_john

I use sandpaper and finish with 3M #4000 on top of mouse pad like material to get a convex grind. I use marble and the same paper for my Japanese knives. It works great, is cheap, and very easy to do. In my mind all other methods are a huge waste of cash. the convex grind FAQ

I recently bought a ふぐ引き fugu knife at a flea market cheaply but will rarely have the opportunity to slice fugu for てっさ fugu sashimi. At a restaurant the chef told me that they use konyakku to practice slicing fugu! So there is one good use for konyakku for people who don't like to eat it. I practiced on some konyakku but it is harder than it seems to make those uniform slices

Speaking of korokke I made a korokke that turned out particularly well recently. I sautéed minced cabbage in butter and then added some apple juice and cooked it until it became soft and the liquid was almost evaporated. Then I let it cool and formed small patties of the cabbage mixture and froze them. After they were frozen I covered them in mashed potatoes mixed with some milk and fried them like regular korokke. My friend dubbed them とろけるキャベツコロッケ melting cabbage korokke. I have since used the same freezing technique to make other unique korokke. Maybe I should put this in the urawaza thread.

I actually used your recipe 4:1:1 but I added a few things. I used light soy, and made dashi using ago (flying fish?) instead of katsuo, and I added konbu and a few small pieces of shiitake and let it sit over night. then I boiled off the alcohol. I found this information about the difference between kansai and kantou's soba tsuyu, sorry Japanese only: generally flavors are lighter in kansai and that extends to tsuyu as well.

dough thickness fresh soba! before garnishing recently Takara Tomy has started to sell a soba machine called いえそば　house-soba. If you turn it on it's side you can knead and mix. then you turn it upright and cut the noodles. It looks pretty good but it is about $100 and it is made of plastic. I recommend a 6000¥ pasta machine if you want to make pasta, udon, soba, and ramen. Also check out this book: パスタマシンで麺道楽—うどん、中華麺、韓国風冷麺、もちろんパスタ!

I have a soba experiment to report on! I had an idea to try making soba using my pasta machine. First I set out to buy some soba flour. I went to a local soba shop and ate their teuchi soba. This shop uses stone ground soba flour that they grind at their shop with an old style millstone. I asked the master about ratios of soba flour to wheat flour and he said that each shop has their own blend but there has to be at least some wheat flour to add gluten or the noodles will fall apart while rolling. He agreed to sell me some of his fresh flour so I bought 300g which makes about 4 portions of soba. When I went to the supermarket to buy ingredients I looked carefully at the dried soba they had. Some packages advertised "80% soba flour!" and other such percentages. I noticed one that said "100% soba flour". I checked the ingredients and only soba flour was listed. So I decided to try and make 100% soba flour soba. In a large bowl I added water to the soba flour slowly until the dough reached the consistency of soft pasta dough. Because there is no gluten there was no need to knead so I let it rest while I boiled a big pot of water. Then I rolled it out on the pasta machine in 100g portions and cut it using the smaller noodle size on my machine. I boiled it for about 1 minute and cooled it in running water. It was the best soba I have had so far. Comparing it to the soba I ate earlier that day at the shop the texture was firmer and the aroma was definitely stronger. The best thing about it was that it was extremely fast and easy to make. From start to finish, including the boiling/resting time, it took about 10 minutes. I froze the remaining dough so that I can enjoy teuchi soba any time. 大成功！Now I will try to get some different type of flours, I would like to try inaka soba.

There is a pamphlet about traditional craft industries in Sakai such as incense making, bicycles (Shimano), and knives but there is not much English at the museum itself. The most interesting part for me was the different names and uses of the knives. Some knives had romajii readings but not many. If you don't want to pay $800 for a knife I really suggest checking out the flea markets in your area. Or if you are traveling in Japan try to go to at least one flea market to look for knives. I bought a very good Sakai deba and yanagi for 1000¥ each recently. They are used of course, but that is just proof that they are good knives. Is a knife made of Japanese steel, made in China, and sold in America still a Japanese knife? I use the chef's knife from this series more often than any of my other knives, the handle/bolster design is great.

I took a trip to Sakai recently and visited Sakai Hamono Edged Tools Museum. here are my pictures for everyone. There is a museum with hundreds of knives which all have unique names and purposes. There is also a store where various knife makes in the Sakai area have individual showcases to sell their knives. They also sell some other edged tools such as scissors and whetstones. On certain days there are demonstrations where I think you can make your own knife. Check out some of the prices at the end. f.y.i. 100¥ is about $1, 10,000¥=~$100

I went to a new yakionigiri chain the other day called "yakioni". their nori was incredibly fragrant. it reminded me to ask how to achieve really fragrant, crunchy, nori? I have bought many types of average supermarket nori, roasted it myself, for things like onigiri or makizushi but it has never come close to matching the fragrant, crunchy, nori of high quality sushi restaurants or these particular yakionigiri. what is it exactly? roasting technique? expensive nori?

I have only seen 2 or 3 ramen, oden, and yakitori yatai in Osaka. I think they are more common in Kantou? I wonder if there is some sort of map or online community about yatai... I would love to have more yatai dining experiences, not just snacks.

Oh, is it? I will ask the chef the next time I visit there. ← it might be Shodo shima. too many islands to keep track of

does he use soy sauce from sado island as well? it is some of the best soy sauce I have tried.

Inspired by the preparing fish thread here a bunch of videos about preparing all kinds of fish: *さばき方 *sabakikata search *枚おろし *maioroshi search

I'm set for kosher salt for the moment. if it had a girl on it I'm guessing it was Morton. Do you know the Thai grocery store on a side street of Kuromon Ichiba (クンテープ)? They had Thai rice last time I went, around 2000¥ for 5kg. if I remember correctly. I also stumbled on a fantastic parma ham, european cheese, cured meat, and more varieties of alcohol than you can shake a stick at shop off shinsaibashi shopping street in minamisemba. the name is Bon repas ボン レパ.

around here noodle shops usually have a "all you can eat" bucket of tenkasu or ika tenkasu on the counter. I like to eat the noodles and then soak up the remaining soup with heaps of ika tenkasu. The best shops have real tenkasu that are left over from making tempura but this seems to be the exception not the rule. Ive never seen a mix like that before though.

if you live in Kyoto, Osaka, or Kobe you might want to check out this book: 京都・大阪・神戸パンの本 Kyoto, Osaka, Kobe Book of Bread. It is a list of great bread shops and their special products. Some great pictures as well. The sandwiches section made me want to go on a tri-city sandwich tour. It seems to be on display in every book store currently.

I have long been a student of food and cooking (and always will be) however I have never attended a formal cooking school. Now, largely at the request of potential students, I am thinking about trying my hand at teaching. Having no real example to copy or adapt a teaching method from I am hoping the infinite wisdom of eGullet can help me be a better teacher. Surely many of you have experience teaching about food and cooking at least in some capacity. Many others of you have been students at some point. What was the best class you took? What made it the best? How should curriculum be decided? Should I start with knife skills and basic kitchen knowhow before even moving on to cooking anything? Or should I assume that most people already have their own way of doing things and just try to teach recipes or specific unknown techniques? What kind of materials (written) if any should be provided? How long should a class be and what is a good example of pacing and division of time? I am thinking of a basic input stage, specific technique or element practice, a practical where the technique or element is used in a larger recipe, and finally tasting/comments/review. How can I understand the motivations of potential students before they are in the classroom? I assume that some people are interested in techniques that can be applied to any kind of cooking whereas other people may only be interested in learning novel new recipes or seeing someone with experience make a recipe first hand. These are the issues on my mind now. I have only just started to think about doing this. What am I missing? Thoughts? Anecdotes? thanks.

What do you request from home (wherever that might be) when people come to visit Japan? I've been left scratching my head when people ask me what I want. I know there is something I should be asking them for but I can never remember it when they ask. Out of sight out of mind I guess. I'm hoping some of your desires might remind me of something I'm missing. Necessities? Luxuries?

recently the anime version of the famous gourmet manga Oishinbo has been broadcasting weekday mornings at around 8:30 on channel 19 in the Kansai area. I arrange my whole morning routine around it. I've read more than 50 volumes of the manga and the anime version is more of less exactly the same. after Iron Chef it is probably my favorite "cooking" show.

it seems more like an infomercial for an immersion blender (call now and we'll throw in the soda/espuma siphon for free!). the more interesting aspects like the super bag get skipped over fairly quickly. the tuna mayonnaise didn't look very appetizing either. but some good ideas here.

recently I made a batch that turned out to be uniformly grainy. there is liquid pooling at the top and it is very thin. the taste is right but the texture is all wrong. what could I have done wrong? and can I continue to use this curdled yogurt as my starter or should I start all over again?

Les Diners De Gala by Salvidor Dali

I think it is an adaptation of gam-ja. I have had it at various restaurants in the SF bay area. Has anyone eaten at Han Yang Korean Bar-B-Q in Hayward or Seoul House in Oakland? They have this particular banchan there. They were similar to Japanese daigakuimo but not as sweet.

Good replies so far. A few replies bring up how to treat the garlic and ginger. I keep knobs of ginger in the freezer and then microplane a little pile of ginger snow on the cutting board. Then I do the micro dice of garlic using the same technique you would use on an onion but on a much smaller scale. I usually add them both at the same time but I will experiment with adding one or the other first and various times/temperatures. I heard somewhere that garlic should never be reduced to a paste because there is some sort of reaction that will take place and change the taste? Any other opinions on garlic and ginger? I made some chicken stock from just chicken bones and reduced it to a point where it would gel when it cooled. Then I froze little gelled cubes so I can have them on hand for stir fries and other things but I haven't tried using them yet. I am trying to pare down my technique to use minimal seasonings although white pepper, sugar, and oyster sauce all have a place and would probably be delicious. I'm not sure what to say about the MSG, I would like to leave it out but I really think it adds something without being too obvious or overpowering. The wok I am using is well seasoned and the burner is a wok burner.

This is a great thread. I'm looking for a recipe for a potato banchan. it is usually quartered or halved potatoes that are sweet and a little crispy. it seems like they have been fried and then boiled in syrup? does anyone have the recipe?