Big Bunny

I go around the ends to make "handles", then typewriter. BB

This book is excellent and has been reprinted. I would add Ken Hom's Chinese Technique for a good pictorial overview of the methods. It is out of print but available used. BB

Truly. BB

Yes! That's the way it works! BB

So true. Sauces make good better, they cannot make bad good. There are degrees of perfection - sometimes a sauce makes food "more perfect." On the other hand, sauces can be ornaments. Dishes served with a variety of sauces can be eaten as a theme and variations, or a rondo. BB

All of the above. If I immediately make "sticks" of unused celery and/or carrots, they will probably get nibbled up before they go bad, especially when I need munchies while I prepare supper after work. I do a lot of stir-frying, so I am used to throwing away half of each head of garlic and bunch of scallions. BB

Here in Baltimore, there are many Korean families in which the parents run small businesses to send the kids to college ... the great American tradition. I imagine that this increases the number of Korean-Whatever places because of the demand for "whatever". Of course, there are also Korean restaurants which cater to a mainly Korean clientele. Our Korean population is large enough to support quite a few of these. BB

Another possible sidebar is "little dishes of dipping sauce." There are so many variations on this, usually very specific to a given region. BB

How many volumes will this book be? Asia is big, and there is a lot of history to deal with. Food is all about history and geography. My guess is that you will be torn between showing all of the links and relationships that exist between these cuisines and the sheer impossibility of really doing the subject(s) justice in the limits of one book. Over the weekend I did the "Hunan Steak Kew" recipe from Michael Tong's book. This is a great example of "Authentic American-Chinese Restaurant Cuisine." I usually read several recipes before doing one. Eileen Yin-fei Lo mentions the possibility the "kew" is actually a Chinese-American pronunciation of cube, and that the idea of big chunks was inspired by the easy availability of beef in the U.S. Of course there is no "steak kew" in Hunan (Or, maybe there is now), and the Shun Lee dish is really spiced-up (American-) Cantonese, but mainly it is a simply delicious dish in the American-Chinese restaurant tradition. Hmmm. That may be hard to quantify, but that quality of self conscious "deliciousness" often separates restaurant cuisine from traditional (everyday) cuisine, doesn't it? BB

My favorite use for kohlrabi is a soy-sauce pickle I learned from Florence Lin's vegetarian cookbook. Slice the k. into thin dominos, let it "weep" with salt and sugar, then put in a jar and cover with soy sauce. This keeps "forever" in the frij, and is a great side dish to anything with rice, especially rice poridge. BB

Toasted peanut-butter and banana is even better - especially on toasted raisin bread. BB

Arguments for and against sugar seem to parallel arguments for and against MSG. BB

Cinder blocks? BB

I have a story about this. Years ago I was putting leftover steamed fish away. Because I knew of this tradition, I was careful NOT to flip the fish in the process. Later that day, there was a report on the radio that a local fishing boat had turned over, drowning one fisherman. If I HAD flipped that fish, I would probably have been a wreck when I heard that news. BB

Pears are great with almost any cheese. It isn't always easy to find them at the perfect degree of ripeness, though. BB

In several books, Beijing is referred to as a food capital because there are so many restaurants there by/for people from the various regions. This is just a function of being the center of government and offering a wide variety, not necessarily a claim of excellence. BB

I use peanut for Chinese, olive for Mediterranean. To me, the real comparison is between olive oil, and the combination of peanut oil with a spritz of sesame oil. Sometimes, as an experiment, I use peanut oil on a Mediterranean dish, then give it a dash of sesame oil. That works quite well. Olive oil doesn't need the same "lift." I have never tried to do a Chinese dish in a fragrant olive oil (but NO sesame oil.) That would be interesting. BB

Bali is not on the mainland. BB

When I was a kid, in the fifties, I had Lipton's Onion soup all the time. It was as easy as making tea, and better than bouillon. I haven't had it in years, now I have a craving. BB

My local 7-11 already has ordinary, ripe bananas on the checkout desk for 49 cents each. BB

Sichuan pepper is used pretty much like black pepper in this respect. It is usually toasted and ground, but can be thrown whole into stews. Whole Sichuan pepper in a stir-fry pretty much "roasts" in the process. Even if you don't eat the pepper corns, they season the oil/sauce. BB

I got Yan's Chinatown with some of my Christmas money. It isn't divided into sections by city, but many (most?) of the recipes are attributed in their intros. I have made a Macanese claypot rice dish, and a lovely (unattributed) lime and silver fungus soup. Both were quite good. BB

I think that it was a bag of Double-H sauerkraut where I got the idea of cooking the kraut with beer and caraway seed. I always cook it this way now, and usually add kielbasa and new potatoes. Easy comfort food. BB

Pidan pan daofu ... great with a cold beer. I usually grind some black pepper over it - maybe a few tiny scallion slices. BB

I open the beer after I have done most of the cutting. BB