EdS

These blowtorches sound exciting. I've always been paranoid about them. Specifically, when I see someone use one, I'm thinking that somehow the flame is going to go inside and the thing is going to turn into a big bomb and blow the place up. Can someone set me straight? Are these things safe? I wanna torch stuff.

Well, posting this URL is probably one of the biggest cliche's of the dot-com era besides the Hamster Dance but here is a site dedicated to the non-gastronomic mullet. Seriously, I wonder if there is some sort of connection between the haircut and the fish? I knew nothing about the fish until reading this thread and it appears they both share the same habitat.

Carrot tops? Several years ago I drove my then-girlfriend from the SF Bay Area to Reno just to see Carrot Top do his act at the Silver Legacy casino. I laughed. The girlfriend didn't. She left me not long thereafter. So, I'd say Carrot Tops are not a good idea. When I saw those AT&T commercials that came out later, I came to my senses. Now, regarding carrot tops, carrots are actually part of the parsley family. I've heard of people saving and using the carrot tops just like parsley although I've never seen a recipe that used them.

The Ducasse/French method of using medium heat and butter works well as an alternative. It'll give you a result that's a little different. I prefer it myself to the screaming-in-ultra-hot-pan method but you need to have your steak cut thick for this technique to work well. It's worth trying out especially if you don't have good ventilation and want to avoid all the smoke. The Ducasse method of cooking steak

Chinese chef's knives or cleavers are available in many different sizes and weights for different purposes. They are most definitely not all reserved for vegetables. Not only are some just fine on chicken bones, some are much larger, heavier, and less delicate than a Wusthof meat cleaver. I am talking about two or three times the weight. One Chinese technique is to chop a whole chicken into pieces, bones and all. It's almost like dicing an onion! There's a good illustration of this in Barbara Tropp's The Modern Art of Chinese Cooking. However, I do feel that the thin vegetable models are the most commonly available here and you don't want to be doing this sort of thing with a vegetable model. One good maker is Chan Chi Kee of Hong Kong. Here is a product list to give you an idea of the variety that are available. You can find these in Chinese restaurant supply houses like those in San Francisco's Chinatown.

Being frank, I think there are two main perceptions that the general unadventurous public has of North African restaurants: 1) They heard of someone going to one and eating with their hands. 2) They're places to go check out belly dancers. and I'll add a more recent perception due to what seems to have been a trend a few years ago... 3) They're a place to go try out a hookah.

¿Cómo se comen las empanadas salteñas? (How to eat Salteña empanadas) The content at the link above is in Spanish but you can run it through a translator like Google Language Tools (translate a web page) if you need to. The links on that page won't work properly for some reason if you do that but you can just scroll to each section.

Empanadas? Oh man, don't get me started. I've been spending about a month each year for the past several years in South America. That would include Chile, Peru, Bolivia, Uruguay, and Argentina. I most recently spent all of April in Buenos Aires. Lots to do there. New Yorkers wouldn't find the idea of staying in one great city to be unreasonable. I've been known to have an empanada or three. Empanadas are in all those places, having originated in Spain. My understanding is that they are particularly popular in Galicia in Spain which is Celtic. You also have those meat pies originating in the Celtic regions of Britain. Therefore, I would bet that British meat pies and the empanadas in the Spanish-speaking world are directly related. Northern Portugal is Celtic as well. I bet that explains those empanada relatives in Brazil. It's all a melting pot down there anyway. I never tried empanadas in Peru but can say they are quite popular in the other countries I listed. I tend to associate empanadas with Argentina just because they seem particularly ubiquitous there. I've met my fair share of empanada addicts in Buenos Aires. No surprise to hear that a homeless person asked for empanada money since empanadas can be dirt cheap and great value. More than once, I've gotten in discussions about empanadas with the locals in the pubs (there's British influence in Buenos Aires). Seems everyone's got an opinion. All sorts of empanadas in Argentina: Baked or fried Dough for baked empanadas can be made with lard or other animal fat or as puff pastry or shortcrust Ground beef (most common in my opinion), chopped beef Chicken Shrimp Merluza (white fish) Cheese (mozzarella) [more Argentines claim Italian descent than anything else, including Spanish which follows closely] Humita (corn) Chard Cinnamon/Cheese Preserves (quince, sweet potato, guava, etc.) pretty much anything they eat down there can end up in an empanada The empanadas from the north, empanadas salteñas (from the region of Salta), are spicy. I really like those. The ones I had in La Paz and Copacabana, Bolivia were similar. The ones in Uruguay seemed like the ones in Buenos Aires. No surprise since that country is basically to Argentina like Canada is to the United States, a mere satellite. OK, just kidding. Please don't send hate mail. I only had a small number of empanadas in Chile but the thing I noticed there is that they seemed to make them a fair amount larger. You can have empanadas as a complete meal with a combination of different types with even a sweet one at the end. I like to drop by a hole-in-the-wall and order a large plate of these along with a glass or bottle (prices are low down there for us) of good Argentine wine. I noticed a lot of business executive types downtown would have their lunch this way. You can certainly have empanadas as an appetizer too. Some restaurants will give you an empanada when you take your seat.

I'm bumping this because this week I saw a pile of these going for $7.99 at Border's. They were right next to the those "no-name" value cookbooks with all the pictures that typically go for about $5. This was at the store across the street from SBC Park in San Francisco but I bet these books are on sale throughout the chain. The structure of the book is somewhat odd but the content is a good update on French cooking. I think it's quite a good value for the price.

But if so, does it make American great? ← Great has many meanings. Defined as superior in quality or grand? No, not in my opinion. But defined as powerful and influential or outstanding in its significance or importance, absolutely. Every major city around the world that I've visited has American fast food chains and/or local fast food restaurants trying to emulate American fast food or at least the processes and procedures used to create it. I don't want to drift too far off-topic so I'll leave it at that.

Jason has at least a 1-ton weight on it overnight. Thus, the "flat" picture he later took of the sandwich inside of it's plastic. ← I think I was distracted by those close-ups he does that always make me hungry. I missed the plastic-wrapped version! I need to make myself one of those.

That sandwich looks really tasty but the only way that would fit in my mouth is if a Monty Pythonesque 16-ton weight fell from the sky and smacked it into submission first.

America's most influential culinary contribution to the world is junk food.

In Buenos Aires, Argentina, a common choice is three medialunas (small croissants) and a cafe con leche. The same in Uruguay.

Failed? Taco Bell is all over the place in San Francisco and they are busy. I had a couple of tacos at one on Market St. just the other day. I count nine locations in the Yahoo Yellow Pages. San Francisco has strict zoning ordinances that prevent chain restaurants and fast-food places from freely opening throughout the city. When they do open, they compete quite successfully with the local businesses.

Make sure you use your steel more often because this sort of behavior is going to more quickly knock your edge out of alignment. Using your steel will extend how long you can go before a sharpening.

Certainly you can use your Wusthof to split lobster. Beef bones? That's where a meat cleaver comes in.

I use good extra virgin olive oil or none at all. I don't think using olive oil to cook at anything other than rather moderate heat provides any significant benefit. Pour some good olive oil into a sauce pan, bring it up to heat, let it cool off, and then smell it and taste it. It won't be as good. The higher the heat, the greater the damage. One thing you can do is use a neutral-tasting oil--my favorite is grapeseed oil--and then drizzle some good extra virgin oil on your dish as a finish.

I've used a Wusthof Trident 10-in. wide chef's knife countless times on chicken bones with no problem. That includes halving chickens and chopping off the ends of the chicken legs with the heel of the knife. It's actually one of the few tasks I have for this knife since switching to the somewhat more fragile Japanese knives. I bought a German meat cleaver for the same reasons you're thinking about and I only used it a few times for that purpose. I think they are too heavy and too blunt to be optimal for chicken. I completely agree with Ben about getting one of the heavier Chinese cleavers (not a vegetable knife/cleaver), if you're worried about your chef's knife. Those cleavers are great performers for a reasonable price. Another option is a Japanese deba knife. They are designed for tasks like chopping off fish heads and work just fine on chicken.

Suruki Supermarket 71 E 4th Ave This is a small family-owned place that gets a lot of business. It has great fish, a wide variety of miso, Japanese vegetables, etc.

I have that Sanyo rice cooker and am very pleased with it. It does a nice job with no burning, including brown rice. No complaints. I've probably run a couple hundred batches of rice through it by now.

Dengaku tofu - Rectangles of tofu skewered, smeared with a sweet miso paste, and grilled

My favorite way to eat tofu is chilled with a condiment like bonito flakes and a little shoyu (soy sauce) poured on top. I do this with tofu fresh from the tofu factory not tofu in sealed plastic tubs from the grocery store. I find there's a substantial difference in flavor, at least in the types I've tried, and that regular grocery store tofu tastes pretty nasty unless you use it in a cooked dish. Few flavors make me happier than that of good fresh tofu. For the other type, my vote is for agedashi tofu (fried cubes). I'm not much of a fan of stir-fries. Believe it or not, I had a plate of tofu, an entire cake, right in front of me on my desk here when I opened this thread. So, here's a photo. Will add some shoyu. It's a post-workout snack--I need to eat lots of calories to maintain my weight so this is probably a double or triple portion.

Oh man, if we're counting the original Star Trek as a movie, how can we forget Balok offering Captain Kirk some tranya? Balok: "This is tranya. I hope you relish it as much as I."

Thats odd- i live in east bay (livermore,) but i honestly eat in SF only a few times a year. I have never seen a peruvian place around town (not that i have specifically looked for them, but still...)... ← I think what's happened is that several high-profile Peruvian restaurants like Limon and the small Fresca chain in San Francisco and have drawn more attention to Peruvian food. There have always been Peruvian restaurants here and there but I don't recall anyone trying to take it to a higher level and getting the publicity for it until recently. There really does seem to be a trend developing in SF. I hope it spreads across the Bay Area and elsewhere. Peruvian could be the next Thai if people have a chance to sample it. The thing I miss most about my trip to Peru last year is the food. The Art of Peruvian Cuisine has some examples of Peruvian food. Nobu is very much a Peruvian-Japanese seafood place. The cuisine is rather broad given the Asian, European, African, and native American influences. Rather than some sort of fusion forced by some creative chef, Peruvian is a fusion refined over many years by many people. To me, it's fusion done right.