KennethT

This has really gotten out of control....

yup

Joe's was in good form tonight

I do glutinous rice (Thai sticky rice) in the CSO - soak it in a bowl of water for 12 hours or so (overnight is fine), then I lay out in a single layer on a tamis and steam in the CSO at 210F for 15 minutes, then change the setting to keep warm at 185 or something like that for another 15 minutes. Comes out perfectly every time.

Your fry consumption continues to crack me up. But mainly, if you don't know of it already, may I introduce you to https://www.amazon.com/Aroy-d-Coconut-Milk-100-Original/dp/B00JUB8N3G/ref=sxts_rp_s1_0?crid=1J0YQ8PAO2HDL&cv_ct_cx=coconut+milk&keywords=coconut+milk&pd_rd_i=B00JUB8N3G&pd_rd_r=3e1470a1-aa3f-4451-be06-3e5b59f12e4d&pd_rd_w=gSnFA&pd_rd_wg=eKdYE&pf_rd_p=1646f938-0b84-43fb-8b04-69eb8aa1e55a&pf_rd_r=9S1KFY7XW08RN5H4QKYE&psc=1&qid=1651354653&sprefix=coconut+milk%2Caps%2C80&sr=1-1-5e1b2986-06e6-4004-a85e-73bfa3ee44fe This coconut milk in the shelf stable carton is vastly superior to any brand of canned milk - just make sure that the one you get says 100% coconut milk on the package. Some of them (even the same brand) are not so. Unlike the canned product, there are no stabilizers or gums or texturizers and the flavor reminds me most of the fresh stuff I've had in SE Asia. I like them in the 8.5oz carton - mainly because I either typically use 1/2 cup or 1 cup at a time. If I use 1/2 cup, I pour the remainder into a small ziplock bag and get all the air out (like you would for SV) and keep in the freezer. Some recipes only need a Tablespoon or so of coconut milk, so making a frozen log makes it easy to break off however much you'd like. Sometimes when it defrosts, it looks like it has separated, but if you give it a quick wisk it comes back together fine.

I wish. But that would be going against the point of trying to make it healthy and was nixed by my wife. I've never made yu taio and I think the only thing I can get locally are the frozen kind, which I've never tried (one day, I'll try and slip it in to see if she notices) - she LOVES them and ate 3/4 of the plate of them when we had this in Singapore so while she might veto them in a discussion, she might say otherwise if just put in front of her... hehe...

Teochew style Bak Kut Teh noodle soup. It is a pork broth (made from a rack of meaty Wild Fork ribs and a couple pork feet from Chinatown), with Sarawak peppercorns and a LOT of garlic cooked slowly until it is sweet. Wild Florida pink shrimp from Wild Fork.

Everything looks great! What is the herb 4th from the left with the striking purple flowers? Do you find it difficult growing rosemary and thyme along with other herbs? I had trouble doing that because I found that they liked to dry out a bit between waterings. Do you have any trouble with deer eating everything? Growing up, my parents had a lot of hostas around - the deer loved them. They got so invasive (and killed so many plants/shrubs by eating them to death) that he wound up putting an electric cattle fence around all the plant areas. It worked well but it was a lot of maintenance.

This.

The oven fries actually look crispy... could you give more details?

@Martin FisherI have this one that I like a lot: https://www.amazon.com/electric-gooseneck-kettle-temperature-control-electric-tea-kettle-gooseneck/dp/B06XPLM49J/ref=sr_1_3_sspa?keywords=electric+tea+kettle+temperature+control&qid=1651268306&sprefix=electric+tea+k%2Caps%2C77&sr=8-3-spons&psc=1&spLa=ZW5jcnlwdGVkUXVhbGlmaWVyPUEyQUVaVllRSVU0TVZIJmVuY3J5cHRlZElkPUEwNDU0NzQ2QUlNMjlIMFg1QzYxJmVuY3J5cHRlZEFkSWQ9QTA4MzEwNDZYUDZTT0hHMzE5RkEmd2lkZ2V0TmFtZT1zcF9hdGYmYWN0aW9uPWNsaWNrUmVkaXJlY3QmZG9Ob3RMb2dDbGljaz10cnVl I like its 180 setting for my green teas. For oolong, I do gong fu brewing - I uses a small cheap clay teapot I got in Chinatown - called a Yixin tea pot - you fill the pot about 1/4 of the way full with dry tea leaves and then do many short infusions. First, you "rinse" the leaves by adding the hot water all the way to the top, count to 5, then drain and dump the tea water - its purpose is to mainly open up the leaves. Then the first real infusion - I do 25 seconds - both of these at the 205 setting. Then I turn it down to 200 for the rest of them. 35 seconds, then 50 seconds and a final steep at 1m10s. Could I get more steepings? Maybe, but if I did I'd probably be vibrating off the wall. Many videos show gong fu brewing using a fancy wooden box, which are great, but expensive. Personally, I put a rack on the bottom of my sink and just do that....

Last night was the first time I made massaman curry - it really reminds me of some of the Malaysian or Nyonya curries I've made in the past, but I used the Maesri paste in the can, amended with some roasted shrimp paste (I had left over from my Indonesian dish over last weekend), some extra toasted/ground coriander and cumin and a small piece of whole cinnamon (true cinnamon, not cassia), a couple cloves, some nutmeg and a few cardamom pods. It came out well, but I forgot the tamarind paste!!!!

remind me not to order any of the pasta (or whatever that is) that the guy got his hair up in.... 😆

My wife recently came back from a work trip to Ribera del Duero where she had the suckling lamb. Your photos are better than hers!!!

@shainI'm curious about the shrimp dish. It looks like a stir fry rather than a curry. I know it's ridiculous to go by looks but it almost looks like a tamarind sauce. Do you remember anything more about it?

In addition to what @AlaMoi said, a while back, my wife and I would go to New Orleans once a year for a while... While there, we consumed an uncountable amount of oysters while sitting at various oyster bars. Those guys shuck fast! One of them said that the secret is to keep the oysters in a big tub of ice (that drains) - when the oysters are at that temp, they open much easier than standard refrigerator temp. Also, most of them didn't shuck in their hands, but they had some kind of cradle they would nest the oyster in.

I think it depends on the filling! Pork (meat) and chives (vegetable) looks like all the food groups to me!

Out of curiosity, what are the prices like up there?

I made a new (to me) Indonesian curry today - ayam bumbu rujak. It's weird trying to make a dish that you've never eaten before, never seen a description of (in English) and really have no idea what it's supposed to be like. But it was surprisingly crazy good and very addictive. My wife and I are both stuffed now!!!! It brings up an interesting point how two different dishes using basically the same ingredients but either in slightly different proportion or a slightly different cooking method can wind up dramatically different. This was very similar to quite a few of the Nyonya dishes I've made in the past, but tasted like something all its own.

They went in the garbage. They're really thin - maybe 2mm thick - so they're not really usable for anything and I imagine would fall apart if you tried to wash them. And while they look nice and kept the sushi in great condition for my, admittedly, short trip home (around the corner), they're just eco-friendly packaging. I would assume that the box is biodegradable - you could probably even compost it if I did that kind of thing in my apartment. Plus it just seems so fancy compared to the standard molded plastic takeout containers.

I was all set to make a new (to me) Indonesian dish, but it turned out to be almost 7PM when we were leaving the grocery store so we decided to put that off to tomorrow and get take out sushi on the walk home instead. This time from our local favorite, Kanoyama - for $3 more, it was heads and tails above the quality at Ennju - the rice was 1000x better, and the fish was awesome. It comes in one of those fanciful wooden boxes. Left to right, tuna, hamachi, salmon, snapper, shrimp (perfectly cooked), hamachi, salmon belly, tuna/cucumber roll. It was fortuitous that just a few minutes before, totally unplanned btw, we got these new soy sauce dishes at HMart... And filled: Sorry - I probably should have picked the detritus out of the dish before the photo but oh well....

Viet style lemongrass shrimp. Banh mi from Wild Fork - not bad at all! In my mind, I envisioned being here

@liuzhouIs there a reason why you went with cast iron woks as opposed to carbon steel?

Southern Indian style cod. Cod from Wild Fork, curry leaves from the garden.

Agreed. I think a big problem in duplicating SE Asian food (or Chinese food) is the access to the proper chillies. In this example,chili de arbol are totally different by than the heaven facing chillies.