Katherine

" The pasta water contains starches which are helpful for allowing sauce to stick to pasta. Which is why you should never, ever wash your pasta after it has been transferred to the colander because all those starches are on the surface of the pasta." Don't use a watery sauce, and it will stick just fine. If your sauce breaks down into a pile of tomato pulp and a pool of splishy-splashy tomato water, there's nothing you can do to get it to stick to the pasta.

I had a 3-cup Zojirushi rice cooker I used all the time. I made whole grain porridge for breakfast, sweet rice ad sushi rice, pilafs, and could set it so there was hot rice waiting for me at night. It's small enough so that I could make 1 serving and not have leftovers when I didn't want to bother with them. I gave it to my daughter to take to school, and now she uses it to make noodle soup, rice, and to reheat leftovers. I miss it a lot. If I had unlimited money and storage space, I'd have one in each size. The Japanese make wonderful toys.

They're made with plain rice, not sushi-seasoned rice, so they're not sushi. Also, they're wrapped around a filling in the shape of a ball. Maki means "roll", as in the many styles of sushi rolls we see.

I think you're probably looking at a kitchen error here. Unless they tell you in advance that meat is to be served raw, it should be hot and obviously cooked on the outside. A chef would have to be remarkedly misguided as to the tastes of American diners to serve them raw lamb unannounced.

I haven't picked any wild mushrooms in a long time. A few times I picked puffballs, which are delicate in texture and tasty-but you have to pick them before they go "puff". Then there was the wild mushroom lasagna incident, where I stripped a neighbor's tree stump of some sort of tree ear. When I fried up a bit, it got tough as leather, so I pureed it before sauteeing and adding to the sauce. Some of the people who ate the lasagna thought it was fabulous. For me, it was a little earthy. Then he removed the tree stump. No more tree ears.

Gross! It is porridge that is soul food! Congee...Kasha with onions and cheese...Pilaf of toasted whole oats with butter, salt, pepper and cream...Grits with ham and cheese...Japanese sweet rice porridge with dashi and seafood...Toasted long-grain brown rice pilaf...Mixed whole grains with sausage meat...

What I miss when I travel is a good American-style breakfast. I cook a hot breakfast every morning, and after a week of pastries, I want a blue plate special, or a Southern style breakfast, like biscuits and gravy. Or grits, country ham, and corn bread. Nobody else in the world understands how to cook proper breakfast potatoes, or knows what breakfast sausage is. And then they try to serve us an "English-style breakfast" because we speak English. Stuff I wouldn't serve to my family even if I was in a bad mood. And they wouldn't eat it even if I did.

I love to order dessert, and don't mind paying proportionally to the cost of a meal, but so many restaurants give you huge portions that fill you up so you can't. I'll get a doggie bag in advance to take half my meal home, but only if it's something that will still be worth eating for lunch the next day. About fad diets: the mind-over-body bit only works for so long. After being on one of these diet for a certain amount of time, the needs of your body give you irresistible cravings and you fall off the wagon. Next time you try the diet, you fall quicker, and eventually give up. But I do feel that many Americans eat far too many carbs (by a factor of 2 or 3), not a more balanced diet. Americans eat less fat, less protein, more carbs, Americans get fatter. Coincidence? I think not.

What I'm looking for in an Australian cookbook is something more like the American Joy of Cooking or James Beard's American Cookery--the kind of everyday food people cooked for their meals (and sometimes still do) without the restaurant touch of a star chef. Something that has all the basic recipes. What sort of cookbooks did your mothers use?

If you'll check out this address, you'll find a lot of people with expertise who will be more than willing to comment on your selection. http://www.wineloverspage.com/cgi-bin/sb/index.cgi?fn=1

Sure. It's a conspiracy. Maybe you were not affected because you were not susceptible, but so many have fallen before you. "Must shop...people buying stuff...must be on sale...must buy...more stuff"

They get very lightly brown, tan on the outside, really, and some of the excess moisture gets cooked off in the oil. Also really good in omelettes. Actually, a customer in a restaurant I was cooking breakfast in ordered it that way once, and everybody liked it, so I cook them that way often (if I'm not eating them raw, of course).

Tomatoes are in season right now. What I like to do is sauté onions, garlic, and red peppers together in olive oil until soft. In another pan, fry seeded, slivered fresh tomatoes in plenty of oil until browned and cooked. Combine the two. Season with salt, pepper, and red pepper. Add cream and cook until a little reduced. Toss with pasta, serve on meat, or eat by itself.

I had some white lightning once. It came in a mason jar with maraschino cherries in it. After about 6 months on the shelf, I opened it. It smelled like pure toluene. Who knows what results from such an uncontrolled process? I threw it out. Although if I had a glass still with thermometers so I could control the fractionation, I might feel differently.

"It is almost impossible to define an Australian cuisine in the same way that it is difficult to pin down what American cuisine or Canadian cuisine means." But, given that there are probably authors out there trying to do this anyway, can you recommend a cookbook or two?

If you're making a delicate cake, it might not be ok.

If the recipe calls for sifting before measuring, then you should do it because sifting lightens the flour, and you will end up with a different weight than if you scooped or spooned. According to King Arthur, their all-purpose flour has 11.7% protein and their cake flour has 8.0%. This could be a big difference. A cake that comes out perfect with cake flour might be heavy and tough with all-purpose. A muffin that normally uses all-purpose flour might be pasty or crumbly with cake flour. There's a conversion equation somewhere, but it's better to run out and buy the right flour, to be on the safe side.

How about: tequila, clam juice, lime juice, Peppar, tuong, etc. Garnish it with a lime wedge, a nugget of lobster meat, and a shrimp on a pick.

Shoyu is the Japanese word for soy sauce. There's a huge variation in the quality available. I use a mass-produced one like kikkoman for stir-frying, but only the small bottles of unpasteurized/aged/small lot are good enough to serve at the table or with sushi. I buy them at the natural food store, but they might be available at at better Japanese grocer in your area. Tamari is special type of Japanese soy sauce, which doesn't have as much flavor. Read the labels on the soy sauce bottles. Tasting notes: Ohsawa Nama Shoyu; Ingredients: organically grown whole soybeans, water, organically grown whole wheat, sea salt, and aspergillus oryzae (koji). Flavor: rich, full-bodied. San-j Tamari Premium soy sauce; Ingredients: Water, soybeans, salt, alcohol (to preserve freshness), wheat. Flavor: mild and delicate. Golden Mountain Soya Bean Sauce (recommended by the guy at the Vietnamese market); Ingredients: Soya bean meal 46.5%, Water 30.48%, Salt 18%, Sugar 5%, Add Food enhancer 0.02% (Disodium inosinate and Disodium-guanylate) No preservative. Flavor: Sweet, tastes like cheap imitation chicken soup. Little soy flavor. Taste a few types side by side and you'll understand. Also, keep in mind that "reduced salt" types are also "reduced flavor", so there is no advantage to buying them over using less of a regular type.

Eeuuw! Is that how they serve it in New Jersey?

I am one of those people to whom cilantro tastes like soap. It took me years to grow to like it in small amounts. A little flag would go up in my brain, saying, "Spit it out!" During that period of time, an new "Mexican" cuisine rose (and fell) which was characterized chiefly by massive doses of cilantro and salt. I love dill when it's done properly, which means it needs to be the focus of a dish, making it easier for you dill-haters to avoid too. It doesn't belong in herb blends, especially when they don't let you know in advance.

As far as stock goes, most of the flavor in the chicken is in the dark meat and skin. Very conveniently, so you can remove the raw breasts for another purpose with no loss in flavor, or just buy leg quarters. The most tasteless broth is made from barrel (carcass) bones leftover after white meat has been used for some other purpose.

Well, Jason, put the Garlic Queen (Amsterdam, Reguliersdwarsstraat) on your list of garlic themed restaurants. They have a garlic eau-de-vie there that will cure what ails you while it puts hair on your chest.

How thin you roll them (as far as setting number is concerned) depends on the calibration of your machine. I have heard that the better quality small machines can be adjusted. The one I used to use was a cheapie, and the thinnest setting was too thin for anything but strudel. The next thicker setting was too thick. In any case, the pasta wasn't wide enough to fit on a frame and seal properly. I bought a Trattorina, which I highly recommend. It is so superior that it is a joy to use compared with my old motorized small machine. The thinnest setting is perfect for raviolis, while sometimes for extraordinarily delicate ones, I roll them out a little thinner by hand. Maybe you need to roll your dough out a bit more by hand if you machine doesn't have the correct setting. If the dough is too stretchy to handle at the thickness which it seems ought to be right, you might try making it just a little bit drier. I've seen recommendations to dry the pasta for an hour on a floured cloth. If I don't cook it right away (like if I'm making a huge batch), it goes onto a lightly floured sheet pan, and after a while, they get flipped over. If I'm not using it immediately (within hours) it will then go in the freezer, but not for more than 2 weeks. Usually, I just have the water boiling and cook it immediately.

My favorite is portobello and brie: Cut cheap brie, crust and all into 1" cubes. Sauté sliced portobellos in butter until cooked, add sherry or other wine and salt to taste, cook until dry. When mushrooms are cool, place an equal amount in the food processor as the brie. Chill until ready to fill raviolis. Serve raviolis with a little butter and cream, so as not to overwhelm the delicate flavors. You might want to get a ravioli frame or two (or three or four). They make nice uniformly shaped raviolis, and are available in lots of shapes and sizes. Though I haven't found anyplace that carries them all. Start with www.fantes.com. I always use my KitchenAid stand mixer to make pasta dough. Two servings is such a perfect amount of ravioli to make, you get to stop before you get really bored...