KennethT

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?

I don't know if you were in Chiang Mai on a Sunday - but I have very strong memories (I don't know if I took any photos back then) of the Sunday walking market in the middle of town - it was really big. I got a great wood carving depicting village life for practically nothing - at that time, in that market, it was known that foreigners could bargain and get about 30% off (locals would go down to about 50%) but it was already so cheap I felt bad asking for less as the guy obviously had put quite a bit of time into it. Some time in the afternoon, they started playing the national anthem on loudspeakers that were mounted up on telephone poles and everyone immediately stopped what they were doing for the duration.

Killing me!!!!

I have yet to find anything that garlic chives aren't good with!

Seeing all those snail dishes made me yearn for those O'c restaurants in Saigon. Usually there's 5 or 6 different types of snails and lots of different cooking options.

Chicken with ginger and garlic chives

I think when it comes to buffalo wings, different people have different tastes - some like them REALLY hot, others not so much. There are a few restaurants in NYC that specialize in Buffalo wings - they have maybe 5 different sauces to choose from. Personally, I don't find Tabasco that hot, but it has a particular smell I can't identify that I'm not a fan of - I think it's the vinegar they use, but I'm not sure. I've never been a huge fan of eye watering, nose running heat - I like to be able to taste the chillis - although some habanero sauces are really tasty even though they can be ridiculously hot. The traditional buffalo wing is literally drowned in sauce - they're first deep fried - no batter, then tossed in a bowl with the hot sauce to evenly coat. So you're getting a lot of sauce. Some people like to dip the wing in bleu cheese dressing or ranch dressing - this helps to cool the burn. So to me, since there's so much sauce, if the sauce is too hot, it literally becomes painful to eat... no fun. I don't know if I've ever had Franks sauce - so I don't know much about it. The dish I made was for a dinner party when I was in my Modernist phase... So there were like 3 deboned wings per person as part of a multicourse tasting.

Definitely not. For some reason, I generally dislike Tabasco - I find it has a weird smell to it. Crystal is fantastic, however - great flavor, not too hot.

Years ago, I made a highfalutin version of "Buffalo wings"... I did the modernist cuisine 24 hour SV treatment and then deboning. When ready to serve, I seared both sides on a cast iron plate - the skin, with no coating, got really crispy. It was then served with a hot sauce that was roughly 1/2 and 1/2 Crystal Louisiana hot sauce (I think much better than Tabasco) and butter, simmered together with a bunch of chopped onion, plus a blue cheese foam...

Definitely getting there! We ordered Joe's last night....

My wife grew up in a suburb of New Orleans - she said that everyone she knew put Tony Chachere on EVERYTHING!

I figured... but still thought it was funny! I never learn - dry humo(u)r doesn't translate well through typing...

I don't know about Malaysian chicken rice - like most things there, the same dish in Malaysia is usually a bit different from the version in Singapore. But traditionally, in Singapore at least, there is a lot of garlic in chicken rice - it's in the stock, rice and the chilli sauce! But I don't know if your local Malaysian places are making their own chilli sauce or using a bottled product. Once you get to having traditional dishes outside of their homeland, all bets are off!

I prefer to have sand between my toes than between my teeth!!!

The daytime street/market scenes look very similar (although I also remember quite a few unpaved or barely paved roads), but night time looks totally different. There certainly were not any of those search lights!!!

I love a good conch fritter!!!