mamster

Undersalting. I know when I started cooking, I did not understand how to use salt, not even the principle of "taste, and if it needs salt, put in more salt." It's amazing how everyone has to figure this out for themselves. Dull knives is my biggest pet peeve about working in somebody else's kitchen, so now I always bring mine. It's way better to get that "who does he think he is?" look than to cut your finger off with a knife that was last sharpened when people actually thought Dewey might have won the election.

Benefit for what?

They all stink raw, and they kind of stink when you cook with them, too. Most of Bangkok smells like diesel exhaust mixed with fish sauce, which is not a terrible thing if you're in a Blade Runner mood. One of the reasons fish sauce seems to improve the flavor of almost everything is that it's loaded with glutamate. For things like uncooked dipping sauces and salad dressings, if you don't like the full-on fish sauce assault, it's worth finding a mild premium Thai brand such as Baby or Tra Chang. I've been seeing Baby (aka Golden Boy) more and more. They have it at Uwajimaya in Seattle, at Osaka in Richmond, BC, and at Bangkok Center Grocery in Manhattan. Despite the "premium" moniker, the premium brands still cost like $2.

I'm no piscologist, oceanographer, limnologist, or fisherfolk, so I'm reading with interest, not leaning back in my chair and pointing smugly. As a student of mine once wrote on an evaluation form, "Matthew seems to know everything about biology, except marine life." My hunch and hunch alone is that white salmon is the result of genetics; it's hard to imagine that the fish's diet could be so different in the wild that they don't pick up a trace of pink, and I know that white salmon are caught alongside red salmon. There was a big article about white salmon in the NYT a couple years ago; I could try to pull it up and at least quote liberally from it. And as for Oncorhyncus tshawytscha, the only reason I knew that is that I once took a limnology course at the UW fisheries building, and they have a big king salmon mounted on the wall wearing its scientific name. I was actually trying to be glib. Atlantic salmon (Salmo spp.) and Pacific salmon (Oncorhyncus spp, and why did they get the easy one) are both in the Salmonidae family, and I'd bet both are called salmon because the flesh is pink and they taste similar. Did you know that in the wild, Atlantic salmon (or at least the few remaining ones) are iteroparous? Oops, there I go again.

Ben, you can get a 5-pound bag of sticky rice for a couple of bucks in the I-district, and you should, because it rocks. Not exactly larb, but in the larb vein, there's a popular Thai sausage made with pork and lots of garlic and lime juice, and bulked up with cooked sticky rice. I've made it at home with ground pork and it's great. I think I turned it into an omelet once. Does everybody know how to do Thai-style eggs? Beat the eggs, salt with fish sauce, add a little lime juice, and cook in oil. Great accompaniment to larb, or pretty much anything else.

Thanks for posting the review, seawakim. Local opinion (both here on eGullet and elsewhere) seems unusually divided on E&O. I think most everyone agrees the fries are good.

King salmon is Oncorhynchus tshawytscha. Hope that clears everything up! Also, there are a bunch of non-salmon anadromous fishes, including some sturgeon, shad, striped bass, and that sort of thing. There's only one catadromous fish in the U.S.: eels, if you consider that a fish.

I like sockeye best, too, although I find it's easier to get the skin crispy with king because the fish is thicker and cooks more slowly. And while I'll take wild over farmed whenever possible, I don't dislike farmed salmon by any means--it's still better than much of the rest of what you find at a typical grocery fish counter, for example.

That is like totally true MsR y'know?

Knifery sounds good. Schielke, you got me thinking that fish cookery might be nice, since it's probably where I'm least comfortable in the kitchen and know I could learn a lot quickly. But really, I can't argue with anything suggested so far. Count me in.

If you eat in the Pacific Northwest at all, I'm interested in what you have to say, HB. Do you cook much at home, besides pho? Where do you shop? Etc. Have you started a homemade pho thread on cooking at any point? I'd love to hear more about that.

That's the way I do it, snowangel. It took me a while to get the hang of it, and the key thing is you have to flour both sides of the sheet after every successive roll through the machine. Otherwise it sticks and gets weird. Malawry, congrats on the great pasta batch.

Is that all? What a rip!

Yeah, SG, if it makes you feel better, this ended up costing the Herbfarm a hell of a lot more than the price of your extra meal in lost business. Not that this does you any good personally, and they're probably still filling the seats, but I firmly believe that in the long run bad customer service comes back to bite you. Thanks for giving it the good fight and reporting back.

As much as I'd love to keep this great series going on Pacific Northwest, modesty and geography require me to move it to Canada. I'm keeping a pointer, though!

I think he meant "between" in the sense of "north of the SF border, south of the Canadian border." Right, guys?

I had dolsot bibimbap for lunch yesterday. The place near my work has new ownership and has gone a bit downhill, but middling bibimbap is better than none. I really, really need to get my own dolsot. Also, that poem is the best thing ever, I failed to mention earlier.

Wait, there was also a shrimp tempura uramaki at one point. And probably other things I forgot to mention. They went a little overboard on the fried crustaceans, maybe, but you did not hear me complaining.

Hey, I had omakase at Mashiko! It was a friend's birthday and we had some fifteen people in the place. Most people ordered off the menu, but a couple of serious sushi friends and I asked if we could do omakase, and they said sure. We did the $30 level. I requested sawagani, and sawagani there were, a plate of eight or so little crabs that looked like they were dancing. Delicious. This was followed by the best tuna salad I've ever eaten, a sky-high concoction with raw tuna, cucumber half-moons, shredded seaweed and onions, dressed with ponzu. Next, more sawagani, this time with fried sweet shrimp. Shrimp heads! The crustaceans were crawling around inside a web of fried cellophane noodles. Finally, some sushi. Frankly, I don't remember what all the nigiri pieces were, but I know there was amber jack (kanpachi), maguro, albacore, scallop, and sockeye salmon. All absolutely exemplary. Some of the nigiri pieces had little minced bits of other fish on top, which is a nice touch. At this point I figured we were done, and I would have been totally satisfied. Nope, there was one more plate, with slices of ankimo (monkfish liver pate), a cucumber boat full of uni (which, no, I still don't like), three baby octopuses, and some whitefish served inside a lime. I cannot believe this was all $30. I robbed these people. Every piece of fish was scrupulously fresh, and the preparations perfectly straddle the line between austere and precious. They've recently updated their menu at sushiwhore.com. There is now natto on the menu, I'm afraid, klink. We didn't get any. Anyway, klink is of course right--it's hard to imagine a more satisfying and exciting sushi experience than this.

Oh man! I have to go to One World this week!

Nightscotsman, I guarantee that if you bring your desserts into my office, I will eat them. I think Rachel is probably onto something with the portioning, though. Ever notice how people are reluctant to open a door if there's an already open door they can go through, even if it means they have to wait? There's probably a similar syndrome at work with the desserts: if I have to choose the portion myself, people will see how much I take and think I'm greedy, so I'd better take just a sliver. Whereas with donuts, it's completely obvious how much to make. Maybe you could maintain your standard of presentation and still get people to eat the food by setting it out in a pristine state for a little while, then hacking it to pieces. Kind of like how they'll sometimes present a whole fish or bird and then take it back to the kitchen to carve.

Well, that pretty much describes the Garden of Eden, doesn't it?

I love Zaina! Best falafel I've had in town. Usually the 'just put everything on the pita' approach fails, but somehow they get away with it. Never, ever try to eat one of these while walking, though.

I've never seen orange Coffee Crisp, but they do have regular Coffee Crisp in Seattle. ChocoKitty, do you need a care package?

I have now tried nightscotsman's black cocoa cookies (in fact, I just had one for breakfast) and they're both delicious and really, really black.