KennethT

Any reason for 36 seconds? 2 chai?

How does everyone access the hot pot if it's not in the center of the table?

I don't know if you were in Chiang Mai on a Sunday - but I have very strong memories (I don't know if I took any photos back then) of the Sunday walking market in the middle of town - it was really big. I got a great wood carving depicting village life for practically nothing - at that time, in that market, it was known that foreigners could bargain and get about 30% off (locals would go down to about 50%) but it was already so cheap I felt bad asking for less as the guy obviously had put quite a bit of time into it. Some time in the afternoon, they started playing the national anthem on loudspeakers that were mounted up on telephone poles and everyone immediately stopped what they were doing for the duration.

Killing me!!!!

I have yet to find anything that garlic chives aren't good with!

Seeing all those snail dishes made me yearn for those O'c restaurants in Saigon. Usually there's 5 or 6 different types of snails and lots of different cooking options.

Chicken with ginger and garlic chives

I think when it comes to buffalo wings, different people have different tastes - some like them REALLY hot, others not so much. There are a few restaurants in NYC that specialize in Buffalo wings - they have maybe 5 different sauces to choose from. Personally, I don't find Tabasco that hot, but it has a particular smell I can't identify that I'm not a fan of - I think it's the vinegar they use, but I'm not sure. I've never been a huge fan of eye watering, nose running heat - I like to be able to taste the chillis - although some habanero sauces are really tasty even though they can be ridiculously hot. The traditional buffalo wing is literally drowned in sauce - they're first deep fried - no batter, then tossed in a bowl with the hot sauce to evenly coat. So you're getting a lot of sauce. Some people like to dip the wing in bleu cheese dressing or ranch dressing - this helps to cool the burn. So to me, since there's so much sauce, if the sauce is too hot, it literally becomes painful to eat... no fun. I don't know if I've ever had Franks sauce - so I don't know much about it. The dish I made was for a dinner party when I was in my Modernist phase... So there were like 3 deboned wings per person as part of a multicourse tasting.

Definitely not. For some reason, I generally dislike Tabasco - I find it has a weird smell to it. Crystal is fantastic, however - great flavor, not too hot.

Years ago, I made a highfalutin version of "Buffalo wings"... I did the modernist cuisine 24 hour SV treatment and then deboning. When ready to serve, I seared both sides on a cast iron plate - the skin, with no coating, got really crispy. It was then served with a hot sauce that was roughly 1/2 and 1/2 Crystal Louisiana hot sauce (I think much better than Tabasco) and butter, simmered together with a bunch of chopped onion, plus a blue cheese foam...

Definitely getting there! We ordered Joe's last night....

My wife grew up in a suburb of New Orleans - she said that everyone she knew put Tony Chachere on EVERYTHING!

I figured... but still thought it was funny! I never learn - dry humo(u)r doesn't translate well through typing...

I don't know about Malaysian chicken rice - like most things there, the same dish in Malaysia is usually a bit different from the version in Singapore. But traditionally, in Singapore at least, there is a lot of garlic in chicken rice - it's in the stock, rice and the chilli sauce! But I don't know if your local Malaysian places are making their own chilli sauce or using a bottled product. Once you get to having traditional dishes outside of their homeland, all bets are off!

I prefer to have sand between my toes than between my teeth!!!

The daytime street/market scenes look very similar (although I also remember quite a few unpaved or barely paved roads), but night time looks totally different. There certainly were not any of those search lights!!!

I love a good conch fritter!!!

It's amazing how somethings are exactly the same, and yet others are very different from 15 years ago...

In Thailand, it's prik nam pla (nam pla = fish sauce, prik = chilli)

Ending our weekend in Singapore (at home)... ayam buah keluak - without the keluak.... the whole apartment now smells like shrimp paste!!!

Lunch today continued the weekend in Singapore theme... Bak kut teh noodle soup with wild caught pink shrimp - really good on a day when it's 16 degrees F outside!

I don't usually make the chicken itself in the traditional way. Traditionally, you'd use a whole chicken, give it a complete salt scrub makeover, rinse, stuff the cavity with ginger/green onion, then poach gently in a big pot of water, then shock in a big pot of ice water when it done - that sets the gelatin in the skin. Personally, my wife and I aren't huge fans of the skin for chicken rice (sacrilege!!!) so I'll usually use thighs and cook them SV in a bag of my master stock with the skin in the bag to get more gelatin out of it, but it's then discarded. Or, since we had an appetizer last night, I took some tenderloins and just traditionally poached them in my master stock that I keep refreshing with garlic/ginger/green onion each time its taken out of the freezer. To us, the most important things in a good chicken rice is the rice texture, chilli sauce, then chicken. There's also a debate among Singaporeans as to the best way to eat it. If you look at my singapore blogs, you'll see how it comes when you go to my favorite place, Wee Nam Kee. The chicken arrives room temp, covered in what seems like a mixture of stock/soy sauce and sesame oil. The plate of rice comes separately. The chilli sauce is in a container on the table - take however much you want. Also on the table are containers of grated ginger to add to the sauce (I like my sauce really gingery) and sweet soy sauce. I like to add the sweet soy sauce (kecap manis) to the chilli sauce and mix thoroughly - then scoop a bit of combined sauce with each bite of rice and chicken. Other people like to drizzle the sweet soy sauce over the rice, and some will even drizzle the chilli sauce in the same way. To each his own. Sometimes you get a friendly local at the table next to you, and if they think you've never been there before, they will insist on telling you how they like to eat it and why everyone else is wrong.

What did you think of Joe's sauce? I think it's pretty different from most NY places. To me, it seems like their sauce is just tomatoes and maybe salt. No oregano, no garlic powder, etc...

😵 Ay yay yay.... I'll try... making the chicken itself and the stock doesn't really have many ingredients but it's quite a few steps if you do it the traditional way. Making the rice requires the stock! However, if you already have a decent chicken stock, you can get 95% of the way there by simmering some ginger, garlic and green onion for like a half hour until it's really fragrant. Then remove the solids and discard. Soak however much jasmine rice you want to make in cold water for about 20 minutes. Then wash the rice thoroughly with 4-5 changes of water until the water is clear. Drain the rice well. Traditionally, the next step is done using rendered chicken fat, but in the name of my cardiologist, I use a few Tablespoons of rice bran oil and saute about an inch of ginger (small dice) and 4-5 cloves of garlic, chopped - not to browning, but fragrant. Add the drained rice and toss to coat evenly. Then add to your rice cooker along with a fresh pandan leaf (I keep them in my freezer) that you can tie in a knot so it fits in the rice cooker easily. Depending on how gelatinous your chicken stock is, add your fragrantized stock to the rice cooker using the same amount as you would water, or in my case, since my stock is really gelatinous, I make it half stock, half water. Once the rice is cooked and the machine turns to the keep warm mode, let it sit undisturbed for like double the time that it was cooked - this is an important step in getting good rice texture. Edit - add pandan leaf to the rice cooker

Love it!!! It's amazing seeing huge bags of such fresh looking galangal...