v. gautam

There is a leap of logic being made here that itself may be open to more self-doubt or scrutiny: if it ïs "processed" [not defined here] synthesized [ how, to what degree], or "comes out of a can/spray device" it MUST necessarily be unhealthy/inferior to a "natural". possibly fresh, product. This is an a priori judgment. In many cases this could be true, but not necessarily. There is a product sold as ''liquid aminos" lovingly used by a certain group of people who shun crytallized MSG and allegedly suffer from scratchy throats, thirst etc. & shun MSG in their diet. They are buying into the biggest bunch of nonsense, as they are consuming exactly the same glutamate, in brown liquid rather than white crystal. The same applies with people currently purchasing demerara cane sugar, and natural cane sugar. If consuming sugar is not appropriate for their personal physical condition, it will not matter matter if they consume sugar express-mailed from Heaven itself! There is a sensible judgment to be made: not all processed foods are the Satan's playing field, nor are all additives, many of which are extraordianarily positive. I have no relationship with the food industry, but am a plant membrane biochemist who deals with aspects of plant defense reactions as well. From that viewpoint, I can assure you that "natural" foods, including healthy foods like cabbages and carrots are not necessarily innocuous, from a human health POV. As soon as they are harvested and stored, they think themselves injured (in certain instances) and produce minute but still significant quantities [when added up over a lifetime] of coumarin-based anti-herbivore compounds. People eat raw button mushrooms. Many countries discourage their raw consumption owing to the presence of agaritine, another natural toxin we disregard at our own risk. So here again, you have natural additives you do not recognize, or choose not to. Much more could be written about the blindness, and ideological partisanship of a certain group of people who today have become the opinion makers of the American food movement. Fresh salads have the potential to carry parasites of strains that can penetrate the blood-brain barrier. There is no way that the simple washing advocated by the USDA can ever rid salad, cilantro greens & such of these hookworm-type parasites. There can never be guarantees of non-contamination and illness is never acute but month or years in the making. Has anyone ever inquired about the 100% guarantee of freedom of all raw greens from these? And what about that most dangerous and pernicious of all dietary habits that gets such approbation today, the consumption of raw meat and seafood? Aside from ever so many nutritional availability aspects, people should inform themselves about the bacterial, viral and subviral types & titres of ocean waters. These can never be eliminated, no matter how high priced the sushi chef.

Douglas, You may also like to include this reclassification of B. cereus into Bacillus cytotoxicus & the psychrophile soil-dwelling Nhe-like toxin producing strains. Chem Biol Interact. 2008 Jan 30;171(2):236-49. Extending the Bacillus cereus group genomics to putative food-borne pathogens of different toxicity. Lapidus A, Goltsman E, Auger S, Galleron N, Ségurens B, Dossat C, Land ML, Broussolle V, Brillard J, Guinebretiere MH, Sanchis V, Nguen-The C, Lereclus D, Richardson P, Wincker P, Weissenbach J, Ehrlich SD, Sorokin A.

You can marinade the liver with some grated onions or juice thereof, grated ginger/juice [small qty.], grated garlic, black pepper, bit brown sugar, tiny bit of salt, pinch of the garam masala mentioned upthread, pinch of roasted cumin powder [optional], a little neutral oil like salad oil [not EVOO, pure olive seed oil ok, peanut oil good] AND Lea & Perrins Worcestershire sauce [other brands NOT acceptable, L&P steak sauce not ok either]. When ready to cook, have some onions sliced into rings, and a bay leaf or cassia leaf. Heat your non-reactive skillet, add butter or neutral oil or mix of both (very easy on butter), add leaf, drip off marinade and add liver slices. In another corner, add onions. Incorporate the two after onions become a bit wilted and translucent [only a bit], and cook liver judiciously, seasoning to taste. Adjust the heat levels to prevent scorching. Cook quickly, to your desired degree of done-ness. Eat with fried eggs, french fries/steak fries & toast. Similar things can be done with kidneys. During the British period in India, there used to be something known as a "savory" served as an intermediate course or towards the end of formal dinners in services [such as in Army mess halls]. Certain savouries were rather popular, including Sardines on Toast & Kidney on Toast. Lamb & goat kidneys were diced small, and often cookedin the manner described, occasionally including some sherry, and rarely, red chili powder & turmeric [but that did happen, as I can attest!]. The spicy liver often showed up in breakfasts or brunches along with pork products, fried tomatoes et.al. The finger chips, which are something like US steak fries and L&P sauce immediately signal an Anglo-Indian heritage with their presence along or within a dish. The other preparation was the famous (or infamous ) Roast Mutton [i.e. braised hind leg of goat] that was the de rigeur lunch at ALL mercantile offices in a major city like Calcutta. The reason was that this was one meat that all members of these firms, British & Bengali could share together [chicken being off-limits to certain groups for recondite reasons]. Soup, grayish slices of meat [that can be delicious when prepared with care], whole potatoes braised in the gravy, peas & carrots, custard sauce & "pudding", 300 days of the year!! The braising base should be carefully browned onions, then aromatics [whole cassia leaf, cassia bark, green cardamom, cloves, black peppercorns], let release aroma, finely crushed [not paste] fresh ginger, finely minced garlic , both together & ditto, then small quatity of tomato concasse or puree to incorporate all the spices, and finally, L&P sauce, salt, some sugar. [bTW, the Indian L&P used to be much brighter tasting, sharper, more piquant than the US; one is told that the Canadian product more resembles this older style than the NJ formulation but I have never tasted] The Indian goat leg had the bone in + knuckles to create a good base; plus nice layer of fat that browned well & was important for the finishing steps. Hot water, pressure cooker, or sealed steam cooking. Add browned potatoes at apropriate time to the plentiful gravy present in the almost-cooked meat, and begin to reduce when meat sufficiently tender. You proceed to a rich demi-glace or further, and here the rendered +rendering fat works its magic with the potatoes and the meat, helping to coat both with an incredible cloak of rich fond. Remove both meat & potato to a warm dish, get rid of excess rendered fat in the gravy[not the stuff on the meat!!], and reconstitute fond to a small gravy with water alone or a very thin white stock of bones. Strain. Slice meat. Arrange potatoes. Serve with gravy boat. Lovely marrow, depending on age and sex of goat. Remember, these were castrati males, selected for prime meat, aged 12-18 mos, known as "gram-fed mutton" [stall-fed chickpeas & aromatics to satiety, like corn-fed steers in a fattening yard]. Exceptional.

What size of a pressure cooker do you have [7-8 quart] & what size of a frying pan? 19-20 inch? There may be some benefit to either halving the leg OR if you have a graniteware type of turkey roaster, considering first a browning, then a braise inside a conventional oven with the roaster sealed with wet dough. That will give you tender meat, with a marination. OR, if you have a large ROMERTOPF or can borrow one. If you indicate which of the above best meets your needs, then one could suggest some ideas. If Mexican is your goal, the ideas from a goat BIRRIAN may work for you. http://www.recipezaar.com/-12779 same one, I think: http://www.pepperfool.com/recipes/mexican/birria.html You can serve CHOLULA hot sauce on the side for those who want more heat. If serving wheat tortillas, then serve whole wheat, and heat them with a tiny bit of butter on a grill plate until they have brownish blisters and smell toasty. Make sure they more than just heated. Serve with thin sliced red onions that you previously have marinated in a solution of hot water+vinegar, OR pico de gallo made with thai chillies.

You are extravagantly fortunate!! And yet it seems people there gravitate to very low quality high fat doner kebab!! At one time, dogfish used to be the chip shop staple in England. Several species of hake from the south Atlantic are now being promoted to replace cod & haddock, which are being depleted in North American waters. Silver hake today is used extensively in UK balti houses. Pollock & whiting fillets are available relatively cheaply compared to other white fish in US markets. Koreans shape pollock into neat squares for their jeon!! Frozen tilapia [farm raised] and fresh catfish fillets [farm-raised] are two others common and relatively inexpensive fish in the USA.

Please thank my august teachers. I am merely a fool who is trying to convey, most imperfectly, their knowledge, traditions and lore to a bigger world. Thank you for your kind thoughts. Additional note for the liver: a Joyce Chen 14 inch non-stick wok works well in the preparation above, as does any ordinary 14 inch flat/round bottomed wok. An interesting observation: in some liver preparations, e.g. the dry spice Chorchori upthread, the proportion of potataoes to liver is almost 1:1. The flavored fat forms the GRAVY, and therefore is scant. The clinging spice, the film of flavorful oil (ideally neutral like peanut oil or best, ghee) that carry with it the overtones of mustard oil and fresh ghee are mixed in with plentiful rice or consumed with great hunks of bread. Thus, the net effect is that of almost a seasoning. That is why the base is made so rich, and the rice made moist. There are several degrees of cooking rice moist in Bengal, between dry and congee. This actually is a fine art, and dishes are prepared to favor the unique textures of different varieties of rice cooked to different degrees of moistness. It also matters whether things are eaten steaming hot, tepid or cool, and what temperature the rice is for each side. These fine points of West Benga cuisine are rapidy becoming extinct, within a single generation. Here, it should distinctly hold its shape but be moist enough to easily absorb the spice and be smashed and become a "ball''. Sticky rice might be good too, though it is never customarily eaten in West Bengal. In Kashmir Pandit cooking, liver is cooked in a sweet-sour gravy fragrant with mustard oil where potatoes are the star and liver actually becomes a flavoring. This is a very interesting way to consume liver, and a little goes a long way.

I would like to learn about the fish part from those here. Its PHYSIOLOGICAL dryness, and leakiness when being fried, and what it does to the batter. All fish is not equal, surely? Species matter, don't they? And does not that have something to do with the end result? First off, frozen versus fresh: some species may freeze better than others. And, what does freezing do: depending on the lipid composition of the cells/species, filleting procedures, how frozen, how defrosted, there must be some membrane disruption, and therefore a leakage of cell contents. So patting dry a fillet, and salting it will have various consequences. Some species or some frozen by xyz methods might weep copiously in the fryer compared to others. Some fryers might use a lower temperature, for specific frying reasons and commercial fat mixes, say 315F versus 350F. Home cooks might go another route, because the volume of oil they have is smaller compared to the fish volume. That is not the case in commerical fryers with large oil volumes, where the batter, heat exchange rates etc. all have different dynamics. All I can say is that fillets from a certain far eastern country labeled flounder etc. behave very strangely, turning into mush. Whether that is a species issue or the result of lysozyme activity far, far progressed, one cannot tell. But that is an extreme example demonstraing the effect of fish quality on the final product. Inquiring minds want to know...

Many superior recipes from India, if you care for flavor palettes from those regions. Please note that these heavily spices because they are meant to be enjoyed with a LARGE amount of rice or wheat bread, the bread and or rice being considered an important and very enjoyable part of the meal, not a side-dish [rather, 80% of a mouthful]. So, the spicing and concentration is geared to that level. Here is one recipe from Bengal that plays the flavors of mustard oil and desi ghee against each other and green Thai chili with crushed black pepper. These combinations may appear strange if you have not grown up acquiring a taste for them. Something like seal blubber, blue cheese or steak tartare: different cultural perspectives. Salt and wash goat liver to extract blood and gaminess. Cut into chunks, leave to drain. Thinly slice yellow onions on the north-south pole, root to crown, following the parallel venation of this modified leaf. Per kg or 2lb you may need 3 cups, say 3 medium sized onions. In a heavy pan, rondeau brazier type, or sauté pan, non-stick fine or stainless, say 12-14inch diameter (depending on quantity of liver), add a cup oil and onions, cover well, set on low heat, bring to simmer with a tsp. of sugar. Meanwhile, in a blender, with scant water, grind a few cloves of garlic and some fresh ginger, wash but no need to peel. How much is how spicy you want to make your dish. After you do this, place the ground spice in a bowl, add a couple of teaspoons of turmeric powder and the same of red pepper powder. Korean kochukaru adds flavor and spice without crazy heat. Please note that food from the gentry of West Bengal have little chili heat but a lot of sugary sweetness; from certain groups, a LOT. Add water to make slurry that is convenient to spoon. Let it rest for flavors to develop. We are trying to imitate the stone grinding process. If you have a stone wet-grinder, either mechanical or manual, then please use that. In India, it is customary to use whole spices for certain procedures but they seem not to work too well here, so later, you will be grinding fresh in that same grinder, a stick of cassia bark [sold as cinnamon], a few green 6-8 cardamom, and fewer 4-5 whole cloves. That will be your garam masala. You will need in addition, tej patta [indian Cinnamonum tamala leaf, ideally, use a bay leaf if everything becomes too much of a hassle]. Not to be ground. Black peppercorns, to be ground, for a finale. Tomato puree from a can or fresh plum tomato + juicy beefsteak, cherry etc. Then you scrub some russet potatoes, cube with skin on, gently sauté them in a non-stick pan with enough oil until slightly cooked/browned and hold. The simmering onions in sufficient oil will seem to become rags, then those rags will begin to coalesce in eddies. Now uncover and carefully raise the heat a bit. Finally, these tiny clumps will begin to turn color. This slow, even browning/caramelization of very finely sliced onion in plentiful oil or ghee is the basis of superior braises or making an excellent curry base. You can achieve the same thing in 10 minutes over higher heat but the quality will be dismal. Don’t fret about the oil, especially if it is ghee it is called collateral damage. There is this modern day nonsense that everything, from 1 egg to a 10 lb roast, has to be cooked in 1 tb of oil. Well… I would have added more ghee, because the liver is being cooked in a dry braise of a cooked spice paste and fat, as you will see. It is very rich an eaten in only small quantities, with a lot of steaming jasmine rice, cooked a bit on the moist, soft side. Actually, the small-grain basmati Kalojeera or Sitabhog is eaten, accompanied by a freshly sliced Thai lime [Citrus hystrix] or a green lime. You mash in the green chilies according to your desire for heat. Hot naan or chapatis are excellent, too. But we have move far ahead of the game. When the onions are very light gold, please drop in the tej patta or bay leaf. Indian tej patta sold here may need several because they are all dried out. But never overdose on the bay leaves [Laurus nobilis]. Then add the ginger-garlic paste from the blender. With the heat a little higher, stir until aromatic, then add the slurry of dry powdered spices. Stir to mix and cook a bit until the harshest smell abates. Add tomato in very judicious quantity, to add moisture for frying the spices without scorching and to add a base & piquant edge. Do not flood the spices with tomatoey flavor. Add sugar/brown sugar and salt to pull out the tomato water. Keep cooking until you have a nice brownish-reddish mass that pulls away easily from the sides, smells neither raw nor overcooked, but just toasty & right. Here is a problem, and that is, you need an experienced cook to show you the right degree of doneness just once. But hopefully, you will manage. What you are going to do now is add both liver and potato, sprinkle some garam masala and mustard oil, a handful of Thai green chilies, and fry on higher heat just a little bit. Then you cover jut a little while. Water will get pulled out. You exercise judgment. Uncover and fry again. The idea is to just cook the liver and potatoes without adding water, or adding just ½-3/4 cup or so of scalding hot water, to distribute the spice matrix evenly. We are not looking for gravy but spices clinging to just-done liver retaining the smell of mustard oil. Better a tiny bit underdone. Add garam masala most sparingly in pinches, if needed. Let be for a couple of hours for flavors to settle. Reheat very gently or not at all. Serve topped with hot, melted ghee and a hint of freshly powdered peppercorns OR roasted powdered cumin. The final taste should have a distinct edge of sweet, and the proportion of garlic should be more than the ginger. The green chilies are left whole to contribute their flavor. They can be mashed in as desired. This preparation is called METEY CHORCHORI or dry-cooked liver from West Bengal. An excellent one from a good cook in Pune, India: http://thecookscottage.typepad.com/curry/curry_in_a_hurry/ Here is a recipe from Hyderabad: http://zaiqa.net/?p=244 From Kerala: http://deepann.wordpress.com/2008/07/10/spicy-liver-fry/ http://www.indobase.com/recipes/details/liver-masala.php http://www.tajrecipe.com/indian/cooking/re...-liver_428.aspx

Hello Turbocooker, Without confounding your problems, may I add my 2 cents? With stovetop cookware, your personal style of cooking, the cuisines you prefer, the number of people you generally cook for, and the maximum numbers you occasionally need to cook for with aplomb, all have a bearing on what you need to purchase. Fat Guy [steven], SL Kinsey, David Goldfarb C. Sapidus or I may each enjoy food & cooking immensely but each will be cooking a different profile, so to speak, AND for a different audience. Hence, for each, a different set & type of cookware will prove ideal. So please try to figure these parameters out calmly and rationally, first. If you love European or Dutch-style cooking, the combination you end up with will surely be different than if your tastes incline towards the Far East or South or South-Eastern Asia. Your friends will be willing to sit down with you, and there will be many here to walk you through your choices piece by piece. You can buy things also piece by piece from many sources, mixing and matching accoring to bargains available and your precise needs: Bridge Kitchenware,NJ; China Fair, Boston; Gala Source Restaurant Supply, etc. No need to buy a pig in a poke: you may find a Sitram piece here a better bargain, a Paderno piece there, another Sitram piece at Amazon, a pressure cooker ditto at their clearance sales. Of course, you may be a lucky person who can pay without bothering about price, in which case I can certainly give you excellent counsel that you will never regret, and it involves neither All-Clad nor the copper twins from Europe (Falk =supremely wonderful if you can afford!!).

I have a question for those who have used/compared Vollrath, Paderno G1000 and Sitram Profeserie or Catering lines for the rondeau/braziers, 7.6 qts, 11.4 qts and above. There is also a Paderno GG1100 series, much more expensive than the 1000 line. Vollrath 77760 series is 8 gauge stainless steel, i.e. o.1719 inches sheet metal. The 44760 series is 16 gauge, 0.0625 in, and I am not interested in this. Vollrath also has an interesting large size Stir fry pan, a round-bottomed handled wok, for all practical purposes. Thank you for your input & advice. Gautam.

Thanks Doddie, for the details. The finish looks beautiful, and the Lines, as with most Korean and Japanese sensibilities, be it architecture or pottery, are haunting and exquisite, at least to my eyes. What I find intriguing is how they get ddeok to pop. Now with grain, there is a hard seed coat, and the popping varieties are bred with an area of thinner epidermis that gives way first, as the steam pressure builds up within, a moisture content not more than 14-16% by weight of the air dry grain. Ddeok appears to violate these conditions: a) no differential resistance; b) relatively high moisture content compared to either dry/soaked paddy or converted rice, two popped forms of unhusked & husked rice commonly seen in rice growing lands. Very interesting and ingenious. The other remarkable thing is the Korean use of Hens & Chickens for pickling [the plant]!! Who would have dared??!!

Doddie & Peter, Thank you both very much. The Chinese variant, easily available here, is called in the trade a "fast stove" after the literal translation [i am told ]] of "stir fry". They, however, lack the sturdy iron/metal superstructure that makes these Korean models so attractive + efficient. The are merely the burner ring, with a most rudimentary gas coonection, whereas the Korean model has a very robust and safe metal junction. Peter, your fears of an incendiary end would have quite valid had you had one of these Chinese models at your service!!! Since you say they are a common piece of equipment for food vendors and not a specialized gadget for just a specific type of restaurant, like the kopchang place, it gives me hope that there might be increasing degrees of probability of Korean restaurant supply places in N. America of stocking these e.g. to supply Korean food trucks. Thank you both for the look into the ordinary life of Jangwohon. It is such a delight, after the mental overload of big cities with their rich food, late nights and frenetic lifestyles to see ordinary people enjoying a normal life devoid of excess. The pots with fitting lids, mortars etc. on sale were incredibly beautiful. Are they fired clay, and are they still hand-thrown? Or, like Italian clay flower pots, have they discovered some clever way to mechanize their manufacture? I wonder if Peter & his family will take a trip to Hadong one early spring, when the maple sap is running and drinking the sap is a joyously awaited annual rite. Hadong & its surroundings is one area I would have loved to visit. I would hope that wonderful travelers like Peter would venture out of Seoul and enjoy the even better food & drink to be had. How's that for a lure? Gautam.

Thanks for the information. Since these pastes are made and sold in the market presumably for use in the short term, for how long may they be stored safely and how? Frozen? How well do they preserve their flavor? For those who may wish to make their own, would you have a guide or recipe? Thanks much.

Peter, Funny & great, as usual. Now on to SERIOUS matters: underneath the pan holding the proto-sausage is one HOT gas burner, in every sense of the word, super-neat. If Koreans are the enterprising restaurant-goers that you claim they are, surely a serious Korean restaurant supply business in Noth America should be stocking these babies? Now the question is to find the Korean trade name AND manufacturer, e.g. the Chinese parallel [NOT equivalent] in the US would be Tarhong from Galasource, a restaurant supply company. I am sure there exists a specialized Korean restaurant restaurant supply company that MAY stock such things, but they would require fairly specific clues/specifications from a non-Korean such as myself to overcome communications barriers. I should be most grateful if someone from Korea could provide me at least a few of the details, something to go on. Type of restaurants that use these stoves, trade name in Korean of these stoves, and more? Perhaps you or Doddie or even the mysterious Mr. Zenkimchi?? I shall be geatly obliged.

Hi Randi, Hope you are getting better. Reading through your posts, I have a comment. My wife completed her Master's in Public Health specializing in geriatric nutrition, emphasizing her interest in cooking tasty, nourishing meals for the elderly. This now has become a well-organized field of study and endeavor. I remember my mother being very ill from chemotherapy and no doctors, including her spouse, ever taking the time or trouble to pay attention to her diet or the fact that she could not eat enough to recover, that she was in pain later from metastatizing cancer etc. ad could hardly get food down her throat. At that time I did my ignorant childish best, and thereafter became a lipid biochemist to pursue yet more avenues of ignorance. I respect my wife's career choice all the more for this and other reasons. She had been working in her family restaurant since the age of 9 and then was a master bread baker in a major artisanal bakery. All this is to explain that the seniors are not being contrary, but they may have dietary needs that are NOT in keeping with appears to YOU as reasonable. As a very intelligent lawyer, you will appreciate the logic of this argument. As people age, their organoleptic perceptions change. Their need to have foods extremely soft may be a case in point. Taste becomes dulled, and more is dependent on good associations with the past than with current taste [maybe, for some]. There may be psycholgical changes as well as generational gaps. What to you & me may appear eminently edible, e.g. goat cheese or feta, may be highly repugnant to some or many. My wife, for example, is an exquisite cook, but she has some problems with cheeses other than cheddar or mozzarella, and even shuns eggs other than in baked goods [hates mayo!!]. People can be like that. Therefore the suggestion of a printed menu may not be unwise, and a ticket for each specific date may help reduce no-shows to a small extent. To conclude, cooking for a geriatric population today is recognized as a critical part of elder care and geriatric nutrition. The University of Massachusetts at Northampton certainly is one institution that has explicitly created programs reflecting the need to train graduates in this area. Perhaps more people becoming aware of the problems surrounding the issues of cooking for the elderly would be beneficial in our society as it ages and 1 in 4 becomes dependent on others for care. Thank you for bringing up a very relevant subject.

One style throws in some chicharones [here: packaged fried pork rinds will suffice] ground fine into the spice paste. This adds some richness and body. Not too much, though! Call it the Issan coconut milk!! Have you tried a jungle curry this way?

I believe red-in-snow may be a type of radish or crucifer. Red wine lees question is answered in the fu-ru/fermented bean curd thread.

_John, who posts often on this forum, seems to have a pretty professional background, skills/outlook. Perhaps you could write to him? Rona [Prasantrin] might be another source of information/advice. Have you spoken to any expatriate Japanese restaurant owners/food businesses in Canada? I seem to recall culinary schools in Japan that are geared towards turning out chefs trained in the classical Japanese styles. They seem to be very thorough, modern, professional and scientific--- none of the 10 year medieval torture chambers. Perhaps some of the Japanese friends on this forum would have more information on these excellent academies. As you know, whatever the Japanese undertake, they do not do slipshod, be it training schools for French cuisine or their own [ESPECIALLY!!!]. The only issue might be the fee scale here. Even then, you might seek a scholarship. That being an unusual request from a foreigner, I am sure they will try very hard to come to some sort of an arrangement. Good luck. http://culinary-academy.jp/eng/admissions/index.html http://culinary-academy.jp/eng/link/index.html http://jobs.yakaz.co.uk/japanese-chef this might give you brainstorming ideas, e.g. Canadian embassy, consulate kitchen jobs??? US Army base private contractor food service? Are there Culinary Arts Degree Programs in Canada where they have a foreign year abroad? That would be a great way to avoid high costs of living in Japan, while finding a scholarship in Canada. Then you will have made contacts and gotten your toe in the water, found out if you really want to pursue this line in Japan. Plus added a marketable degree to your resume, shoud you wish. Will help later if you want to pursue international restaurant management career.

Found one more in a Khmer website that could be modified in interesting ways: http://www.khmerkromrecipes.com/ In the vegetarian section, "Hot preserved bean cur with boiled (sweet) potato leaves": a stand-alone fu-ru relish with simply blanched sweet potato leaves, could be adapted to water ipomea or chard : fresh lime juice, sugar, chopped thai chilies and hot preserved bean curd [you may change that to plain red curd] are mashed together. Served with hot rice alongside the steamed or blanched greens. Even broccoli or choi sum if you wish! Or a combination platter of blanched greens, like asparagus, plus a few more, cauliflower, carrots, red cabbage, savoy cabbage, Chinese eggplant, ridged gourd (peeled) etc.

The Khmer Krom are today an ethnic minority in the Mekong Delta of Vietnam. Long ago, they were perhaps far more significant there, so their situation now is not good. Anyway, they have a neat website with some really interesting recipes, including purely vegetarian ones, quite a rarity in this part of the world. One more addition to the annals of Khmer cooking: http://www.khmerkromrecipes.com/

Here is a recipe saying his mother made it at home, & not very restaurant-style either: http://www.bigoven.com/7688-Pork-with-Ferm...urd-recipe.html Here's one using both fu-ru AND red wine lees!! Double trouble!! http://www.bigoven.com/37718-Steamed-Pork-...yle-recipe.html Another authentic recipe by a native, non-deracinated Teochew: http://wokkingmum.blogspot.com/2008/01/tof...-bean-curd.html A Vietnamese variant: http://www.globalgourmet.com/food/cookbook...er-spinach.html American Zen !!: http://crystalbyblog.blogspot.com/2009/02/...ncurd-soup.html More: http://eatingasia.typepad.com/eatingasia/2...ese_cheese.html http://www.cdkitchen.com/recipes/recs/67/P...Bean75078.shtml

I have read that the red coloring in fermented tofu traditionally was derived from RED YEAST RICE, or RED LEES of rice: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_yeast_rice The rice by itself is supposed to have health-giving properties, but not when substituted by artificial dyes that are forbidden in food, the various Sudan Reds being an example. Takadi asked how to make fu-ru at home; the wikipedia article http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pickled_tofu offers some pointers about what cultures to get, in pure form if possible. Here's a website to making one's own: http://chinesefood.about.com/gi/dynamic/of...7Edna/koji.html Masayoshi Saito, Eizo Tatsumi and Li Li-te. [2003] Food Science and Technology Division, JIRCAS China Agricultural University (source of starter & other advice). Florence Lin's version, relying on Mother Nature. Not sure I would trust Mother Nature all that much with Sister Botulin and thingies around !!: http://www.recipezaar.com/Fu-Ju-Fermented-...ean-Curd-206890

Sadly, I am too dense to learn Japanese. My Google is rather old fashioned: Donald Keene: An Anthology of Japanese Verse/literature, 1955 & 1960 editions!!

Food Muse, Glad you liked MB's recipe. Just to be a tiny nitpicker, because the recipes originate in a very ancient community that today is being wiped off the face of the earth by the determined actions of a large group of genocidal terrorists ably succored by more than one nation and billions of petrodollars: when fried, the ribs are properly called KABARGAH. When baked in unglazed clay dishes to soak up the fat, they are called TABAK MAAS. The signature Kashmiri Brahman flavors are powdered dry ginger, [not fresh, a very different note altogether] and powdered fennel. Garlic and onions are eschewed, asafetida taking their place. The recipes I gave and presumably the one by MB originate in the Kashmiri Pandit kitchen. Kashmiri Muslim cookery avoids asafetida, using an emulsion of Kashmiri shallots and fried onions mashed in water.

Chris, You are fortunate to have met an enlightened & modern woman. Ask her about her forbears and near relations and you will hear stories that will make you laugh and weep at the same time. At GourmetIndia we have started a disscussion on this topic because many of us have witnesssed precious swathes, not just small numbers, but entire corpus of recipes of certain ethnic traditions vanish with maiden aunts and aged parents. The pace of change is so extreme in India, the dislocation from rural roots alsos so extreme, and the types of foods require space, time, labor, rural products and an extreme desire to sacrifice oneself for the family. Therefore, one prerogative might be to hold closely to such treasures and be lauded for these, slim returns for a life spent laboring over practically nothing. Underlying this is a subconscious bitterness or a complicated psychology that I will leave for more expert minds. Anyway, the net result is that more than 75% of the foods I have known and relished in my childood are completely lost, and unknown to the next generation, which is regarded by many in my generation as some sort of cultural and spiritual savages, irredeemable!! They likewise share a similar view about us! Returning to the Cambodian kroeung in question, I woul be very grateful if you could make some inquiries at your end, and see where that leads. I have a suspicion, where the kroeng paste itself is concerned, for this "chicken curry", there are shades of a generic peninsular Indian cooked spice paste at work here: The peninsular masala paste would start with a small red shallot or boiling onion + some cloves of garlic being roasted on embers or hot ashes; on a gas flame, here in the USA. Then, peeled and slowly roasted in oil with some whole spices, then ground to a wet paste. To simplify even more, but lose some depth of flavor & smokiness, sliced or diced onion/shallot & garlic can be slow-roated with whole spices [not too slow because the essential oils will evaporate] & wet ground. As far as I can gauge, the ingredients include: Shallots or boiling onion Garlic Galangal aromatic dry red pepper, like BOLDOG paprika or gochugaru whole or ancho, soaked, flesh scraped out, pounded: idea is to create not heat but a flavor base, remembering that the blackened flakes will also add some heat of their own. The whole dish must be pleasant, piquant-warm, on the mild side, no macho heat competition here. coriander seed black peppercorns Star anise fennel green cardamom cassia bark [ that which is sold as cinnamon, for the most part!] nutmeg You can adjust the spicing to your liking, remembering that there will be coconut milk entering the picture to tame the sharp edges as well as potatoes, plus sweet potatoes & bamboo shoots if you like. Some Cambodians love a LOT of lemongrass, but YMMV. NB: You can also use some anchovy fillets here to good effect, if you do not have/tolerate some of the more exotic fermented fish products. Cornish hens work really well, failing which skinned thighs cut into boneless cubes, throwing the bones into the pot as well. With the Cornish hens or poussins, wash dry, joint and rub with salt & turmeric. This will form a thin coat & prevent spattering +help browning. Lightly brown in peanut oil & set aside. In the same oil/pan, brown halved/quartered russets/Yukon Golds, and sweet potatoes if you like. Next, gently brown a small amount of very finely sliced onions, covering them to wilt, then uncovering them to brown. Add a tiny amount of sugar after they are golden, then kroeng paste, cook for a bit, add chicken. Some like to add cilantro or Thai lime leaves, either to paste or to the pan. Let your tastes guide you. Too many flavors piled on top of one another may be counterproductive. Thin coconut milk may be added now, i.e. the cream spooned off and saved for the very end. Simmer covered, with salt until potatoes, sweet potatoes and or bamboo shoots done. Add a judicious amount of blackened chili flakes. Things will look terrible. Cook a tiny bit longer, like 3 minutes, then add reserved coconut cream and balance seasonings. Correct with fish sace, sugar salt.