liuzhou

When breading with panko, I always dry the meat, as suggested above. Then eggwash and into the panko, pressing the crumbs in. Refrigerate for a bit, then repeat the egg and panko and another short refrigeration. It may seem you would get too thick a crust, but maybe that's just the way I like it. I don't consider it too thick. It looks like the coating in @Duvel's video link.

I was well into my late 20s before I ate salmon that wasn't from a can. My mother thought it was some sort of exclusive gourmet food. I almost thought the fish lived in cans, despite living very near some of the best wild salmon fishing rivers in the world. They belong to the the Queen and were not the place for scum like me. Still aren't. The first time I ate non-canned salmon was in a London restaurant and I remember thinking "That's not salmon! Nothing like salmon." I'm a bit past my 20s now and still think salmon is overrated. The only time I eat it now is as shashimi or sushi but still not my favourite. I can't remember the last time I ate canned salmon. I thought "salmon manufacturers" were other salmon! 🤣

These arrived this morning, Great fun for freaking people out! Millipedes! Except, they aren't millipedes at all! They are a type of small fish in the anchovy family and similar in usage. Great unami.

I microwave beets here and haver never had colour loss. I have also roasted, which is my preference, but no oven here.

I agree with the previous two posts. The best way to season a wok is to use it. And don't worry about your gas ring not being hot enough. 1.4 billion home cooks in China manage just fine with a silmilar set up to yours. See here.

As I mentioned here some time back, I have always struggled with fishcakes, but today, for boring reasons I won't trouble you with, I was unable to get out shopping, so made do with pantry staples. So, this is my latest attempt. Definitely an improvement, if not perfect. Canned tuna with chilli and Vietnamese fish sauce. Spud. No egg. Served with a simple lettuce and tomato salad dressed with olive oil and lime juice. Sriracha dip. They didn't fall apart! Held themselves together! Wow! And tasted much better than they look. Two more were eaten.

Yes, they do taste somewhat of cucumber. After all, they are part of the cucumber family, as are all melons. In fact, Mandarin Chinese doesn't differentiate between melons, squashes, cucumbers etc. - they are all some kind of 瓜 (guā ). That said, any time I've had these melons, I've more noticed a banana-like flavour. They also have a slight citrus flavour. Try lightly salting them; that brings out the flavours more.

Pork marinated with garlic, ginger, chilli and Shaoxing wine. Sir-fried with morels and finished with soy sauce and Chinese chives.

My dear friend J's son attempting the chopstick challenge.

鸭脚螺蛳煲 (yā jiǎo luó sī bāo) - Spicy duck's feet with sea snails and a salted duck egg. In a local hole in the wall restaurant.

Have you read the Kitchen Scale Manifesto? Link below.

Back in the late 1960s, in Scotland, although there were a few "Indian" restaurants around, most of the required ingredients were not available to the home cook. Nor were there many, if any, cookbooks aimed at home cooks. Then around 1970, an "Indian" market opened in Glasgow near where I was living. On the same street as me. I investigated but could hardly recognise anything and everything was labelled in Hindi, sometimes with romanised tranliterations. What the hell was "methi", "dhaniya", "jeera", "haldi" etc⁈. And why didn't they have any curry powder? I gave up. As I was leaving, I spotted a pile of little yellow books on a shelf. More like booklets. Who knows why, but I picked one up. It was a badly typeset recipe book apparently written in what the author thought was English. I bought one. It cost almost nothing. I went home and forgot about it until weeks later when I came across it while looking for something else. I began to read it. Seemed a bit strange but I could understand it. I got to the last page and there found a list of all those unknown Hindi names with English equivalents. So, I tried some of the more promising recipes, meticulously following the instructions.The results were awful. Over watery, bland and barely edible. I checked the recipes over and over to see if I had overlooked anything, but it seemed not. A couple of years later, I went to India for just over a year. There, I found that a lot of the food I was served in small restaurants was just like those awful recipes. I have to say the worst Indian food I have ever eaten was in India! Roll on ten years and I returned to India for a shorter visit. I braced myself for culinary hell, but things had improved immensely. I still got a few bum deals, but they were now the exception. And back home, more and more "Indian" restaurants and markets appeared. Then a trickle of proper recipe books turned into a flood. The first I bought after the yellow disaster was Madhur Jaffrey's 1973 debut publication, An Invitation to Indian Cooking (eG-friendly Amazon.com link). I still have it. First edition. It's in London, though. No idea what happened to the yellow peril, though.

I'll second that.

Has what? Wills?

I'll revise my will tomorrow when the lawyer's office opens. You'll have to supply your own pasta, though!

Pan fried mackerel with mirin dressing served with orzo laced with coriander roots, stems and lower leaves as well as scallions. Served on @Anna N's favourite plate! While I am here, let me mention there are two Legolands under construction here in China, each claiming they will be the world's largest. Until the next one.

Christmas recipes from Britain during WWII rationing. More here.

Interesting BBC podcast here on the history of sushi and more. 40 minutes long.

I've stayed in that hotel. Never visited the pub/restaurant, though.

Certainly is! Great looking produce, too. Thanks for sharing.

An experimental breakfast. What is great for breakfast? Bacon and eggs, of course.So that's what I made. Sort of. Bacon and egg sort of ramen. The broth is dashi with a little red miso, garlic and dried 'tribute fish'*. Crisped up some bacon, soft-boiled an egg and chopped some Welsh onion. Fresh ramen took three minutes to cook, so I threw in the pre-cooked bacon, eggs and onion when there was still a minute to go. I really liked the bacon alongside the seafood flavors. * Tribute fish is a direct translation of the Chinese. There are many tribute foods supposedly because they were prized gifts to be sent to the emperors. They (the fish; not the emperors) are tiny - 5cm/2 inches long at most. Nearly always sold dried. Great for adding umami. Dried Tribute Fish 贡干鱼 (gòng gān yú)

There was a restaurant in Hunan that I used to frequent very often. I never really thought about it, until a friend from England came to visit and she had rather low chilli tolerance levels. So I warned the cook to rein it back for my friend. Said friend took one bite and almost screamed. I guess two things happened simultaneously: a) after years of normal Hunan cooking, the wok was infused with chilli heat . b) "no chilli" in Hunan translates as "less than usual, but anything less than volcanic isn't edible!

@Katie Meadow I love me some geoduck! But not exactly easy to gather!