TheFuzzy

Unfortunately, I don't have any pots large enough to fit a two gallon inner pot and still give me room to stir. So no. Looks like I need to invest in one. Sous-vide controller ... riiiiiiiight. Next to my Wolf range and my walk-in fridge. Here's my tollbooth-sized San Francisco apartment kitchen.

Trish, Thanks! I visited and liked Atascadero, Dutton and Gratton, but most of the others are new to me. I'll print out your list for my next drive north.

Maybe I just don't know the right wineries in Russian River. Recommendations?

Heidi, I didn't even know that there were Pacific lobsters. I'll have to look at the market next time.

Nope. I got some Green Bamboo Rice from a booth at Cleveland's old market recently, but that's actually green in color.

All, How do you control the temperature while making cheese? I've been trying to do it by double-boiler, but doing something like heating it by 5 degrees over 20 minutes is nearly impossible ... first it doesn't heat, then it heats too fast. Tips?

Suy, Of the Russian River wineries, Graton Ridge and Atascadero Creek are probably the best. A lot of the RR wines are mediocre and overpriced, although not as bad as Napa. If you're coming over from Healdsburg, you can also hit the Dry Creek wineries, which include a lot more stars: Amphora, Kokomo, David Coffaro, and Unti. Overall, you'll get better wine for less money in Dry Creek than Russian River. Also, if you're in Healdsburg, don't miss the Downtown Bakery, which makes the best savory breads (semolina, sesame, etc.) in the Bay Area. The only place we've eaten in Bodega Bay is the Sandpiper in the marina. It was fine for what it was ... a weekend boater tourist trap ... but not worth going out of your way for. Cheap and good location, though.

Jeremy, First you have to pick a regional cuisine. Thai curries are very different from Indian, and even within Indian, the spices used by the Punjabi are notably different from those used in Kerala. Asking for a recipe for "curry" is a lot like asking for a recipe for "pie". What pie? What style? So, pick a region and we'll take its flavors apart. Seems like we have lots of input here.

Liuzhou, Hah! Reminds me of a shopping experience I had in a Thai supermarket once. I found a utensil for sale I not only couldn't identify, I couldn't even conceive of its use. "What is this?" "It's eight dollars." [pause. wait for friends to stop snickering.] "What's it used for?" "It's for cooking." [longer pause] "Fine, I'll take it." We christened it "Mr. Thingy" and I think it ended up being someone's wedding present.

Stephanie, My wife, the chocolate geek, says Nigella Lawson's How to Be a Domestic Goddess has a recipe called "Dense Chocolate Loaf Cake" which makes good cupcakes.

Maggie, the easiest/fastest way to cook brown rice is the "pasta" method: boiling in lots of water, then draining. Rice cookers, in my experience, can't do brown rice unless you have one of the expensive ones which has multiple settings. Also, water absorption in brown rice varies more than white rice, I think. The main secret to liking brown rice is not to think of it as a substitute for white rice. The cooking methods and seasonings you want to use are different. I've been doing a lot of this lately since I'm on a high-fiber diet kick. I've found an excellent use for brown rice: crock-pot cooking. White rice, in a 6-hour crockpot, turns to mush. Brown rice holds up.

Jeremey, Others: The term "curry" is deceptive. It sounds like you're talking about a single thing, which of course you're not. Curry refers to any dish with a spiced sauce in a Southeast Asian style. You have Indian curries, Thai curries, Malaysian curries, even Japanese curries. In Nepal, for example, the word isn't "curry", it's "masala", as in spice mixture. But not a single mixture ... the average spice vendor would have at least 20 different blends, each of which had names. "Garam masala" is such a mix, but of course it varies. Further, if you were making a curry in an Indian household, the spices would be added at different times in the cooking. Strong aromatics might be added before vegetables, dried spices added at various points in the cooking, and leaves and herbs added when nearly done or after cooking. On the other hand, Thai and other Indochina curries tend to consist of a prepared paste, made with a variety of spices in the mortar & pestle, which is the first ingredient in the pot/wok. There are quite a range of spices which are appropriate to one or another type of curry. Including: garlic, galangal, rhiosome, ginger, astofetida, onion, cloves, cinnamon, capsicum peppers of all kinds, black pepper, cumin (brown and black), coriander (seed and leaf), curry leaves, kafir lime leaves, lemongrass, sawtooth coriander, basil, raw turmeric, dried turmeric, mustard seed (black, brown or yellow), fenugeek, cardamom, caraway seed, dried shrimp and salt. And most of these spices can be whole, ground, roasted, fried, pulverized and/or fresh. I had a point here, but I've forgotten what it was. Recommended: Curry, A Tale of Cooks and Conquerors

Dougal, I was actually citing sushi based on the iodine content of Nori, but after some research Nori is the lowest-iodine seaweed out there. On the other hand, a single proper bowl of miso soup, made with konbu, covers the entire iodine needs of an adult for a week. And I'd far rather eat Japanese soup periodically than have my salt taste funny, but not everyone may share my opinion. However, many other foods ... including fish, tubers, milk, legumes, seafood and turkey, contain iodine. I can see, though, that someone on a meat-and-potatoes diet (or other restricted diets) might not get enough iodine according to the WHO standards, and need the iodized salt. Or if you're allergic to seafood and don't like seaweed. I'd be interested to find out how WHO determined that 150mcg/day of iodine was necessary for an adult, as few human populations in history would have had access to that much, but I can't access the papers which would tell me that.

Russell, Zuni isn't much like Chez Panisse at all. It is all California Cuisine, but most high-end restaurants we have here are either Cal Cuisine or Cal-something Cuisine. Alice Waters left her stamp on Northern California. However, Zuni has a relatively fixed menu which emphasizes their rotisserie and pizza oven, combined with some European finger food (like salt cod brandade) to support their bar. I do recommend the restaurant, it's quite good. However, I was not impressed by Incanto or Quince. And have found Boulevard to be good, but more expensive than good. Some to add to your list: Farallon, Pizetta 211, Clementine, Cafe Jacqueline, Limon, Foreign Cinema, Thep Phenom, Slanted Door, Aziza, and Spork. I have reviews of some of these on my blog.

I never buy iodized salt. Frankly, the fact that it exists at all is pretty much a holdover from half a century ago, when Americans didn't eat seafood. If you have sushi once a month, you're pretty much getting your full RDA of iodine. So there's no real point in buying it ... and the iodine taste will harm some dishes.

Oh! Up until your remark, I'd thought that citric acid and ascorbic acid were the same thing. I guess so far I've only used it in things where modifying the pH mattered and not other properties. Thanks for the warning!

Dougal, Thanks! I get my Ascorbic Acid in powder form by buying jars of Sour Salt, which is available in supermarkets and generally 1/5 the price of drugstore tablets or powder from a cheesemaking supply.

ooops, stupid math error. Good thing it wasn't a recipe. How much vitamin C?

San Francisco's water is heavily clorinated (2.1mg/l ... that's 0.2% chlorine!), ostensibly because of the very old pipes in the system (they just ripped out the last of the cedar wood pipes 7 years ago) but in reality because the Clorox Corporation is headquartered in Oakland and is a big local palm-greaser. The amount of treatment in the water has been quadrupled over the last 10 years. You can taste it. Most San Franciscans, like me, use a filter to remove the taste. Some filters (like Brita pitchers) release a lot of the chlorine through aeriation. It's actually Chloramine rather than Chlorine, but the effect on cultures is the same. I've been using bottled water for my sourdough culture too; I was having trouble with it for months before I figured out the chlorine issue.

All, Well, Ricki's book just paid for itself. In her general advice, one thing she notes is that tap water with high colorination can prevent your rennet from working effectively. Guess what San Francisco tap water has in it? So the advice is to dilute your rennet in distilled/plain filtered water. Regarding milk, once you have a recipe you're confident with, there are premium milks which will make your cheese better, particularly if you're making a "fresh" cheese such as queso fresco, panir or whole milk ricotta. Folks in the Bay Area swear by Straus organic milk, which is flash pastuerized but not homogenized. Best for cheesemaking is their cream top milk, which is truly whole milk. $7 per half gallon, including a $1 deposit on their reusable glass bottles. At the very high end, Organic Pastures sells raw bottled milk: not homogenized, not pastuerized, just filtered. Note that they do skim the cream and sell it separately, though, forcing you to buy milk + cream to get the whole deal. $8 for a half gallon. I'd expect that there are similar milks available in New York state, as well as anywhere they have both cows and gourmets and/or health food nuts. Note that if you do use raw milk, it has to be pastuerized for some recipes where the native milk bacteria would interfere with the culured cheese bacteria (according to Ricki Carroll).

Chris, OK, thanks. Ordered it through my local bookstore. We'll see. Aged cheese would be fun, but realistically, I have no space (SF apartment). However, if I can make my own ricotta, paneer, queso fresco, etc., I'll be pretty happy. And the microwave mozzarella.

All, Oh, I forgot that I wrote a review of Quince.

Well, where I say that the recipe is a failure is that they heat the milk without citric acid, then use rennet to coagulate it (not acid), and instruct you to give the rennet only 10 minutes. The result was that I got less than half the yield from my $16/gallon milk than expected, because the curds didn't form well and couldn't be sieved out. The fancy cottage cheese I ended up with was very good ... but not worth over $16/lbs. And the amount of work actually required was much greater than described (using large amounts of cheesecloth and squeezing out the whey, several times). Ricotta, ultimately, is simply very-small-curd cottage cheese. So, again ... book recommendations? Is the Ricki Carroll book the best for a home cheesemaker, or is another one?

Not just Yakitori! Just about any specialty Japanese food: shim-age, tempura, curry, izakaya*, okonomiyaki ... there are almost 20 restaurants in JapanTown, and at least 12 of them just serve "general Japanese food", a bland mishmash of soba, tempura, bento, ramen, sushi, etc. You'd think some of them could specialize! Certainly they couldn't do worse business than they are already. You can get pretty good Japanese Ramen and Udon in the city now. And there's one place in JapanTown that pretty much just does steamed rice casserole (I forget what it's called). But the rest would be regarded as low-class diners in Tokyo, the kind you find near a terminal train station where there are no other restaurants. (* = yes, there's a restaurant called "Izakaya", but they serve the same bland mishmash Japanese food as everyone else).

Yeah, apparently it's a bad idea to heat mild for a rennet-set cheese to 200F (ricotta is normally acid-set). You're basically ultra-pasturizing the cheese yourself; the curds won't coagulate well (according to Jim at Cheesemaking.com, as well as my own experience). I went through about 4 yards of cheesecloth sieving and squeezing to get any cheese out of it at all -- and in the end was able to salvage only about 8oz out of over a gallon of premium raw milk. That 8oz tasted pretty good, but wow, the expense ... $21 for less than a pound of cheese! Also, the time for coagulation and the amount of rennet are both wrong as well as the possible yield, which says to me that the Saveur staff never actually tested the recipe as written. Anyone recommend a particular cheesemaking book?