sequim

Or the result of a happy accident. Big Bunny - regarding wines, I'm not that adept at choosing wines to what the food asks for! I need suggestions. Especially with reds which seem much more difficult. Maybe that's a different thread though. Also, I was thinking wines aren't served much with Chinese food so I wouldn't get much response if I did post a thread like that.

I don't think there will be any outrage over it. It's a quaint term. When's the last time you heard anybody use it? It's not, as someone suggested, part of "common parlance".

Thanks for your kind words. I guess it must have been on a different thread, but someone mentioned getting the wok hot enough to smoke and indicated that getting the garlic really brown imparted a smoky flavor they liked, so that's what I wanted to achieve. Maybe that's a matter of personal taste. I had originally thought burned garlic would be bitter, though. I do know, though, that when I stir fry kale, I like to get the pan really hot and slightly burn the leaves as I like the crunchy smoke taste it gets. Perhaps it's a fine line between carbonized nasty and pleasantly smoky. An aside: At the chinese market yesterday I saw baskets of peppers (habeneros, jalapeno and anaheim) - the funny thing is they were all labeled jalapenos! Now as I continue to cook chinese I do hope that I can start to successfully pair wine with chinese foods as I think that is very difficult. Yet, I love wine and don't care to drink beer which many have suggested. Last night, however, I did have a pinot grigio which went very well with what I made. It was neither too sweet or too dry and the food didn't adversely affect its taste. Oops, I digressed from the main topic....

Why don't you become Moderator, Trillium! You are so active, after all. I am loving this thread. I love Chinese food but I have had similar experiences with Project in that when I've attempted to make a dish, the flavors are just blah or nasty even though I have all the special condiments. Last night, however, I concentrated on the Less Is More dictim and to taste as I go rather than put in quantified amounts. I used the Chicken and Green Bean recipe only as a guide because what I actually had was some killer BBQ pork, some rice leftover from lunch and some green beans. I made pork fried rice and slowly added flavorings like a lightly fried egg (I'm never sure if I should swirl the beaten egg into the fried rice or first lightly cook a pancake and cut it into strips. Last night I did the strips), scallions and lacking peas, put in some of the green beans I did as mentioned below. I also made sure to pick up some light soya as I know the dark soy I have has tended to overwhelm dishes in the past or I've made them too salty with too liberal a hand. Letting this mellow overnight, the flavors were great this morning when I had a bowl for breakfast. Not overspiced but not bland. With the green beans, I took the advice of getting the wok really hot and even letting the garlic brown, almost blacken up, although in the past I felt the garlic had been ruined when it reached this point. Then I threw in my blanched green beans and browned them up with a couple mushrooms and a jalapeno (deviating from traditional chinese I guess), adding the seasonings at the end, first adding light soya, then half the amount of dark soya and after tasting, some oyster sauce. It was delicious and I felt I'd crossed some magic threshold.

Thanks for all your input though it still leaves things pretty wide open. I know what you mean about Pearl River - I now have two bottles of their soy that are just pushing at the shelf above in my cupboard. I don't think I have any bottles of condiments that say anything about refrigeration although I'll probably check again for what it's worth.....not too much as it seems pretty inconsistent. Now if I was Project, I'd be going crazy. Too many conflicting opinions and not enough hard and fast rules. I guess if people do different things, then it really doesn't matter too much. If mold grows on top, then refrigerate it next time. I checked my cupboard-kept (and for maybe a year) hoisin sauce last night and it's still mold-free and smells fine so it'll stay there. Maybe it does have more preservatives than others - it's the common generic supermarket brand.

Oh here's one, did anyone mention biggie size. Hate that one. I love brekkie though cuz it's English. Also Jamie Oliver uses lots of slang that could be considered annoying but I think it's cute. Sorry I'm an anglophile.

I have to say appetizers, I just cannot spell hors d'oeuvres without thinking about it! ...did I get it right??????

This guy must have skipped out on taking humanities classes in school. Not all of us are engineer-type Americans. Some of us like the metaphor and poetic ways of speaking that touch on truth and can't be pinned down to exact formulas. I think Ben is referring to Zen and the Art of Chinese Cooking...

Too funny. I am so naive, I didn't even know mulatto was considered a slur. I just thought it described someone of mixed black and white heritage. I guess I'm not around enough name-callers.

Hum, now I'm confused. What is your past experience hzrt8w? I mean, what happened when they were out? Now out of your refrigerated list I keep chili paste, hoisin sauce and black bean paste out. I haven't noticed anything going bad and the hoisin has not developed any mold on it. Could it be you got something in the hoisin which made it go moldy? My assumption has been if extra spicy, extra salty, or fermented, then it could be out and bacteria wouldn't like such a hostile environment. But then I'm not a food biologist or chemist or whatever you would call one who would know.

Thank you Ben. I have been refrigerating the oyster sauce, but now it looks like I can take out the soy and Mae Ploy chilli sauces.

Hello everybody, As I increase my activities in asian cooking, I am starting to collect a sizeable number of bottles of condiments. I don't know what to keep in the fridge and what I can keep out. Obviously I have more cupboard space so would like to keep these things out, but I'm not sure. The bottles don't say Refrigerate, but what do most people do? I have all kinds of soy, hoisin, chilli paste, oyster sauce, black bean sauce, fish sauce, hot sauce... Some I have in the fridge, some I have in the cupboard. I feel like these are all fermented type of things so don't need refrigeration but I am just guessing. Another problem is that some of the bottles are rather big and don't fit in the fridge very well which is frustrating. Thanks! Linda

No Nullo jokes around this board, unless you count the sexless chicken ones...um, referencing the Charlie Trotter thread... Your user name is cool, I always notice it.

Hi Nullo! just wondering if your user name has any meaning

I think that having blue cheese straight on bread or cracker may be a bit too much, especially to start. I guess I like blue cheese more when it's in a dish than when it stars alone and I am a stinky cheese lover. But try it in a pear salad, it is absolutely fantastic and gives you a way to appreciate it without being the overwhelming flavor. And just use little chunks of it or go to a restaurant that makes a good one. And of course there are different types of blue cheese. Go down to a good market where they let you sample and go through the blue cheese to find more mellow ones you like. Talk to the cheese person. I did that recently at our local Metropolitan Market and she led me through the different types and how to use them.

I don't think it's psychosomatic. I like to drink tequilla specifically because it does make me feel different from drinking other types of liquor. I want to go climb things! I feel more poised for action versus sitting around just drinking more.

I have to wonder whether having tons of poison around the food is better than having the bugs around. I know which I'd choose....

Hand's down, Jamie O's kitchen - it looks like someone really lives there and it looks so much like London outside that round window. I like that it's messy with an old fridge and magnates on it, hanging jars full of spices and herbs, the hole cut in the counter to the garbage...just all these personal touches. In that vein, Julia's kitchen would be the greatest - it is so lived in looking, in fact it was! I hate these high tech, everything perfect kitchens with acres of space. It's just not homey or inviting. Secondly I like Ina's place, especially her garden!

Um, is that expensive?

You can be clean as all get out and if your neighbors aren't, well, here come the bugs! I am happy to live in Seattle now rather than Chicago. We don't seem to have roaches here. I haven't seen one Although that's not to say I don't miss Chicago and racing cockroaches at the bar where I worked. I won't say where....

Roaches are a part of life in some parts of the country. When I lived in Chicago, I had them in every apartment I lived in - that certainly didn't keep me from eating there! If I had to choose my bug, I'd choose roaches over flies any day. I don't really like finding them in my food, but it's not really a calamity. As someone said, in other parts of the world, crawly things are food.

Trust me when I say that you are not ignorant! When I mentioned green papaya I was referring to an unripe one Thank you Monica. But when I recently read a recipe that called for green mango, the writer stated that green mango was not the same as unripe mango so I don't want to make that mistake again...

Help an ignorant person. Is green papaya different from unripened papaya? I heard this is true of mango, that a green mango is not the same fruit as unripened mango. I've never seen green mangos in my regular grocery stores.

My preference is the one in the ID as it's convenient to coming from West Seattle and I get alittle freaked by traffic in the U district. However, I'm up for majority vote!

Yes, Please continue! I love this baking thread. I've gotten Sherry Yard's book as well but haven't made anything from it yet. Not really wanting to do pecan pie now that summer is here. Has anybody made anything else from her book that they liked?