JasonTrue

It sounds like part of their shtick more than anything else... "It's not Kosher to bring in outside food." Really? I can't think of a way that a shop that serves sandwiches with both cream cheese and meat on the same bagel could be Kosher, anyway. Though I don't have any cultural authority, I don't think you can be fleischig and milchig on the same bagel

They have a bit of a Yiddish shtick in their marketing-speak, but I don't think they claim to be Kosher. I remember making homemade bagels and bringing them to a group of people I was working with at the Japan Center of my university in Germany. I had given advance notice so people could bring their own toppings. My professor said, "I heard that one can eat these with ham..." I said, "well, that's certainly possible, but it would be inconsistent with custom, since these are associated with Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe and Russia in the U.S., and they don't tend to eat a lot of ham..." He ate his with ham.

Yes, that's where she said she'll be.

Kabocha adds a lot of water content to the gnocchi, even when roasted. I've made good kabocha gnocchi before, but I've also made very bad ones. I usually oven-steam the kabocha ("roast" halves face-down in shallow water bath). I found that temperature control is very important... if the temperature varies much from what I think is a 155-160F sweet spot, bad things can happen. But based on your description, I'd say the most likely thing is that you didn't have quite enough flour in your gnocchi. The impulse to avoid tough, chewy gnocchi often leads us to be overly cautious in the use of flour, and so we get ones that don't quite hold together. When I've made regular potato gnocchi with egg, it usually works out, but I think that it adds too much moisture content in kabocha gnocchi and I now generally skip that. I would love to do a kabocha gnocchi, but in the Seattle area kabocha and other winter squash won't taste very good for another month or so. The ones from out of area don't generally have good color in September.

I learned yesterday that Wholesome Vegetasia, a nice little Chinese Vegetarian restaurant on King St., plans to close its doors on Wednesday. I think Nancy became a little exhausted with the demands of operating a restaurant and her side businesses. She plans to start conducting cooking classes on Chinese Buddhist Vegetarian cuisine.

I don't have any corroborating information, but the source tells me that various clashes of ego have something to do with it. Also even with the fairly decent traffic that they still seem to have, it's going to be pretty hard to make that initial investment back. so sad, if it's true. i'll be curious if they really are putting it on the market. the actual building there is a gorgeous artifact, in addition to some top-notch grub. ←

I've heard murmurings that May is looking for a buyer. Wallingford is a tough place to operate retail/restaurant projects, I think.

I understood your quest as "whole grain .... products", as in , the flour containing the whole grain. Anyone who is attempting to "use more whole grains" isn't asking for boiled wheatberries.

I have seen whole wheat puff pastry in Germany, but I'm not sure if many companies are producing it for foodservice applications in the U.S. With yeasted laminated dough it's also possible to make whole wheat croissants, which I used to indulge in as a student in Germany even at the supermarket bakery. For your planned dish, I think you'd be in ok shape either with puff pastry or laminated dough. You may have a hard time finding it "off-the-shelf", though, and I'm still not patient enough to make puff pastry myself; in spite of a willingness to take on far more elaborate projects, I've never been very successful making puff pastry. Whole wheat pastry flour is very helpful for pie recipes, so I imagine it would be good to use that rather than bread flour.

Oh, I somehow missed Kiem Hwa's message. Yes, I am planning to import straight yuzu juice primarily (except for Korean fermented yuzu juice, I am not aware of a "concentrate", but yuzu juice is quite strong when unmessed with), but the vendor I am working with says they will be able to bottle blends and dressings to my specification as well, so I'm hoping to do a yuzu juice drink. Based on the cost of materials, I have a feeling the pricing won't be much better, though. The main pricingadvantage I'll have is that I'll not be buying from a drink-maker but from a yuzu company.

It's a bit dangerous to attempt fusion before being truly comfortable in the domain of a particular cuisine, though I also don't think it's such a travesty to use atypical ingredients that have a compatible function. But I took some liberties when preparing a fried paneer dish that I think are perfectly acceptable. I didn't have any chickpea flour, but since I frequently cook Japanese food, I had a plentiful stash of katakuriko on hand. This is a very useful starch and is usually the one used for agedashi-doufu, another fried food, and produces a very nice crispy texture. I am quite fond of tamarind chutney, coconut-peanut chutney in the right hands, and maybe a mango chutney if the mangoes are deserving, but the fruit I happened to have on hand consisted of some nice peaches. So I made a moderately spicy peach chutney, emphasizing fenugreek and cloves, with a bit of ginger, some lime and chilies. Because I had an insane amount of paneer on hand for someone who doesn't eat it on a regular basis, I also made a simmered paneer dish with a similar, but not identical sauce, to the lentil koftas I made a couple of days ago. Blog entry

I think my challenge is not whether improvisation is acceptable, but whether my knowledge of Indian food is sufficient that my improvisation would be convincing to or at least comfortable for a native. I am not embarrassed at all to serve something I consider Japanese to someone who actually is Japanese. I've got a fairly good sense of what parameters are within the range of Japanese taste, and what is wacky. Even my "fusion" dishes are fairly comfortable for average Japanese folks, although the specific combinations or choices may sound suprising. I'd say the same for Chinese, Mexican, Thai, or Italian food. I wouldn't at all be embarrassed by serving most dishes in my repertoire in those cuisines to someone who grew up with the cuisine. One of my former coworkers was surprised that my vegetales en escabeche (Mexican seasoned marinated vegetables) was better than many versions he has had, and the fact that I can pull off a decent vegetarian baozi surprised a number of Chinese friends as well. And in fact, I have served Indian dishes at dinner parties and the feedback was fairly positive, but I only serve the ones I'm most confident about. I'm far more likely to cook a dish I've never made before for a large group if it's any other cuisine except Indian One time I actually made a dish which was little more than deep-fried long slices of Japanese eggplant mixed with a splash of Japanese soy sauce and grated raw ginger, and some Thai, Indian, Japanese and Chinese guests all claimed it was a product of their cuisine, which I thought was very funny.

"Damu ki komu" (no idea what this would be in roman characters) I am not going to attempt to translate the actual instructions, but I will translate the ingredients. Any instructions are just what I've done. I've found the recipe relatively forgiving, but it is possible for the cashew sauce to stick to the pan and brown, which should be avoided; be judicious in heat. Sweat the following in one pan: Mushrooms, raw 200g, roughly 15 pieces Butter, 20g Garlic, minced, 5g Ginger, minced, 5g Salt, 1/4 teaspoon Red pepper powder, 1/4 teaspoon For the sauce, combine in a bowl: 80g ground cashews; yogurt, 100cc (I use coconut milk instead for a more mild flavor) cinnamon, 1/2 stick (since sticks vary in size in the US, I take this as about 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon), ground clove, 3 pieces, ground bay leaf, 3 leaves, ground cardamom, one pod, ground 2 red peppers I grind the dry spices, and even the cashews, in a coffee grinder or spice mill, and add the other ingredients. Mine doesn't like sticks of cinnamon, but you could simmer the cinnamon with the sauce that you'll use or use ground. In a second pan, cook separately: 2 tablespoons ghee 5g garlic, minced 5g ginger, minced red pepper powder, 1/2 teaspoon garam masala, 1 teaspoon Salt, 3/4 teaspoon To which, add Tomato puree, 80 cc (I usually use concentrated tomato paste in a tube and therefore far less). Water, 400 cc Add the contents of the bowl of the ground cashews/spices and simmer until thick and creamy. Transfer the mushrooms into the simmer sauce. You needn't simmer terribly long, but keep the heat moderate if you plan on keeping it for a while. It's fairly flexible and doesn't need to be served the instant it's done. The serving suggestion points out that it's quite acceptable to add other things besides mushrooms. I have sometimes put other sweatable vegetables in this sauce, such as zucchini or patty pan squash. I think the ingredients list is correctly translated, but I'm sure I've mistreated the original instructions.

I've definitely had some olives that are as salty as Indian pickles, but most of the ones that leave Europe for the US are not as salty. California olive producers see to go for fruitier, rather than brinier. Even so, I know I balance my saltiest cured olives with some bread or cheese to cut the salt impact. I do the same with Indian pickles, but with rice or chapati. I did find that it took me forever to make use of a single jar of lime pickle, garlic pickle, or mango pickle. I was once a little overwhelmed by the salt on a tomato-and-onion covered papad in one Indian restaurant... and I know an Indian colleague or two who didn't complain about the mild flavors but felt Japanese food isn't salty enough (even though Japanese have a fairly high daily salt consumption). It would seem that many Indians fairly high tolerance for salt.

Only the cross-cultural circumstances by which I came to this recipe are odd, not the fact that the source is Japanese. I received this book about 9 years ago when I was an exchange student in Germany. A friend of mine had gone back to Japan, and she wanted to send me a small gift... she had gone searching for a vegetarian cookbook in Japanese, but the only thing she found was a beautifully-produced Japanese-language Indian cookbook, Spicy Vegetable Cuisine, by Renu Aurora. Actually quite often, Italian restaurants in Japan are better than much of what I can find in the U.S. or what I ate when I was a starving student in Germany, and I have had a few incredibly good Mexican, Thai, and Chinese meals that I couldn't easily find a substitute for at home. (I can't say that the typical Mexican, Indian or Thai restaurant in Japan is very memorable, though). The best Indian and Thai restaurants I've been to so far, though, were in Hong Kong. That might just be a matter of good fortune and fresh ingredients.

An authorization for a charge doesn't actually transfer any money to the bank or to the merchant. Only upon settlement a few days later does any money actually change hands. If a bank is actually deducting the money off of a debit card, rather than just reducing the available balance, it seems like a procedural error. I've never seen any evidence that the money was subtracted from my account until the transaction was settled, on either my credit union or commercial bank accounts. The "Available Balance" usually changes, though. An authorization isn't the same as a transaction... I suppose it's possible for a restaurant or company to mistakenly set the transaction mode to "sale" rather than "authorization." But that makes adding/subtracting amounts for tips more complicated, at least in my credit card system. A specific complaint to that restaurant, a call to their bank and/or card processing or POS equipment vendor, should resolve such issues. In my online store I never complete a transaction until after something has a shipping label and is out the door, but you can bet I authorize the transactions fairly quickly after receiving an order.

I'm vegetarian, though a bit more flexible when someone else is cooking (e.g. a restaurant, esp. in Japan). My girlfriend pointed out that Japanese cuisine has Sa-Shi-Su-Se-So dominant flavoring techniques; it stands for sugar, salt, vinegar, shouyu, and miso. Once you're experienced with the flavor profile that matches Japanese sensibilities, everything else becomes relatively simple. Japanese try to do as little as possible to food, just waking up flavors. With few exceptions, simplicity is key in almost every cuisine. Even for Indian or Thai food, the actual cooking techniques are relatively simple, but the seasoning base is a more complex flavor. It's this complexity that takes a lot of experience to understand well. The "heat" isn't the hard part; the toasting or cooking of spices isn't the hard part; it's basically a question of comfort level with the flavor profiles of different types of dishes. If you eat at a "curry house" in Japan, they don't show much respect for nuance; every dish is basically the same except what meat goes into it. Restaurants run by Indians (almost always owned by a Japanese person who is likely more cost-conscious than an owner of a traditionally Japanese restaurant) aren't much better there. Even in the U.S., where we have generally better-quality Indian restaurants, some chefs get quite lazy about distinguishing one dish from another and the waitstaff doesn't necessarily help suggest ways to balance out a meal. Accordingly, most Americans and Japanese have a poorly-trained palate for Indian food. That makes it rather hard to become skilled with improvising dishes; we don't necessarily know which flavor notes should be emphasized in a particular preparation. I can follow basic techniques, including making a passable chaunk, toasting my fenugreek before cooking with it, popping my mustard seeds in some ghee or oil, and so on. I can choose spices based on what I like. The dish might be perfectly serviceable to an average Indian but I would expect each would taste a bit unfamiliar. Fortunately, like China, there are enough regional variations that I suppose anything could be acceptable or anathema to someone. As for the mushroom/cashew dish... I can try to roughly translate the mushroom-cashew recipe ingredients from the cookbook, and explain my tweaks, but I think it will take me a bit... Rather oddly, the book is written by an Indian woman, Renu Aurora (レヌ アロラ), but the text is Japanese. I believe that particular book is now out of print. Essentially, it has mushrooms sweated and seasoned in one pan, and ground cashews, water, more seasonings, tomato paste cooked in another. The mushrooms are simmered in the sauce and, in the original recipe, yogurt is added, but I prefer to make it with an equivalent amount of coconut milk. It's quite creamy and rich, with distinguishing notes of cardamom and cloves. Ginger and garlic were both used, as I recall. (one Chinese friend of mine told me using both in the same dish was completely unacceptable, so that just shows the differences in cuisine...) Blog with eggplant raita with forgotten cilantro, mushroom-cashew dish, and avocado gratin Apparently I chose the same Hagi bowl for the mushroom dish when I last made it... well, the bigger version on the blog will be more revealing.

I'm not an expert on Indian food, although I'm quite fond of eating Southern dosas and utthapam, and probably can make a few passable vegetable or channa masalas, some ugly chapati, and a really nice mushroom cashew curry, one rare case where I actually follow a recipe. I feel no problem improvising with Japanese, Chinese, or vaguely Italian foods, but I'm never quite comfortable calling my Indian-influenced dishes Indian. When I'm improvising, without referring to cookbooks, I would say this is "Jason cooking with a little too much garam masala in the house." I never really follow the cookbooks precisely anyway. But every once in a while I crave something with some mustard seeds, cumin, coriander seeds, ghee and salt, some garam masala, etc. More particularly, last night I was craving some lentils and some light soupy thing. So I made three dishes. One was a simple grilled eggplant dish with some lime juice, chilies, cilantro, and sweet onions. The other was something like a rasam, though slightly big in proportion compared to how I've usually had it served to me. Another was a kind of lentil kofta with a spiced tomato cream sauce. I'm not sure what it would take to feel like I'm not cheating somehow by improvising. In my Chinese cooking, after my Chinese neighbors in Germany started requesting me to make something, I started to feel like I had passed a certain point of knowledge. With Japanese cooking, my favorite cookbook encouraged improvisation, and I was later better informed by frequent travel to Japan. I cook Indian-ish dishes so rarely that I think it would take a few months of obsessive experimentation, dinner parties and so on before I would feel like I know anything. So here was last night's dinner... Blog entry: Craving soup and lentils

I drink bottled/canned coffee and tea in Japan only because of the distinct lack of water fountains. Of course I alternate with juices, Gokuri and so on. At least based on what kinds of coffee were being served and consumed, Japan used to have higher standards for coffee than most of the U.S. But the U.S., or at least Seattle, has increasingly demanded more from coffee, whereas the expectations in Japan are fairly stable. In Seattle area, I have access to some truly stellar options for coffee, although we have our share of the mediocre as well. The pricing is quite reasonable. In fact, opposite of more normal pricing customs, the better shops often actually charge a little less than Starbucks. It's a little more challenging in Japan. Excellent coffee is still quite expensive, with prices in the 600-1200 yen range, and the price is no guarantee that you'll get good coffee... And the better versions of U.S.-style coffee shops, like Macchinesti in Tokyo (Akabanebashi, I think... anyway, Azabu area), are a bit more extravagant than the chain equivalents; I think the menu ran mostly 350-600 yen for most drinks there. http://www.bento.com/rev/1896.html When I need a bit of a caffeine fix but don't really want to spend a lot of money, I might buy a bottled coffee. But the stale taste is kind of offensive. I liked the idea of being able to buy a hot bottle of coffee or tea, but I am usually not very impressed by the actual flavor. It's a lot harder to enjoy than when the first few times I went to Japan. I think I tend to drink more C.C. Lemon and Gokuri, because even if they aren't pure juice, they do seem somewhat refreshing. I usually think I want an unsweetened bottled/canned coffee, but when I taste them again, I remember that milk and sugar help obscure the worst notes in bad coffee, and start buying the sugary stuff for the rest of the trip. I was really incredibly surprised when I was in Mashiko, Japan and drank vacuum-drawn coffee in a little coffee shop associated with a gallery that I rely upon, and got some beautiful brewed coffee. One of my ceramics artists came to meet me and when I talked about the coffee he felt inclined to sit down and order a cup before we headed to his workshop. My girlfriend complains that she can't readily find "good coffee" in Japan. (Starbucks doesn't quite qualify, but she'll take it in a pinch). The frequent obsessiveness with getting food right in Japan seems not as common with coffee.

Kyoto Yuba, or fresh yuba, is a different texture than the dried yuba. When you rehydrate the dried yuba it will be much more chewy than the nama-yuba you would find in Japan. You can rehydrate yuba just by pouring hot water over it per Hiroyuki's suggestion. If your yuba is rolled up in a spiral shape, it would work well in soba or udon after being rehydrated, and maybe briefly simmered in kakejiru (dashi with mirin, shouyu and salt). If the yuba is more stick-like, I think it's more suitable for nabe or something like that. If you rehydrate sheets of yuba you can also wrap it around something (maybe natto and shiso?), hold it together with a toothpick, and fry it, then serve it with some dipping sauce. There are some companies in Japan, and actually also in China, producing "fresh" yuba that keeps reasonably well either shelf-stable for a few weeks (like I found in Kyoto), or frozen (like I found from a Chinese company at FoodEx Japan). These ones are suitable for ponzu or tsuyu type preparation. But I wouldn't particularly recommend this for dried yuba, because the taste and texture is totally different. Think of it as fresh vs. dried shiitake or konbu; both are good, but you'll never get a decent soup stock out of fresh shiitake or konbu, and you'll never want to make kushiyaki from dried shiitake. Dried yuba is great for soupy applications, fresh is best for just simple dipping sauces and garnishes.

I sometimes use a mat originally designed for sushi. It rolls around the spinach and I apply pressure along the way; it works fo me.

Actually I think that the primary contribution of eggs in homemade ice cream is a stabilizing/emulsifying effect. I believe it will generally make the crystallization more consistent. I'm not particularly knowledgeable in food science, but I've always noticed that my Cuisinart ice creams tend to be more consistent in texture with either more sugar or more eggs. Since I'm not usually craving the sugar as much as the cream and maybe the fruit, if it's a fruit based ice cream, I tend to be less concerned about spectacularly evenly frozen ice cream. I would hazard to guess that most mascarpone sold in the supermarket or even average specialty markets contains some kind of emulsifier or stabilizer. Of course, egg yolks contribute a custardy texture, which I do enjoy, but I don't personally crave it as much as the fruit or base note. If I put eggs in ice cream it's generally vanilla. Lower fat content isn't always the case, because I might slightly reduce the cream proportion if using eggs. When I made edamame ice creams I found I needed to dial down the cream content because the soybeans contributed a lot of fat by themselves.

I had an excellent yuzu mascarpone ice cream in the kitchen of an out-of-the-way French restaurant in the rural Nose valley outside of Osaka, Japan. I believe I've had a few mascarpone gelatos elsewhere, as well. I have made a pretty good cream cheese/lemon zest ice cream served with a dusting of graham crackers. It was nice, though perhaps even more fat than I really need, and I do tend to make fairly rich ice creams. I haven't actually tried a mascarpone one yet. Based on these somewhat limited experiences, though, I suggest using more milk than cream... maybe 3 milk to 1 cream to one mascarpone. Even that seems fairly rich, and you could probably reduce the cream content further. Using a 1:1 cream to milk seems overkill, especially if you are putting egg yolks in there. My ice creams rarely incorporate eggs because I'm usually not trying to create a frozen custard, but I do think it contributes to a richness that would benefit from more moderation on the milkfat. I've found that when my ice creams were "too creamy", whatever the fat source, I basically get a hard sliceable mass that is better molded than scooped. Unless you're trying to strongly emphasize the mascarpone, I think you might benefit from some sort of citrus note... lemon zest or orange zest or something, and maybe even a hint of juice. It will partially serve to cut the palate impact of the fat and make the ice cream slightly more refreshing.

This is a "sour." I think the classic is a whiskey sour, and other drinks involve blending with a sweetened lemon-lime base, traditionally foamed with egg whites. http://www.drinkstreet.com/category.cgi?category=24 Japanese seem to have extended the concept to be most fruit juices or oolong tea blended with shochu. (I might be a bit off on this).

I just had some fortune cookies dipped in matcha-flavored white chocolate made by Chocolati for me... white chocolate and matcha were meant for each other.