Sleepy_Dragon

Never tried to actually make the thick kind, because I don't like them. So for the longest time I was content/apathetic enough to leave the origins of egg rolls and blisters shrouded in mystery! Pat

Hehe is that all it is? All this time I thought it was something special about the wrapper itself! Pat

It varies by region, but around the Pacific NW in the US, egg rolls are sort of a catch-all phrase for the different kinds of spring rolls (tsun gurn). People who use "egg roll" as a generic term mean both the fried crunchy thin skinned rolls, and the fried ones with the thicker more doughy skin, but on actual menus, the thin skinned ones are spring rolls and the thick skinned ones egg rolls. I have no idea how these things came to be known as egg rolls though. The only egg my mother ever used in them was a little bit dabbed onto the corners of the wrapper to seal them up. Pat

We mostly ate this with... not sure what the Cantonese or Mandarin pronounciation is, but it's "poh veh" in Shanghainese. Basically, leftover rice with boiling hot water added to it, to have as breakfast with leftovers from dinner, plus pickles, foo yu and pork sung on the side to jazz it up. Pat

Jackie Chan getting thrown onto an open truckload of durians in Super Cop: Chow Yun Fat in obligatory Chinese restaurant fight scene in A Better Tomorrow 2: Pat

Hm, perhaps the addition of finely minced gristle and sugar? Pat

Our summer lunch service begins next week and will run from Monday to Thursday until mid August. Next week is a slight exception of Tuesday through Thursday thanks to Independence Day observed on Monday. It is a hot and cold buffet style service. Come on by and let us practice our garde manger skills on you all. Pat

Niter kibe is spiced butter. Delicious heavenly spiced butter. My favorite Ethiopian restaurants always have a nice oil slick of it over the food, hehe. It makes the injera lined underneath the food so rich and juicy! I posted a recipe in an earlier thread out of one of my books, towards the bottom. Pat

Thank you very much for explaining this, BBhasin. How nice it is to have people here to explain these behind the scenes mysteries. As for shaping the pappadums, clearly the possibilities for frou frou are endless. I need to build up heat resistant calluses on my fingertips anyway... Pat

Lesbian & Gay Chefs Association. No local chapters yet though. Pat

Some kind of Chinese noodle soup, udon soup, or pho. It's not for no reason that the stereotypical budget HK romance flick involves a heartbroken person trying to slurp up noodles in a noodle shop on a rainy day! The other aspect of this is actually going out to get food. My cooking is often shot to hell when I'm feeling bummed, especially in the Too Much Salt department. Pat

Hehe yeah, tonight was the first time I ever used a microwave to do pappadums, though I didn't use spray or oil. That did work out pretty well, though I didn't do it with whole discs. Maybe next time! I take it the end result is a little crispier with Pam or oil? Pat

Fascinating! I think I can visualize what you're saying, bague. Interesting technique, I'll give it a whirl when the craving next hits. Anyway, the ones I've seen in restaurant buffets are definitely not fried, but they come out so flat and neat. I'd love to know what toasting technique they're using, not just for the flatness but what seems like perfect stacks of a couple hundred pappadums in one shot. Surely it's not just one cook standing in front of the microwave nuking them one at a time? My reason for inquiring about it took place tonight, where I wanted to bring some pappad and chutneys to a local egullet dinner; being confined to public transportation, being able to keep a mass quantity of cooked pappadums in a small contained space was important. I didn't quite manage this, decided to chop through two packages of pappadums to make six triangle wedge shapes, then microwaved them eight at a time on a plate for 30 seconds. I know, not in the least bit traditional, but it seemed like an ok thing to do to ensure everyone could taste the four chutneys without needing to chomp on a whole or half disc of pappad to do it. gingerly, I did notice that tonight about the ingredients making for different levels of flatness, one of the packages was urad daal pappad. Pat

There's probably an obvious answer to this, but here goes. In Indian restaurants which do buffets, I've noticed their quantity cooked pappadums are always perfectly flat. Sometimes whole, sometimes cut in half, but still flat and very easy to stack or lean against each other. How is this accomplished? Whenever I do mine, it's either fried or cut in half with each half placed in a toaster, all the while keeping an eye on them in order to rotate the halves before they scorch. But they always come out wavy and not at all flat and stackable this way. Doesn't bother me in the least, but it would be easier to transport flat ones. Pat

I wish I had a brilliant culinary secret to share about the coconut chunks but no: it's just easier to grab one for snacking on. The next batch will get grated first though. Pat

That's a shame. I recall Mayuri being great back when they ran their Queen Anne location, they had such wonderful masala dosas, vadas and lamb keema. But, this was around 7 years ago, so maybe things have changed for the worse. Oh well. One place I keep meaning to try is Udupi Palace in Bellevue, have you been there yet? Only thing that stops me is needing to take two buses to get out there. Pat

Hm, this thread is a good reminder to stock up the freezer again. I've been ignoring it for the last few Weeks In Hell at school, so right now there is just a plastic bin filled with peeled coconut chunks. And they only managed to get in there because I didn't want to let yet another coconut spoil on account of being too busy to hack it up and peel it. Pat

Uwajimaya in Seattle occasionally flies in tenmusu chefs to make tenmusu for sale to the public for a few glorious days. In trying to communicate with them in my mangled stomped-on Japanese how much I enjoyed them, I did notice they dropped the "u" at the end of tenmusu, so perhaps it's not limited to verbs and the desu copula. My conversation partners also tend to drop it, but will pronounce it if I ask them to repeat a word I'm trying to learn. Also hard to catch in conversation at times is when a vowel gets lengthened. In which case I inwardly hope and pray for enough context to tell me what's what. Pat

What kind of texture does this have? And baking soda, really? I'm curious because our classroom experiments with baking soda and green vegetables turned them a strange neon green color with a mushy texture each and every time. Red cabbage was even weirder, going from purple to bright blue! Pat

Yes! I feel it too if I've gone without rice for more than a few days. I also remember when I was a teenager the first time I saw non-Asians eating Chinese take-out. They'd eat all the meats, if there were women among them they'd eat some of the vegetables too, and leave all of the rice. Distinctly remember wondering if their tongues got tired from it, if they weren't already suffering stomach aches from the iced drinks they were downing at the same time. Pat

Me too! On the occasions when my mother made them, roast chicken, steak, baked or mashed potatoes, traditional Thanksgiving dinner with all the trimmings, and spaghetti and meatballs were wildly exciting to me. So was McDonald's. Though I never liked Kraft macaroni and cheese or hotdogs, and still don't for whatever reason. My childhood memories of jook mostly involved eating it when sick, so for the longest time I refused to touch it after that, though nowadays I love it. Just one of many Stupid Child Moments: thinking I knew better than my mom about what comprised cleanliness in the kitchen, and taking her old nicely seasoned wok and attacking it with a brillo pad until all the seasoning had been scrubbed off. *bonks self over head* Man, I hear that. My parents were Shanghainese so I grew up eating Shanghainese home cooking. There are a lot of things Mom used to make that I don't know how to make now, and now that she's gone it's too late to ask her. Granted, in my own circumstances there were other significant factors involved in the rift between me and the rest of my family over the last 15 years that would still be hell to deal with now if she were alive, but it still makes me sad to think about it. I don't think it's ever too late to learn anything though. I've been trying to do it for awhile now, now that I'm old enough to have the wisdom to appreciate what I no longer have. Though one thing that's made it more difficult is just the sheer number of white guys I've come across who try to lecture me about my background. Seems like each year it gets worse and worse on several orders of Oh. My. God. Shut. Up. Were you allowed to have Japanese food as a kid? This too was something I didn't taste until my early 20's because my mother wouldn't hear of it under her roof. Same thing for anything made in Japan, she'd check the labels of every manufactured good before buying it to make sure it was made elsewhere. Tony Bourdain had a brief passage in Kitchen Confidential about his Chinese food chef instructor at CIA, and that pretty much described my mom's views to a T. Nonetheless, I took to nigirizushi right off the bat. Pat

Well drat. Even so, a 12 year run is still great. I hope they've moved onto something else. So I've heard. I'm glad some things are changing for the better. I still remember marching in their first Pride parade, there were 12 of us total. Then in subsequent years the numbers doubled each time, until they stood steady at around 300 - 400 people. The C&W thing has never much made sense to me either, it's also been around for awhile now. Tu Tu Venu's owners used to host women's C&W nights too back when they ran Sassy's, complete with instructor. But then, I also remember perfectly heterosexual Yanqui cow-orkers eagerly pawing through C&W catalogs looking to accessorize their wardrobes (this would be the time when Garth Brooks and Travis Tritt were making their first pop-country waves), so why not homosexual Yanquis. That no actual cows or ranching were involved in any of the above in Seattle or Syracuse never seemed to matter. Anyway, the one bonafide olde tyme Gay Restaurant I can think of now here in Seattle is Sonya's downtown near Pike Place Market. It's mostly older gay men who go there. Pat

I haven't liked Kiku since they changed hands, though haven't tried the teriyaki. Tempura anything has been too greasy, doughy and at times undercooked, and whatever they now use for their udon soup base isn't as nice as what it used to be. Bummer, I used to love their food. Pat

I love both. If presented with the usual "if you had to give up one at gunpoint...?" question, I'd just sigh and flip a coin. And mourn whichever choice it was that lost. Being able to enjoy Indian and Japanese food feels like letting different parts of my nose and tongue have their turn to come out and play. Pat

Tu Tu Venu I'll try it one of these days soon and report back in the NY Forum - my only reason for not going there is that they never advertise, it falls under the radar and I forget to try it out (not to mention that only one restaurant in town has the iced coffee with condensed milk that I crave and I keep going there repeatedly). Wow, are they still around? That's great to see. I was living in Syracuse back when they first opened in 1993 or thereabouts, and remember the owners too. Also had a meal there as well though don't recall what it was. They did run the one lesbian bar in the city at the time, and had to close it when another one opened up and became the In place to be. Thus Tu Tu Venue was born as a different business which would attract gay men as well as lesbians, rather than suffer the same fate of every subsequent new lesbian bar. Such is the way it always goes in most cities in the US. Even here in liberal Seattle, there's only one lesbian bar nowadays. Among other things, we just don't have the same capacity for drink that the boyz do. As for Vikram's comments about feeling ripped off in gay establishments, among other things, I suspect people in the US are just used to that because many of the old time gay bars during the Stonewall days used to be run by the Mafia in cahoots with corrupt police. But overall, I agree about the economics being a much greater factor for people in other countries in terms of having safe public space. I'm thinking especially of an essay I read sometime ago about the scene for lesbians in Thailand, and it was clear that going to a bar or club was for the wealthier set. Plus there is the extremely close-knit community and family to think about. Always difficult to explain to non-Asians whether gay or straight. Pat