prasantrin

I don't always fluff, and I don't think our rice was always fluffed when I was growing up, either. I think it was more out of laziness than anything else. When I was growing up, we didn't have a lot of leftover rice, so fluffing wasn't as important. It's more important to fluff (in my opinion) when you're going to have leftover rice, otherwise it cools into a hard mass. Not so good for making fried rice. But if you're just eating it right away, you can always just fluff your own serving when it gets to your dish. (Growing up we didn't use small bowls for rice like Japanese and Chinese people do. We usually ate off a regular dinner plate or a largish bowl. Were I to use a small bowl, I'd be more likely to fluff. It's easier to get the rice into a small bowl of the grains are sort of separated already).

Can you fit a regular-sized cupcake in your mouth, even without icing? If you can, you must have a pretty large bite.

That's one style of hot chocolate. It's not going to be everyone's favorite. Certainly not mine. I shall now add "For me" in every one of my posts to make it clear my statements are my opinion and not worldwide fact. Still, milk or water + cocoa = hot cocoa. It ain't hot chocolate. That's not just my opinion. ETA: More eG topics for hot chocolate/hot cocoa ideas. For me , there are some really good ones in there.

I think if you really wanted to get rid of the seeds, you'd have to puree the blackberries separately and then put them through a chinois or some other fine mesh strainer. A lot more work than desired when you just want a quick smoothie, but it's either that or skip them altogether. Or you could puree and strain, and then freeze them in ice cube trays. Then you could just pull out whatever you needed whenever you needed it, and the work only needs to be done once in a while.

It's easier to eat--you can break off a piece of cupcake without getting icing all over your hands. It's easier to box up--no worries about icings rubbing off on inappropriate cupakes. That's my story and I'm stickin' to it!

Interestingly, the Spectrum website has a recipe search function. They've got recipes for all their edible products on their website. Not a lot, but certainly enough to get you started if you're wondering what to do with it.

The best hot chocolate is the stuff made with ganache. Fine Cooking did a ganache-based hot chocolate a year or two (or more) ago. It was awesome. To me, recipes that are cocoa-based aren't hot chocolate, but hot cocoa. It's a different animal in terms of richness and flavour. Chocolate and coffee makes a mocha. I do like flavourings, though. Peppermint hot chocolate. Mmmmmmm. . .

At the Neapolitan-style pizza places I go to, the pizzas are made one-by-one. It's not like they form 12 rounds in succession, then top each one and bake. They form one round, top it, and put it in the wood-burning oven. Then they do the next one, etc. etc. Places with smaller ovens only bake one at a time (which means if everyone at the table ordered pizza, the last person may get theirs just as the first person is finishing), but places with larger ovens will add another pizza while the first one is cooking, etc. I've never seen more than maybe 3 in the oven at any on time, though. They need to keep an eye on them and rotate them as need be, and they bake very quickly, so you can't have too many in there at once. My favourite pizza place only bakes pizzas for 2 minutes or less, so they only do pizzas one at a time. None of the places I go to use cornmeal. They all use flour. A lot of flour.

Assuming it's uncooked rice, it should last a long time. But you may find it cooks up harder than newer rice. When that happens, I compensate by adding more water than I usually use (I usually use about 1:1.1 rice:water, but with older rice I might use 1:1.25 or so).

Thanks! I'll need to wait until I have need for more baking stuff before I place another order. It's amazing how much prices differ between Tomizawa and Kikuya--some things are much cheaper at Tomizawa (dried cranberries--Y197/100g there vs. Y630/250g at Kikuya) but other are much cheaper at Kikuya (frozen cranberries--Y397/250g at Kikuya vs Y336/100g! at Tomizawa). Hopefully I'll find some around here. I vaguely remember seeing some at Tokyu Hands, and maybe the Hankyu depachika, but it could just be my imagination (like the quinoa was).

I use a very wet dough, and I found the best way to get the pizza off my peel was to prepare the pizza in as short a time period as possible, as close to the time of putting it in the oven as possible. I don't start preparing the pizza until I'm sure the oven is at the right temperature. Then I quickly make my round (looks more oblong most of the time) on my very well-floured peel, spread on some tomato puree, and put on my toppings (usually just olives, capers, and sliced fresh mozzarella). All that is done in fewer than 5 minutes and by then, the wet dough hasn't had enough time to suck in all the flour from the peel, and it can still slide. If it doesn't, I lift up the edge of part of the dough and blow some flour under. I think the key is not to let the pizza sit on your peel for too long. The longer it sits, the wetter the flour or cornmeal will become, and the less likely your dough will slide off with ease.

Balkan-style yoghurt is similar to Greek-style--thicker and richer than usual yoghurt. The comments made here about Greek yoghurt would also apply to Balkan. BTW, you should check out the ingredients of different Astro yoghurts. If their website is to be believed, I'd stay away from the 2%--it's the least "pure". (Oddly, the 0% has fewer ingredients--just skim milk, cream, and active bacterial cultures. But I'm thinking someone made a mistake and mixed up the ingredients for 0% and 2%).

Perhaps that's why they say it's a "unique straining process". They also say it takes 4 pounds of milk to make 1 pound of yoghurt. If you're making your own yoghurt, try straining your yoghurt till it's 1/4 the weight of the milk you started with. Also consider the quality of the milk you're using to make your homemade yoghurt. Regular supermarket milk can be pretty crappy in flavour, but you may not notice until you start drinking better quality milk. I found that out, and now I can't go back to buying the cheap stuff on sale.

Is wheat bran readily available in Japan? I've been searching, and am having trouble finding it. I remember using it in my baking class, but haven't seen it since. I've even searched Kikuya, hoping they'd have it so I could tack it onto my order, but no luck!

Greek yogurt is just strained yogurt. Think along the lines of labneh, but perhaps not strained as much. From the Fage website:

If you can get your hands on unpasteurized cream, try making butter from that.

I wonder if Japanese caramels are more similar to what you're looking for. They're not sticky at all, and are very tender in a melt-in-your-mouth way. Maybe you can try looking for a recipe for nama-caramel and see if it gets you close to what you want.

#3 and 4 are likely the reasons. Assuming your friend was with the JET Programme, a lot has changed since then, even in rural areas. You don't mention where you're planning on travelling, and what those "handful of places at which [you'd] like to eat that seem to be English-free" are. It would be helpful to know those things, so people who are living here now, or who have more recent travel experience here, can give you more accurate advice. Unless you're travelling to a place where absolutely no foreigners ever visit (and there are few of those now), you're not going to be as much of an anomaly as you may think, and you may not have as many problems as you think. (Reading Japanese--even katakana and hiragana--would be very helpful, as would a basic food vocubulary--if you can't read the menu, you can always ask the waitstaff to read it for you, so if you can understand the meaning, you'll be fine. I do that sometimes when the kanji is too difficult for me.)

For those of you based in Singapore, the White Card is now available! Lucky you, you can get 50% off dining at all of these restaurants: What's the catch? You only get 50% off if only 2 people are dining. The more people in your party, the smaller your discount is. Three people only get 33% off. Four people only 25%. Five or more? Only 15%! And if you're dining solo--then you only get 10% off. Still sound like a deal to you? Well, it also costs SG$500 plus tax per year, and you can only use it in conjunction with a Mastercard. (Funny thing is, they accept both MC and Visa for purchase of the membership.) I've only been to Cafe Iguana, but if that's the level of restaurant involved, can you really get your money's worth with this card? I found out about the card through the blog of one of people involved with the card. He writes: The launch party was in July. Sounds to me like he's using his blog to advertise because the card's not doing so well. Cheesy.

Untosted? In the pictures? What pictures? むきごま = Dehulled sesame seeds, right? Ah--no hulls? I was going to get these むきごま to make sesame paste. The other kind they sell are just labelled 白ごま and they looked a little more browned, so I thought they might be toasted while むきごま might be untoasted. I guess I'll have to get my sesame seeds elsewhere. I don't need 1 kg of sesame seeds, and the 白ごま only comes in 1 kg packages!

New questions. . . I haven't made my sesame caramels, yet, but am now buying supplies. Should I just get ground black sesame seeds and add those, or should it really be a paste (i.e. should the oil have separated from the seeds)? If it should be a paste, is there any reason I couldn't use other nut or seed pastes in my caramels? I'm thinking of adding some hazelnut praline paste to my order. I think it would be smashing in caramels, but it's also expensive. That means I can't afford to waste any in trial-and-error experiments.

Are むきごま just untoasted sesame seeds? Or are they different somehow that regular goma? (In the pictures, they just look untoasted, but otherwise look the same.)

I was talking to my co-workers about this, and they think it's weird. They say you're better off learning how to say those things, then pulling out the card and pointing if the staff really can't understand you. They also say it's hard for Japanese people just to choose a bunch of dishes for you, because they'll be too concerned about whether you'll really like them or not. And a lot of places won't do omakase, plus some places that do, will only do them for regulars (with whose tastes they're familiar). Perhaps instead of "omakase", you can use the word "osusume" which is more like "recommended" or sometimes "daily special". You can just say something like "osusume wa?" and then they'll mention a bunch of dishes and you can say, "OK. Zembu." ("OK, everything"--yes, Japanese people can understand "OK") Crappy Japanese, I know, but most Japanese don't seem to expect much from furreners. I can usually get away with something along those lines. And I've never been to a restaurant of any kind (high-end, low-end, mid-range) where the staff has insisted on a furrener using a fork rather than chopsticks. I look Japanese, but a lot of my friends don't, and they are never given the option. Perhaps the person was eating food that is normally eaten with a fork or spoon? (Like curry rice, for example)

I decided not to make mashed potatoes with my last to kita akari potatoes. I'm going to do Cook's Illustrated roast potatoes with them. And then I'm going to make french fries. If they make good baked potatoes, they should make good french fries, too. . . right? (Even though I vaguely remember having the oil boil-over of the century from making french fries out of kita akari potatoes, I'm going to try again. I'll just be more careful next time.) Better buy more before they're all gone!

Has anyone tried making their own tahini (not taratoor, but tahini ie. sesame paste) from scratch, yet? Questions-- Toasted or untoasted seeds? If toasted, lightly toasted or heavily toasted? olive oil or sesame oil? food processor or blender? My food processor is an 11-cupper, so I assume I'd have to make a couple of cups in order to make it worthwhile? My blender kind of sucks, so I'd like to avoid using it. But I can make do if I have to. Can't grind it by hand because I've got tennis elbow up the wazoo. About tahini in a jar--how long would it last at room temperature? I'm talking about the commercially available stuff, not homemade. I've got a two year old jar in my cupboard that has been opened (about two years ago, actually). Room temperature in Japan, however, ranges throughout the year from about 10C to 35 or 40C. I'm afraid to taste it--I hate the taste of stale sesame oil!