Abra

I wish I could have been at your New Year's dinner! Despite the blur, that's a wonderful assortment of food. By sheer coincidence, I made a lamb broth soup for our dinner tonight. Mine had celery root, long beans, lots of sliced garlic, and zucchini, plus freekeh as the grain. It was very auspicious for our weather too. I'd love to know how to make good okonomi yaki. And also, any Japanese sweets or desserts that you make. I know very little about that part of Japanese cooking and would love to learn. And pictures of Japanese street food, and the produce section of your favorite market, would also be wonderful. Uh, not to be demanding or anything!

I hope you're all recovered soon, Helen. I'm really interested in your blended-culture family, as I am in Torakris'. I notice that you eat a lot of dairy products, which is not something I associate with Japanese food. I aslo see that your husband cooks, another thing I don't think of Japanese husbands doing. I love to be wrong about such things! I love taro, and gobo, and all sorts of fish paste cakes, so now I'm thinking of having a little extra ozouni here at home, even if it is a bit on the non-traditional side.

No, but I did buy some bergamot preserves in a jar from George's Bakery. I haven't tried it out yet.

Brr, I wish I had a kotatsu right now! I had lovely ozoni at another eG member's house on New Year's day, and I'm craving another bowl. When you say that at this time of year you eat more Japanese food than Western food - are you from somewhere other than Japan, originally? I assume so, since your English is impeccable (with the exception of your totally lovable typo: schnapper). That really made me giggle!

Tzatziki is a major food group in our house too, so I want to compare notes. I always grate the cucumber into a tea towel, then wring it tightly to squeeze out all the juice. Is that your method too? It makes for a messy towel, but the resulting juice is great. Last time I mixed it 1:1 with nigori sake and made an elegant little cucumber cocktail.

Looks like a breaded chicken breast! Austin, what makes this disgusting to you? You'd eat bacon on raisin toast, right? Or does that also sound disgusting? Happy New Year, and I'm looking forward to more on Thai baked goods.

Gorgeous! I can't help but wonder whether you were disappointed in so many of the pastries because you work with such an elevated set of desserts every day. Would the rest of us have oohed and ahhed over most of what you had, or do you think that the Japanese pastries are really more for the eyes than the taste buds?

So far I've only made the Fall-Apart lamb shanks, and they were fall-over yummy. I cooked them overnight in the slow cooker, then pulled the meat off the bone, since it was sort of a tasting menu. They got a fairly long rest in a warm oven, in the sauce, and were utterly delectable. You can see how they turned out here. If you haven't tried these, don't wait! The poached pork and the herb and onion jam are right up there at the top of my list to try next.

I ended up after 29 years as a master grape grower with 206 gold pieces, a well known chardonnay vineyard with type B root stock, a well known sémillon vineyard with type A root stock, a highly respected chardonnay vineyard with type B root stock, and 2 cabernet sauvignon vineyards with type B root stock. I'm all-organic and tree-hugging, so I never did any spraying or irrigation, nor did I go for the premium rootstock. Oh, and I popped every time for the futurist's predictions.

I'm more or less with Fresser, although I was thinking that they wouldn't look half bad filled with fruit salad, or watermelon chunks, or something of that sort. You could use them once for that purpose, and invite the givers. Or even do them filled with popcorn, or some little snack item, cereal and nut mix, something you can hoard in your own cute little glass. To me it looks like they weren't actually trying to be mean to you!

I took my remaining fillet out of the cure today, so that was exactly a week. The very tip of the tail was jerked, but the rest is now excellent. Next time I'll wait for fresh fish, though.

Ok, it looks like learning sous vide cookiing is going to be my next big technique push. I'll have to hunt up that thread - I avoided it while it was current, and now I see how dumb that was!

Here's what it looks like in MasterCook. As you can see, the terms for the ingredients have to presented in a certain format and using certain vocabulary. If I really want to indicate prawns, I can go get the nutritional info and incorporate it into the MC data base. Since "prawns" and "shrimp" are the same nutritionally, I just used shrimp for this little demo. * Exported from MasterCook * Prawns Jalfrezi Recipe By : Serving Size : 4 Preparation Time :0:00 Categories : Amount Measure Ingredient -- Preparation Method -------- ------------ -------------------------------- 1 lb shrimp -- shelled and deveined 6 green chile peppers -- medium hot and sliced length-wise 1 piece ginger -- (1/2") finely chopped and crushed 3 cloves garlic -- whole, lightly crushed 2 medium onions -- diced Curry leaves – a sprig 1/4 tsp turmeric powder 2 tsp ground chile powder 1 tsp ground black pepper 2 medium tomatoes -- finely chopped 2 hot chile peppers -- diced 1 tsp soy sauce 1/2 cup coconut milk 2 tsp lemon juice 1 small bunch cilantro 1 1/2 tsp salt 2 tsp canola oil Method: Heat oil in a fry pan and when very hot put in the garlic, curry leaves, onion, and ginger. When onions turns limp, add the turmeric powder, chilli powder, black pepper powder, and fry for a minute. Add the tomatoes and saute till oil separates from it. Now add the capsicum, soy sauce, prawns, and salt. Stir-fry for 2 minutes on moderate heat. Add the coconut milk, green chillies, and lime juice alongwith half a cup of hot water. Bring slowly to the boil, simmer, and let the prawns cook in this mixture for approx 5 minutes. Serve hot garnished with coriander leaves. Traditional Indian Home Cooking Recipe: Prawns Jalfrezi aka Chilli p Prawns - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Per Serving (excluding unknown items): 255 Calories; 12g Fat (40.9% calories from fat); 25g Protein; 13g Carbohydrate; 3g Dietary Fiber; 173mg Cholesterol; 1067mg Sodium. Exchanges: 0 Grain(Starch); 3 Lean Meat; 1 1/2 Vegetable; 0 Fruit; 2 Fat.

Thanks, Ptipois!

Awesome! I actually do have an unglazed cloche that I'm always forgetting about, so that could double as the Romertopf. So now I need the chamba stuff, and I'll check out claycoyote too. Thanks!

I use the MasterCook software, which easily calculates calories per serving. I could do these two for you, if you like, but if you want to do all of your recipes, the software is inexpensive and is useful for lots of other purposes too.

Paula, will you be so kind as to give us your favorite sources of clay pots? I got Slow Mediterranean for Christmas, as well as cooking my way through SW France, and I only have some glazed Polish bakers, and a glazed cazuela, which I don't think are what you would be using.

This is so interesting to me. I've lived in Israel for a total of 6-7 months, but it was over 30 years ago. It sounds like things have really changed on the food scene, except for the fact of the fresh vegetables being so excellent. I used to haunt the fruit juice stands for fresh-squeezed mitz gezer and mitz eshkoliot (carrot and grapefruit juices) which were breathtakingly delicious.

Welcome to eGullet, Deb! With your wine and food expertise, you'll have a ball here.

Well, we sure sang Klary's praises throughout our Christmas weekend! The boterkoek was scrumptious, and not even that gingery, considering how much I put in. The texture is really interesting - but I noted upthread that someone referred to it as a "cookie." I think that you must use ginger preserved in syrup and not the dried crystallized stuff, or else you will get a cookie! The moisture from the ginger is a big part of the texture. Ours was melt-in-your-mouth buttery and delectable, and definitely a cake not a cookie. I'm embarrassed to say how well the advocaat turned out. Shall I mention that there's not a drop left? We won't even talk about why that is. Part of it topped the bitterkoekjes puddings You can't really see the layering in these pictures, because I used really tiny bowls. That meant that anyone who wanted to could have three or four of them. We won't mention who would do a thing like that. I did add a bit of almond extract to the puddings, as they weren't as almondy as I'd hoped with just the bitterkoekjes for flavoring. That's a dab of sour cherry preserve, and some candied angelica sent to me by jackal10, on the top.

Elie, thank you for your beautiful stuffed onion photo. That recipe has been calling to me since day one, but I've wondered about the amount of work relative to the end product. Sounds like it's at least as delicious as I thought it would be. Of all the posts, yours is the dinner I wish I'd had on Christmas!

Those pictures of you and yor parents in your Christmas headgear are a National Teasure. If there's anyone else in Canada, or the world, like you, Zuke, I've never met her! Thank you so much for a very special blog.

I have to say that I think you all might have been right about the frozen salmon. Here's my gravlax after 48 hours Not salty, and not dry. I have the other half still curing under weights, and I'm hoping for a deeper cure. This was delicious, sort of mi-cuit in texture, but not exactly what I was expecting. It didn't drain much water at all, so I was thinking there'd be no problem, but it's still quite moist.

Christmas Eve supper was a nibble buffet Ginger-Garlic Hummus with Crudites and Salt Roasted Potatoes (the salt-roasted potatoes sort of look like cat turds, but they taste wonderful) and gravlax with dill-mustard sauce, aged Beemster and Gruyere, and Dorothea with Marigold Petals This was my first time making gravlax, and it wasn't really cured after 48 hours. It was delicious, but not yet really dried. You can see how moist it still was We also had Chufi's Dutch parfait, made with homemade advocaat and a pudding made with Dutch bitter almond macaroons (on top is a bit of sour cherry preserve and some candied angelica sent to me by jackal10) and a platter of assorted Mediterranean bought sweets, plus some Latin Lace Florentines that I made with chipotle That fluffy, hairy white stuff was the sleeper hit of the evening. Pismanije is a sort of cotton candy, not too sweet - each little cube pulls apart and fluffs up to about three times its size. We drank Gluhwein and lingonberry-cava cocktails with all this, and had a very merry, if sugary, time.

She is from Bangkok, and eats it every time she goes home. She's even described eating it during the whole plane ride back and bringing so much that she still had to turn some into Customs when she arrived. She seriously loves the stuff, but she's never mentioned the condensed milk thing! Your website has some beautiful shots, Austin.