EdS

I wasn't sure what to eat with this tofu since I've never had tofu of this consistency. I scooped the tofu into a bowl and put some bonito flakes and a little shoyu on top. Before pouring the tofu into the colander there was some amount of liquid on top. If I had poured the tofu into a mold undrained, I think I would have had tofu soup! It could be that my soy milk was a little weak or perhaps I am worrying about nothing.

I made my first batch of tofu today. Sorry, no pics. I started by making soy milk in my soy milk maker using some bulk $0.89/lb. organic soybeans from Whole Foods which I had soaked overnight and water filtered by a Brita filter. As soon as the soy milk was finished, about 15 minutes later, I poured it through a very-fine-mesh chinois into a Staub cast-iron cocotte over medium-low heat and checked the temperature which registered about 170F degrees. I poured a tablespoon of nigari into a small bowl, added a small amount of filtered water, and mixed the contents. I then very slowly whisked the diluted nigari into the soy milk. It appeared to coagulate almost immediately. I covered the cocotte and let it sit for 10 minutes. I decided to not mold this first batch but rather just drain it. I placed a fine-mesh Japanese colander over a large bowl and poured the tofu into the colander. A few minutes later, I emptied the water from the glass bowl and placed the colander back on top. I covered the bowl and colander with plastic wrap and placed them in the refrigerator. A few hours later, I decided to take a look. A few minutes later, it was all gone! It tasted just like the great "cotton" tofu I get from the local tofu factory here (San Jose Tofu) and unlike supermarket tofu which always has a funny taste from my experience no matter how "fresh" it's supposed to be. The texture of my batch was rather light and fluffy which can be attributed to the fact that I did not press it. I think what I had was "silk" tofu. I'll certainly be doing this often. It wasn't much work other than clean-up. My next project will be to make some cotton tofu.

I'm not sure if I'll get a plastic one or a stainless steel one. I know I saw the stainless one yesterday but I couldn't find it today. I lost patience clicking through the links on Google so I'll try it again later. I have one of those wood rice tubs. It's an ohitsu? I use it sometimes for sushi rice although often I just get lazy and use a regular bowl. That's what gave me the idea that wood might be good for tofu too. Your yosedofu looks good, especially the last picture where there's nothing left! I know that will happen to mine too, heh. I bought my first nigari this evening. I was happy to see that my store carried it. So, tofu will be coming very soon now! So, for "silk" tofu, I can just pour it into a container without draining?

Thanks, Hiroyuki. I think I was concerned that wood might be better because it might provide flavor or absorb moisture from the tofu compared to using the non-porous materials. It doesn't look like this is an issue. I can save the $30 those cypress wood boxes go for here and buy myself, uh, another 40 pounds of soybeans.

I recently started making soy milk. Kristin's eGCI class is awesome! I've since purchased a SoyaPower soy milk maker and find it makes making soy milk about as easy as cooking rice in a rice cooker. I'm pretty impressed with this appliance. I'm ready to get into making tofu. I think I'll be doing a lot of this so I'd like to get a tofu press. I've done some searching with Google and have found tofu presses made of cypress wood, plastic, and stainless steel. Would one of these be preferable?

Thanks, Jason, for the rundown on yuzu juice. Very interesting. By the amount of yuzu-this and yuzu-that I see on menus around here, I'm betting most places are using the low-end yuzu juice. I'll buy a bottle to experiment with but I'd love to give your higher-heat pasteurized version a try when you import it. I bet you'll find plenty of demand.

I've done that. TWICE! ← Add me to the list. I think what happens is that you're away from the kitchen for a while and out of the groove. When you return, you see that pot and go into autopilot, treating the pot like it's full of pasta. The time I did this, I didn't catch it until I had already poured out all the liquid and was removing the solids to a trash can! I was so angry that I set the pot back down and pretended like it didn't happen until the following morning.

I didn't realize the price of hon-mirin was that much more than the mirin with corn syrup but there seems to be so little of it here that I don't have much data to go on.

Jason, you might want to see if you can track down some Hakusan Mirin. It goes for about $6 for a good size bottle. There's a distributor list at that web site. This mirin is made in Napa along with their sake. It actually seems to be somewhat drinkable if you are into frou-frou sweet drinks which I am not. I could see how this could pass for a ladies drink in the past in Japan, as is my understanding. I comparison tasted this with some corn syrup mirin. There's a noticeable improvement so I'm sold on hon-mirin. Unfortunately, my local "gourmet" grocery store has decided to stop carrying this so I'll either have to find it elsewhere or maybe I'll try the other hon-mirin listed above which I've seen at Whole Foods. Strangely, my Japanese grocery has great fish, Washington wagyu beef, California jidori chicken, fresh tofu, maybe 30 types of imported shoyu and even more types of sake and miso, but no hon-mirin!!! I guess most people don't care so it's a low priority. Is it like this in Japan too?

It struck me that buying yuzu juice out of a bottle is like buying lemon juice out of a bottle rather than using the actual fruit. I'll wait until it's yuzu season and hunt down some real yuzu.

I see that my Japanese grocery has small bottles of yuzu juice in the condiments section. Since they don't carry fresh yuzu and I think it's out of season right now anyway, I've been thinking about buying a bottle. I probably won't use much at a time so I am worried about the shelf life. Once I open the bottle, how long does it last? Is it something that will go bad after a week in the fridge or can you keep it around for a while?

Raw chicken is served as sashimi in Japan. It's also sometimes just seared on the outside. I'm sure great care is taken to minimize the possibility of contamination. Poultry is about the only thing that turns me into Felix Unger in the kitchen. I clean everything thoroughly. It'd be a huge rush for me to eat some raw chicken.

HKFL in Milbrae is a bit of a local legend here on the Peninsula. I'm actually surprised to hear there's one in SF! A number of us who worked further south in Silicon Valley would race up Hwy 101 to take a long lunch there. Milbrae is the city just north of Burlingame and San Mateo and close to the airport.

I'm very happy when new crop koshihikari rice reaches the markets here in the SF Bay Area during the autumn harvest. I've only seen this rice at Japanese markets and not in regular supermarkets. I know Tamaki Gold sells it but there are other brands as well and I can't say that I have a preference between them. It's actually kind of fun to buy some small bags of rice, figure out what rice/water ratio works best with each of them, and then make some comparative batches simultaneously. It was educational for me to find that there really are differences that come out in the final product and I can see how people would develop their own preferences.

I've had questions about what enthusiastic French home cooks prepare in their homes as opposed to food served to the public. It's one thing to read books on the subject but then you need to endure such problems as the author's biases and faults in their observations. I haven't been to France and even if I had, it would take a large amount of time and effort to gain enough experiences to paint an accurate picture. I can think of no better way to gain this insight in a short amount of time than by getting this information from a large sample of cooks straight from their mouth (or keyboard) on online forums. These links are much appreciated.

My mom's cooking, including the steamed and boiled stuff. Edited to add: sorry, these dishes weren't so amazing.

Several years ago I made a rare visit to LA and thought it'd be fun to check out one of those movie star joints. I did a little research and headed to The Ivy in Beverly Hills. I don't own a TV and only see a few movies a year so it's quite possible for me to be surrounded by so-called celebrities and for me to be completely oblivious. I do know who Paris Hilton is but that's because a friend sent me a link a few years ago. My friend and I arrived and we were seated out in the patio. It seemed everyone was looking around at everyone else but trying to pretend they weren't. I don't know how many of these people were "celebrities" and how many were gawkers, but I did sense a peculiar atmosphere about the place. I expected the food to be terrible but to my pleasant surprise, I enjoyed my meal very much. I ordered the fried chicken. This was really good fried chicken. Years later, I still dream of this fried chicken. I think they put crack in it. Makes sense given the clientele, huh? I didn't recognize anyone in the place but it was obvious that many of these people considered themselves important and I also saw my share of plastic surgery victims. I don't know if The Ivy is still A-list as they say down there but I did have a good time on my visit. Go there, eat some fried chicken, gawk.

You'd be surprised about all the other things French people know about and are interested in. Those two are very good forums, btw. ← I wish my French were better than first-grade level. I can see how it'd be fun to hang out on those forums. To think, somewhere in southwest France there just might be a festival involving gallons of tequila, wet t-shirt contests, and Harleys.

I often make a late night frittata. There always seem to be eggs around and some vegetables or other things I can chop up and throw into the eggs to make something interesting. At that hour I'm usually too tired to make anything serious. It's easy to start the frittata on the stove and then slide the pan under the broiler to finish. Eat it with whatever bread you've got left over and life is good.

I've never been impressed with the food at Farallon. I think the food is overrated just as others have stated. I don't know how to describe it. Generic seafood with no soul? I do think the interior is worth the price of admission at least once. I had my 30th birthday dinner there several years ago. The waiter was a classic waiter-hoping-to-be-discovered. He thought he was Jack Nicholson or Christian Slater. Slater's already a copy. We don't need a copy of a copy. The girlfriend found the act amusing but I found the guy annoying as hell. He kept interrupting us for no good reason to tell us a joke or something. Attention-getting bastard. Nothing I hate more than being interrupted. Well, the girlfriend was a skinny redhead wearing a dress with a plunging neckline so maybe the guy couldn't help it but it was my birthday not his. I think it's the only time I've ever found it necessary to have a word with a waiter. I haven't gone back. I've heard many good things about Aqua over the years from friends I trust but strangely I've never made it there.

Thank you, ludja. I found it quite entertaining to visit the American recipes section of supertoinette and see all those people discussing and making food like carrot cake, chilli, American potato salad, Jello-O(!), fried chicken, hamburgers, and cheesecake. I had no idea there was an interest or even knowledge of chilli in France.

Are there web sites similar to eGullet but in French and with mostly users in France? What would you recommend? I'm particularly interested in sites where there's discussion between people cooking at home. Thanks!

This is very interesting to me. As an American who often doesn't care much for "Italian" food and even much of "authentic Italian", whatever the region, that I find in the restaurants here, I found myself enjoying much of the Italian food there. I've always wanted to ask an Italian what he or she thought of the Italian food in Buenos Aires. I know roughly half the people in the city can claim Italian ancestry and most of them arrived around the same time that the Italian immigrants arrived in New York City. Obviously, what passes for "Italian" here is actually Italian-American which can be pretty different than anything found in Italy. I wonder if Italian-Argentine is just as different or if it is closer to what one might find in Italy. I'm guessing the biggest difference is more use of beef.

I spent all of April in Buenos Aires and have been there several times before. As someone who doesn't eat a lot of red meat, I naturally get cravings down there. I've tried seeking out good seafood places but have never had any luck. I'd get a tip, try a place out, and be disappointed. There's pretty good Japanese. It seems to be a trend. But I live in what is basically a Japantown area here in the San Francisco Bay Area with probably 20 Japanese restaurants within a half dozen blocks of me so eating Japanese in Buenos Aires isn't much of a treat even though the sushi I tried in Buenos Aires was admittedly pretty good. They obviously have access to a good supply of fish. I do have a suggestion though. After I returned on this last trip, I went through the Argentine cookbooks that I bought and found that Patagonia (in the south) appears to place more emphasis on seafood. Therefore, I would suggest finding a restaurant that specializes in Patagonian regional cuisine. They just might have some good Argentine seafood dishes.

Awesome! Thanks, Shalmanese. I'm going to buy myself a new toy.