Hassouni

Also, if you want to piss off the Churchkey people, audibly compare it to Brickskiller in front of one of the staff....

First-ever mai tai: 1 oz Appleton Extra 1 oz Smith & Cross 1 oz lime juice 1/2 oz Cointreau 1/2 oz orgeat, freshly made today. What a spectacular drink! It's quite tart, but man, the flavors going on are just something else. I'll be making a lot more of these!

Birch and Barley may be OK, but I find their upstairs bar Churchkey noisy, overcrowded, expensive, and snotty. My pick for beer is still any of the Paradiso locations. Similar complaints about Gibson, at least from the snotty front. Passenger on the way! The drinks are as good, if not better, and they're all custom made on the spot - no cocktail menu. (It's also cheaper)

Hm, after making a mai tai, I may add a few more drops of almond extract...

Prawncrackers, Nguyen says that it's possible to take the sauce too far, so that it burns to "a bitter black stage." Do you think that's true? Nguyen's sauce is supposed to be bitter, but with sweet undertones. patrickamory, don't keep us in suspense! What's the cheese? I followed her directions for caramel sauce as closely as I could and it is indeed bittersweet in a very nice way. Do what she says and you should have the same success.

So syrups will go bad with a bit of booze in them? I've had bottles of simple and grenadine around for about a month with nothing going off yet.... is 2:1 a better preservative? I'm keeping everything in the fridge, for the record.

the oz of vodka won't help?

A faux chili made with some root veg and other leftover-y items: I fried a miniscule amount of bacon, added onions, carrots and garlic to sweat, then some butternut squash and turnip, after a few minutes added a puree of roasted and soaked dried chile guajillo, ancho, and arbol, along with the soaking water and some chicken stock. after the root veg were mostly tender, threw in some pre-cooked pinto beans and their liquid, some frozen corn, and some poached shredded chicken from stockmaking activities last week. Garnished with "korean pepper", avocado, spring onions, and a squeeze of lime.

Yikes! I can understand curries leaving a lingering smell but what Chinese food does? All the smoke from trying to get solid wok hei.....

OK here we go.... blanched raw almonds after laboriously skinning them... said almonds after being ground and soaked for 2 hrs in hot water, squeezed out as best I could sans cheesecloth... Final product! That's a 750ml squeeze bottle, so I used: 3 cups almonds 3 cups hot water for final soaking This yielded a bit over two cups of almond milk. I then added almost 2 cups of evaporate cane sugar, with the idea to make it a roughly 1:1 syrup. After cooling, I added about two tsp orange blossom water and 1 tablespoon or so almond extract, topped with an ounce of vodka as a preservative. Thoughts: Haven't tried it in a drink yet, but the drops of syrup I've tasted are divine. First off, just the almond milk and sugar has some of that telltale bitter almond taste - extremely subtle and very nice - if I were using this syrup as a dessert topping or something, I might stop there. With the almond extract and orange blossom water added, it's just lovely. Will make a mai tai tonight and report back. Also, I should really invest in some cheesecloth...I tried coffee filters but they broke nearly instantly.

Believe it or not, I'm in the process of making my own orgeat now. Should have final results later today.

I'm intrigued about fish....what do you use SV for with fish?

What do all the letters in the coffee stand for? Kopi O, Kopi C, etc.... Given that Singapore is what, 75% Chinese or so, is the major food influence there Chinese or Malay/Indian? Is it sort of like a fusion in general, or are most dishes distinctively Chinese, Malay, or Indian? It seems that Malay influences are disproportionately large, as least as far as population figures are concerned. And as for my own blog, hah well, my food life is kind of boring lately...

I go to Vietnamese and other Asian markets a lot and have never seen it, but it's really easy to make at home and keeps pretty much indefinitely. That looks amazing, I've never seen chuck served like that, it looks really steak-like. I'm starting to think maybe this sous vide thing is all it's cracked up to be.

Nikki, what an awesome start to what looks to be a great blog! I think a lot of us expect many delicious things from Singapore Any chance you can document some chili crab? A friend of mine moved there and won't stop talking about it, but I've never had it or even been anywhere that served it.

I've noticed on Hiroyuki's personal blog (hiro-shio.blogspot.com/) he adds naga negi to a lot of dishes, without reference to "regular" negi if there is such a thing.

Yep, that's exactly it.

And here we have some of yesterday's preparations cooked - the shiozake was gently seared, and it got the crispiest skin I've ever eaten on a fish, like, kettle chips-crunchy. kabocha as prepared above, straight out of the fridge and warmed up to room temperature, and the new stuff: enoki and hakusai misoshiru, horenso no gomae ae, and kinpira gobo and carrot. God I love gobo.....

Bruce, I've made so many stir fries almost exactly like that, looks delicious! As does the seafood above, what drool-worthy pictures on a first post. My humble offering: Full-on Japanese: Japonica rice (of course), enoki and hakusai (napa cabbage) miso soup, some leftover simmered kabocha, spinach with goma ae dressing, kinpira gobo (burdock root and carrot stir fry), along with some lightly seared homemade salted salmon.

Yokode refers to the handle on the side instead of on the back or the top. Kyusu means teapot generically and on its own can be any kind. Yeah, I'm concerned about a metallic taste. Then again, I use metal strainers now, so who knows.

OK, so I'm pretty committed to getting a yokode kyusu. I just drink too much Japanese tea to brew in a mug or pyrex measuring cup (more room for the leaves to expand). What are the differences in performance between the various filters? I'd really like one with sasame, the traditional clay filter, but those seem to come on the more expensive models. Otherwise, there are mesh screens that go around the entire teapot, mesh screens that just block the spout (these look cheap and crummy), and mesh screens that act as a sort of net and suspend the leaves so that they drain between infusions. Is there any practical difference between these various filters/screens?

Bulleit rye Sazerac. Man. Perfection. Siiiiiiiiiiigh of satisfaction

The kabocha flavors the dashi, mirin, shoyu, etc, and in turn takes on some of those flavors; it's a really cool blending of tastes. I should have scooped out the flesh around the seeds a bit better, because in some areas I got lazy and the flesh next to the seeds gets mushy REALLY quick...

Some awesome chicken soup made from this: broth ladled out over a sweated mirepoix with leeks added, some chopped turnips and kabocha thrown in, then some noodles and celery leaves. Delicious!

Hm how come this thread has been dormant for three years while the Korean, Vietnamese, Mexican, Chinese, etc ones are still active? Here are some things I cooked for future consumption: Kombu tsukudani made from spent dashi kombu (ichiban and niban dashi in the freezer) Konnyaku no tosani, as posted on Just Bento Kabocha no nimono made with the ichiban dashi from yesterday Shiozake/shiojake (salted samon, also from a technique posted on Just Bento) - I left this in the fridge for 48 hours and it has a really nice, firm, almost hardened gel-like texture.