KennethT

Yunnan elk with herbs. Tonight's herb selection was mint, sawtooth coriander, laksa, kaffir lime leaf and curry leaf from the garden, plus some flowering chives and cilantro from the store.

I loved our trip to an elephant sanctuary in outside of Chiang Mai. 15 years ago it was really hard to find one that wasn't exploiting the elephants.

It's not for my apartment, it's at work. I have a lovely 200 feet of sidewalk to keep clean.

It's actually pretty simple - but you need access to the proper ingredients... To me, the most necessary one is: Grachai - also called fingerroot or sometimes just "rhizome". Unless you can get it fresh (I've never seen it fresh outside of SE Asia), I'd use the frozen - there is a brined version in a jar (available on Amazon and elsewhere) but I've found it to be relatively flavorless. Also necessary is: Green peppercorns (not dried). Again, if you can get them fresh, it's amazing. These brined ones are a pale comparison but are the best I can get. This recipe is really good with any firm, meaty white fish, chicken breast, etc. 1) Cut the fish into about 1" - 1-1/2" cubes and marinate in a bit of fish sauce - you just want to coat it, not have it sit in a puddle 2) in a mortar, make a paste from about 1/2t white peppercorns (ground in the mortar), if you can get cilantro roots - use like 3-4 of them otherwise I use about a handful of cilantro stems - cut into small dice before adding to the mortar, 5-6 cloves of garlic, 1 prik chee faa (deseeded) and as many Thai chillies as you'd like (I use only 1 to make it not too spicy, but traditionally this dish is quite spicy) 3) Over medium heat, stir fry the paste for a couple minutes until really fragrant and the garlic gets a little color 4) Turn up the heat and add the fish, tossing around to coat in the paste, then add a few Tablespoons of fish sauce, a small handful of the grachai (I keep it in the strips that it comes in - just defrosted), a few strings of peppercorns and maybe 4-5 kaffir lime leaves deribbed. Stir fry a bit. 5) Add about 1/4-1/2 cups chicken stock or water and stir around until the fish is cooked - should be just a minute. 6) check for seasoning - will definitely need a bit of sugar, and maybe a bit of salt 7) when fish is done, turn off the heat and throw in a large handful of Thai basil and toss around to wilt it in the residual heat.... done!

Nothing like having a dish from the tropics to warm up after plowing the sidewalk when it's 17F outside..... Bak kut teh noodle soup with wild Key West pink shrimp, lots of garlic and peppercorns...

I've seen ostrich meat - but it's usually ground or what they call "loin". It's delicious, but expensive. I'd imagine the wings are used in the ground meat. Maybe someone could contat an ostrich farm and save a couple wings from the grinder?

I love it. It is so convenient to be able to just pick a couple leaves when needed - plus, the only store near me that would always have them has them prepackaged with a lot more than I'd use (and they're expensive) so I used to wind up freezing the rest - they keep ok in the freezer, but it's definitely not the same as being just plucked! Plus, in certain dishes if I don't want to have to worry about picking out the leaves or eating around them or slicing super fine, I'll use some of the immature leaves which are still really tender. The same is true of my curry leaf tree.

Pad cha cod with grachai and green peppercorns. Kaffir lime leaves from the garden...

Thanks - I've never seen pork jerky before, even in my local Hmart (a Korean supermarket chain)

Oh, I'm not surprised it exists in Germany or anywhere in Asia... but I've never seen it in the US - so I thought it was funny that they put it in the flyer for USA foods for the superbowl.

pork jerky?

I titled this post this way because I've never been to Sichuan, nor do I have a Sichuan cookbook, but I've read/seen enough on the internet from people in Sichuan and a lot of them seem to have most things in common... but whatever you call it, it's really tasty! I like to use mahi mahi but you can really use any firm fleshed not too oily of a fish. The quantities below are for 2 people, served with white rice. 12 oz fish, cut into 1/2" thick slices 1/2 and 1/2 rice flour and either cornstarch or potato starch fry oil - I typically use peanut oil but any high heat oil would work well 1 package mushrooms - I like a shimeji or maitake stir fry oil - I use rice bran oil, but any high temp neutral oil is good Aromatics: 2" ginger, peeled and cut 1/2 into sticks and 1/2 into small dice 4-5 cloves garlic, smashed and chopped 3 Sichuan pickled chillis about a small handful of dou chi (fermented black beans), chopped 1T Pixian doubanjiang 5 stalks celery, cut into 1/4" thick slices on bias 10 chinese chives (garlic chives) cut into 1" long pieces *you can also use some leeks - they would go in at the same time as the celery and chives 1-2T sichuan knifed chilli - I actually stopped using the knifed chilli since my wife finds it makes things a bit too spicy, so I leave the dried chillis whole: 3 dried heaven facing chillis 1-1/2t sichuan peppercorns, ground (you can use more, but I'm very sensitive to it so I don't use that much) 2 t light soy sauce 1/2 to 3/4C chicken stock 1-1/2t sugar (add more or less to taste when almost finished) 1/2t salt 1/2t MSG Method: Add about 3/4 to an inch of fry oil to the wok and put on medium high heat. It's hot enough to fry when a wood/bamboo chopstick bubbles when put in the oil While the oil is heating, dredge the fish slices in the flour mixture, shake off the excess, then fry until browned - maybe 30s to a minute? Remove and let drain on some paper towels Remove the fry oil and clean the wok Stir fry the mushrooms in about 1T stir fry oil until browned, remove from the wok and reserve Clean the wok if necessary (it shouldn't be) If not using the premade knifed chilli, add a couple tablespoons stir fry oil with the dried chilli and ground sichuan peppercorns and fry until fragrant and the peppers darken a bit Add the aromatics and stir fry until the red oil comes out If using the premade knifed chilli, add about 1-2T knifed chilli Add celery/chives/leeks and stir fry for a minute or so Sprinkle light soy sauce around the wok, stir around a bit then add chicken stock and seasoning, mix through, then add reserved mushrooms and fried fish Stir around for a few minutes until the liquid has reduced a bit and the flavors come together. Taste and adjust seasoning.

I'm pretty sure that no one in Sichuan knows what mahi mahi is!!! But I really like it - it's firm and meaty but flakes and stays juicy, and it's pretty affordable as wild caught fish around here usually isn't. I'll put the 'recipe' in RecipEgullet - although I don't usually use a recipe for stuff like this - just a rough framework - it's actually quite similar to a mapo tofu, but with less liquid and doesn't need thickening.

Sichuan twice cooked mahi mahi

Fantastic... wow - those fried bug snacks have really increased in price in 15 years! When walking around Chiang Mai, do you find that there are a lot of touts? One of the things that irked me about Bangkok (not that long ago) was the seemingly ever present tout who would politely chat you up and try to take you to a gem shop or tailor or whatever...

Years ago when I did the MC deboned wings, I also found them to be a bit dry - I think it's from the extended SV...

Back to Vietnam.... ga xao sa, lemongrass chicken:

ACIFP?

Why wouldn't greenhouses be local?

Our last few meals have been very SE Asian heavy, and after looking at @Chris Hennes's work, we decided that it was time for our weekly fix...

So I was able to move around some of the plants - I put the two trees by the window - not that it matters that it's near the window - it's a northern facing window in winter - but there's probably 100umol/s of light that comes in from it. I don't know if you can see from the photo, but the lime tree really suffered being suffocated by the lemongrass. I wound up pruning off all the interior branches since they were all just sticks. I also pinched off all the flowers, so I'm hoping it puts out a flush of new growth in the next few days. Once it gets over that flush, I'll prune it again to bring in the long arms. The curry tree is doing much better now - the new growth is maturing and it's putting out more leaf buds. This is the lemongrass plant - I don't know if you can tell how big it is in the photo, but it's about 5 feet across!!!

Vietnamese-y wild caught Key West pink shrimp and rice noodle stir fry

Reading about @shain's trip to Thailand had me thinking of previous travels... In particular, I was thinking about Jay Fai - a street food vendor near Chinatown in Bangkok who was the first street vendor to get a Michelin star. Long before her star though I had the pleasure of going there based on some discussions I had at the time with some Bangkok local foodies on a travel message board. She is known for using really high quality seafood in standard Thai streetfood dishes, and executing them really well. One of the dishes she's known for is her version of Tom Yum Goong - although her version is typically Tom Yum Talay since she uses a few different types of seafood, not just prawns. I had defrosted some wild caught cod from Wild Fork, and decided to make tom yum cod hang - basically tom yum flavored stir fry. Lemongrass and kaffir lime leaves from my garden. Here's some dishes from Jay Fai: And some action shots of the lady herself: Charcoal powered woks with an electric fan underneath when she wants a turbo boost

Any reason for 36 seconds? 2 chai?

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