KennethT

Do pepper plants make suckers that need to be removed? There are a bunch of these sprouting:

Are the wontons homemade? If so, what did you use for afilling? If not, from where and what do you think of it?

@Senior Sea Kayaker Have you ever topped your chilli pepper plants? I'm debating whether I should top mine but it looks like the keriting is already splitting its apex....

They're doing well. Keriting on the left, rawit on the right.

I honestly couldn't tell you. I'm sure my tastes have changed - I don't like things nearly as sweet as I used to just for starters. Part of me thinks that the Twinkie filling probably hasn't changed in 30 years but without a time machine, or a former Hostess employee, I would have no way of knowing for sure.

Same with me - we used to have them every Friday night when my parents went out for dinner without us and we stayed home with a babysitter. Several years ago I was experimenting with a chocolate filled with what my memory was of Twinkie filling, which I hadn't had in 20 years. So beforehand, I broke down and bought one and the filling was very different from my memory - I remembered it being light and fuffy, when in fact it was greasy and unpleasant.

As it's a long weekend for me, I'm hoping I can do an at home "traditional" Balinese bebek betutu. Traditionally, a whole small duck of a breed I can't get is stuffed with fresh cassava leaves, slathered in a melange of chopped stuff - lemongrass, galangal, shallots, etc - wrapped in a specific palm leaf that I also can't get (but is typically substituted with banana leaves, even in Bali) and then put under a terracotta dome in a pit in the ground, covered with rice husks which are then set ablaze, and then let sit for about 10 hours. I have duck legs in the freezer. I can get frozen cassava leaves - no idea if they will weep liquid once they thaw. Chopped stuff is no problem. Banana leaves also in the freezer. No terracotta dome or pit in the ground (I live in an apartment in NYC) but I do have a stovetop smoker and a bag of organic rice husks typically used in pet bedding or as a soil amendment. So I figure I can slather, wrap, smoke, then SV for maybe 8 or 10 hours and that can kinda recreate what I'm looking for. Maybe. Then again, 99% of the places in Bali that make it use a regular oven nowadays.... but where's the fun in that?

I haven't done it in a long time, but I used to cook salmon SV with a bath temp of 113 to an internal temp of 102 - I used the Sous Vide Dash app to calculate the timing and it had never failed me. Then I'd torch the top - consistently good. I like a bit of gradient with the salmon - I like the dead center to be really rare, just barely flaking and the outside appears cooked and has a bit more tooth.

What does freezing for 48 hours prior to bagging do?

I always thought La Caja China was a brand name. Many years ago, people posted about cooking in one on this forum...

My wife and I are similar to you in our extreme dislike of bananas. On our honeymoon about 20 years ago, we were in Hanoi and were told that one "must try" item was a banana blossom salad - which is made in a similar fashion to a green papaya salad. When we said that we didn't like bananas, we were told that it actually didn't taste like banana at all - but when we had it, we didn't agree. My wife described it as a salad of "banana strings" - you know the strings that are there in between the sections of peel? I don't think I'm as sensitive - I didn't mind it so much - I thought it was vaguely reminiscent of banana but I liked the texture. But a slice of bruleed banana on the fish.... we'd run screaming.. haha...

I love the rocks on that beach. Also, what's between the burger patty and tomato? It kinda looks like fish sliced for sashimi to me!

Thanks for this @Kerala. Were you able to get fresh banana leaves or were they defrosted from frozen?

I didn't know earthquakes had seasons...

I hope the weather gets better soon!

A POUND???!!??? Around here, I've seen them for like $20 per 1/4 pound! If they are really $11 per pound, would you mind getting all that you can and ship them by next day air to me?

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.