KennethT

Been dying to have this for a while... Singapore style chicken rice. My chilli sauce came out really good. I cooked the chicken in some master stock sv at 150F but next time I'd try 140 or 145. Also the rice's fragrance was really good but texture was a little hard - next time needs a bit more liquid.

Interesting. Interesting that it says peppers and tomatoes are self-pollinating. When I grew my tomato plant indoors, I had to manually pollinate it with an electric toothbrush to vibrate each flower truss otherwise the flowers wouldn't be pollinated and would drop off. I assumed I'd have to do that with my chilli peppers. But I guess they mean self-pollinating in the way that there are not some male and some female plants or flowers and vibratory or wind action would be enough to pollinate - they don't need cross pollination from different plants or flowers.

Thanks All. @Senior Sea Kayaker - thanks - I had read that chilli seedlings were delicate which was my concern for breaking them up too soon. I have plucked all but 2 of each variety - keeping the first 2 of each variety that germinated. I still have more seeds just in case but I'm sure that as time goes on they become less viable. Does anyone know the best way to store the seeds for long term storage? I know that strawberry seeds can be frozen for many years and still be viable, but I don't know if chilli seeds will tolerate freezing temps or just refrigerator, or should they just be kept dry at room temp?

OK - so practically all of the chilli seeds that I planted (4-6 seeds of 2 different varieties) have sprouted, quite surprisingly - which now leads me to a dilemma that I'm hoping you all can help solve. Since these seeds are hard to come by (I brought them in from Indonesia - I've never seen them sold in the US), I've weeded them down to 2 seedlings of each type -I'm nervous about something happening to the plants before they fruit and can give me more seeds. Since they're grown hydroponically indoors, technically, they don't really compete for soil resources so it doesn't matter how many plants are in one container. So I guess the limiting factor is whether 2 plants close to each other will shade each other. I was hoping to not have to pull the seedlings apart to limit the root stress - I could just take the puck of coconut coir out of it's cup and put it in a perfectly matching shaped hole in a larger container when time to replant. And then do that again when time to upgrade to the next size, etc. So, to split the seedlings or not to split? Thoughts? Photos here and here.

@BonVivantGreat to see you here again. I'd also love to see whatever you wish to share.

How was the phony negroni? Was it close to a real negroni?

I had some bison left over from last night so mapo tofu today

Last night, we decided to take advantage of our roof as it seemed like a perfect evening for a picnic. It was until we were interrupted midway by some kind of yellow jacket, bee or wasp that kept hanging around us. We were eventually able to lure it away to hang out somewhere further down the roof and away from our table. I made an Indonesian-ish thing since Indonesian food is commonly eaten with hands since we didn't have any disposable cutlery and didn't want to bring up any flat ware. Spiced bison meat patties with the remainder of my previous sambal ijo and some rice. The patties were mixed with shallot, garlic, ginger, fresh turmeric, thinly sliced kaffir lime leaf plus some freshly ground coriander seed, mace, nutmeg and clove (and of course MSG, salt and a bit of chicken powder), then "grilled" on a cast iron plate. (In most of Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore, the term "grilled' more often than not means plancha'd.

Now a couple of my cabai rawit have sprouted! These are commonly translated as Thai chillies, but they're more plump and fleshy than any of the Thai chillies I've seen in Thailand.

Just a note - grachai is fingerroot, not kaempferia...

I've grown basil for a long time (not recently though) - but I've found that it sprouts and grows with very little effort - I've never had to add heat to it, just room temp was fine in the past.

We got 4 of similar to your giant green one here last weekend - they were still hard. I put 3 in the "root cellar" and 1 on the counter to ripen. It was ready last night - it was amazing!

3 of my Indonesian chilli seeds have sprouted! These are from the cabai keriting - long, skinny and slightly curly and medium spicy with great flavor. Fingers crossed that I can get them to maturity...

It seems that I've been intermittent fasting (16-18 hours) every day for practically my entire life without even knowing about it! I only eat breakfast while on vacation and there's something worthwhile eating, otherwise I skip it. I do drink water and green tea (no milk or sugar). I have lunch around 1PM and dinner around 7 or 7:30PM so I'm usually done eating by 8 or 9PM at the latest if we have some popcorn while watching a movie. I find that once my body is used to it, I don't miss eating anything in the morning - I'm not hungry, I don't feel tired, don't need a snack, etc. BUT, if I go on vacation and eat breakfast for a week, once I come home, I find that I get starving around 9 or 10AM. So, to get back on track, I have a small snack when I become really hungry - enough to tide me over until lunch - usually a handful of cashews or something like that. The next day, I'll make sure I have the snack (if necessary) maybe a half hour later than the previous day, and so on until snack time coincides with lunch time, then I'm back on schedule and don't get hungry until around lunch time from then on.

Red chilli chicken tacos made with Padilla de Oaxaca, chipotle and puya chillies, fire roasted tomatoes, roasted garlic and red onion. Served with homemade guac, pickled shallots and shredded sawtooth coriander.

Finally had time to make some bison mapo tofu... With stir fried morning glory (we were in Chinatown yesterday)

Thanks. It completely skipped my mind that every region basically speaks their own language and that Bahasa is commonly almost a 2nd language.

so lado means chilli in Bahasa? I thought it was cabe or cabai?

My wife and I fell in love with Padang food while in Jakarta - it's really popular there. What I didn't realize was how labor intensive it was! The Padang restaurants should be charging a fortune! This weekend I had a bit of time so I decided to try to make one of my favorites, ayam balado - balado chicken. I don't know what balado means, if anything. I do know that Malaysia has something similar, they call belado. (Anything can be balado-ified - we saw potatoes balado, eggs balado, fried fish balado...) The chicken is first simmered in a watery broth of ground spices like ginger, garlic, turmeric, ground coriander, etc and then removed and drained. The chicken is then shallow fried in a lot of oil, then removed and drained. Then, in a little bit of the oil, some mashed red chillies (typically 2 or 3 kinds so it's not so spicy), shallots and tomato are stir fried in the oil, with some of the chicken simmering broth added midway through and then fried until dry at which time the chicken is then refried in the chilli mixture and then finally served!!! Just in case there's not enough flavor there, it's commonly served with one or two more sambal - either sambal merah (red sambal) or sambal ijo (green sambal). We were addicted to the sambal ijo and since I finally found (at least temporarily) a source of green tomatoes, I decided to try to make it also, even though I didn't have the right green chillies for it - but the ones I got were ok.

I just planted seeds for 2 different types of chillies that I brought back from Indonesia... fingers crossed that they sprout!

I haven't cooked a full meal in quite some time. It was nice getting into it again.... Malaysian chicken kapitan curry

They are fresh, hand pulled, wheat noodles. Sometimes called biang biang noodles...

I have the same issue but I'm finding that things are going in the right direction. As many Gen Z'ers are looking to reduce alcohol consumption (typically replaced with cannabis), there's been a big renaissance with non-alcoholic "spirits". I've had both a non-alcoholic whiskey and gin that were quite nice and in my neighborhood there's at least one fully non-alcoholic cocktail bar which I havent tried yet but am curious about. Who knows, maybe sometime soon, even "normal" restaurants will start to feature well made, interesting non-alcoholic cocktails that aren't fruit based.

A branch of a local chain, Xi'an Famous Foods, finally moved (back) to my neighborhood.... Rougiamo with lamb and lots of cumin and fennel seeds. Hand ripped noodles with pork. I love the flavor of their cumin lamb noodles (their specialty) but for some reason it always gives me indigestion.

I'm curious as to your findings. There was a period of time when ads for these rolling sharpeners were clogging my instagram feed. I was curious but never bought the bullet. I imagined that it would more hone than sharpen.