KennethT

Sorry - I misremembered. According to my notes, the trai va only exist in Hue - not even all of central Vietnam!

Are these related to the Trai va fig I saw in central Vietnam? They're supposedly really uncommon (only exist in central Vietnam) but are picked green.

What is the lettuce wrap filling? Is that ground chicken?

I used terracotta pots years ago and never had much success with them - and we have very soft water! I tried growing citrus in them, even drilling extra drainage holes and making the soil more than 1/2 cedar shavings - I still got root rot quickly. I grow pretty much exclusively in fabric pots now and I'm not looking back!

I grow them indoors with supplemental lighting. You can grow almost anything this way as long as you tailor the environment to what they like.

Stopped by on the way home tonight. Scored a new one - pineapple madeleine. Great pineapple flavor and a LOT of butter!

Was Motorino in Hong Kong while you were there?

And in one of your threads, Saigon evidently!

I'm surprised you ordered the salmon salad since there was c*rn even in the photo on the menu! I don't abhor c*rn as you do, but on a salad like that is just gross.

I think this is a problem with lots of things. Indonesian food barely exists here in NY (and probably even less nationwide) - it's really difficult when a cuisine uses a varied array of sambal, and an even more varied array of chillies to create those sambal!

I think you can freeze it, but I've never done it myself. I usually only harvest a stalk or two at a time (whatever I need) and leave the rest growing. That's probably how I wound up with so much! I wound up giving a small amount to a friend who lives in the building who will plant them for herself, the rest I'm giving to a local SE Asian bakery in exchange for a bottle of their homemade sambal (which uses the lemongrass).

I needed to repot my lemongrass plant - it was completely root bound. It took hours of sweaty back breaking work to get them apart. Fingers crossed!!!!! This is after thinning and repotting. This is what was leftover!!!

My reward for repotting my lemongrass plant.

Pandan sesame cake. Yum.

What do you do for this mint sauce? It looks liek chopped mint in oil, but it's hard to tell from the photo

This is a good read

This looks really good. I haven't been in the market for cookbooks, but the sample recipes look right up my alley. I did enjoy looking at Sri Lankan food while reading @sartoric's travel blog a while back. But how to make my own string hoppers?

Pan roasted wild cod with Vietnamese mango salad with 4 herbs (3 from my garden)

Thanks so much for this! I really enjoyed reading about this. Once the farm is stable and running, ever consider writing a book of your memoirs? You've got a great writing style.

That's what I mean by impossible to kill. It is very happy with wet feet - it can basically live in a swamp, but it is also surprisingly drought tolerant! Really, you just need to make sure it gets a decent amount of light.

Thanks, but to be honest, this plant grows like a weed. It's basically impossible to kill!

My laksa/rau ram/vietnamese coriander plant is out of control. It has become a jungle after just a couple months after clipping 5 small sprigs off my last plant and rooting them. It drinks about 2.5 liters of nutrient every couple of days! 14" wok shown for scale....

Return to Singapore - I had wanted to try deep frying the hawker style wings - see Appetizer: Chicken rice main course:

I made the Singapore Hawker wings again - but this time, deep fried them.... this was definitely the winner!!! These were marinated for 24 hours as above, then steamed for about 40 minutes (probably could have been 30), then put on a rack and dried in the refrigerator overnight (actually about 24 hours, but overnight would have been more than fine). Then deep fried in peanut oil at about 375-400F from room temp. The skin came out super crispy and the meat on the flats was nice and succulent. I thought the upper arms were a little dry - maybe those only need to be steamed for 10-15 minutes? And since they were nice and dry, I had no oil explosions whatsoever even though I was armed with my splatter screen in one hand just in case! Totally worth the effort!

@liuzhouI didn't buy any of these but saw them in my local Korean grocery - HMart. I didn't get a good enough look to see the differences between them - the store was way too crowded and I was late to start making dinner. Maybe next time.