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JasonTrue

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  1. In the formerly sleepy nether regions of Seattle (Ballard, Greenwood) Tuesday is a popular day off for restaurants and similar service businesses. It probably allows them to do more things than being closed on Mondays would allow them, including, for example, eating at other restaurants. Monday as a day off isn't that surprising for a restaurant; it's always a very low traffic day except sometimes for lunch-driven businesses. Since Seattle is not New York, money is likely not the only factor in deciding which day of the week is a small business's weekend. I tend to take Tuesday or Wednesday as a lighter workload day because of the nature of my schedule; Monday I'm often catching up on orders that came in over the weekend, while I was busy running around doing supermarket demos. Tuesday or Wednesday as a passive work day will annoy fewer people. If I were a restaurant, I'd probably shutter on Mondays. But I might instead choose a day when my own favorite restaurants or vendors were still open but my customer traffic were fairly light.
  2. This rubbing of chopsticks together is one of the bad habits of on-the-run businesspeople that Westerners seem to have unfortunately picked up on and taken as obligatory. In fact, the only time this rubbing practice is really acceptable is when eating noodles at a quick-service shop, such as in a train station. It is not intended to remove splinters, but actually to raise them, increasing friction when food is picked up, making it faster to grab the noodles. In any other context, it's not really good manners or desirable behavior.
  3. The funeral association in Shinto practice is the same as you describe. It's used when preparing ritual food sacrifices, presumably to help the dead person eat. Also, I believe due to association with funerals, it's not good to directly pass food from one pair of chopsticks to another. As for licking one's chopsticks, this is called "namebashi" (舐め箸), and I don't have any detailed reasoning for why it's considered taboo. In Korea, I often saw people rest the tip of their chopsticks in their mouths for a moment just before actually eating, which was slightly surprising to me. In Japan, this is perhaps not a major insult, but it's certainly a minor faux pas. If I'm a little bit distracted, I forget to point my chopsticks leftward when setting the table, and this is considered inappropriate because it's inconsiderate of the guest, who will likely pick up the chopsticks with his or her right hand. It's not as easy to pick up the chopsticks with the right hand if the top of the chopstick is on the left side, so that's not good. In Gaku Homma's book, he also referred to a few other generally bad-taste taboos. Sashi bashi (刺し箸) or stabbing foods with chopsticks is bad partially because it's a bit childish. In contrast, though, it is permissable to cut things with chopsticks by repeatedly spreading the tips of chopsticks outward to tear an item apart. The latter is a slightly tricky skill to pick up. When served a meal with rice, it's considered more delicate to eat a bit of rice between bites of different side dishes. While likely nobody will bat an eye if you neglect this convention, this error is called utsuri-bashi (移り箸). Crowding your mouth with food without chewing in between is komi-bashi (込み箸). It's also considered bad to simultaneously pick up a bowl and chopsticks with the same hand, or using chopsticks to gesture while talking. Usually in Japanese homes and in most non-teishoku restaurants, the table will have some shared dishes in addition to individual plates. When I first visit someone's home or an otherwise unfamiliar person, I reverse my chopsticks to pick up items from common plates. It's considered deferential, but it's also a little old-fashioned and perhaps overly formal. 95% of people, regardless of your relationship with them, will quickly insist that such formalities are unnecessary, because "it's just us." Could you explain the reasoning behind these taboos? We have the latter one in China, and the reasoning is that chopsticks standing in rice is only used for sacrifices to the dead. So leaving your chopsticks in your own rice, or worse, in someone else's rice bowl, implies that they will die. ←
  4. For hazelnut, I would grind a bit of hazelnut and add a dash of Frangelico or other hazelnut liqueur. My favorite fall/winter ice creams, gelatos and sorbets have been: 1) kabocha (Japanese pumpkin) ice cream, avoiding any impulse to add pumpkin pie-like spices. Extra simple can be fantastic. 2) Apple and Calvados sorbet. 3) Pear sorbet. I have done this with some cloves, but with good, sweet pears, less is more, and unadorned is fantastic. 4) Satsumaimo or sweet potato, roasted/baked then smashed. 5) Purple sweet potatoes (either Okinawan-style, or a bit more "spicy" with ube.) 6) Chestnut, especially went paired with either apple or pear sorbets. 7) Cranberry sorbet. Although most cherished in the summer, many citrus fruits actually peak in fall and winter.
  5. If the owner or chef is Japanese, I think that they won't easily be able to escape these taboos. As both Suzy and I suggested, in fancier restaurants, I think they will likely use better waribashi, but waribashi nonetheless. The ubiquity of chopsticks in U.S. Thai restaurants is a clear example of catering to local market conventions, authenticity be damned; clearly Thai people have no use for chopsticks except occasionally for noodle eating, but American restaurant goers somehow think chopsticks obligatory in all vaguely Asian restaurants. If you're in an Asian fusion place run by non-Japanese, they may be more willing to entertain alternatives to waribashi. Chinese owners are not likely to be concerned with this taboo, and Koreans might entertain metal chopsticks since most of them can be easily washed. I don't think, however, that many Japanese restaurateurs in the US would be comfortable making these kinds of leaps, because chopsticks are too tightly tied to religious taboos. Chinese and Korean restaurateurs seem willing to adopt waribashi, but not the other way around. Metal, plastic, and the long, untapered Chinese style wooden kwaitsa don't fit in with a Japanese vibe, among other problems. Lacquer is too personal for a restaurant. The remaining option is waribashi, either the ultra-cheap flat cutouts or the prettier round tapered ones. The bizarrely non-Japanese sushi that are mostly obligatory in U.S. restaurants (California, spider, spicy tuna, etc.) are market concessions, so certainly some Japanese chefs are willing to dispense with certain preferences in favor of staying open. If faced with some kind of pressure, perhaps some conversion, kicking and screaming, might happen. But "better" is really subjective in such context: culture vs. market. Which matters more?
  6. Yes, I'm always irritated by plastic chopstics when I'm in Chinese restaurants because they are too slippery and unwieldy. I remember in Beijing my coworkers were making sport of picking up single fried peanuts out of a small bowl using plastic chopsticks, testing out the foreign visitors, but actually it turned out our Chinese colleagues were more frustrated than us. Even though I can make do, I'd rather have metal chopsticks like in Korea, or even reused bamboo chopsticks, sanitation risks and all. Lacquerware doesn't like near-boiling water, which makes health department compliance more time consuming, but it isn't insurmountable, because the three sink method works reasonably well. But it just won't happen, for the reasons I've enumerated above. Anyway, people should be eating sushi with their fingers, not chopsticks.
  7. Yes, of course glassware and ceramicware are reused. But if you look for consistency in old taboos, you'll usually be disappointed, since the repeated behavior over several generations is deeply subconscious, and somewhat idiosyncratic unless you grew up in that environment. For example, few would object to all dishes being washed together, but you'll find children all over Japan who would consider it distasteful if their father's clothing was washed together with their own. This is explained partially by taboos about touching other people's things, and partly by taboos about cleanliness. But if you look for a logical explanation, it won't happen. Chopsticks also have a substantial role in Shinto ritual and connect people with the world of "kamisama" or gods. The taboos surrounding chopsticks are more tightly bound than with many other items. (If you don't believe me, start licking your chopsticks around an older Japanese person, or in front of anyone, stick your chopsticks into a rice bowl and leave them standing up. Not a good idea.). If a particular teacup or glass becomes strongly identified with a member of a family, such as 夫婦茶碗 (husband-wife teacup pairs, which are slightly different in size) or the equivalent of "dad's favorite coffee mug," you will find the same kind of resistance to using the cup among family members who are not associated with that cup as you would with chopsticks. More anonymous teaware (such as typical 5-piece sets or restaurant ware) will not likely become subject to the taboo. Restaurants with a lot of repeat customers may actually establish reserved sake cups to go along with the private bottle of sake or shochu that gets purchased by the bottle at the restaurant and kept behind the counter until the customer next comes in. If this happens, those cups won't likely touch any other customer's lips. There are, of course, exceptions with the chopsticks behavior as well: namely, some families keep a few pair of lacquered "guest chopsticks". They are used pretty rarely and don't become strongly identified with a family member, but rather broadly with all outsiders to the home. And it is possible to hear an apology at a private home that they have no guest chopsticks other than waribashi. Typically, the chopsticks in a private home are not only distinct in design but also in size (father's slightly larger than mother's, childrens' are smaller than both). Real lacquered chopsticks will absolutely not be $1.99 for 6 pieces even at wholesale prices, but plastic or wood can certainly be found at those prices. At wholesale it may be possible to find a set of 5 pair of mass-produced lacquered chopsticks at $3-4, but mass produced lacquerware is a more recent phenomenon than mass-produced waribashi (which originated around 1870). However, as I explained, I think it would take some serious marketing efforts in Japan to convince people that plastic chopsticks in restaurants are a good idea. Plastic pseudo-lacquered chopstics may work, but Japanese themselves will still find the experience odd, even if it seems upscale to a North American audience. It's simply not a question of cost, and focusing on cost will not produce any clarity. There are also different grades of waribashi, and you might be able to convince restaurants to choose nicer bamboo waribashi, but I doubt that Japanese restaurants would be able to make the psychological leap to plastic or lacquerware. Long term, the most likely argument for change is environmental. The aspen wood isn't a sustainable resource, and even lower impact materials like bamboo still cost a lot in terms of shipping and disposal. However, I suspect this will more likely happon on an individual level in Japan, with the "bring your own" phenomenon mentioned above. Also, a shift in attitudes about what constitutes wastefulness would be necessary. Single-use lacquerware would clearly suffer from the "mottainai" perception, but for some reason waribashi do not suffer from this perception. In fact, the first use of waribashi was actually frugal, as it used up otherwise unusable wood scraps.
  8. I don't think any excuse is required... I've almost never seen fancy chopsticks offered in a restaurant in Japan. There's a long-established taboo in Japan about touching something that belongs to someone else. It explains quite a lot of things, from furoshiki wrapping of bento and gifts, to packaging, to ritual department store behavior. Over time, waribashi are probably more expensive than reusable chopsticks because they are a consumable, rather than smallware. I don't think this is a question of cost, it's a question of cultural convention. Usually even if I go to someone's home and they use lacquerware chopsticks for their family members, they will probably use waribashi for their guests. My friends can't imagine using their mother's, father's, or brother's chopsticks regardless of how clean they might appear. If you were handed a pair of lacquered chopsticks in Japan, and they didn't belong to you, you'd be a bit surprised (and the cheap ones are more than 25 cents a piece). Plastic or metal are not really common in Japan, and Chinese-style untreated wood chopsticks (a la http://www.kwytzakraft.com/) as used in China aren't necessarily considered any higher in value than waribashi by Japanese.
  9. About a year ago I visited the home of one of my girlfriend's close friends, planning a slightly premature cherry-blossom viewing party at a nearby park. Of course, I learned, such an event is about drinking and eating, not about the cherry blossoms, so it worked out anyway. In preparation for the Hanami gathering, we made an insane number of sandwiches on shokupan, using egg salad or Japanese-style processed cheese or other toppings. I thought this was an excellent opportunity to introduce our friend's children to the joys of the classic grilled cheese sandwich. I made it with a few slices of tomato, and mom was quite surprised to see her youngest daughter, who usually rejects tomatoes without a second thought, devouring food that had tomatoes in it... she wasn't sure if it was the grilled cheese format or the novelty of a strange white guy making it that made the whole thing work. Tonight I was reminded of children's food as Hiromi referred me to this nifty site: Kasumin Yoroshiku Bento Gallery This site features one mom's efforts to make attractive (and apparently time-consuming) bento for her son. Complete with contemporary cartoon characters illustrated with the benefit of nori and other such accoutrements, the presentation is inspiring, even though I've never been much of a food surrealist. A few years ago, my pottery instructor sent me a batch of similarly cartoonish bento, and it didn't occur to me that people could make a fairly substantial hobby out of such endeavors... Any other homey children's food in your Japanese cooking repertoire? (I'm still trying to avoid having children, so I don't have much to contribute here).
  10. I'm not sure I understand you quite right, but "nama yuba" is actually fresh yuba, not rehydrated. Fried yuba is tricky to pull off. When wrapping things with yuba, I've used toothpicks to help them hold everything together. When starting with dried yuba, be careful not to soak it too long if you plan to fry it. I don't think the amount of water matters, but the soaking duration and water temperature will affect the texture and durability.
  11. Thanks to Torakris for putting this back in the right topic. Remind me not to post while sleeping.
  12. I think there's a thread on yuba in this forum somewhere, but I'll make a few suggestions. Yuba can be sold dried or "fresh". If your yuba is already very moist and soft, then you have "fresh" yuba; it is usually sold in vacuum packs or frozen. If you have such fresh yuba, you don't need to do much with it except dress it lightly; a splash of Japanese soy sauce with raw ginger, or perhaps umeboshi with a little raw shiso, would work as a nice garnish. Fresh yuba can be sold as a stack of thin sheets or in small rolls. Outside of Japan and possibly China, fresh yuba is quite rare, but sometimes Chinese supermarkets have a denser kind of fresh yuba that can be prepared like noodles. I think this type of heavy yuba is usually boiled briefly then stir-fried. If, in the more likely case that you started with dried yuba, you'll have a very different set of options. First, you'll generally need to rehydrate the yuba by soaking it in hot water until it's fairly soft. If you have sheets or long, collapsed tube-shaped yuba, you boil it in soups, as Chinese often do; it kind of stands in for or augments pork. These dried "tubes" aren't typically used by Japanese, in my experience, but are very common in Asian supermarkets in the US. I think you could use them in nabe. Dried spiral-shaped rolled up yuba, which has many layers, can be incorporated into a kakejiru (soy sauce, mirin, and salt seasoned dashijiru) and then served atop soba or udon. You'll then have Nikkou style yuba-soba or yuba-udon. These sheets could also be rehydrated and stuffed with, say, ginnan, and fried. Dried sheets of yuba can, instead of being hydrated, be cut and then deep-fried, then served sprinkled with salt as a sake accompaniment. Alternatively, after frying, simmer lightly in kakejiru, then place into a small bowl and dress with a bit of the boiling liquid. Another good use for dried yuba is in nimono. Sheets or tubes of dried yuba can be soaked and rehydrated, cut into 1-inch pieces, then simmered with rehydrated kikurage and carrots; cook about 7 minutes or so, then add some blanched greens of your choice. Once warmed, serve in small bowls.
  13. I don't make a lot of wagashi but I've made two attempts at kurikinton recently. This one turned out better-textured than the last one, but there's a lot of room for interpretation on the best texture for kurikinton. I like both the dry and moist types. This one is very moist. I posted approximate details on how to make homemade Kuri-kinton on my blog.
  14. I dated someone from the Caribbean whose mother used to pick lemongrass out of their garden when she was sick, but she said that her mother boiled it and served the liquid a cold remedy. She didn't eat it straight. Thai cuisine frequently uses cut pieces of lemongrass sauteed in oil. The lemongrass will often simmer with the liquids, but people don't generally chew on the lemongrass. It might be removed prior to serving in some restaurants to avoid customer complaints. When incorporated into certain pastes or sauces, it will generally be sliced finely and then bashed with a mortar and pestle into a texture only slightly more abrasive than grated ginger.
  15. I can be equally hostile to pan-Asian fusions created by people who don't understand the fundamentals of a cuisine well... But on the other hand, your statement is kind of funny, because so many Chinese dishes currently beloved in China wouldn't have been possible without foreign influence. Chinese cuisine has now long incorporated chilies, tomatoes, peanuts, and other ingredients from the West, and some herbs, fruits, and vegetables came from other parts of Asia. Even rice may have moved to China from Southeast Asia, though that's certainly quite a while ago. Pure "Chinese" Chinese food is, to some extent, a matter of interpretation. But I think there are a few types of "fusion". When a region is exposed to foreign ingredients, they are frequently adapted to local dishes. When people from one region travel to another and settle there, they try to make their cuisine using the available ingedients. When people comfortable with one cuisine travel to another pla for short-term trips, their recollections of that cuisine can subsequently influence their cooking. And then there's sort of willful, fusion-for-the-sake-of-fusion cuisine, often created by chefs who only have a shallow understanding of cuisine that they are borrowing from after dining in other restaurants. It may take several attempts to incorporate a "non-native" ingredient in a way that seems Chinese, but I think it can be done. It's usually a question of ingredient function. Maybe the "marinade" isn't quite the right approach... In my cookbooks from China, highly aromatic marinades are pretty rare. They are usually just Chinese "wine" and soy sauce. Ginger or garlic may be added, but usually those are added in the cooking stage and not the marinade. I think lemongrass used to flavor hot oil might come work out as more Chinese in style. Saute some lemongrass in oil, then remove the lemongrass itself; use this oil for sauteeing, or drizzle over a steamed/blanched dish while the oil is still hot.
  16. In Seattle, a local Chinese Buddhist who spent many years in Thailand opened a Chinese vegetarian restaurant and she used lemongrass prolifically. Of course, she said she was influenced by Thai cooking, but the dishes she created were far closer to Chinese styles. One of her dishes with lemongrass was similar to a Thai-style vegetable curry, but the approach and flavor profile were essentially Chinese. I believe she also used lemongrass to flavor either wheat gluten or yuba (the soymilk skins I always forget the Chinese name for; 湯葉 is the Japanese rendering). (added) I think her interpretation of hot and sour soup also incorporated lemongrass.
  17. It's that time of year again, for those of us in the northern hemisphere... Tonight I made yudoufu, or tofu nabe, with some shiitake and local chanterelles, and hakusai (napa cabbage). I made a yuzu-ponzu. Details: Yudoufu blog entry Kinoko iri nabe Yuzu ponzu and the accessories
  18. Both Monja and Okonomi-yaki are fairly modern dishes. Okonomiyaki emerged as Osaka merchants started interacting with foreign traders and had access to novel ingredients. In one monjya place they were offering "Baby Star" fried noodle snacks as an option with their monja. I liked a tofu and kimchi monjayaki, in which the tofu is cooked in the center of the "O" before the liquid is added; this simply wouldn't work with okonomiyaki. But I'm still not much of a monjya fan yet.
  19. JasonTrue

    Quark soft cheese

    Austrians like it sweetened a bit, flavored with vanilla and served with crepe-like pancakes; in Austria, this kind of Quark is called Topfen. Also lightly sweetened, it's a good garnish for rote Grütze, which is basically a thickened, chilled fruit soup made with white wine, a bit of starch, and various berries, predominantly reddish-ones. Blackberries, raspberries, tiny European cranberries (regular cranberries are just fine), and even gooseberries can be used. If the fruits are more green or more yellow, it's still Grütze, but no longer rot. When making cheesecake, Germans use quark where we would use cream cheese. I used it in Germany when making cheesecakes because it was so much cheaper than buying Philadelphia brand cream cheese or local versions of the same. I've also seen it used in fruit salads. It can be mixed with Muesli or granola. Sometimes it is spread as is on bread as is commonly done in some countries with sour cream or cream cheese.
  20. I got my omija berries from a tiny Korean-run dietary supplement shop, whose owners custom blended some combinations of grains, herbs, and chinese medicine to turn into a drink. It wasn't cheap; I think the berries cost about $25 for about 400 grams. I'm guessing you won't need much for a beer project, though. The packaging on the omija photo is about the same style, although a different branding, as the one I got. The label on this photo seems to say "Omija yeolmae" but I think mine just said omija-cha, even though they were whole berries. Do you think you will replace the hops with omija or just add the omija to the basic ale flavor?
  21. I made an attempt at one of my favorite highway "service area" snacks today: Oyaki (full description of technique is on my blog entry.) The filling I made was actually slightly repurposed, extended karashi-na filling from my jiaozi that I showed on the China forum. To the karashi-na filling, I added some oroshi-kabu (actually turnips rather than Japanese kabu), miso, shouyu, and a couple of mushrooms. The skins are simple to prepare, but hard to turn into something pretty; accordingly, I obscured the "twisted" side. In the pan: Plated:
  22. Yes, when I make kimchi tofu jiaozi, I call them kimchi dubu mandu. I like that combination best steamed, but I certainly make them pan-fried sometimes. I tend to call jiaozi mandu if they are made with Korean style fillings. I remember seeing "piza-mandu" (pizza dumplings) (mozzarella, tomato, herbs, textured soy protein) in a Korean market's frozen foods, but if I was making them from scratch, I am not sure I'd be brave enough to call them "mandu" unless explaining them to Korean guests. I only call my jiaozi "gyouza" when I have a Japanese audience. If I refer to boiled ones, I call them sui-gyouza; steamed ones are mushi-gyouza.
  23. This is a good suggestion. If I was using eggs in the filling I'd probably season those similarly, save perhaps the sesame oil. I usually don't need tofu to be too heavily seasoned but it makes sense in such a context to give it a little more base complexity. I often like to pair the tofu with kimchi instead, which is salty enough that the tofu doesn't need a lot of extra help. So it didn't occur to me to season the tofu separately. On the term "Wor-Tip" or "Gwor-Tiea" (potstickers): Not being an expert in Chinese language, I just know when I've gathered together with Chinese friends to "make jiaozi" the end result could be steamed, boiled, or potsticker style, or some combination thereof; by the time we finish cooking, we don't worry about what it is called. We just eat.
  24. I am fond of various Korean drinks popularly served either as after-dinner refreshments or for folk medicinal purposes. yuja-cha (yuzu "tea") 유자차, made with yuzu marmalade or slices of yuzu and honey su jeong gwa (a.k.a. soo jeong gwa) 수정과, made with ginger, cinnamon and persimmons shikhae (a.k.a. sikhae) 식해, made with malt-fermented rice daechucha 대추차, (natsume-cha for Japanese, who tend to find the idea bewildering), or jujube tea; I like this in Korean tea shops but not so much if sold in jars. omija-cha 오미자차, which is a berry with :five flavors" I'll make a lot of these this winter and post as I go. Here's my first for the season: omija-cha Omija-cha (occasionally romanized without the hyphen, i.e. omijacha) is a “tea” made from the fruits of something occasionally translated as magnolia vine, or alternately as schizandra berry. It takes me about an hour or so of simmering the very expensive dried berries to get the right level of flavor intensity, and I’m sure you could find someone who tells you it needs to be done much longer. I rarely make it, but I thought it would be a bit refreshing and maybe keep a little cold from relapsing. It's fairly heavily sweetened. I served it cold, but it may be served hot. Omija-cha is often a bit darker than this photo, but I might have been stingy with the berries this time. The name refers to the “five flavors” of the berries, the classic five flavors of Chinese cuisine: sweet, sour, salty, bitter, pungent. I like it, but I’m sure it’s an acquired taste. In Seoul I once ordered it while sitting alone at an art gallery/cafe, and I’m sure the young girl at the counter was a bit perplexed, though she understood my awful Korean.
  25. if you've only heard 'bibimbap" pronounced and not spelled, it's certainly easy to think there's a p sound in the "bibim" part, because the difference in Korean between "b" and "p" is not how "hard" the b or p sound is, but whether it's aspirated or not. So some Koreans make "b" sounds that sound like a "p" but without a puff of air. On the other hand, that final "p" is a little tricky to get right too, because only the first half of the "p" comes out... it's aspirated but unreleased. That's why Japanese just leave off the final "p" altogether when they say "bibimba"... it sounds closer than "bibimbapu", which would be the most likely way the "p" sound would come out in Japanese. Korean romanization is more bewilderingly inconsistent than it should be... If I see "soo" or "su" they are the same, following different conventions, but "soo' (sue) and "so" (so) are completely different. And writing out double-l sounds fails to convey the transformation of the sound that happens when present.
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