prasantrin

Yes, but in those climates, they usually have a separate kitchen (outdoors or in a separate building) for doing those types of things. And maids to deal with it. Fiddling with the grill and putting the pot outside works best for me.

Now I have a list of 4! If only my aunt would get back to me and confirm. Well, I could always go by myself. I wouldn't get to eat as much, but I could still get my dim sum! (Yes, hum soi gok is deep-fried glutinous rice balls, but the savoury one not the sweet one. I think it uses the same dough as red bean sesame balls, or whatever they're called. I love both of them!)

I'd stick some lemon pepper in there. I use a lot of lemon pepper.

I think it's limestone water. It's used in some Chinese pastries, too (I think), so you may be able to find it at a Chinese grocery store if you don't have a Thai one in your area. eta: http://www.thaifoodandtravel.com/ingredients/limestone.html

Viva City and Jade along Alexandra Rd are open at 9:00am. ← Have you tried either/both of them? Just wondering if you have a preference for either, and if either serves hom soi gok (often called "deep fried Chinese perogies). It's my favourite, and I'm going to try to bring an order of that and maybe cha siu bao along on the flight. And maybe some cocktail buns if I can get some. :-)

What's the best dim sum closest to YVR that's open around 9:30 or 10 on Saturdays? I'll be arriving around 9, and if my aunt is willing, I want one final dim sum extravaganza before returning to Japan. I will probably need to be back at the airport by noon (I'm hoping Korean Air will let me check in super early, but if not I have to be back by 12).

Hm... Korean curry rice, I would say. The ingredients such as potatoes and carrots are much smaller than those of Japanese kare, and the roux is yellowish rather than brownish. It should be less spicy than Japanese kare, right? ← It also has a lot more stuff than Japanese curry rice, I would say. I've never had kare rice (other than my own) in Japan that had that much stuff. You're usually lucky if you get 3 pieces of carrots, 4 chunks of potatoes, and 1 piece of meat.

If you buy a Japanese ginger grater, you'll never go back to anything else. Just watch your fingers. Those little nubby things are sharp! If your ginger is too old to peel with a spoon, try using a grapefruit spoon. The serrated-like edges are a little better for peeling old ginger than a smooth-sided spoon. I almost never peel ginger, though. I just use it skin and al.

Today we went to Victoria Seafood for lunch. Sticky rice in lotus leaves--served incredibly quickly (not just for our table, but for every table that ordered it). The filling is still very sparse compared to other places, and there's not a lot other than ground pork (beef?) in there. A few thin slices of Chinese sausage, but that's it. Hom soi gok--Maybe 1 tsp of filling for some very large shells. What's up with that? The shells were sweet, which I kind of like, but they were overly caramelized. They weren't burnt, but the outside was a little difficult to chew (and it stuck to my teeth). I liked it, but in terms of hom soi gok, it wasn't a good sample. Char siu cheung fun--the cheung fun is still too thick, but it's not as stiff as it has been in the past. The downfall of this dish was the char siu. It tasted heavily of citrus or some other acid. It wasn't char siu as I've ever had it before. Beef omasum (tripe) with ginger and scallions--I didn't try it, but my mother said it was flavourless. Victoria Seafood special siu mai--really it's like har gau in siu mai wrappers. I wonder of the wrappers have turmeric in them, because they're yellow-ish, and they tint the shrimp yellow. Large-ish pieces of plump shrimp, but not particularly flavourful. Service was kind of sparse at lunchtime. We went early--just after 11, and only saw staff when they were bringing out food. One family that came in around 11:30 or so waited several minutes before anyone came out to talk to them, and it's not like the staff was waiting in the kitchen to bring out food for a table (there was only one other table occupied aside from us), because when someone did come out, he was empty-handed. The adult male in the party even went back to the kitchen door to call someone, but no one heard him. I was far more impressed the last time I went to VS, but this visit was back to normal for them (which isn't very good, imo). We only had one seafood item, and I think that was a mistake on our part. I really do think we should just order seafood items here, and stay away from everything else. The only problem with that idea is that most of the things we like don't have seafood in them.

Why, why, why did you have to post about those? I was hoping to leave Winnipeg without spending my usual fortune at Lee Valley, but now I'm going to have to pick up some of those pourers! And you can always find more to buy there (hence spending a fortune.). Curses on you andiesenji! But thanks!

I ditto Sneakeater, but I would change the question a little to "How much better would it be for your friend to have your kids there?" If you think your friend (the birthday celebrant) wouldn't mind one way or the other, I'd take my friends to Per Se, and then maybe do lunch at Jean Georges with everyone, or just with your family.

Celebrities in their own minds for sure. Reality show participants in mine. ← I don't know who wrote the first quotation (can't find it anywhere), but I would think that most respectable chefs don't give a crap about who's a celebrity in the industry. Most of them probably just care about who does their jobs well. And I think most of the chefs involved in this show are "respectable". And really, if you're running a successful restaurant, how much time do you have to watch a crappy reality show about "chefs", most of whom aren't that successful at cooking? ← It's from post #260. The contestants involved in this show are chefs or cooks. It's the celebrity part that irks - because they're far more known for participating on this show than anything else. ← Yes, I'm aware the participants in the regular Top Chefs are trained in cooking, but I wonder how many of them would achieve any amount of legitimate success in the food world without the show. Like I said, most of the respectable chefs on TCM wouldn't give a hoot about people in the business who attained their status via TC rather than through their skill in the kitchen (and TC really has little to do with real skill in the kitchen--or so is implied by an anecdotal conversation between Stephanie Izard and Rick Bayless).

I thought the Vietnamese also had a balut-like egg. I vaguely remember seeing Bourdain eating one in Vietnam on Cook's Tour way back when.

I had a Canadian FoF today, and it was horrible! The bun was really sweet, and there wasn't enough tartar sauce to compensate. The bun wasn't steamed, either, but was dry. Plus the cheese was oddly strong--it tasted almost like a slice of cheddar. The actual fish tasted very strongly of old fish, too. Not a good thing. I don't know who they're getting their supplies from now, but it ain't good! The only positive was that the fish was relatively freshly fried, so it was still crispy. Even then, I'll stick to FoFs in Japan, and will probably never be able to eat at McD's in Canada again. (not necessarily a bad thing) ETA: And it cost me a whopping $3.46 including taxes!!! What's up with that?

Not a new and exciting flavour, or even a fruit flavour, but I tried their root beer the other day. I suspect their root beer is made the same people who bottle A&W, while Safeway's store brand is made by the people who do Barq's (maybe even Hires). PC's root beer is quite sweet, and lacks complexity. I prefer Safeway's store brand (but would happily drink PC if nothing else were around--it's only 89cents for 2L, after all!).

Back to hugs and kisses. . . In Winnipeg there's a liquidator candy store called Leader General Jobbers. They've got hugs for $1.50/227g, kisses for the same price, and also kisses in a 900-ish gram bag for about $4. If you look up "liquidators" or "jobbers" in your yellow pages, you may find a similar candy store in your area.

How do you feel about quiche to go along with sandwiches? You could make it as individual tartlets (if doing that, I'd probably buy tartlet shells). It just adds something a little different from sandwiches, and it still goes along well with salads. Plain cheese quiche tends to do well with provincial-types in my area. You could do half cheese, and half spinach and cheese for the more "adventurous" types. And if you do individual tartlets, you can just freeze whatever is left for snacks later on!

Thanks! I was hoping just to order online, but I guess I'll have to just make the trek out there (it's quite far). I also found some aluminum bars at Canadian Tire. I might try to use those--only $5 for each 36" (about) bar, but they're not very heavy. I might have to weigh them down a bit if I go with those. eta: The bar looks like this http://www.fdsons.com/solid-aluminum-angle...62-pi-4143.html . It also comes in steel. Bad idea?

Celebrities in their own minds for sure. Reality show participants in mine. ← I don't know who wrote the first quotation (can't find it anywhere), but I would think that most respectable chefs don't give a crap about who's a celebrity in the industry. Most of them probably just care about who does their jobs well. And I think most of the chefs involved in this show are "respectable". And really, if you're running a successful restaurant, how much time do you have to watch a crappy reality show about "chefs", most of whom aren't that successful at cooking?

Huh? What and where? ← Perhaps there's some confusion, unless he's opened another one. It's on Pennsylvania Ave in Washington, DC.

I'm a relatively adventurous eater, and I'm Asian, but I probably would not have touched those dishes, either. In my experience at mixed potlucks (i.e. potlucks attended by a random mix of people from different backgrounds and ethnicities), the Asian dishes pretty much always suck unless they're made by people from the same countries the dishes are from. This doesn't mean your dishes sucked, but I would have just assumed they did, so I would have avoided them. That being said, I might have taken some shrimp, because free shrimp are always good. Spring rolls that aren't made a la minute generally aren't (the skin gets tough and dry) and noodles kind of get dry plus they start sticking together, and that's never fun to eat at a potluck, so those definitely would have been avoided by me. And even raves from other people would probably not have enticed me to try them. I once let raves about someone's makizushi encourage me to try one, and I ended up having to suffer a biteful of the absolute worst sushi I'd ever had. Everyone else liked it, but it was really horrible (having lived in Japan for 11 years, I think I'm a relatively good judge of bad sushi. Maybe not of spectacular sushi, but definitely of bad sushi). Potato chips are always safe at a potluck. Plus fried food is always good. It's a rule.

Assuming it's for 12 muffins, there are tons of websites out there that offer pan conversions and hints for baking. I'd start with a 9" loaf pan, and bake it for however long a standard loaf cake bakes.

OK, so I get the square not the tube square? The measurement are a little weird--for example, if I get grade 202T43, I could get 1.5", but it doesn't tell me the rest of the dimensions (I'm assuming the 1.5" refers to height). Does it matter what grade I get? Can I just get the cheapest kind? It's so confusing being a girl! (I just set the women's lib movement back a few decades. . . )

So, I've been looking at the Metal Supermarkets site because I want some caramel rulers made. I looked at what they have under "stainless steel", but how do I know which kind to get? I'm supposed to choose the Profile/Shape, the Grade, and the size, but I'm not quite sure what to get. Judging from the above, I need at least 3/8"x1"x40", but what shape is a long bar? They've got: ANGLE, CHANNEL, EXPANDED, FLAT, HEXAGON, PIPE, PLATE, ROUND, SHEET, SQUARE, THREADED ROD, TREAD PLATE, TUBE RECT, TUBE ROUND, TUBE SQR. I thought it might be a tube rectangle, but looking at the sizes available, I think I'm wrong. And would they polish off the burrs for me? I don't think I have anything I could do it with unless I can use a nail file. . .

Would he really? He continues... Well, maybe not ALL chefs are degenerate and irrational, but...I'm sure some are, Dale. ← What an a**hole. The differences between Dale and Michael are further seen by Michael's comments (bolding is mine). Dale doesn't have half the experience Michael has, yet Michael still shows him the respect of calling him "Chef".