Chris Amirault

Question about the Japonica rice. I had been contemplating making sticky rice balls to be eaten with curries, since they can be eaten at room temperature, but basically had given up on the idea of using any other kind of rice in the bento unless it was going to be microwaved. Does Japonica retain its texture and flavor when cold, as in refrigerator-cold? This morning's bento box: stir-fried greens with chicken fat and garlic, small container of homemade chili oil, roasted nam yu peanuts, cucumber, and a slice of chicken pot pie. (The crust has home-rendered lard in it, so no leaving that out.) Oh, and a kaffir lime leaf cut into a little heart. No rice or egg molds so I gotta do DYI cute.

My heart is racing. As I've mentioned elsewhere, David Thompson's Thai Food is one of the most important cookbooks I own. Just yesterday I spent an hour or so drawn back into it, pouring over the recipes and descriptions while preparing a beef penang recipe. So I got very excited to read that his Thai Street Food came out yesterday. You can learn more about it in this Gourmet Traveller interview. You can't, however, buy it on Amazon or anywhere else north of Australia, as far as I can detect. I'm dying to know what's in it, how to get it, and what people think. Anyone Down Under got a copy?

Home yesterday with a sick kid, and made two batches of "curry" paste: a Khmer kroeung featuring frozen turmeric root and a Thai penang paste with boiled peanuts. They both were wildly successful, the smoothest paste I've ever seen (not just made), and I learned a few things along the way. You only need to chop things pretty roughly though thoughtfully. Stringy stuff like lemongrass needs only to be very finely sliced, while irregularly chopped shallots, garlic, and chile peppers work best. It's good to arrange the ingredients in order from most to least difficult to grind. David Thompson always starts with his soaked peppers to form sort of a slushy base environment and then moves from toughest to least tough through lemongrass, galangal, shallots, etc. I take no responsibility for anyone who breaks a utensil or the motor somehow, but: unlike a blender, where you can easily ruin an entire batch by dropping a spatula into the blades, it's very easy to scrape the sides of the rotating bin or knock material off the axle during operation to guarantee a smooth paste. The plastic got stained by the turmeric, but I think that'll come out and frankly I don't care.

I wanted to bump this up because I had my first meal at No. 9 Park last week for an anniversary dinner, and, top to bottom, it was terrific. We hung at the bar with Ted, who was both a terrific ambassador for the restaurant and a fine bartender to boot. He made my wife a Hummingbird (a Paloma variation with St. Germain), and, when I asked for something challenging, he made me a drink he's calling Scotland the Brave: perfect. Dinner was also top-notch. We started with a peekytoe crab amuse (great) and the justly famous prune-stuffed "gnocchi" (more like agnolotti, methinks), served with pieces of foie that were stained with Vin Santo; it was paired with a cocktail called the Salvatore (didn't get ingredients). We also had a confit baby octopus with cepes and matsutake mushrooms; the octopus had been crisped up somehow (grill? fryer?) so it was both melty and crunchy, two things that I don't associate with octopus. The entrees were also terrific: a porcelet choucroute and a lamb saddle and shoulder. The lamb couldn't be improved upon, and the pork had only one flaw, an excessively salty mustard sauce dabbed next to the plate. The coconut and smoked banana dessert was excellent, but the chocolate cardamom sorbet was one of the best desserts we'd ever had. It was one of the top three or four meals we've ever had.

Potential understatement of the year! I missed the previous discussion about the Mother's Ruin Punch, but the cinnamon tea infused vermouth sounds like an amazing idea. Perhaps a Red Hook variation, using it in place of the Punt e Mes? I dashed some cinnamon tincture into a Martinez tonight (Broker's, M&R rosso, Luxardo, Angostura) to get a sense of how it might work sans tea. The cinnamon leads on the nose and finishes on the palate, but is still subtle. Definitely worth playing around with this.

It's interesting you asked that, bc he and I talked about the exact same thing (and I learned that they're selling CAF at Brix in Boston, btw). He can't keep the CAF on the shelf, but I got the sense he'd like to do so for this drink, yeah.

I was at No. 9 Park last week, and Ted made me a Scotland the Brave, which I thought was a big, brash keeper: 2 1/2 (not a typo) oz Talisker 3/4 oz Fernet Branca 3/4 oz Cinzano rosso 1/2 oz Mathilde Orange XO

I'm still trying to find my inner Tim Taylor. Will also report back.

Given the advice here, I'm planning to take a boatload of dishes, glassware, and pans to Sears to try out the Kenmore. Will report back.

I'm running into more challenges trying to learn to cook a lot of this food. For example, at a new Khmer restaurant here in town I had dishes my partner identified as char khwai (fried bread), beef plear (which is in Riviere as marinated beef salad), hae kainge (ground pork & shrimp wrapped in tofu sausage-style, steamed, sliced, and fried), salor majo kroeng (a thick kroeung-based soup with beef and tripe). Any leads on any of the non-plear items? And, while we're on the subject, is plear the same as lok lak?

It's good, still a little raw. I added too much ginger, I think. Didn't measure stuff out, stupidly.

I'm very interested in this as well, as I've just got this Ultra Pride+ grinder, which is ideal for making the batter for rice noodles. The recipe I found floating around online (click here for an example and video) has equal parts rice and water soaked overnight then steamed in pie pans for 5 minutes. Has anyone tried this?

Yeah, a high quality black tea (I'm seeing a lot of Ceylon around the web) with cinnamon sticks....

They were too fat -- it was a jokey criticism of the too-coarse grind, and not a claim of authenticity. Again, see above: they were, indeed, flecks of very coarsely ground corn. I simply hadn't let the machine run long enough. This machine was intended for smaller grains (rice, dal) and the larger corn pieces are a bit too big at the start, hence the mortar and pestle (not a molcajete).

Made a Cleirmeil tonight: 1 1/2 oz rum (Inner Circle green) 3/4 oz green Chartreuse 3/4 oz lime 1/2 oz maple syrup 1/8 oz pimento dram (homemade, not the St. Elizabeth's called for) Another lobster drink: looks horrifying, but is luscious.

I bet that stuff would make a killer Martinez or rye Manhattan.

Oh, good! I just read about the Soup Swap, and, of course, my thoughts turned to the Mother's Ruin Punch. Which vermouth did you use? Which tea?

Thanks, guys. I just got back from three stores and have a better sense of what we're looking for, which I can articulate best in response to the posts you wrote. I had a hard time figuring out what "Sani Rinse" means, and sales people weren't too good at explaining it either. In addition, most upper-range models have high heat settings. The Kenmore 1374 got a CR best buy and looked very impressive in the showroom today. It seems to have all that we're looking for, and is currently on sale. More on that below. That's helpful. On the showfloor, salespeople upsell the stainless interior by talking about it retaining heat more (thus helping with no heat drying cycles), but I can't see that mattering to us. Ditto the "half wash" LG feature: we counted 10 full washes last week. I'm so glad to read this, as I approached the three showrooms thinking that I would take notes on features but not obsess over them, ignore external design (it's a butt-ugly machine no matter what you do with it), and focus on day-to-day use, which means racks. I measured our biggest cutting board (fits in the Kenmore, not in the KitchenAids), and thought long and hard about when loading the machine stinks: dinner parties, big pans, cocktail glasses, plastic cups, serving utensils. That Kenmore looks like it'd take all we can dish out in that regard. So here's an interesting feature: the Turbo Zone, which consists of four red uber-jets in the lower half of the back interior wall. The idea is that you put heavily soiled stuff in the tilted back bottom rack and let the Turbo Zone jets blast away. There are a few situations in which I can imagine that would be pretty terrific -- the roasting pan, say, or a couple of saute pans -- but only if it works. Anyone got feedback? Oh, and: assuming that I have the home-repair know-how of a chimp, should I pay for installation or give it a go?

We're unhappily in the market for a built-in dishwasher and trying to balance the following factors: We may not be living in this house for another decade, and given the typical real estate buyer for our house a Bosch, Miele, or Asko would be considered a liability. Our family of four (12 and 4 year olds respectively) makes nearly all of its own food and thus produces lots of crusty plates and pans, greasy glasses, etc. I want to stick everything in the dishwasher without rinsing or scraping if at all possible. I can't get any solid information on sanitizing, but if a model allows me to put a raw-chicken-covered plastic cutting board that comes out squeaky clean and sanitized, that's a plus. Some of the boards are large, as well, 14-16", and don't fit in the current machine. Gotta be EnergyStar. From that list of criteria, we're looking at the following models: KitchenAid KUDC03IVBS KitchenAid KUDS30IVSS KitchenAid KUDC20CVSS KitchenAid KUDS40CVSS Whirlpool GU2800XTVY Whirlpool GU2475XTVY Whirlpool GU2300XTVS I'd also be interested in opinions on Kenmores but their website is driving me nuts so I don't have a model list.

I think that the standard ratio for simple syrup is 1:1, and if it's not declared otherwise I'd go with that. However, you'll want to taste it to judge the sweetness level. You're drizzling it atop the cake, yes?

Hennes and I were talking about using a FoodSaver bag to preserve vermouth, and couldn't see why that wouldn't work quite well. Same reason, too: we both want to buy a bottle of Carpano Antica Formula but don't want to have to swig a liter fast before it goes south.

Just made this winter's batch and learned an important tip the hard way: don't pour the nam yu mixture onto the peanuts while they're in the wok; the sauce will stick to the bottom and burn. Instead, do as Ah Leung suggests: put the roasted nuts into a cold pan, pour the sauce over, and then cook them in the oven. Even with a slight loss of sauce due to the burn, these turned out, again, fantastic. I'll be serving them before dinner with Audrey Saunders's Earl Grey Marteani.

Would a potato ricer work?

Ooh: all good ideas. So you put 'em in the blender whole? What kind of blender?

I would like to report that a smoothie is a great way to use overripe bananas that you've frozen. I need to defrost them first (microwave is great here), but wouldn't that be a good test of your new VitaPrep?