KennethT

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.

Where did you get them from? I've gotten them from kalustyan's and they've been pretty good, but I really don't have much to compare them with since I don't think I've bought them from anywhere else.

Piment d'Espelette if you've got it!!!

I ran out of my homemade curry pastes a long time ago, so one of the priorities this weekend was to rectify that. I was planning to do a few different ones, but I only managed to make pork stock, some Bak Kut Teh and this Nyonya coconut-less chicken curry, called Ayam Buah Keluak. Of course, I can't get any buah keluak here (they're a type of Indonesian/Malaysian nut sometimes called "black diamonds") but I will try to find some when I'm in Malaysia next winter. So this is the buah keluak-less curry:

That's better than converting for the jokes.

@DuvelWhat was the agenda?

It was perfectly ok. The rice was a bit mushy and gluey, but the fish was decent. It was from Ennju - we had never had it from there, and I read an Eater article a few weeks ago listing them as one of the best of the more affordable sushi places in Manhattan. Also, it turns out that they're closing at the end of June. But, personally, I feel like the quality of sushi at Kanoyama is much better and only slightly more expensive ($25 vs $22 for a similar set) but also includes a salad and miso soup whereas the Ennju included nothing.

2nd Seder take out sushi