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jrufusj

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Everything posted by jrufusj

  1. no it was a kaiten place called Pintokona. I definitely want to go back to Roppongi Hills now and check out the store called 'White Trash Charms Japan" that I just noticed on their floor map. Fifty dollars a person for kaitenzushi? Ouch. Was it good enough to justify the price? Comparable to a more standard sushiya? Jim
  2. Kristin: I haven't tried any of the places in the article, as I'm not normally looking for a burger when I am in Tokyo. Of course, it would be different if I lived there. Everyone needs a good burger from time to time. Then again, Seoul is pretty far down on the burger chain as well. I have had a burger a few times at the Tokyo American Club. If you have any friends who belong, get them to take you along and go to Traders' Bar for a burger. The price is right too. It should be when one has paid a joining fee and pays monthly dues. I imagine your schedule is damn near impossible with three kids, but I'd be happy to take you to lunch there on one of my trips if you could break away. It'd be interesting to meet someone from eGullet. That's it...Burger Club Tokyo. Jim
  3. jrufusj

    Cooking shortcuts

    Agreed that a lot of the difference will come from the source and freshness of the product available to make the scratch version. When I lived in Bangkok, I had two coconut palms in the garden at my house. Thus, I made coconut milk and cream from scratch. Now, in Korea, the coconuts I have access to in the stores are mediocre at best and I use the tinned coconut milk from Thailand, which gives better results. Coconut milk is one of those items where I can get reasonable (actually quite good) substitution out of the tinned product. Many other things I simply do without when they are (a) not in season or (b) not available locacally with sufficient quality and © I don't have a freash stash recently smuggled in from wherever they can be adequately sourced. I did without limes for almost a year and a half until I found a small vegetable stall with Thai-type and Thai-quality limes. The ones that come into the grocery stores are abysmal -- black market American limes smuggled off the military base -- totally lacking in flavor and costing about a buvk a piece. Jim
  4. For some reason, the web page linked to shows up in Chinese on my computer. Could it be something with my browser settings? Margaret: If you are using Internet Explorer, go to: View:Encoding If you see Korean as an option, select that. If not, select "More", then scroll down and select "Korean". That should allow you to view the page in Hangul. Good luck, Jim
  5. jrufusj

    Sesame Leaves

    Sesame leaves (²¢ÀÙ or kkaetip) are used in a number of ways. They are often part of the assortment of leafy vegetables that are served with many kinds of grilled meat. The meat is rolled in the leaf to be eate. As Jinmyo mentioned, sesame leaves can also be made into kimchi. Traditionally, sesame leaf kimchi is a summer kimchi. There are two versions that I know. First is the ordinary one: 6 lbs. sesame leaves 2 gal. water 7 ozs. course salt 4 ozs. rice porridge 4 ozs. myeolchi jeotgal (Korean fermented fish sauce/paste) 2 ozs. coarse dry chili flakes 1 oz. gochugaru (Korean chili powder) 3 oz. chopped garlic 1 oz. chopped ginger 3 ozs. scallions, sliced on the bias into 1/4 - 1/2 in. pieces 1 oz. chili threads Bundle about 25 leaves together and tie at stem end. Dip in brine of 3 ozs. salt dissolved in all the water. Mix all ingredients except 2 ozs. salt and press bundles well into seasoning. Lay bundles flat in bottom of kimchi jar and layer until finished. Cover with loose leaves and remaining salt, then weight down. Age in refrigerator for 2-3 weeks. The second sesame leaf kimchi is often made with shiso leaves as well. It is a rolled, stuffed kimchi: 1 lb. sesame (or shiso) leaves 3 ozs. salt 5 lbs. radish (Korean radish -- like daikon), julienned 2 ozs. chopped garlic 1 oz. chopped ginger 3 ozs. gochugaru 4 ozs. clear myeolchi jeotgal 2 ozs. rice porridge 4 ozs. minari, in 2 inch lengths 4 ozs. kat (Indian mustard leaves), in 2 in. strips 4 ozs. scallion, split and in 2 in. pieces 4 ozs. dae pa (Chinese leek), in 2 in. pieces 8 ozs. western onion, julienned 1 oz. sliced chestnut 1 oz. chili threads Rinse sesame leaves and slat with about 1 oz. salt. Let stand 1/2 - 1 hour. Toss radish with 2 oz. salt to wilt for about 1/2 - 1 hour. Mix garlic, ginger, gochugaru, jeotgal, and rice porridge into sauce. Toss radish, minari, kat, scallion, leek, onion with above sauce mix. Put a little of the vegetable mix on sesame leaf and roll. Layer rolls in kimchi jar, cover with loose leaves, and weight down. Can be aged a little or eaten fresh. Sesame leaves can also be used in other vegetable preparations. Kkaetip saengjeoli: Rinse 100 grams of sesame leaves. Prepare seasoning (yangnyeom), consisting of 4 Tbsp. soy sauce 1 Tbsp. gochugaru 2 pods green chili, chopped 3 pods red chili, chopped 1/4 medium western onion, minced 1/2 spring onion, sliced crosswise in small pieces 3 cloves garlic, minced 1/2 finger ginger, minced Layer leaves with yangnyeom and allow to marinate briefly. Serve as side dish (banchan). Kkaetip jjim: Rinse 60 grams sesame leaves Prepare yangnyeom, consisting of 3 Tbsp. soy sauce 1/2 Tbsp. gochugaru 2 pods green chili, chopped 2 pods red chili, chopped 1/4 western onion, chopped 1/2 spring onion, sliced crosswise in small pieces 1/2 Tbsp. minced garlic 1 tsp. minced ginger 1/2 Tbsp. sesame oil Heat yangnyeom in saucepan (don't boil), add sesame leaves, and stir to coat. Heat sesame leaves in yangnyeom just until they wilt. Serve as banchan. Note on recipes: The quantities for the kimchi recipes are much bigger than for the banchan, because kimchi is normally made and aged in large batches to last through a season. The rolled, stuffed one is in smaller quantities as it requires (and benefits from) less aging. Banchan are normally made a la minute, so they are in much smaller quantities. Traditionally, kimchi is aged in the ground in great buried pots. Today, it is often aged in special kimchi refrigerator. These are not kept as cold as your ordinary home refrigerator, but you can still use your normal fridge. The kimchis will simply mature more slowly. For kimchis where fermentation is very important, you might start them in a cool room for a few days to a week before putting them in the fridge. Enjoy, Jim
  6. I'm not sure I would ever buy a commercial example of it. The idea of buying it from Hickory Farms makes my stomach turn. However, when I was growing up, my father worked in a stock brokerage office with another broker who came from a farm family in the next county. We would head out once a year to help slaughter hogs, scald them, break them down, fabricate the prime cuts, and do low-brow country charcuterie with the rest. I can promise you that head cheese is damn good when it comes from a batch you helped make from a hog you helped kill. Take a slice, put it on a saltine cracker, top it with a little tobasco sauce. A wee bit of redneck ambrosia. Haven't had it in years. I'd kill for some now. Jim
  7. Sorry to be ignorant, but what are "turkey bucks"? I'm imagining some kind of frequent buyer points or something. Then I'm trying to imagine how anyone could stomach enough tourkey to become a frequent buyer. Uhh...feeling sympathetic effects of a bored palate and constipated colon just from all that imaginary turkey. Jim
  8. jrufusj

    Chicquailant

    The first thing I might do is to revise the choice of birds (though this may violate the terms of your bet). Suggestions: Duchy quail (nice, elegent, European nobility sounding name) = quail in chicken in duck Gucci quail (for those rabid consumers of expensive branded products) = quail in chicken in goose If you do the former, you will need either to get a canvasback sized duck or a relatively small chicken. I would lean toward a wonderful, young, tender chicken. In addition to the fun wordplay, the great advantage to each of these alternatives is that it puts the bird with the most flavorful fat and skin on the outside, where it can be used to best advantage. It also eliminates the pheasant, which I just can't see using in this manner. I love pheasant, but would hate to see it lost in a jumble like this. The other suggestion I would make is to do more than a bread, cracker, or cornbread stuffing. I would attempt to cover the areas between the outer skin of the smaller birds and the cavity walls of the larger birds with something more rewarding. For example, I might take good flavorful dried mushrooms, reconstitute them, slice them thinly, mix them with your favorite winter herbs and some chopped garlic and mustard (and any other appropriate seasoning to taste) and make a chunky poultice that would be liberally slathered over each of the smaller birds before stuffing. I probably would not do a bread stuffing at all. Just my thoughts, Jim
  9. In addition to a number of good reasons mentioned by other people -- perfection found through simplicity being chief among them for me -- I would add one (or two) more. First, is there any better foundation for a favored spice or herb? Imagine perfect, moist, flavorful (if you start with the right product) meat, highlighted by a bit of crispy, greaseless skin, set off by a judicious amount of one's favorite seasoning. Hard to beat. In the same vein, what better backdrop is there for enjoying a delicate, well-aged red wine? As much as I love inventive or comlicated food perfectly matched with wine, I cannot imagine any better combination than a perfectly roasted chicken with one of those sublimely nuanced mature burgundies most of us can only afford to drink on rare occasions. I would have to agree with Jinmyo with the notable exception of wild turkey one has bagged and prepared oneself. However, I do have a foolproof method of preparing commercial turkey. (1) Purchase turkey. (2) Prepare according to whatever method one prefers. (3) Serve turkey breast meat to whatever unsuspecting fools are at hand. (4) Make turkey and sausage gumbo with the dark meat and carcass. (5) Hide gumbo from others and feast on it for a week. Promising that my tongue is not even anywhere near my cheek, as this is my usual Thanksgiving ritual, Jim
  10. jschyun: Did you have this at one of the Yongsusan restaurants in Seoul? Or is there an outlet now in other places? I think you've indicated before that you live in California. I didn't know if you were recently on a trip to Seoul or if there is an outlet in the LA area. I'm not a big fan of yangban shik, except for special occasions. I'm much more partial to everyday sorts of Korean food. However, I really do like Yongsusan. If Yongsusan is broadly typical of Kaesong style food, I'll have to explore and search out other examples. Still, I have to admit that I still can't get excited about shinsollo. There is a new Yongsusan (opened about a year ago) across the street from my office. I should go sometime soon. Haven't eaten at one of these in almost two years. Jim Edited: To correct a typo and fix repetitive diction.
  11. I spend about a week a month in Tokyo, but most of my time is devoted to business. This means that, while I have plenty of time to explore new places and have a liesurely dinner, lunches must normally be grabbed on the go. Question: What do you like to eat for lunch when you are pressed for time and cannot really go far or sit down in a restaurant? Please assume bento from home is not an option, as I stay in a hotel when I am there. I find that I often go back to one item again and again. A fast takeout place in the lobby of my building serves donburi type dishes (not actually served in a donburi, but in a Chinese-type cardboard takeout box). They have one where the toppings are: yama-imo, nameko, those tiny little crispy sardine-like fish, pureed green vegetable, salmon, shoyu, and raw okra. The rice is not perfect, but is decent. I get this once or twice a week for a delicious takeout slimefest! Anyone else had this? Is it a common dish that I could find a better version of in a sit-down restaurant? Thanks, Jim
  12. I own the Lonely Planet World Food guide for Japan. Bought it when I first started travelling there a couple of years ago. I've learned a lot from it, though it doesn't go into tremendous depth. I also gave the Thailand version to my parents before their visit to Bangkok and they enjoyed it very much. As a starting point for getting familiar with Thai Food, it would be quite helpful. The advantage of Thai Hawker Food is that it gives some clues to using the food vendors -- where they are concentrated, how to recognize the kinds of things they are selling, etc. The two books in combination would be a great start. I know I mentioned it before, but I can't recommend Aw Dtaw Gaw (or Aw Taw Kaw) highly enough. It is probably the best place in all of Thailand to see a concentration of great fresh ingredients, as well as prepared foods. Any hotel concierge or taxi driver should be able to help you get there. If you want to do it on your own, I would recommend picking up a copy of Nancy Chandler's map of Bangkok. This should give you a clear picture. It also has a good map of Chatujak market itself. Finally, it is probably the best map in terms of clarity and focusing on the attractions and areas that are most likely to appeal to visitors or foreigners newly resident in Bangkok. My wife and I keep a large stack around to give out to friends who will be visiting Bangkok for the first time. Enjoy your trip, Jim
  13. Kristin: I dug through my house today and can't seem to find my bunshik cookbook. However, this link to a ddeokbokki recipe may help. I can't vouch for this exact recipe, as I've never used it, but it should help you get rough proportions, which you can then adjust to suit your preferences. One thing I would note is that it calls for "chives". This should not mean what is ordinarily called chives in English and not what would be called puchu or kol p'a in Korean. It is what we would call a spring onion or a little larger. In Korean, this would be either ordinary p'a or dae p'a. If you were to use aonegi or naganegi, you would be just fine. Varieties of ddeokbokki are described with recipes on this page. Unfortunately, it is in Korean, so it will only be helpful to some. I don't know whether you read a little Korean or have a friend who can help. I can help with individual translation problems, but translating the top page and all its children would take me forever, given my meager skills. I'll keep looking for the cookbook and post a translation of that recipe when I find it. Good luck, Jim
  14. jrufusj

    Carpaccio of fennel

    I normally use a Japanese mandoline (Benriner) to slice the raw fennel. One way I like to serve it (still raw) is with blood orange sliced as thinly as I can (must be done by hand with knife), parmigiano reggiano also sliced very finely, a drizzle of the best olive oil you can lay your hands on, a very light sprinkling of freshly cracked black peppercorn. Do nothing else to it, except that you can snip a bit of the fennel fronds over it for garnish, but go light with that (for texture reasons). The orange should "bleed" just enough that you will get a little liquid flavor and color onto the plate without any additional dressing or garnish. This is one of my favorite starter salads. Of course, you could riff on this a thousand ways. Please let us me know if you do anything new with this that works well. Jim
  15. cwyc: When I wroter the last note, I was in Tokyo. I'm now back in Seoul in my library. The exact name of the book I recommended is Thai Hawker Food. No specific author is credited. The book was published in 1993 in Thailand by Book Promotion & Service Ltd. The telephone number for international sales is 662/375-2685~6. However, this is a very old number and may not work any more. I expect that you may have to purchase this book in Thailand. Unfortunately, I don't know the other book you have mentioned. Good luck, Jim
  16. Mmmmh!...matsutake. Think everyone's excited about the countdown to Varmint's pig-pickin'? Well, I grew up in the deep south of the US and have done my share of pig-pickin', but what I'm excited about is the countdown to the Yangyang song-i (matsutake) festival, where we will be having a matsutake-pickin'. Oh yes, we'll be tromping along the mountain searching for those delights in just one short week. If waiting weren't hard enough, a friend delivered a treasure to me on Tuesday -- three perfect matsutake, freshly picked from under the fragrant shelter of the lovely red pines of Yangyang. However, I was leaving that night to fly from Seoul to Tokyo, so I had to send them home for my wife and son to eat without me. GRRR! My four-year-old son thinks they are the greatest thing on earth (perhaps not quite up to the level of french fries, but that would be reaching). Last year I brought two matsutake home. Cathryn and I prepared one and carefully put the other away for the next night. James took one taste and immediately demanded to know where the second one was and why we were hiding it from him! Oh, the passions these little phallic-shaped delights can inspire. Counting the days, Jim
  17. cwyc: Please don't be intimidated. You'll find it's all much easier than you think. One recommendation I would make is to look for a book with a title that is something like Thai Hawker Food. If you can't find it before you get to Thailand, you should be able to find it at any Bookazine, Asia Books, or Kinokuniya bookstore in Bangkok. Asia Books is ubiquitous, so you should be close to one of their shops no matter where you may be staying. The book is slim...maybe 60 to 80 pages...white softcover with graphic art type decoration...relatively small size...but not quite small enough to fit in your back pocket. The book isn't perfect, but it does a good job of surveying the major street foods, along with giving Thai names and a few tricks for identifying what kinds of food each vendor is likely to have (by the arrangement of the vendor's stall or the apparatus the vendor uses). Once you get that far, all you really need to do is point. To be perfectly polite, you can say "Kaw (insert name of food) noi khrap." Replace the word khrap with kha if you are female. I'll not try to describe tones, as vendors will get what you mean even without the right tones, as long as you keep your vocabulary and sentence structure simple. Context goes a long way. On the other hand, when you order coffee, you would say "sai nom" to ask for milk to be put in. However, if you say it with the wrong vowel length and tones, it can also mean "shake your breasts". Don't worry, when a foreigner makes an effort at Thai, it is very much appreciated and no one will be offended. If this weren't a family forum, I'd tell you about the first time a bunch of young male Thai office workers took a business trip to Tokyo and were taught to order coffee in Japanese. That was a shocked group of young men! Enjoy, Jim
  18. Kristin: I would agree with skchai that you don't really need a recipe to make tteokbokki. From reading other posts of yours, I suspect that you have palate that is pretty well attuned to Korean flavor profiles. You should be able to tell when you've got it right. However, I can PM you a recipe if you would like. It is from a copyrighted book, so it would be more appropriate to PM it. It may take a little while as I have to dig up my bunshik cookbook and translate from Korean to English. I am flying to Tokyo tomorrow afternoon, so it may have to wait until this weekend. Please let me know if you would like me to send the recipe. Another tteokbokki variation (though not too common) is to use the same basic ingredients, but to substitute a curry sauce for the gochujang sauce. The curry sauce is similar to that used in Japanese curry rice. A friend of mine puts golbaengi (a snail-like creature) in her tteokbokki and it goes very well. Many street stalls also include whole boiled eggs in the tteokbokki. Jim
  19. New use for furikake: We've been eating up leftovers this weekend. Last night that meant cleaning the last scraps from the carcass of a chicken Cathryn had roasted earlier in the week and making a chicken salad. We didn't have enough for a plated salad, so we made sandwiches with some good whole grain bread we picked up from the little German deli outside the expat food market. We had a few potatoes that also needed to be eaten so -- as a rare treat -- I made potato chips (crisps). We almost never buy that kind of packaged crap, so we only eat them when I make them. Well, with potatoes that needed to be eaten and a dinner of sandwiches, it seemed time for the splurge. Got out the Japanese mandoline, sliced them paper thin, fried them in batches in pretty hot soy oil until they quit giving off moisture, drained them, filled a paper sack with paper towel shreds, dumped the chips in, shook them to get rid of the rest of the excess oil, shook in a little salt, SAW THE WASABI FURIKAKE BOTTLE. That did it; in went a healthy dose and shake, shake went the bag. Out came a chip. Taste...damn good. I probably don't make potato crisps more than four or five times a year, but I made another batch tonight. Guess what flavor they were. His bloatedness, Jim Edited: To add the fact that it was my wife who spotted the furikake and suggested using it. She is responsible for the fact that I ate potato chips two nights in a row!
  20. Kristin: Thanks for bringing this thread to the top of the pile. When I was reading through it, I found the tidbit quoted above. Have you tried the natto kimchi recipe yet? I am eager to know how it worked. If you liked it at all would you be willing to share? Or if that is a copyright issue, can you give me a reference to the book it was from? Was the book nihongo, hangul, or English? Thanks...you've really got me curious. Jim
  21. Aren't the namul great? One of my favorite things about eating in Korea is that in most restaurants there are so many little tastes on the table. Family meals can vary significantly, from a simple soup with maybe just rice and one kind of kimchee to a meal with any number of banchan. In a formal dining situation, there really is no limit. You are correct that the unfermented vegetables are the namul. Among the most popular are kong-namul (bean sprouts), shichimi (spinach), e-hobak (zuchinni/courgette), oi (cucumber), various types of mountain vegetables in season, and on and on and on. The supply is really limitless. As an example, yesterday's lunch was gul sundubu jjigae, accompanied with a bowl of rice with vegetables bibimbap style. One stirs the oyster tofu stew into the rice. Along with this were the following banchan (as best I recall): a type of odaeng (fish cake) with pork bits in a soy marinade, baechu (cabbage) kimchee, gochujang-marinated manul (garlic), and a couple of other things I can't recall at the moment. The tariff for the whole thing was 5,000 KRW, which is about US$4.25 at current FX rates. I normally make namul simply from the top of my head. Next time, I will either take notes as I work or I will search out some recipes for you (that may not be TNT but that at least sound in balance to me). In terms of keeping, I don't know. We've never had a chance to test it, as they always disappear so quickly...but not as fast as the oi-sobaegi kimchi (stuffed cucumber). That stuff flies out of my refrigerator like it had wings. I knew my wife had adapted to Korea the first time she served me a Marcella Hazan style roast lemon chicken, accompanied by steamed rice and oi-sobaegi. And, I must say, the combination worked very well. Jim
  22. jrufusj

    gobo

    My favorite gobo dish, I have only had once. At a sushiya in San Francisco, I once had what the itamae called tataki gobo. It was tataki in the sense of being hashed or pounded, not seared. As I recall, it was dressed with a very simple goma-ae type dressing. Absolutely wonderful. I don't know if this is a common use in Japan, but I would kill for another taste. Jim
  23. I'm not sure I would call the Korean products a "version of natto". They are fermented soybean products, but they have a completely different texture, aroma, and taste. Additionally, they are generally used in different ways. Although they are very different from miso, I would say their use more closely approximates that of miso than of natto. Doen jang is the milder of the two products, but is what you are more likely to have encountered in Japan. It is most commonly used as the base for a soup/stew called doen jang jjigae and also as a dipping condiment, either alone or combined with gochujang. I also like it spread on fish before they are grilled, something like what is sold in Japanese restaurants in Korea as misoyaki, but with a stronger taste. This use seems not to be so common in Korea, but I like to do it. The stronger product is cheong guk jang. It is smellier than doen jang. The only way I have really ever eaten it is as the base for a very strong soup. Most Koreans will only eat cheong guk jang in restaurants because the smell is impossible to get out of one's house. Neither of these products have the "slimy" texture that so offends many westerners who try natto. Question: Is it the smell or the texture that is offputting to many Kansai-bred Japanese? I suspect it is the smell, since (1) Kansai food tastes seem to me to be more subtle and (2) other "slimy" products seem to be popular throughout Japan. Incidentally, when I have shared by stashes of natto with Korean friends, more than half have not liked it because of the texture. Jim
  24. Must say I'm not really crazy about Pocky in any form, but they do make perfect cake decorations: - whiskers for the bunny cake I make my son every Easter - drawbidge planks for the elaborate castle cake he wanted for his last birthday. I've been through bunny cakes for Easter, pumpkin cakes for Halloween/October birthday, castle cakes, and dinosaur cakes. This year he wants a superhero party. Not quite sure what to do for this one, but there's a good chance it will feature Pocky. Jim
  25. No comment. Neither shall I make any comment on fresco's choice of emoticon!?!?! Jim
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