jgarner53
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Posts posted by jgarner53
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I eat sushi with a fork.
Isn't the traditional way to eat sushi with the fingers? Flip the sushi fish-side down to dunk into the soy sauce, then eat it so that the fish side goes against your tongue? No chopsticks required! Though I believe that maki are eaten with chopsticks?
I just spent 11 days in Japan. You'd think I'd have looked around enough to notice how people were eating their sushi.
I love the Thai/Filipino method of spoon/fork and adopted it on a trip to Thailand three years ago. But only for Thai food. Asian soups get the porcelain spoon; western soups a soup spoon. Chinese and Japanese food get chopsticks.
I loved watching little kids trying to master their chopsticks in restaurants in Tokyo. They hadn't developed the dexterity just yet, and were pretty awkward. I even saw training chopsticks for sale that had round finger grips in the right places, so you could learn. (I think they were connected at the top, too).
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This is so exciting! It's like remodeling vicariously, but without the dust (at least on my end)
Congratulations for getting it all together and started! -
Haven't remodeled my own kitchen yet, but when I was about 13, my family remodeled our kitchen/family room/dining room over the course of one summer. We had the fridge, toaster oven, and microwave in the garage, and the workbench set up as counter space. There was a card table and chairs in there, and I think we mostly used paper plates, but I do remember stacking dishes in a washtub and carrying them to the tub to wash.
I ate a lot of frozen meals that summer. I don't remember what we did about dinner; mostly I remember pulling frozen pot pies out and heating them in the toaster oven (this was before they could be microwaved) for lunch most days when I was home.
Good luck, and keep your eyes on the prize - a new kitchen!
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Aaaah, the difference between walking, standing,and sitting. I get it. (Wish guide books would be more clear, though) In my defense, I was not the only one sitting on the planter. There were two other (Japanese) people sitting (though not eating) on the other side.
And of course, today, in a crosswalk outside the Tokyo National Museum, I saw a "do not walk and smoke" sign. On the pavement. Presumably to minimize butt trash, but it was worth a laugh.
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I admit that I am about as inconspicuous here in Tokyo as Godzilla (6 foot-one gaijin woman
), and that I probably break about 100 etiquette rules a day without knowing it.Like eating my rice balls sitting outside the other day. I'd picked up a couple for lunch in a department store basement, and there's no place there to sit that isn't a separate restaurant. Eventually, I find a planter and sit down outside to eat my lunch. Later, I read that Japanese just don't do that.
So if I pick up a bento or snack in a store, where in heck am I supposed to eat it?
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are you still working in the city? remind me which bakery? i followed that thread back when you started it.
Yes, I work at Boulangerie Bay Bread (Pine @ Fillmore), part of Pascal Rigo's empire. Been there almost a year now.
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All your ugly kitchens make me ashamed to call my kitchen ugly. OK, so it's not ugly, but it is dysfunctional. Who puts a range in a corner, with a cabinet perpendicular so that you can't' put anything straight into the (only) oven, and can't stand directly in front of the range?
When my kitchen finally bites it, I will have a challenge on my hands, design-wise. At 10x11, with 3 doors (only one can go away), two windows, and walls that can't move (1 exterior, 1 load-bearing, 1 adjacent to a stairwell that has nowhere to move), I can't really change the footprint at all.
An island is the least of my worries. I dream of counter-depth fridges, 36-inch ranges (even better would be wall ovens, but would sacrifice too much cabinet space), and gorgeous soapstone counters...
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i love e.guittard and have never liked ghirardelli very much.
the only thing i don't like by guittard is their milk chocolate. it tastes very "malt-y" to me and that isn't my favorite flavor.
annachan, i'm located in the bay area, can you tell me who you buy your bulk chocolate from? i usually use the e.guittard 61% and white and am considering buying from chefswarehouse (dairyland) based in New York. they have started distribution on the west coast and are located in oakland. i spoke to a sales rep and i can buy from him and pick up at their warehouse.
maybe your supplier is better?
I'm in San Francisco and get my E. Guittard through Pacific Gourmet for about $3.50/lb. Their number is 888-652-9252. They will let you do pick-up orders, though I believe they have an order minimum (I usually get my cocoa powder there as well).
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Has anyone heard of or tried Metromint? From the bottles I've seen ($1.89 for 16 oz. at a Mollie Stone's in San Francisco), it is just water and peppermint. No sugar or artificial sweeteners. But close to $2 for what most would down in a single serving?
According to their website, they use pesticide-free peppermint leaves grown in Yakima, WA and filtered water.
Couldn't I just do the same thing at home?
For far, far cheaper?Has anyone tried this? Is it good? As refreshing and magical as they claim?
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Where I work, we use raw egg whites and yolks all the time. The retail staff has a list of ingredients of all of our products, so that anyone who is concerned can get an answer. (The mousses all use raw yolks and whites, as is the meringue on the lime tartlets (it's a Swiss meringue and probably not cooked enough to count), and our pot de crème has raw yolks (though they're tempered with boiling cream).
Hasn't seemed to have been a problem yet.
I remember years ago on the Food network when Debbie Fields (aka Mrs. Fields) had a dessert show, that she'd recommend that if you wanted to eat the cookie batter she was mixing, to leave out the eggs.
Not that I ever did, or have. I am a certified beater licker, raw cookie dough nibbler, and pot de crème snarfer!
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Man, how could I forget guacamole? And spinach dip? The kind you make with soup mix, mayo, and sour cream, and frozen spinach.
At a Mexican restaurant, if they don't take away the chip basket, I will eat nothing but chips and salsa until that enchilada combo plate goes home with me in a box because I am too full to eat more than two bites.
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I'm weird about temptation. I was about to put down Girl Scout Thin Mints because if I open a box, I'll eat most of a tube before I'm aware of what I've done. But right now I've got half a dozen boxes sitting in my kitchen untouched. The Thin Mint bug hasn't bitten yet, I guess. Even the other day, when I wanted something sweet, I didn't open them.
I'm a sucker for a triple cream cheese and will eat it over other harder cheeses if it's around. Oh, that creamy goodness!
Most of my temptations are easily deniable, but when the jones hits, watch out because that's all I'll think about, talk about, PLAN for when I can eat it, whether it's fries, macaroni & cheese, or a few bowls of Cap'n Crunch. Stay outta my way because I'm a girl on a mission!
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Green tea
Coke zero (having switched from Diet Coke last year)
Bread in some form (working in a bakery feeds this addiction oh, just a little bit!)
Something sweet, but not usually chocolate.
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Working in a bakery, I'm responsible for laundering my whites. They do aprons and side towels. My jackets and pants are my responsibility.
Even if it is 5am, I come in to work in jeans and a t-shirt, or whatever's weather appropriate, and change into my work clothes there. Cold weather can have me in two or three layers under my jacket (which has short sleeves), regardless of the temp in the kitchen.
I don't even really like walking out to check on my car (to move it to avoid ticketing) in my whites, but it ain't worth it to change for 5 minutes!
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I've baked chiffon cakes in regular cake pans with great success as well. Using a pan with sides taller than your cake will be lets you invert the pan while it cools.
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If you're covering the cake ultimately with frosting (like buttercream), you can pipe a border around the outside edge of your cake layer before adding the filling. The buttercream acts as a dam to keep the filling contained while it sets.
One trick I use is to build a cake in a 3-inch deep cake pan. I pipe the buttercream around the cake layers as high as I want the layer of filling to be, fill, then move on to the next layer. When it's chilled and set, I take put a cardboard round on the top (which will then be the bottom of my cake), invert, and hit the sides gently with a blowtorch to soften the buttercream. The cake pan slides right off, and I have a smooth, even stack of cake ready for icing.
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I grew up on Skippy extra crunchy, but have switched to TJ's salted (gotta have the salt) and love it! Now, when I taste the others, they taste overly sweet and smooth to me, even if there are peanut chunks. They must grind and strain any peanut bits out of the big commercial brands, and then add chunks back in because I don't know how else they could get it so smooth.
A few months ago, my TJ's had a differently labeled PB that was much less smooth (a lot firmer, less oil, and not as tasty). My husband and I hated it! But the next jar, while yet another different label, seems to be more like the old kind, perhaps just with a label redesign. No info on the packaging as to the supplier, so I can only guess that they tried a different PB purveyor.
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This may sound obvious, and I may offend pet people here, but be willing/able to put your pets outside, or in a spare bedroom, if there are guests that are a) severely allergic or b) have problems, or your pets have problems (the cat always throws up when company's there, or your huge dog likes to jump up on people).
I usually warn people in advance that we have a cat, so they can take whatever precautions they may need to (allergy medicine, or whatever).
And for heaven's sake, you might think it charming when Bootsy licks your plate clean, but your guests will likely be horrified and wonder how clean their own plates are!
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That 4 gallons doesn't include the batch (yield about 24Q) we do at least 3x/week in our pasteurizer.
Or the separate, "specialized" pastry creams we make (rose, coconut, chocolate, jasmine, and rum).
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Joy! Our kitchen designer has found a local soapstone fabricator, twenty miles down the road from here!
Lucky you!
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The pasteurization/aging requirements for imported cheese come to mind. So what might otherwise be a heavenly cheese in France gets pasteurized if they want to make it for export to the US.
Thank goodness I live in the great state of California where not only can I buy liquor 7 days a week, but I can buy beer, wine, or hard liquor all in my local grocery store without having to make a separate stop at a state-run liquor store.
I have heard (not that I've <ahem> tried this) that if you are shipping wine or beer to someone, telling the P.O. that it's olive oil is a good ploy. Fragile, yes, illegal, no. But why it's illegal for my homebrewing husband to openly ship a six-pack of his holiday beers to his brother in MD is beyond me.
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Don't bother with lipstick. I bite into my cookies, brownies, sandwiches with gusto!
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ye gods, if we had to use a double boiler for our pastry cream at work (where we do batches starting with 4 gallons of milk every day, at the very least), it would never get done!
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I just want to say that it's so exciting to see a sketch! Like living my own dreams for kitchen remodeling, but vicariously, and less messsily!
Honestly, I'd make a list of everything you store in your kitchen - go through it to see how much of everything you have and then see if it will all fit in the sketched out spaces. Do you know where it will all go? Does it all make sense (like, you said, the baking things near the baking area)? You'd hate to get through to the other side and find you have no space for that prized whatsit you can't live without.
Melon Disappointment
in Cooking
Posted
When I was recently in Tokyo, goggling at the prices on the packaged fruit in department stores, I did kind of have to chuckle at the melons for sale. Each one was lovingly wrapped in tissue and propped up in what looked like a velvet lined box. Prices started at about $35 and went up (I saw one close to $100!
), and every single one of these melons (cantaloupes) had the stem still attached, which meant to me, at least, that they had been picked way too early and probably had very little flavor, for all their priciness.
Anyone ever eaten a $100 Japanese gift melon?