Sleepy_Dragon

Here is a link to a local Farm to Cafeteria campaign here in Washington state: http://www.pccnaturalmarkets.com/issues/ir...mpaign2004.html I hope it succeeds. Pat

I'm allergic to alcohol, but sake is one of the very few alcohols I can actually drink without getting sick. Just one glass though. It goes so well with briny oceanic foods, mmmmm. I like C.C. Lemon too. And the hot coffee can vending machines seem like such a great idea. Buy one to stick in your coat pocket to keep hands warm! Otherwise, I'm generally a tea drinker, and green tea is among my favorite things to drink. Pat

More street food from everywhere! Even though our summers are short, between their mildness, all the bodies of water, walking and bike paths, and the tourists, it seems like a seasonal thing that could work. Seem to recall reading somewhere that local food regulations are what stop this from happening though. More regional Chinese places too. Though agree with sequim about needing the right population to support it. Pat

How finely must the greens be chopped to make saag? I can't ever seem to get the right consistency, it should be like a smooth puree once finished cooking, right? Even went so far as to puree them before cooking one time, and that was a mistake. Pat

Well, I'll take a stab at the questions. I'm not Indian either btw, and there's plenty of basic stuff I'd like to ask too as it occurs to me. So, maybe another bungling newbie perspective can help you make sense of things. Anyway, as far as caramelizing onions goes, to my tongue, it takes the raw sharp taste out. Biting into an undercooked onion chunk is pretty unpleasant to me amidst all the cooked ingredients, and I agree about it being much less digestible. Caramelization not only makes the onions sweet, but also adds a different level of flavorful complexity and texture too. That's something that applies to anything caramelized, not just onions, kind of like the difference between a steak that's been steamed and one that's been browned. Also, if done slowly enough so that the onions brown evenly through and through, you end up with that sweet and crunchy onion garnish. Just drain over cloth or paper towels to soak up some of the grease, and sprinkle over the dish in question, while surreptitiously snacking on them at the same time. For roasting spices, yeah that just takes doing and getting familiar with how they change. But after a couple tries, your eyes and nose know what to look for, especially for the ones like cumin. Maybe it might help to think of how toast is made and how the scent changes: first there's the undercooked moist dough-like scent as the water evaporates, then there's the golden brown good morning scent, then the acrid burnt scent if you let it go too far. It's similar for spices, where you want to pull them off of the heat in that middle stage. It doesn't take long either, just don't do it on high heat, and keep shaking the pan to allow the spices to turn. Hope that helps. I'm sure more experienced folks will be along to further elaborate. Pat

Hm, my Ethiopian cookbook says to use vegetable oil rather than butter for tomato fit-fit, but I'm partial to butter, hehe! Pat

Try and take some time to just hang out and people-watch too at some place with outdoor seating. Broadway's great for that. Or just wander around. If you go to that frites place, you'll want to be walking them off while eating! And yes, please visit us budding culinary students at SCCC for lunch Tuesday - Friday 11:15am - 1pm! Pat

Why not just start with local seasonal ingredients, and prepare them the way you like it? Another thought is to research the ingredients that have fallen out of favor because of food supply centralization and distribution dictating that the only things we can buy in stores are those which ship well and still come out looking great after weeks and months in a box car. The US used to have thousands and thousands of different kinds of vegetables the locals used to eat in whichever region, but nowadays we only see a fraction of them. That seems like a place with possibilities to start. And you'd be supporting the local farmers too. Pat

I love injera too. I like to eat leftover injera for breakfast as the bread that goes with some spicy scrambled eggs. Especially with butter melted over it. Haven't tried frying it yet, but the addition of tomatoes and chilies is similar to fit-fit, a salad great for leftover injera. Chop it up with chopped red onion, jalapenos, tomatoes and garlic, and mix with lemon juice, melted butter and salt and pepper, let sit for a bit to let the flavors sythesize, and eat. Pat

Me too, I finished this book two days ago. I also loved Letters to a Young Chef, by Daniel Boulud, which I finished about a week before The Apprentice. Letters is a condensed collection of, well, letters of advice for anyone trying to become a chef. He doesn't think it's possible for older folks just starting out, but I intend to ignore that bit while taking the rest to heart. Great book. Pat

Doesn't sound like a crashing bore to me at all, I'm very interested in this topic and will be putting this title on my list. Another book in a somewhat similar vein I really like is The Best Thing I Ever Tasted, by Sallie Tisdale. It got a lot of bad "reviews" on Amazon, but I mostly chalk that up to people just expecting a fluff memoir about things that taste good, and aren't interested in how things got so crazy today. And I'm willing to bet they took their mom's labor for granted. My partner and I both loved the book, and she is sending a copy pronto to her mom. I'd recommend it for anyone who has or is a mom who's trying to make sense of how the lines between national wealth, pleasure, the post WWII sphere of domesticity, and the centralization and mechanization of food production affect the day to day lives of ordinary people trying to get by. She goes through stuff like the history of Betty Crocker, the creation of the flour trusts, her own attempts at trying to provide the kind of life found in glossy magazines while trying to get her kids to eat healthy food, her observations on what's hip or not and how that changes throughout her lifetime, and so on. edited for author name typo Pat

A skylight in the kitchen but no ventilation? Isn't there someone around here with a sig about certain things being representative of being in love with the idea of cooking as opposed to actual cooking itself? Anyway, I'm keeping an eye on this thread too because I live in an effete urbanite shoebox with the same stupid grease recirculation system that masquerades as ventilation. Pat

Yes quite. Not to mention $75-100 can be more than a day's wages for people too. Pat

The Spice Is Right The Everything Indian Cookbook There we are. They are on my To-Buy list, just have to wait for some wiggle room in my budget! Pat

The food thing swings in both age directions for me. I used to love milk as a kid but hate it now. I'm also somewhat allergic to dairy. I could also tolerate raw bell pepper but now can't stand it as an adult. And never liked cooked bell pepper at any age. I like the flavors it adds to food, and I will cook with it, but I won't put it in my mouth. Also loved lop cheung (Chinese sausage) as a kid but can't stand it now. Used to hate onions, but now like the flavor they lend, though again won't necessarily put them into my mouth. It depends on the form they're in. Big raw slices and slimey slices are usually out of the question. Same with tomatoey stew-like preparations with lots of onion pieces in them. Otherwise, I'll eat and enjoy them. I don't like real olives now, and I blame this on growing up on the canned olives as a kid, which I liked well enough back then. Nowadays I think canned olives are boring, but real olives are downright offensive to my tongue, which is pretty sad but oh well. Exception: an olive tapenade a classmate made for a potluck we had last quarter, where the real olives in question were finely minced into a bunch of other stuff. That was delicious. I liked some vegetables as a kid, but only the leafy parts. Like gai lan or bok choy for instance, or broccoli. I'd only eat the leaves or florets, and leave the stems because I didn't like their texture. I'm mostly over this as an adult but still hesitate a bit at times. Tomatoes were another thing I disliked then and like now but only in certain ways. Big soggy chunks of tomato in a sauce or stew = no. Tomato sauce or bruschetta or finely chopped in bhelpuri or tabouleh = yes. Pat

Would this be something that cuts across all economic strata, or could we extrapolate a likelihood of the average poor person in Gujarat preparing food which more closely resembles the cuisine before the trade prosperity? Pat

One book I've got that might help as an introduction to regional cooking (as opposed to an encyclopedic compendium of cooking from all regions) is A Taste of India, by Madhur Jaffrey. Unfortunately it's out of print, but there are used copies available. She covers Dehli, Uttar Pradesh, Gujarat, Maharashtra, Kashmir, Bengal, Hyderabad, Tamil Nadu and Karnataka (in one section), and Kerala, devoting around 15 pages to each of background material, plus 10-15 recipes per region. The background stuff is all in her anecdotal style of visiting markets, people and families, along with her own family stuff, interspersed with bits of history. It's a good book for considering a starting point in terms of picking a region to start with, having a few recipes, then thinking about what next to read up outside of the book. I also used this book to kind of figure out how to make bhelpuri. She had a short paragraph describing it at the end of the Maharashtra section and I followed that to make it. edited to add regions I missed in the contents, and the bhelpuri bit. Because that's one of the things I really valued about this book way back when I first got it; all the little bits of descriptions of foods throughout the background material which triggered my curiosity and desire to learn more. Pat

Yeah, it would be wonderful, but it would also be about 500,000 pages long! Pat

My preference is for dives and holes in the wall, as well as any place that feels homey. I can enjoy food well enough in a fancy place, but it takes awhile in order to get over the initial feeling of discomfort in them. Waitstaff who sense that fancy places aren't a customer's usual bag and want you to feel welcome anyway can go a long way towards mitigating this. Pat

Did it come with an idli or two? (white slightly tart disc shaped steamed cake of rice and urad dal) Pat

New menu for One World, for Tues - Thurs. May 4, 5, and 6 next week. The tapas menu two posts up is actually over now. ONE WORLD - LATINO MENU Appetizer Cana de Acucar com Camarao -- 2.50 Flambe shrimp on sugarcane spears with pineapple salsa prepared tableside Soup and Salad Sopa Azteca -- 2.00 Tortilla Soup Ensalada de Jicama -- 2.00 Baby greens with jicama, oranges and radishes served with an ancho lime vinaigrette Entrees - Includes choice of soup or salad Ensalada de Jamaican Jerk Pollo -- 5.25 Spicy grilled chicken breast served on a bed of baby greens with a sour orange vinaigrette Pato en Tacos -- 6.95 Duck tacos with charred habanero salsa and a black bean cake with crispy plantains Chilahuates -- 5.25 Banana leaf wrapped tamales with masa, black beans, almonds and vegetables served with tomatillo salsa and vegetarian green rice Sandwich Cubano -- 5.75 Grilled sour orange roast pork, ham and cheese sandwich with yuca and plantain chips Tamal de Salmn Adobado -- 6.45 Chili grilled salmon in cornhusks served with jalapeno corn flan Desserts Please inquire for today's choices -- 2.00 Beverages Coffee/Tea/Decaf, Coke/Sprite/Diet Coke/Diet Sprite -- 0.75 (end) Pat

I haven't tried to make anything from this site yet, but I like visiting just because it's such a "down home" production: Japanese Mom's Table: http://www9.ocn.ne.jp/~japamom/ Pat

Thank you very much for the clarification, Hiroyuki. And the compliment, but the credit for that should go to my Japanese teacher, as he is careful about teaching the polite form for everything! Well, he will teach the blunt form too, but only as a warning for what -not- to say unless the situation is a really familiar one among peers where you know the context is ok. So ok, using "to" (means "and" for anyone else reading and trying to follow along) is considered polite. That's a relief to know. I haven't wanted to try ordering in Japanese because it sounded so excessive to say "to" after each thing, especially when my typical nigiri zushi (zushi! Thank you for this correction too) order is 8-12 kinds. I'm glad it's actually ok. Arigatou gozaimasu, Hiroyuki-san. Pat

Ya know... past a certain number of Scoville Units, I can't help but think it comes down to stupid machismo. Pat

So when attempting to order nigiri sushi from the waitstaff, let's say you want several kinds, do you have to put "to" between each type of nigiri? ie. Otoro to shiromaguro to uni to sawara to ikura to hamachi wo onegaishimasu. What is the best way to order a list of things you choose? Pat