prasantrin

Anyone familiar with cooking schools in Kuala Lumpur? I'm looking specifically for learning to cook Malaysian food. So far I've found the Westin Hotel and Mandarin Oriental Hotel both give cooking classes, but I think I'd prefer something a bit more homely. That leaves me with two choices. One is Carana (also called LaZat), but I can't get to their website without a trojan horse trying to sneak its way into my computer. That eliminates them off the bat, in my opinion. The second choice is Rebung. Rebung is tempting, anyway, because it includes lunch at the restaurant, and I read Tepee's account of a Ramadan get-together held there a couple of years ago. I think the food would probably be very good, though I can't tell from the website if it's more a demonstration class or a real cooking class. I'd prefer a real cooking class if possible, but I'm not completely adverse to just being lazy and eating the fruits of someone else's labour. Are there any other schools that are recommended? Also, we're thinking of going up to Cameron Highlands Dec. 31-Jan. 1. It seemed too long a drive to be done as a day trip, but even with two days and one night, would it be too quick a trip? Best saved for a more leisurely visit? My mother can't really do any trekking or hiking, so it's not like we need time for that. But we do like to relax whenever possible. Any food or accommodation recs for that area?

Has anyone been to Antonio's Fine Dining in Tagaytay? It made the Miele list (not that I have a high opinion of that list) of top Asian restaurants. The blogs I've read seem to like it, but I'm still wary... Would it be worth a trip out to Tagaytay from Manila?

There aren't so many Singapore-based posters here. If you're looking for meet-up type events, you might want to try the forums at makansutra.com. They have meetings every month or so. I'll be in Singapore for a few days in December/January. If you find anything new and exciting before then, please post about it! The only place on my list so far is a Buddhist vegetarian place near Maxwell Road hawker stalls. Sounds strange, but they make a very good mock fish head soup that my mother wants to investigate further.

Has anyone made the Double Apple Bundt Cake, yet? I've only got homemade (not by me) apple butter, not store-bought, which I think the recipe calls for (I've only got a recipe off the internet, because my book is back in Canada). It's pretty thick, and I'd like to use it, instead. Am I asking for problems? I don't know how many of you follow Dorie's blog, but she's in SE Asia now with her son, so I'm hoping one of you will give advice in her stead!

Isn't it fall? Curried salad sound fabulous, I'll try that! ← nakji, remember your miso kabocha mashed thing? Is the kabocha supposed to be mashed when hot? And is the dish supposed to be hot, too? I steamed some kabocha the other day, thinking I'd make it, but I never got around to the mashing and adding other ingredients part, so now it's sitting in my fridge awaiting its miso-parmesan-butter glory.

Those spring onion pancakes! I'm going to have to try Crystal Jade in Singapore. I really really need some of those pancakes! What are baked Mooli buns?

I like mixing ketchup and mayonnaise as a condiment for french fries. And when I was a kid, we loved mixing worcestershire sauce and ketchup. We ate it with steak. I haven't done that in decades. I really must buy some worcestershire sauce.

A Canadian company, Paderno, makes a salad spinner with a turn handle. I haven't tried it, but in my experience Paderno makes very good quality products (I have a little stainless steel pan that gives the most even browning I've ever seen on a grilled cheese sandwich). The yellow one is on sale for $20 (Canadian), but the other colours are $38. That's an awful lot of money for a salad spinner!

It's not a mandolin, I think, but something like this thing. Awfully expensive, but would be fun to use. The Japanese Benriner website shows the one at Ming's Pantry, and another type called Cook Help. There are pictures of both types in use, and they seem to be identical in the final product.

Both ketchup and dill pickle chips can be found across Canada. Just make a short trip up north and you can get your fill. (Not sure about the particular brand you had, though.) Pringles has dill pickle chips. They were an "extreme" flavour, and they were very mild compared to pretty much any Canadian brand of dill pickle chips. I thought they sucked, actually.

Fruitcake would depend on weight and what's in it--quality and type of fruits and nuts. A fruitcake with pecans as the nut, for example, should be more expensive than one with walnuts. http://www.fruitcakedelights.com/product is a Canadian website with a good range of products (different fruits, nuts, sizes, etc.) that will give you a good idea of what you can charge for your product. You may already be doing this, but if I were to buy fruitcake, I would really appreciate an assortment of small loaves that one can buy as a set. Something like this http://www.collinstreet.com/pages/miniature_pecan_cakes.

First calculate the cost of your ingredients plus overhead. Then take into consideration what the market will bear. Then price accordingly. What's reasonable in your area may be different from what's reasonable in other areas. In Winnipeg, for example, people are very well known for being cheap. You could charge a lot more for a tray of cookies in Toronto or Vancouver than you could in Winnipeg. Or so I've been told...

Like others, I've been looking forward to this book for a long time, but after seeing her recipe for pound cake and reading some of the ingredients for the pumpkin pie crust, I'm not sure how useful the book will be to people living outside the United States. Wondra flour and butter-flavoured shortening certainly aren't easily found where I live (Japan). Are a lot of the recipe in the book like that?

Awww! I'd have liked to have thought that first, but given it was me, it was more likely I was doing something wrong! Good to know I was almost right in my eating-style, so I guess I'm not quite well-educated, but at least not uneducated! I did put my mustard on the bread rather than on the pâté, and I ate the one teeny tiny cornichon in one bite, but I also tore my bread into bite-sized pieces and spread some pâté on each piece. It was lovely. I wish I had bought some to take home with me! I also had little cups of pickled shredded carrots and some ratatouille-like vegetable dish which I ate as is. Would it to have been terribly gauche to put a bit of those on my pâté, too? So in the case of Mille-feuille, it's OK to be messy. Growing up I was never allowed to be a messy eater, so it almost goes against my public nature to let it get so messy (though messiness seems to be unavoidable!). Like olivier, though, when at home alone, I like to eat millefeuille out of hand so it smooshes all over the place and I can lick my fingers after. It's sort of my attempt at almost-middle-aged rebellion.

Oh my gosh, you have a good memory! It was from Smithy's blog way back in 2005! I remember the poor look in her dog's eyes. He really wanted some of that lamb!

I think €85.00 is a very very good price if the meal at l'Auberge Basque is comparable in size and quality to what Takazawa prepares at Aronia. His sets are priced at Y16 000, Y20 000, and Y24 000 at his restaurant (roughly €128, €160, €193). An acquaintance who has eaten at Aronia several times (and has dined at other starred restaurants around the world) has stated the food is most definitely Michelin 3-star quality. I've tried to get a table at Aronia, but they do not accept reservations for parties of one. If a picture is worth 1000 words, looking at the gallery on his website http://www.aroniadetakazawa.com/creation/gallery/index.html would give you more of an understanding of the type of food he creates. (the website is almost entirely in Japanese, though there used to be some English, so it may pop up again)

Both Schmear baby schmear! Oh magawd Only if the mustard is really aoili. ← OK, so I can put it on my bread, but if I use the mustard, I should put it on the pâté not on the bread. I was just wondering because last weekend, I had lunch at a little bistro in Kyoto. They only had one set lunch which included Pâté de Campagne. I was the only one eating it with my bread, while all the other customers (Japanese) were cutting it in chunks and dipping it in their mustard. I thought I was doing something wrong because the one French customer was looking at me funny. Or maybe he was just eyeing my table because he had to wait a long time for one. Now that stumps me. More puzzlers please, prasantrin, this could be the topic that launched a thousand disputes. ← I do my best to remain controversial.

I'm not sure where to ask these questions, but during my search this seemed to be the best fit... How does one eat Pâté de Campagne? Do you cut off a bit and smear it on some bread? Or do you cut it in chunks, as with a piece of meat? If you are provided with mustard, what do you do with it? If you are eating the pâté as a chunk of meat, do you dip it in the mustard? If you smear it on some bread, do put mustard on the bread first? And how about Mille-feuille? I was taught to stick a fork in it, use a spoon to slice a piece off, then use the fork to push the piece onto my spoon and eat. I've yet to successfully slice off a piece without squooshing all the filling out using this method, however, so I'm looking for an alternative. Can I tip my Mille-feuille over onto its side and then do the stick/slice/push method?

I have another very simplistic theory Magictofu might like... England has always been very much a class-based society. I think the "bland food" associated with England is really the food of the working and lower-middle classes who really couldn't afford many luxuries in food. But if you look at the food of the upper and middle (solidly middle) classes (Jane Grigson and Elizabeth David fit here, I think--at least according to wiki), you'll find better eating. The same could be said of the food in many other class-based societies.

Y300 in total?? Holy crap! At my local Coop today, I spied a box of 8 pears or 9 for Y4000!! I passed... I've got to spend more time in the country!

Have you tried Bolero? Marco Polo is much touted, but I actually prefer Bolero (both iced and hot). At one point, I was trying to work my way through all of the Mariage Freres flavoured teas. I got stuck on Jamaique which, for some reason, was never in stock.

is right! I can't find any info about how they chose the restaurants they did. Do they explain their choices at all? OK, I did a more thorough search. It's not the Gault Millau Guide, but the Miele Guide, which from what I can tell is somewhat less prestigious. Their system for voting is not too far off from those lists that regularly rank The Olive Garden as one of the top Italian restaurants in the US (only people with Visa cards can vote???). It's really a shame, because considering the people involved, it could have been so much more respectable rather than just a popularity contest.

That could be a good excuse for you to make all the recipes scaled down to test them before making the book. Canadian Living has some very good recipes. They would still be worth adding to your cookbook (if you ever make one), I think, since some of them are very hard to find (anyone have a Canadian Living recipe for Sausage Ratatouille from the late '80s?). Just alter a few things and they're as good as yours! I think most people's "family" recipes were probably once found in print, anyway.

I've been doing research for an upcoming (not too upcoming) trip to the Philippines and found Table for Three, Please. The blog is OK, but more interestingly to eG readers, it notes that jumanggy recently won a "Best Blog" award in the food category at the Philippine Blog Awards for No Special Effects! I've also been reading Dessert Comes First and MarketManila--both of which have been mentioned here before. And (former? current? eG member) Simon Majumdar's Eat My Globe and Dos Hermanos for additional research (he has a lot of info on Asian countries from his around-the-world eating extravaganza).

As I know it, a dry caramel is made by melting sugar without adding any liquids. Are you looking for something else? Or is "carmel" an entirely different product?