prasantrin

We've been using corn flake crumbs to coat pork chops for at least 30 years, probably more. I remember we used to buy them in a box, but I don't know if they still sell them. If I could get a hold of Nestum cereal mix or something similar, I'd make cereal prawns.

Are we talking ingredients specifically, or other foods, too? If I can include other foods, I say sausage rolls. Sausage rolls are perfect, but they're not as common as they once were, at least not in my part of Canada. (And I don't mean pigs in the blanket, I mean real sausage rolls made with sausage meat and pastry.)

India is so large, and there are so many styles of yoga (and cooking), that if you want to combine yoga and cooking workshops, it would be easier to find the yoga workshop first, and then look for the cooking. Search out yoga retreats for the style of yoga you do, and then look for cooking classes in those areas. For example, I do ashtanga, so I'd want to go to Mysore. A search shows there are at least two possibilities for cooking classes in the area.

I have more than one co-worker with annoying issues about food. I've already mentioned the one who won't eat stuffed or crusted things that are sweet (no cream puffs, no pies, etc.), onions, raw fish (we live in Japan), mayonnaise, etc. But have I mentioned the other one who won't eat raw fish (again, we live in Japan), anything liver-related (no pate, etc.) or other "foreign foods"? Now, if you don't like liver or raw fish, fine. But the latter person (who is close to 10 years older than I) insists on making noises whenever she sees or is faced with the prospect of being offered such foods, "Raw fish? Yeccccchhhhhhh! Bleccccchhhhhhh!" even if people around her are already eating them. Grow up. If you don't like a food, don't eat it. But don't spoil other people's enjoyment of their meals just because you're to f***ing childish to keep your thoughts to yourself. And why would you come to a country where you don't like most of the food? As James Michener said, "If you reject the food, ignore the customs, fear the religion and avoid the people, you might better stay at home."

Natto and kimchi? I've never thought or heard of that combination. I don't think I'd be able to do it for breakfast, because my students would complain too much. :lol: Brown rice is a fermented food?

Another odd thing about tonkatsu restaurants--I'm only given a lemon wedge if I've ordered the ebi plate or the combo tonkatsu-ebi plate. I love lemon with my tonkatsu, so I kind of miss it when it's not there.

It's just a leafy lettuce (ie. more like romaine than head lettuce) that's green, but becomes kind of reddish brown closer to the edges. Adds a bit of colour to an otherwise dull plate. If you google images for "sunny lettuce", you can see some pictures.

At restaurants which specialize in katsu, at leat the ones I've been to, the plate is always very simple. No sunny lettuce or parsely. No cucumber. Definitely no tomatoes. Just cabbage and the katsu of whatever type, plus your rice and miso soup. Karashi is usually in a little bowl, free for the taking (I never use it), as are tsukemono and the sauce(s) for the katsu and the dressing for the cabbage. I suspect speciality katsu places don't feel the need to dress up their plates, especially since the focus should be the katsu, not the prettiness of the plate. How does Wako compare to Katsukura, I wonder? Wako isn't very common in my part of Japan (mostly in suburban malls or the like), so I've not tried it. But I've been going to Katsukura for more than a decade and it was my first experience with really good katsu, so it has a special position in my katsu rankings.

Sausage rolls are the perfect savoury bite-sized snack. You can make them small so they really are bite-sized, but you can make them larger, too, if you want to offer them something more substantial. I use store-bought puff pastry, ground pork, shallots if I can get them, and penzey's breakfast sausage seasoning. Sometimes I add cheese (omg--it's soooo good! Especially when the cheese melts out and makes those crispy cheese webs all around), or chopped asparagus or red peppers if I want to give pretense of making "healthful" sausage rolls.

I've wanted to read the book for a few years now, but just haven't gotten around to it. I read her blog posts about it, and also saw her TED video (she was a pretty good speaker, though she shifts around a bit too much). A couple of years ago, I had thought to visit some of the "fortune cookie" makers in Fushimi when Peter Green and I went to Fushimi Inari Shriine, but when I saw the cotton candy, I plum forgot about it. Here's another discussion about the book.

The blog Cannelle et Vanille has a recipe for churros with spiced chocolate bisque based on Spanish hot chocolate and churros. It calls for eggs rather than cornstarch or some other thickener. I think the bisque looks deliciously rich, and would be worth a try in the "perfect hot chocolate" quest. eta: it's more a custard than hot chocolate, but I think it's runnier than most custards, so could still pass as hot chocolate.

That's what haggis looks like? It doesn't look nearly as bad as I imagined. Where does one get haggis in Japan? I actually have a can of haggis that a former co-worker brought me from Scotland. It might even be vegetarian haggis (I can't remember now). If you're ever in the mood for a trade, I'll send if you a can of haggis if you send me some pork pies!

Why? If he wants to give out the recipes for the dishes at his restaurant (and if you read both articles thoroughly, you'd know that the rules are for the servers at the restaurant he's about to open), then he can certainly direct his staff to offer recipes to diners.

Here's the recipe. Your link didn't work because it had a few extra characters after the .html. The curry powder is most likely a yellow curry powder--like madras curry powder or similar. It's similar to yellow curry paste without the wet ingredients. My dad usedd it for certain southern-influenced dishes. Here's an example of a recipe of madras curry powder. If you do a search for "Thai yellow curry powder" or "Malaysian yellow curry powder" you might find a recipe specific to those regions, but madras or similar would do fine.

I am soooo stealing the pumpkin idea! I often freeze cooked pumpkin, anyway, but I never thought to use them in smoothies! Do you use them frozen or do you thaw them before throwing them in the blender? Do you cook your other vegetables? I'm thinking of the spinach in particular, since I know cooked spinach is more bioavailable than raw. Any preferences as to ratios? I don't want it too spinachy, but I want to add enough for a good dose of nutrients. I'm sort of afraid of adding vegetables to my smoothies. I want to do it because it will help me add more vegetables into my diet, but I'm afraid of it sucking. Vegetables are expensive in Japan, as are dairy products, so the whole vegetables in smoothies thing could be a very expensive disaster for me!

Actually, that's a cultural thing...my husband uses his knife an just another means of getting food into his mouth - he uses it in conjunction with his fork in some sort of crazy and occasionally frightening way. That's the way he was raised. Oh well...as he always says, "I'm European, we're wierd that way". Even in Europe, that style still falls somewhere in the lower half of the table manners continuum. It's not just a cultural thing, but a socio-economic thing.

Do you think apples would provide enough sweetness to avoid adding sugar altogether? I need it to off-set the tartness of both the yoghurt (I use plain unsweetened) and the frozen strawberries (which are never sweet). I actually have an apple handy (rare for me), but I ran out of frozen strawberries, so it'll be awhile before I can try it. I don't like to add too much liquid to my smoothies. That's probably why I have to cut the strawberries up so much (they're pretty big strawberries, to!). Well, that and because my Japanese blender is pretty crappy (as most Japanese blenders are). For creaminess, you can also try psyllium. That's the fiber-y stuff I couldn't remember the name of earlier. It might provide a different creaminess than what you're looking for, but I've noticed when I use it in frozen smoothies, it makes the smoothie seem creamier (when in fact, it's probably just more mucousy).

From what I remember of the demo I saw, it wasn't just used for heating the soup, but you put all the ingredients in, blended it and heated it at the same time. It's much more efficient than cooking all the ingredients, then transferring them to the blender, then putting them back in the pot to heat again (if necessary). I bought a VitaMix last summer so I could make smoothies, but I never got around to taking it out of the box. When I return to Canada, I will experiment more. I'm hoping it will pulverize frozen strawberries (the big ones from Costco) without my having to cut them into small pieces first. A lot of people seem to use banana to help sweeten smoothies without adding sugar. Is there any other fruit that could serve the same function? I hate bananas in my smoothies (generally I hate ripe bananas), but I'd like to avoid adding sweeteners. I've just been doing strawberries and yoghurt with a bit of protein powder and fibery stuff, plus a tablespoon or two of sugar. About adding vegetables--should you cook them first? Or cook some but not others?

I'd rather get a McD's hamburger with a side salad and small orange juice than a subway sandwich. Equally fast, and generally more accessible (I don't see subway around much anymore--are they closing up shop in Japan?). I stand by my original claim which I can't quite remember word-for-word, but it was something like: I prefer none--subway's fillings are full of substandard flavourless ingredients. Although if I were really starving and in the middle of nowhere with the only option a Subway, I'd probably get the veggie with cheese. It's generally the least evil choice.

I think you need to be more descriptive. Pork in garlic sauce could be any number of dishes, especially since different regions may have different names for the same dish. I'd never have guessed that this dish would have been spicy, and I was going to point you do the pork in honey garlic sauce tutorial. One useful thing to do is to ask the restaurant staff what the Chinese name of the dish is. It would also help to ask if it's Cantonese, Mandarin, etc. I do that a lot, so I can look up recipes online.

For failed halvah attempts, there's a place in Winnipeg that makes halvah gelato. It's amazing! Try mixing it into ice cream, or using it as an ice cream topping.

Sashimi is a method of preparation for proteins specifically (usually fish, but also chicken, horse "basashi"). To use the word "sashimi" with regards to tomatoes would be pretentious at best. That being said, when borrowings of words occur in language, meanings can also change. In that sense, "tomato sashimi" could be acceptable, as could "coq au vin" made with a hen rather than a rooster.

Tonkatsu sauce is Japanese, not Chinese.

You can start by browsing through this forum to look for topics which interest you. There's one about ingredients that may be useful to you, as it will help you identify things in your grocery store. hzrt8w's home cooking tutorials are excellent resources. You can find the index here There are also threads about recommended Chinese cookbooks that may help you.

Did you notice the way Jennifer held her cutlery and put food in her mouth? Jayzus! Tom's cutlery-holding style is actually pretty common. I see it a lot, unfortunately. At least he doesn't keep the same hold when he puts the food in his mouth. I've seen that, too. I guess even top chefs are only required to know how to cook the food properly, not how to eat it.