All Activity

I've heard good things about Yangjiang Extra Pure Fujian Oyster Sauce from China but haven’t tried it yet.

Fridge? I've always understood that to have started as a shortened way of saying Frigidaire, which for many years was almost ubiquitous as the refrigerator of choice. It was invented, or first produced, around 1916, and then a few short years later was purchased and marketed by General Motors. Growing up, most families I knew owned a Frigidaire, although we had a Crosley Shelvador, which I believe was the first refrigerator with shelves in the door. Nonetheless, we called it a fridge just as Frigidaire owners called their refrigerators a fridge. Think of Jeep, which was a specific brand of vehicle which later became synonymous with a type of vehicle. Kleenex was another such item. Old names are sometimes slow to die. They become part of the lexicon. How many people still call aluminum foil tin foil, which fell out of favor after WWII? That said, many folks called their refrigerator an ice box because, before (and during) the transition to electric powered refrigerators, one used an insulated box that was cooled with big blocks of ice. My mom's parents used such a device until almost 1949, long after the advent of the more modern refrigerator, and after we moved into our home and purchased the Crosley. I still know some folks who call their "fridge" an ice box.

Sale ended yesterday.

Tha Google identifies a number of these for sale. Looks like the first edition was 1960

I enjoy oyster sauce. For years, Lee Kum Kee Premium was my goto choice. And then I discovered Megachef, the third bottle of which I just received. When I first experienced Megachef I was stunned as it was so different, so much more oyster-like in flavor (based on my memory of oysters), that it didn't even seem to be the same product as the LKK. Yesterday, I was introduced to a couple of other sauce varieties from Japan. I'll order one or two soon and report back. They were compared to Megachef as Megachef was to LKK. We'll see ...

Peach cobbler using some wonderful peaches from South Carolina. I used the last two peaches for this cobbler as the peaches were too wonderful to cook. They were of the variety “ eat over the sink”, very sweet and juicy!

@btbyrd what size do you have and how many do you usually feed? The small one at Costco is 20 inches (and comes with legs, carrying bag that will hold the legs, etc) and I think it would be large enough to cook for 2, occasionally more. I'm willing to go a little bigger but not willing to sacrifice portability as I do intend to take it camping (boondock/remote).

@chromedome, thanks for that. I'll admit that, although I could get the broad outlines of what you wrote, I went for more specific information (rather than derail this topic) to an online search for some of your terms. Which led to an AI answer....which, I suppose, illustrates some of your points! 😆

As someone who writes at times for sites like these (not those specific ones) I can assure you that many of these repetitive phrases are used and reused, especially in titles, because they perform strongly in searches. Some companies have their own internal algorithms, perform A/B testing and suchlike, while others rely on tools like Google Trends (or non-Google competitors) to pit keywords and phrases against each other and decide which will perform best. Now everybody's trying to find ways to "disrupt" search (speaking of overused tropes) using AI (ditto), which may perhaps dent Google's dominance (don't bet on it) but in the short term will instead disrupt the entire online economy that's built around attracting eyeballs to sites. If I had any reason to expect that the outcome might be better search results for everyday users, instead of ever more-focused bubbles of attention management/manipulation, I'd be more open to it despite the short-term impact on my own industry. As it is, even leaving out issues like AI's wild inaccuracies and resource-intensiveness, I don't anticipate it being anything more than a new level of what writer Cory Doctorow calls "enshittification."

Uggh. Just brainless writing. Yummy, amazing etc etc, Like the gushing prose on a google review.

With a surplus of broccoli, I did what any self-respecting Italophile might: pasta with broccoli (not rabe) and sausage.

Tomato broccoli fried rice.

Time to bump this up again, and let everyone vent afresh (and perhaps with new terms). My news feed threw me this good-looking idea for a salmon version of club salad from Half-Baked Harvest. My teeth are still on edge from what feels like a sugar high. The idea looks like a good one, and I own one of HBH's cookbooks...but why must the writers use "yummy" so often? Why must they chirp on with things like this: and/or "it's so easy!" and "I have this on repeat every week!" The Kitchn is just as bad. I've pretty much stopped reading them because Every. Single. Title. (well, maybe every other title) has a formula: dishname and parenthetical augmentation: "___dishname___ (It's so good I'll be doing it again and again!)" "___dishname___ (It's so easy we'll make it every week!)" or some such variant. I swear their headlines are written by algorithm. Is "overused trope" a redundant phrase?

A brief update, this time focused on the flocks. A couple of months ago my GF splurged part of her tax refund on a prefab run for the chickens, to keep them out of my garden and safe from predators. They've been living in there ever since, and the older of the chicks I'd mentioned above have now joined them (the younger ones will go out there in another week or so). Here are a couple of pics of them, loitering around the bottom of a "quail condo" we'd improvised from a 5-tier indoor greenhouse I was no longer using for its intended purpose. Quail are messy eaters, you see, so there are usually treats to be had. After using that original quail condo for a month or so, we've learned the shortcomings of our initial design, largely driven by a need for haste (we wanted them out of our living room, as the flock grew) and limited budget. So over the last couple of days I've built an improved version, from my typical "less than shoestring budget" selection of materials. Said materials included: a bread rack from a now-closed bakery, wire cut from a now-decommissioned rabbit cage, some wire mesh, zip ties, the wire used to hold the roll of wire mesh together in its packaging, some of the coated chicken wire left over from the chickens' run, a few pieces from my aunt's old deck, and clean-out trays for the droppings (a crucial "learned experience" addition) cut from the aluminum surround of our torn-out pool. Here's a rough construction sequence, showing how it all came together. First, we have the rack itself, with the top tier enclosed in bits of old rabbit cage. Shelves are the rack's original shelving, but with wire mesh added so the wee birds' feet don't just fall through. The brown cross-pieces are the scavenged bits of old deck, and will support the clean-out trays under each level. After I'd gotten that far, my GF realized that each shelf could in fact support two small sub-flocks. So the rabbit-cage enclosure at the top has now been modified to have two doors and a fixed center piece, and all three have dividers down the middle (the cardboard box was just a placeholder for the cleanout tray). From there, it was just a matter of enclosing the sides with chicken wire, and mounting the doors (zip ties serve as the hinges). ...and here's the end product, with clean-out trays in place. That gives us eight cages where sub-flocks can go, because we now have a whole bunch of different kinds of quail: the standard Coturnix quail, sometimes apparently called "Pharaoh" after their mention in Exodus (before the manna came quail, if you hadn't remembered that bit), as well as Andalusians, calicos, tuxedos in various colours, and many, many more (I think we have something like 10 or 11 breeds, now). So the plan for later today is to transfer our existing flocks into the new condo, clean out and renovate the old one (leaving the bottom tier empty, because it was just a PITA to get in and out of), and then separate some of the breeds further into standalone flocks of their own and move them back into the original condo. We do have one more cage we've picked up from the local classifieds, which I'll modify into an over/under "duplex" for the quail. There is apparently nobody selling breeder flocks or fertile eggs for most of these breeds anywhere east of Ontario (where our own supplier was located), so my GF sees the potential for us to generate a modest side income from selling the specialty quail. Some of them are very pretty, while others show more personality than the regular coturnix (the little "red range" quail are lively, feisty little birds, and make a funny grumbling, chuckling noise that the others don't). We'll see how that plays out. If time permits, later today I'll try to block out time to get pictures of some of the different quail.

According to Andy Ricker, the term laap refers to the sound the cleaver makes while chopping. He also, not surprisingly, recommends chopping finely with a cleaver as opposed to a meat grinder.

Hoooo boy https://m.youtube.com/shorts/sMU1r8S3ajU

John used to buy the big bags of spinach at Costco (in California) that weighed 2 1/2 lbs. He found that it would make two pans perfectly, so I halved the recipe when I wrote it up for the cookbook. As I said, I just kinda wing it now. The pan in the photo is smaller than the recipe. I used a 10 oz container for it.

安徽菜 (ān huī cài) Anhui Cuisine, 徽菜 (huī cài) Hui Cuisine 安徽 (ān huī), Anhui Province is on the Traditional list of the Eight Cuisines of China, yet it remains the least known, even within China. There are, I would suggest, stronger candidates, not that there is anything wrong with Anhui cuisine. It is however seriously outshone by its neighbours. Anhui, capital Hefei, is in eastern China. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license. It is known for its use of wild foods terrestrial, airborne and aquatic. Wild herbs, wild mushrooms and bamboo shoots are widely used as are game meats. Although it is landlocked both fresh- and seawater fish are widely used. Techniques such as braising, boiling or steaming are used much more than the rest of China and stir frying or deep frying much less. Anhui is also known for being the alleged birthplace of 豆腐 (dòu fu), tofu or soy bean curd. Chinese folklore credits its invention to a Han dynasty prince named 刘安 (liú ān), Liu An, not that princes tend in my very limited experience of such people to indulge in kitchen matters. Sadly, tofu did not grant him longevity as he took his own life at the age of 57. I don’t think that was brought about by tofu, though. Also, according to Chinese legend, stinky tofu (fermented tofu) was invented by one aspiring scholar, 王致和 (wáng zhì hé), Wang Zhihe who sold his product in Beijing to make a living after failing the imperial examination. He later became a writer; not a chef. Chefs never invent foods in Chinese legends. Chefs never became legendary. His claim to stnky tofu is dubious as different types appear across China, including Taiwn. 八公山臭豆腐 (bā gōng shān chòu dòu fu), Bagong mountain stinky tofu is a traditional local snack in Anhui. Bagong mountain stinky tofu 蛋饺 (dàn jiǎo), also reputed to be from Anhui but found across China today, are jiaozi dumplings with a twist. Instead of the wrapper being made from wheat flour, it is egg. Sort of a one bite omelette, in fact. Fillings vary widely but pork and chives is most common. Dan Jiao Discovering Dan Jiao: A Lunar New Year Dumpling Delight 🥟✨#recipe #shorts - YouTube One interesting dish from Anhui, 李鸿章杂碎 (lǐ hóng zhāng zá suì), Li Hongzhuang Hotchpotch. This wasn’t invented by Li Hongzhang, a prominent Qing dynasty statesman from Anhui but named so in his honour. The name is often translated as Li Hongzhuang Chop Suey, surely a misnomer. It doesn’t resemble what most of us know as chop suey in any way. The dish is in fact a soup, using among among other ingredients sea cucumber, fish, squid, bamboo, dry tofu, chicken, ham and assorted vegetables. Lihongzhuang Hotchpotch - Image: n.sinaimg.cn The province is also known for sweet potato cellophane noodles 红薯粉丝 (hóng shǔ fěn sī), usually sold dried. These I find a bit gummy. Sweet Potato Noodles Steamed stone frogs 清蒸石蛙 (qīng zhēng shí wā) are ugly critters resembling, you guesses, stones. However, once skinned and cooked, they are delicious. One of my favourites. 黄山炖鸽子(huáng shān dùn gē zi), Huangshan Braised Pigeon is considered to be a medical tonic served in soup. TCM nonsense as usual. There is no scientific for any significant benefit, but it tastes good. When In I need a tonic, I add gin and maybe a slice of lime, but no pigeon or soup. Pigeon Soup - Image: guangyuanol.cn Finally, 臭鳜鱼 (chòu guì yú), stinky mandarin fish sounds terrible, but isn’t so bad. It’s just fermented then fried fish. Nothing like Icelandic hákarl, fermented shark or Swedish surströmming, fermented herring! Stinky Fish Otherwise uncredited images are from Meituan online shopping app.

This is starting to sound like an interesting premise for…I dunno…Netflix? Need I say more?

Chicken and other meats kand vegetablesl are usually chopped/ minced/ ground using cleavers all across east and south-east Asia - usually a two cleaver technique, one in either hand. I hear my neighbours banging away every mealtime and butchers in the markets and supermarkets chopping pounds of meat this way every day.

More smoked elk. With peas, potatoes and gravy.

Ottolenghi's starter was our dinner. And the first artichokes that I've ever cooked!

@RWood, thanks for that. The instructions are clear and I like the way you've laid out that recipe. I don't think I've ever put dill in my spanikopita before; I can imagine that making a difference. Question: why 1# 4oz of spinach? Is that the usual size of a package?

For what it's worth: I can't seem to find the episode on line, but on Adam Liaw's The Cookup, chef Jerry Mai prepared the chicken for Larb by chopping it finely with a cleaver and said it made for a much better dish than using ground chicken. She used some sort of Vietnamese chook.

Sure. I wrote this up for a family cookbook that I'm working on just to have it written down. We usually just wing it now. Some things I'll mention we found helped over the years of making it: Keep it thin, it helps with browning on the bottom and having less moisture. Use lots of feta. Most I've had are very sparse, probably just being cheap. Not sure what your oven is like, but I hate the one we have. It's a Kitchenaid and bottom browning is bad. So, I start it on the bottom, then move it up so the top browns. Don't put too much parsley, can be overpowering, lots of dill is good though.