Smithy

We certainly would! What kind of sauce, if any, do you like with them?

You've gone to a great deal of work. In addition to the work of translation, thank you for providing a single document that can contain all the updates and corrections. One of my dilemmas is that I frequently don't know which ones to ask about. If it sounds very familiar then it may not provide much education for me; if it's very unfamiliar-sounding then it may contain ingredients too exotic for me to find: sea cucumbers, for instance, or even fresh bamboo. Ginger and garlic are easy to find. There are a lot of eggplant recipes listed, and I'm always looking for new ways to prepare eggplant. Am I correct in thinking these are the long, thin (what we call 'Asian') eggplants instead of the more round globe eggplants typical of Italian cookery? A few of the recipes that caught my eye, largely because I don't know what their names indicate, are these: 烧汁铁板茄子 Iron Plate Eggplant /499 金牌烧汁酿广茄 Gold Medal Braised Eggplant /500 三鲜烧味茄 Three Delicacy Roast Flavour Eggplant /500东北茄段 North-Eastern Eggplant /527 天津茄泥 Tianjin Eggplant /527 京酱八宝茄 Beijing Eight Treasure Eggplant /527 If you'd care to describe some of them, or else select one of them at random and translate that recipe, I'd be delighted to try it if possible. I'm intrigued by this recipe. Preserved egg? For how long? A description of this would be nice:Tiger Skin Preserved Egg /387 What are these like? Jinsha Green Beans /341 Drunken fish and Mandarin fish sound interesting:Shaoxing Drunken Fish /379Peacock Mandarin Fish /574Grandmother's Family Style Drunken Fish /393 I could go on and on, but I don't want to be *too* greedy. I'll stop at one more, for now:Sweet and Sour Pork Tenderloin /484I ask about this because I've always been disappointed in what passes for "sweet and sour" dishes in Chinese restaurants in the USA. It may be because my tastes just don't run in that direction, but I'm prepared to think I've just never had a properly balanced sweet and sour dish. I'd be interested in reading more about any of these dishes; I eliminated nearly a dozen others before posting, lest I discourage you from responding.

Right you are. Bake the bottom crust, bake the top crust, cook the filling; assemble and serve.

I think the idea is that it's stiff enough after baking to fit over all like a crisp cap. I've never thought of cooking an apple filling separately from the crust, much less cooking both crusts separately from each other. Bless Shirley Corriher for her innovations, but it seems a lot of complication compared to my family's standard apple pie with crumb crust. I'll happily try it if someone else makes it! ;-)

It has been a beautiful and exciting series of reports. Thank you all for sharing the fun with the rest of us!

Unusual, no: not in this company, anyway. You may not want to tell your neighbors and/or dinner guests.

So: Who else wants to play with the Malbec? and Who wants to start the next round?

Welcome, Liz! It sounds like you'll fit right in here :-)

Huh. I can't recall seeing "Degrees" used as a measure of chemical concentration before. What's wrong with %, ppm, ug/L?

There should be some way to associate bacon with early August. Sir Francis Bacon, alas, was born in January.

In my part of the country they celebrate St. Urho's Day on March 16. (It is not a coincidence that it's the day before St. Patrick's Day.) St. Urho is, according to the story, the Patron Saint of Finland because he drove the grasshoppers out of Finland and saved the grape crop. (Finnish wine is highly esteemed to this day, yes?) The locals - those would be the residents of Finland, Minnesota and the surrounding area - have a big parade and festival, with lots of food and partying. There is rumored to be a dance involving a stomp, waved hands and chant, in Finnish, "Grasshopper, grasshopper, go home!" The official colors are purple and green, for the grapes and the grasshoppers. Strangely, the official foods are most likely to involve beer and Polish sausages, but one can't have everything. Perhaps it's time to go national with St. Urho's Day.

He'd have to be measuring into a bag or small container first,which is why the fishing scale might work as well but be less, well, fishy. I have the same question as others here about the need for such precision and accuracy, but this may be a case of "one wants what one wants".

Dance. Gotta do something while the timer's counting down or the pot's coming to the boil.

Raw chocolate chip cookie dough is my downfall. Like Darienne, I don't make cookies often any more. Invoke the "5-second rule" for things dropped on the floor - if the dog doesn't get there first. I feel best about it when the object in question is to be cooked anyway, but I've been known to pick up (just-dropped) nuts from the floor and add them to the salad.

Getting back to the question at hand: I wonder if there's another scale configuration that would be as portable without seeming too suspicious: for instance, a fish-weighing scale or a small-animal scale. Some of the fishing scales I've looked at would fit in one's pocket, but you'd have to wrap the hook so you didn't stab yourself. :-)

Welcome to the Society, Steve! Feel free to come explore the forums and participate in the discussions. There are a lot of people here with questions, answers, and opinions. What sort of food do you especially enjoy cooking and/or eating?

It's rare in our household as well! Nonetheless, it happened..two bottles in a row, and I have another report: tonight's leftover Malbec wasn't half-bad with smoked salmon. I'd do that combination again.

So, did anyone try the chocolates with durian filling? I loved the warning sign.

That's very interesting, Plantes Vertes. Thanks for resurrecting this topic, which I'd missed before now. Please do post your tasting notes when you can. I'm inclined to agree with the posters above who note that having multiple variables and failing to control or account for them is generally a poor practice that leads to inaccurate results. I'm also inclined toward favoring environmentally friendly alternatives in our own long-term self-interest, as long as the results are good. I'll have to start reading more about this topic and working out the difference between 'organic' and 'raw' in the context of wine.

I opened the first bottle last night. Right out of the bottle it had a nose and taste of grape - as opposed to cherries or blackberries, for instance - but did seem a bit astringent. After breathing for a while the flavors opened out and there was more of a sense of fruit to it, but this was not one of those wretched wines labeled as "fruit forward" that smack you in the face and give new meaning to the phrase "fruit punch". We drank it last night with grilled steaks, a grilled vegetable salad (ramps, peppers and asparagus). Chimichurri sauce was included in a nod to the Argentinian wine source. The wine and the meal complimented each other reasonably well: that is to say, everything tasted good together and separately, and nothing was overwhelming compared to the rest. I've had some wine and food pairings that were nearly magical in the way they brought out new flavors in each other. This pairing wasn't magical like that, but it was good. Today, the leftover wine - having sat in the decanter for over 24 hours - was still good. (Surprise!) It seemed a little drier, as though some of the fruity compounds had evaporated, but it was still quite drinkable. Wanting to test rotut's theory, I opened a new bottle, decanted some, then chilled the rest down to about 60 or 65F. (Our room temperature is running in the low 70's right now.) Chilling did balance the flavors better, perhaps toning down the alcohol compared to the fruity compounds. Just a guess. We paired it with a Southeast Indian Slow Cooker stew with a lot of lentils, onions, garlic, spices, spinach, chicken broth and more spices. Did I mention it was spicy? The wine and the stew didn't play together as nicely as the wine and steak did last night: instead of each tasting good together or separately, each seemed slightly bitter at the first taste after working on the other. $10.99 at our best local liquor store is the normal price; I bought it on sale for a dollar or two less. I'd get it again.

Tom Thomas, your recipe sounds delicious, and your timing is interesting because of another topic that just came up on Hyderabadi Biryani. Perhaps you could answer that person's questions?

Welcome, daniel! There are a lot of skilled confectioners on these forums, and they're happy to talk about confections of all types. A number of them are currently in Las Vegas, Nevada (USA) at a Chocolate and Confectionary Workshop, and you can see some of their activities here: http://forums.egullet.org/topic/148418-report-eg-chocolate-and-confectionery-workshop-2014/ You may find yourself interested in the topic titled "Your Daily Sweets: What are you making and baking?" The 2014 topic starts here: http://forums.egullet.org/topic/147429-your-daily-sweets-what-are-you-making-and-baking-2014%E2%80%93/ There's also a topic titled "Confections! What did we make?" here: http://forums.egullet.org/topic/143988-confections-what-did-we-make-2012%E2%80%93/ Of course, there are a lot of other topics in the Pastry and Baking forum, but we have a lot of lively discussion on other food-related topics. Come join in the fun!

I'm glad to see Delights from the Garden of Eden getting so much attention and going into a new publication. I have the original paperback version (mine came in good condition), given to me by a friend who met Ms. Nasrallah and loved her stories. The stories in the book are fun and interesting, and the recipes fascinating. I can't remember which I've done and which I haven't. I'll have to pull the book out and start cooking from it again.

There are some good ideas coming here. Note that the handout listing approves hard cheeses such as cheddar, swiss and mozarella, in small quantities. I'm with Lisa on the fruit salad. It's a pity about the stone fruits, but with citrus, berries, pineapple and melons you still have a lot of options.

Actually, that photo looks to me like 2013, not 2012. Kerry, can you confirm the year, for our curiosity? At any rate, I picked up 2 bottles of the 2013 and will be opening at least one this weekend. The vintage makes a difference, but for purposes of this game let's assume that it's less important than the winery and the wine in question.