KennethT

@weinoo I second @Shelby - those potatoes look great. Can you be more specific with the method?

Vietnamese lemongrass chicken, made with chicken thighs marinated with lemongrass/garlic/ginger/black pepper/thai chilli/fish sauce/soy sauce/MSG/turmeric

I'm curious to check this out: Who knew Ornellaia made olive oil? The packaging is ridiculously nice - the box it came in is heavy textured cardboard.

Let me know how it goes - I'm not used to writing recipes - I wrote this just to keep a record for myself for the next time I make it, but I'm curious how an outsider will find my sometimes nebulous instructions. Also let me know if something isn't clear before you get started....

That is true. I wound up back there yesterday and picked up 2 others - I didn't take a photo because they didn't look so good as we walked from there to Christopher St. to pick up some tea before heading back home and they looked a little worse for wear by then.... but they tasted great - both were fantastic.

Thanks - I love this dish. Now that I have a bunch of pastes done, I can make it a lot more often. My dried Indonesian bay leaves seem to be pretty similar to normal bay leaves, but they're a bit bigger, so maybe use more of them? Maybe 4-5 normal dried bay leaves? For candlenuts, the closest I can think of would be macadamias. Candlenuts don't have much flavor, but they act as a sort of thickener. They're commonly used in Indonesian/Malaysian/Nyonya curries. The hardest to sub would be the galangal, because there really is nothing else really like it. You could probably just leave it out and it will still be tasty, but it won't be the same... but if you've never had the original, you won't know what you're missing! ha!

I've had this dish in several different places in Indonesia so far - several different parts of Bali and in Yogyakarta (on the island of Java). All of them have been pretty similar and I think this is pretty close to what I made most recently, although after some internet research, it seems that in other parts of Indonesia it would not be uncommon to add coconut milk. This soup is made in a similar way to Indonesian/Malaysian/Nyonya curries - you make a spice paste which is then fried in oil for a while to bring out the aromatics to which a liquid is added. The ratio of liquid to spice paste yields curry or soup. Also, like so many foods of the region, it's open to customization - some places add stuff to the soup that others won't... like hard boiled egg. One of the best versions of this soup I had was in Yogyakarta - my hotel had an Indonesian breakfast buffet and one area was a DIY soto ayam station. At the right is a cauldron of simmering soup, and everything on the left is up to you. The basics of what are added are chicken meat, shredded cabbage, mung bean noodles (aka cellophane noodles) and fried shallots. And of course, being Indonesia, there's always at least one sambal to add some heat. The base of this soup is chicken stock. My recipe below uses 4C of homemade chicken stock (unsalted). The stock gets simmered with aromatics, seasoned, and the chicken is then poached in the stock, removed, cooled and picked into shreds. Aromatics removed and the prefried spice paste (rempah) are added. It's not really practical to make a couple tablespoons of rempah, so the recipe below is for several meals for 2 people or so and the rest is frozen for later - I put it in a a ziplock bag, press into a flat sheet about 1cm thick - this way I can break off as much as I want while still frozen. Also, when I say this is for 2 people, there's one caveat - my wife is not a huge fan of soup - she loves this dish, but only has maybe 1/3 of the liquid that I'd have. So, with that being said... Rempah: About 1 inch galangal (fresh or frozen) About 1 inch ginger 5 cloves garlic 4 candlenuts About 1 heavy Tablespoon coriander seeds, dry fried until frangrant, then ground About 1 inch fresh turmeric (or about 1/2 - 3/4t ground dried turmeric) 6 shallots Blend the rempah ingredients in a blender, or ideally pound in a mortar. I typically blend 3/4 of the way, then finish it in the mortar. Fry the paste in a couple tablespoons of oil (I use rice bran oil) in a wok over medium heat to start, then turn it down to keep it from burning. Stir contantly. You know the paste is done when it looks quite dry and there is no liquid left and the oil separates back out at least partially - so it actually looks like it's frying. It should be quite fragrant. Soup: 4C chicken stock 1 stalk lemongrass, cut into 2-3 pieces and bruised 5-6 kaffir lime leaves 2-3 daun salam (Indonesian bay) leaves if dried, 5-6 if fresh 1 chicken breast Season with about 2t salt (start with less, and add until it tastes right) plus 1/2t MSG Simmer the chicken stock with the aromatics for about 5 minutes, then add the chicken breast, cover and simmer until cooked through. Remove the chicken breast to cool, and discard the aromatics Taste the remaining stock for seasoning - it should be pretty strong as the noodles will dilute it a bit. Add about 2T of the rempah to the soup and simmer for about 5 minutes. While that's going, shred the chicken breast and prep the bowls with soaked/drained cellophane noodles, cabbage, chicken, fried shallot and cilantro/green onion. Add the boiling soup to the bowls. Garnish with sambal and a slice of lime.

Today I had a delivery of yet a different mango variety from Fresh Direct - this one was a Francine mango - which after a bit of research, turns out is a Haitian variety. I don't know if these were Haitian grown though. What I do know about this mango was that it was, for lack of a better word, ok. Pretty good. It's a lot of "not"s... it's not very sweet, not acidic, not fibrous (but that's a good thing), not especially fragrant - there was a slight coconut/florality, but it was really slight. A decent sized mango - ripens to a yellow color. I would have liked it to get a bit riper, but it was already a little soft. Vibrant orange flesh

Indonesian chicken soup - soto ayam... I think I'll put what I did in RecipEgullet so I can remember what to do for next time... I didn't have any cabbage, so I used some baby bok choi (which is a type of cabbage)...

Insert groan button here!!!

Are you crazy!?! Of course! Electricity and water don't mix well.

Bookmarked and added to my Pocket!

Does anyone know where @Shelby's description of taking apart her CSO is? No matter what I do, I can't seem to find it. My CSO is still working, but it seems like it's using less water than normal, so I want to check everything out and see if there's any cholesterol in the tubing that could be causing the problem.

@liamsauntHappy anniversary! I hope you and your husband have a wonderful time!

A good use for chicken breast - Panang curry...

I agree - you definitely need to have some mango!!! But I'd avoid the Tommy Atkins mango - they're probably the most popular by volume sold in the US, but I'm not a fan - they're fibrous and mostly flavorless. I see that Misfits also has Kent mangoes - but I'm not familiar with them so I can't comment. If you're feeling flush, there's a Facebook group called "fruit 4 sale" that has a lot of growers in Florida who ship by Fedex or USPS. Some of these growers are fantastic, and their product is excellent. But unfortunately pricey. I've been putting off getting some, but I know that one day I'll succumb.

Ah! Now I get it... for some reason, I assumed you were deep frying them...

I remember as a kid spraying weed killer on quite a few of those in the middle of the lawn. Who knew you could eat them!?!

Vietnamese style grilled cod with mango salad and rice noodles. I marinated the cod in a paste of black pepper/dried chilli powder/lemongrass/cilantro stems/garlic/fish sauce/turmeric, then wrapped in banana leaf and grilled. Mango salad with herbs was made with the ataulfo mangos - even though they were soft, they still didn't compare to the other mangoes I had earlier in the week - so they needed quite a bit of enhancing. The dressing was black pepper/garlic/cilantro stems/fish sauce/tamarind water/lime juice/palm sugar/thai chilli/fried shallot. Herbs were mint and rau ram (laksa) from the garden plus cilantro and garlic chives. My building has no gas service, hence the portable stove top (15000 BTU!) The plating was crappy but I didn't care - it was late and I was starving!

I'm excited to see what you think.

Sorry - that's not what I meant by explosions. Sometimes, when frying things wrapped in rice paper, there's a little free water there from wetting the rice paper to get it flexible and those drops of water cause explosions! Once you wrapped the rolls, did you blot them dry or anything or do a really efficient (no extra water) dipping job? Or just get lucky? 🤣

Has anyone ever grilled a fillet of cod (without the skin) without a grill basket or anything? I was planning on grilling some mahi mahi to have with a mango som tum, but it turned out that I don't have enough of it, so I defrosted a couple of pieces of cod. Thinking about it now, I'm wondering if it's just going to fall apart completely on me and that maybe I should rethink this a bit... maybe wrap in banana leaves prior to grilling? If it matters, it's indoor grilling on a grill pan.

I don't know if the Colombian Sugar mangoes are sold near me - I've never seen them before, either in person or online.

What's the difference between your dumpling and a vietnamese spring roll? Seems like the same thing except for the filling and dipping sauce. How did you fry them to avoid the explosions?

Lemongrass shrimp vietnamese bun. 4 herbs - cilantro, laksa (rau ram in Vietnamese), garlic chives and mint.