KennethT

It still boggles my mind how cheap produce is in Asia

Thanks. He's in southern California, so it basically never rains there, but I'm sure he's keeping them watered. I also don't know if he planted 12 plants that are all the same variety, or if there are different varieties. I don't even know if he even knows that there are different varieties (he's pretty new to gardening and plants in general).

I have a question for anyone who has grown okra. It's actually for a friend of mine, but anyway, he's growing 12 okra plants. 2 of the plants are producing pods that he says are hard like pieces of wood. The pods are like 9" long. The other plants seem to be fine and normal. Any ideas what's going on?

Mapo tofu... This time made with bison

I used to have the same problem - I decided to keep all of the "small portion" stuff - like coconut milk, I also have small amounts of fire roasted crushed tomatoes, small amounts of pasilla salsa I made, etc. all in the freezer door section. This way, it's always easy to see if I have any lying around or not.

Jeez @Shelby that sucks. Hope you feel better (and get off the steroids!) soon...

I don't know if you're interested, but I freeze coconut milk all the time. I use the Aroy-D UHT coconut milk that comes in what looks like juice boxes. Each holds 250ml - about a cup. If I don't need that much, I put the extra in a small ziplock, get all the air out, then freeze. I can break off a small piece whenever I need and it's as good as before.

I'm curious as to what your favorite sushi place was...

Black pepper shrimp made with tons of dried shrimp. Stir fried Chinese broccoli Pandan serimuka from Lady Wong

They have those in Iceland also. There's a small town that revolves around hot springs and tourists can both cook eggs in the water and they also bake bread in the hot steam. Sulfury bread. Yum. But the hot springs are great for soaking after a long hike. Our first hotel had a spring on their property and they fed it into a series of natural pools for bathing/soaking.

I grew up on Carvel - we had their ice cream cakes for practically every occasion. My wife first got me into only mildly sweet desserts and now I can't go back. It's one of the things I love about SE Asian kueh and Lady Wong does them really well. They're some of the best kueh we've had, including in SE Asia. If you do go there, I would definitely check out the serimuka which they have regularly. We just had the one with some tea - durian serimuka made with Musan king durian.

Traditionally, the blue color comes from a flower called butterfly pea flowers. Pulut inti is one of my favorite kueh but this is the first time I've seen them there, despite them saying that they have it often on the weekends (which is when I go). The glutinous rice is very subtly flavored - it's basically just the rice and the pandan leaf that it is steamed in. The brown topping is coconut shavings cooked in palm sugar.

Appetizer of Lady Wong curry puff, then Thai style steamed red snapper with lime sauce, with some stir fried Chinese broccoli. Fish steamed in the CSO. Pulut inti from Lady Wong for dessert.

We spent about a week or so in south island New Zealand in Dec. 2019 (check it out in the New Zealand dining forum). It is gorgeous and definitely worth visiting - we barely scratched the surface of it, but it's a totally different experience/scenery than Iceland. They're both uniquely wonderful.

Thanks... makes sense - Iceland is probably about as far away from you as you could get (other than the North Pole!).

Thanks - yeah, I have one of them also (a cheap Harbor Freight special) but never thought to use it in the kitchen. As @Steve Irbysays, as tools go, it's one of the safer ones out there. Definitely much safer than a reciprocating Sawzall!

huh. I never thought of wrapping it in plastic wrap. Simple - I like it! One final question - how do you use it so it doesn't tear up your cutting board as you cut through the meat? Do you freeze the meat first or does it not matter?

How do you wash it? I know the blade is removable, but sometimes gunk gets everywhere.

Thanks - I use my 16 year old Krups rice cooker/slow cooker. The key is to wash it well, use the proper amount of water - for Jasmine that means using enough to hydrate teh rice but not boil it. Jasmine rice has to steam once hydrated. One thing I learned about my machine is that when it says the cycle is done and it switches to keep warm mode, you really need to keep it in there unopened for an extra half hour or so, then it comes out like this. I'm going to pick up more tamarind this weekend. I can get some a couple blocks away from me but it wouldn't be "seedless", but I can go down to the Thai store and pick up what I want, which I'll do this weekend as I'm out of my giant economy sized bag of rice and I need more rice bran oil, which they have at a really good price. I think the postage from Costa Rice would be a LOT more than the value of the product inside!

Singaporean Nyonya curry with a bit less tamarind than normal

Only leave myself with 15g of tamarind pulp! How do I not have an extra block in the pantry?!?

Yeah, I read about that...

Sichuan twice cooked mahi mahi

I need to find a way to take a trip there during mango season!!!

What do you do for pho broth? Homemade? Northern or Southern style?