste like anything I've had before. My wife needed a pick-me-up, so..... After lunch we went to the botanical garden. They have a few houses of specific types of plants, but 3 out of the 4 were closed. This one was open: The fern house There were quite a few monkeys roaming around: Contrary to what the sign says, the monkeys were not aggressive at all. This lady was feeding some (which you're not supposed to do) and they were being very patient with her as she doled stuff out: They even have a nice trail through the rain forest: Great example of a cannonball tree. I've seen them in the Singapore botanical garden when they were flowering, but I've never seen them with the mature fruit. Then back to the hotel to relax a bit. By dinner time, my wife was pretty exhausted so we stayed in the hotel. Indian style lamb curry with a dish of pickles and a the blandest pappdum ever. This is the middle of the end. Soon after dinner I started feeling super exhausted, and then wound up having a fever with the chills and became ridiculously nauseous. Like debilitating nausea where you just want to curl up in a ball and pass out. Thankfully, a few years ago I got a prescription for an anti-nausea medication meant for cancer patients - it's really effective. In about 5 minutes, the nausea is mostly gone and by 20 minutes, you feel normal again. It didn't really help for the fever though.

Ayam buah keluak is a traditional Singapore/Melaka Peranakan CNY dish. The buah keluak are nuts that are sometimes called black diamonds. A friend of mine gifted me with some deshelled keluak, so I got some Brazil nuts and removed the nut and used them as a surrogate keluak shell. The keluak is unique and hard to describe. It has an almost chocolate aroma and kind of tingles on the tongue like alcohol would. It's very intense!

That's one thing I miss about Tuscany - fresh pasta with wild boar ragu... I've been thinking about getting some wild boar (from Wild Fork) to make some..

Do you know if it's streaming anywhere else or just on Netflix?

I love the Thai preparation - grilled over coconut husks served with nam jim jaew with betel leaves or mustard greens for wrapping

they were very good. The ones we get in NYC are similar, if not maybe a little better - but the NYC place I love is run by 2 Malaysians who have worked in fine dining restaurant kitchens for many years, so their technique is amazing. The only thing is that in Penang they have easy access to fresh pandan, which is a super important ingredient in kuih - I know it's one thing the NYC people constantly complain about is that they can't get the kind of pandan they wish they could get. They keep asking me to grow some for them! I'm considering it!

Breakfast the next day: Underseasoned char kway teow (no lap cheong in this one!) But quite decent pineapple. Preceded by yet another roti canai with chicken kapitan curry. My wife also had some rendang and more appam. The rest of the day was Peranakan day. Similar to Singapore and some other parts of Malaysia, Penang has a large Peranakan group and long history. There are some famous Peranakan houses, preserved from the late 1800s, still owned by the same family. Formal dining room Another formal dining room Old school kitchen The right hand wall with various bowls, kettles, tiffin, etc. Large assortment of dining table centerpieces to display flowers or fruit An even larger assortment of various plates, tureens, vases, etc. Closeup of tureen with classic Peranakan design After walking around the mansion, we decided to extend the Peranakan (Nyonya) day by having lunch at a Nyonya restaurant called Nyonya Palazzo- probably the most expensive meal of the trip - just under $25. We had wanted to go there because we have really gotten into having kuih on the weekend due to our proximity to Lady Wong, a Nyonya kuih/dessert bakery in the East Village in NYC, so we wanted to try it in it's natural habitat. Various sweet and savory kuih on display. Savory fried radish cake topped with dried shrimp served with sambal Ginger/lemongrass tea Chicken curry with mee siam, topped with dried shrimp and torch ginger flower (the pink strips) Chicken kapitan curry (a different chicken curry than the one above) with bundles of mee for dipping. Various sweet kuih. The green/white are kuih talam - which is a pandan custard (the green part) with a salted coconut custard (the white part). The blue/white is coconut sticky rice - the blue part colored with butterfly pea flower, and topped with a pandan cream. Inside the banana leaves are: A chewy shell made from sticky rice filled with: Shredded coconut cooked in palm sugar - specifically, gula melaka - palm sugar from Melaka - an area famous for palm sugar After lunch, we went back to the hotel for a bit to relax/unwind and digest. For dinner, we decided to go to a different hawker center - right across from Chew Jetty, one of the jetties that people live on, but also sell a ton of tourist crap. If you walk far enough, it gets a lot less crowded, and no more crap Life on the jetty Across the street from the entrance to Chew Jetty is the aptly named The Jetty food court Interestingly, in the mid 2000s, the local government built this food court as a way to try to draw in more tourists, but in reality, it's mostly locals who go here. The perimeter is hawker stalls with tables in the center. There's also a stage where they have live music later in the evening (we were there pretty early) Excellent lime juice (not from concentrate) Stir fried sambal morning glory with shrimp lamb satay (served with a peanut curry) and grilled chicken wings Little fried crabs with Sriracha We had actually ordered a claypot rice dish from another vendor, but they mistakenly delivered it to the wrong table (we didn't pay for it yet) and since it takes so long to make (about 20 minutes) and my wife was starting to feel exhausted, we just left - we still had plenty of food!