Shalmanese

Cha-ya is good but I like Minako Organic just a block down the road more. Sunflower is OK but Mau down the street is amazing. Dosa is great but also check out Udupi Palace a few doors down for amazing vegetarian North Indian food.

I'll be visiting Tokyo, Osaka and Kyoto with a friend over the next couple of weeks and I would love to find places that make traditional Japanese foodstuffs like Miso, Tofu, Shoyu, Sake, Soba, Udon etc. that would be willing to give tours or show us around. Neither of us speak Japanese which I've gathered severely limits our options but we're game to try anyway using a combination of the limited Japanese we have along with sign language. I'm having a hard time researching places since most of them are very small and don't seem to have much of a web presence but I'd love to get recommendations of places that offer such things. Thanks!

If you're having lunch in the Haight, it's a really nice walk from there to the Inner Richmond via Golden Gate Park. Inner Richmond is San Francisco's real Chinatown and it's fun just wandering around. Green Apple Books on Clement and 6th is the best bookstore in the city with a fantastic cookbook section and, if you're a fan of Sichuan food, Spices on 8th and Clement is legit (get the lamb hotpot if you're a fan of lamb. I don't know how they do it but the lamb tastes like the lamb from China, not American lamb). Also, stop by Buyer's Best Friend on Haight and Cole in the Haight. It's this gorgeous little gourmet store run by some friends of mine!

The real reason California is in drought is not because people in LA are taking long showers, it's because of the incredibly byzantine but enshrined laws regarding water rights that give farmers no incentive to shift to more water efficient forms of agriculture (such as drip irrigation). If you've ever seen the movie Chinatown, the entire movie was about the high stakes politics of water rights in California.

Trying to conserve water on the individual level has never made much sense to me, unless you're living in an exceptional circumstance such as being off the grid. Water use in agricultural & industrial settings so dwarfs consumer use to such an extent that the comparisons are non-sensical. For example, it takes 200 litres of water to produce a glass of milk and 16,000 litres to produce a kilogram of beef. A single steak uses more water than I use in a month and "saving" water by rinsing out multiple greens in the same bowl saves about 3 peas worth of water.

Also, If this is helpful, I just did a Mission Food walking tour last week and this was the itinerary: Donuts at Dynamo Donuts Chicaronnes at La Palma Ice Cream at Humphrey Slocome Murals at Balmy Alley Coffee at Philz Coffee Burrito at El Farolito Espresso at Ritual Shopping at the Pirate Store & Paxton's Gate Chicken Wings at Mission Chinese Tea Leaf Salad at Yamo Murals at Clarion Alley Hot Chocolate at Dandelion Chocolate Grilled Cheese at Mission Cheese Knife Shopping at Bernal Cutlery Croissant at Tartine Ice Cream at Bi-Rite Ice Cream Sightseeing at Mission Dolores Church Duck Larb at Ler Ros Thai Beer at Monks Kettle Pourover at Four Barrel It took us a full day to get through the tour but it was a lot of fun.

For Vietnamese, Little Saigon, just west of the Tenderloin is your best bet. Saigon Sandwiches for Banh Mi, Turtle Tower of Pho Tan Hoa for Pho. Pagolac has their signature 7 flavors of beef for dinner that's also very popular. Outside of Little Saigon, Slanted Door & Out the Door in the Ferry Terminal for Charlie Phan's upscale modern take, Tin in SOMA and Mau in the Mission are excellent slightly modernized restaurants by the same owner. Jasmine Garden in Duboce Triangle is also great. For Filipino, the wisdom is to visit Daly City, just south of SF for the density of Filipinos. I've not explored that area so I can't give you great recommendations.

I don't see any visits to The Mission in any of your photos. There's some amazing food here that's worth the trip!

Kent Wang had a S&S recipe on eGullet that is fantastic and it's what I now make all the time. Could that be similar to what you're looking after?

Saffron is maximally soluble in alcohol, reasonably soluble in water and non-soluble in oil. I put saffron and 1/4 cup of vodka in the microwave and warm it up for 30s, then let it sit in the microwave to steep for 30m before adding it to a dish.

Aromatics are called aromatics for a reason and there's nothing that transports me to a culture more than when that first blush of aromatics hits the pan and the scent envelopes the room. Whether it's the ginger, garlic and spring onions of Cantonese cuisine or the Mirepoix of French food or the Trinity of Cajun food or the sizzle of spices, onion & ginger that is India.

I routinely equilibrium brine at 3% by weight and meat comes out perfectly seasoned. I wouldn't worry about it.

I saw it last week with a friend and loved it! It's not designed to be a challenging movie but it's got heart.

Do what the restaurants do and cook it 3/4 through and then spread over a sheet pan to rapidly cool. It then takes about 10 minutes to finish before service. If risotto could be held in a rice cooker, restauraunts wouldn't be par-cooking it.

After a lot of trying, I've come to the ultimate conclusion that cooking whole duck is a fools errand. Even classic whole duck preparations like Peking Duck leave the breast overcooked and dried out.

The Anova v2 has bluetooth control so it can be turned on remotely. I'd just keep in simple, an ice bath in a cooler can keep food cool for at least 8 hours. It'll take some more energy for the SV to melt all the ice but it's worth it to keep things simple.

I just made duck last night and it was great. I think I've discovered my favorite way of making duck legs. The bones were made into a stock with ginger, garlic, leek greens and spring onions. The legs were briefly blanched in the stock, chilled in ice water, pricked all over the skin with a fork and then marinated in soy, honey, star anise and coriander. Legs went into a low oven (250F), covered for a few hours while the stock was cooking. After taking out and cooling the legs, the juice that was rendered out was defatted, combined with more soy and honey and reduced down into a glaze while the stock was fortified with some salt and soy. The legs were then put under the broiler and periodically glazed until the outside was sticky and well browned. Into the soup went bok choy, rice noodles and cilantro. Put some soup in a bowl, top with chopped up pieces of glazed duck and it was heaven. The breasts, I made a pasta sauce from kale & leeks sauteed in duck fat, some white wine, reduced duck stock, garlic, cream, a bit of lemon juice, pureed until smooth. Mixed with fettuccine & duck cracklings with pan seared duck breasts on top was also fabulous.

I've found that people drastically overestimate the flavor transfers that come from poaching and the bulk of the flavor comes not from the infusion, but the tiny bit of liquid that clings to the surface. IMHO, it'd be far better to poach in a relatively neutral liquid and then make a mussel nage or other simple sauce to spoon over the fish before serving.

FWIW, America's Test Kitchen did a test of 3 lightweight cast iron pans (ExcelSteel by Cook Pro 12-Inch Super Lightweight Cast Iron Frypan, Starfrit Light Cast Iron Fry Pan & Guy Fieri 12-in. Pre-Seasoned Light Weight Cast Iron Fry Pan) and rated them all as not recommended.

Dunno, lightweight cast iron seems like a weird no-mans land. If you want even, responsive, lightweight pans, go with clad SS. Cast iron is for when you want to store up a whomping amount of heat in a big chunk of metal.

2 ducks costs barely more than 4 duck breasts so I essentially treat the rest of the duck as free. From 2 ducks, I'll get 4 breasts, 4 legs, duck fat, duck stock & cracklings.

Duck fat. I render down the carcass of 2 ducks every time I'm getting low.

In the Corriher recipe, you're not pre-baking the top crust, you're just plain baking it. There's no secondary bake.

They're not really saving anything since the contestants go home in between the regular season and the finale.

It's a similar procedure to figuring out the oil needed for a turkey fry. Put the chicken in the pot, add water, a pint at a time until the chicken is fully submerged and there's still adequate clearance to the top of the pot (you might need a taller pot than you think). Remember how many pints of water you added and that's how many pints of lard you need. Lard is slightly lighter than water so if you buy at 1 pound = 1 pint, you're guaranteed to have enough plus a little extra for insurance.