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I presume you tried the usual suspect places in Kobe, such as Kobe Grocers and the shops in Chinatown? Perhaps try asking at the mosque in Kobe, the halal Indian shop near there (don't remember the name, but it is on the Kobe mosque web page) or the grocery store right by there (Kitano, I think it's called???), or have you already tried all these? The ones which have a web page do have some unusual spices (unusual for Japan), but still don't look too promising for pomegranate molasses. Still, worth checking if you haven't already. If really desperate, there is this amazon link, though it's quite expensive.

Would someone be able to describe talami bread for me, please? I may be totally off-base here, but it seems to me that this type of of dish (i.e. bread in pieces, added to a mixture) is frequently used with stale bread. Is that perhaps the case here, also? Behemoth, would you know?

My local Asian groceries have piles of them at the moment, imported from Thailand. They can't possibly be out of season. Too bad that Berlin and New Jersey are so far from one another. Have you considered trying with pink grapefruit instead? It's a bit sourer than pomelo, usually, but tends to hold together okay, and you do get the nice color effect as well.

It's a tomato variety. I believe they are a sub-type of Roma tomatoes.

It's probably one reason. But I always thought it was perhaps to make the coffee more similar to soft drinks and therefore maybe get more people to drink it who would otherwise be buying some type of soda instead. After all, doesn't the same size can of soda have around six teaspoons of sugar? So add a couple more teaspoons to cover up any bitter flavor that the coffee brings, and it ends up tasting kind of similar to soda in its sweetness. (Maybe?) I must confess to liking cold UNSWEETENED canned coffee when it's the middle of summer. However, I do wish that the unsweetened canned coffee didn't usually come in smaller cans than the sweet ones (not fair ), and that more cold unsweetened canned coffee also came with milk, instead of just black. With milk and without sugar is sometimes available, but not so often, in my experiene. Are people who don't want sugar in their canned coffee all meant to be some kind of hard-core coffee freaks who don't want to pollute their coffee with any other foreign substance either, such as milk?

Wonton skins - heresy. The traditional crust is the best bit of the samosa.

To clarify further, the norm for payment and tipping in Hungary is as follows: the waiter and waitress carries a purse or wears a money belt. When you are told the price of the meal, you work out mentally on the spot how much you are going to tip, add it to the bill, and then tell the waitress or waiter that you are going to give them that sum. I.e. rather than leaving a tip on the table as in the US, payment and tip are handed over as a lump sum, and you make it clear verbally either that this is the amount you are giving, or you specify the amount of change that you desire.

Eggplant is my favorite vegetable and I cook it often. I never salt it, and have never felt the need. For a gratin, cook first. There is probably a lot on this in the moussaka thread (which I haven't read) or elsewhere but, nonetheless here goes: I find that eggplant can easily be fried with VERY little oil (which it otherwise adores and soaks up like a sponge) as long as you spread the slices out in a single layer and cook slowly over medium heat in a non-stick pan. Flip once, no need to add more oil. Slow cooking and patience is the key here. What goes well with eggplant: almost everything! Specific favorites, pork (not a herb or spice last time I checked, but still mentioning because eggplant and pork make a great match), garlic, tomatoes, oregano, fennel, cinnamon. Not necessarily all at once, but all at once might not be bad either... For a simple, high calory and delicious introduction to eggplant without adding extraneous flavors and really getting to know the taste of the eggplant itself : cut into rings, dip into egg, then flour seasoned simply with salt and pepper, then shallow fry until golden, flipping once so both sides are done equally. With this type of coating, the eggplant goes meltingly tender inside the fried outer coating. Sounds simple, but is definitely worth eating.This is the first dish I ever made with eggplant, and I couldn't stop eating it. Make into tempura instead, if you feel like it. You get the same melting effect of the cooked eggplant within the batter. With both, make sure that the eggplant is cooked through. (Don't make the rings too thick). Apart from the types eaten raw in Thailand, undercooked eggplant is nasty. BTW, the possibilites with eggplant ARE endless. A few years back I started collecting recipes centered around eggplant. Got several hundred now, I would think, all the way from soup to sweet eggplant jam.

You are joking, right? I mean, ALL of them? Even kulfi??? Or a delicate rice pudding, nicely chillled, and perfumed gently with rose water?? Come to Berlin, and I will feed you Indian desserts which will change your mind. Getting back to the topic of this thread, I always loved the name 'priest chokers' (strangolapreti). This is another one with two explanations I know of: one, that the priest is so greedy, and the food so delicious, that he will gobble them down so rapidly he'll choke on them. The second explanation is that the dumplings are rather rough and sturdy, and therefore a priest - who has it would seem a more refined gullet than the hale and hearty peasants who are presumably serving him the dish - is more likely to choke on it. Funny, I'd always thought of it as spinach and bread dumplings from Trentino, but just looked in Ada Boni, and she has it as a sweet baked dish from the Veneto containing sponge cake, nuts, and dried fruits. And then there's also this version as well. Along the same lines, there are not just lots of references to nuns in Italian food names, but also to priests. There are also 'drowned Cappuchin monks' (!), which is essentially a French toast with additional flavorings (coffee in one version, red wine in another). But not the most appetizing name.

Not from embarrassment, surely. A hot summer's day in Naples can be a tad overwhelming . . . ← It would depend on the preacher, it is to be imagined. The heat? Embarrassment? Shock? Perhaps. . .pleasure? These things are all so inextricably entwined, particularly in religious types. ← Well, it's meant to be a Muslim imam, not an Italian priest. There are two versions I know of as to why he fainted. One was from pleasure at the taste of the dish, the other was because he was utterly stingy, and he fainted from shock upon finding out how much expensive olive oil had been used up in one single dish.

Coming kind of late to this discussion, but still... There's an article here about the history of ramen in Japan. Commenting a little on what it says in the article, 拉麺 are usually what they are called in China (referring to the hand-pulled noodles). I don't know my history of Chinese food names well enough, so it is possible that the name actually was used in Japan first, and then got taken to China. (This happened with quite a lot of words actually, 銀行 and 独立 are a couple of examples, even though they are not food related). The other version 老麺 is also possible, as it has (for me at least) a very Cantonese feel to the name. The other explanations with other characters all sound very unlikely to me. The term 'shina' in 'shinasoba' points to the name dating from between around 1870 - 1950, though there is a bit of leeway here. Generally speaking, China was not called 'shina' in Japan before around 1870, but was called 唐 instead. The name 'shina' was adopted as a loan word from English, and some of the time had quite derogatory connotations - 唐 continued to be used as the term for China and Chinese things when no derogatory meaning was intended in the first part of this period, and later 中華 started to get used in that more neutral sense. The bad connotations of the word were one reason why the term was used a lot less later on. I think 'shina' has completely lost its bad connotations now, though (?). I'm not sure I'd agree with this statement from the article without qualifying it a little: To me, this makes it sound as if Chinese were able to sell noodles and gyoza freely throughout Japan after 1899. Not so! Actually, there were all types of restrictions on where Chinese could work and what kind of work they could do both before and after 1899, and although the Chinese were selling food in the Chinatowns of Yokohama, Kobe, and (if I remember correctly) Nagasaki, they were certainly not allowed to sell it in other parts of Japan. Most Chinese in other areas were working as laborers or as travelling salesmen, and even then there were a lot of restrictions on who could work, as well as when and where. Also, Japanese newspaper articles from back then made it quite clear that most Japanese were NOT going to be eating Chinese food. The complaints were that it was too oily, too likely to contain undesirable ingredients, that it 'stank' (because of garlic use?), etc. In fact, Chinese food (or Chinese-style) food really only started getting freed of those connotations in the 1960s in Japan, and only really started getting more popular in the 1970s.

My mother makes Australian Christmas cake every year. She never uses alcohol (the fruit is rehydrated with tea). This includes no alcohol in the batter, and no alcohol poured onto the cake later. I've kept the cake for about six months without problems, and my brother has kept it for a year (he may have added alcohol himself later, but I doubt it). Coming at the same issue from a different angle, couldn't you use those miniature bottles of alcohol rather than buying a whole large one?

Not disagreeing with you about incidence of diabetes, but something to think about: I've always been very suspicious about the figures concerning diabetes - and particularly Type 1 - from any developing country. I always have the sneaking suspicion that, in rural areas particularly, it is massively under-reported and under-treated. If you have insulant dependent diabetes in such areas, you probably die. How many doctors in rural areas recognize it, or have the money to do tests if they do, or how many people have the money for and access to insulin? I've met (well-off, urban) people with Type 1 in China: most of them were not taking insulin, but taking some type of Chinese medicine for it instead at the advice of their doctor. And they all had the acetone-scented breath typical of diabetes being massively out of control. That's the kind of thing that makes me very doubtful about figures concerning incidence of diabetes in poorer countries. That, and the amazing coincidence between getting more wide-spread medical care in any country as the country gets richer and suddenly discovering more cases of diabetes. I've always been doubtful, there also, that it is increasing wealth creating more diabetes (as is usually claimed), and wonder whether instead it is the wealth that is allowing it to be discovered.

Could you tell us what you did? I've played around with an amateurish way trying to make sorbets with no sugar, etc. and have never got textures I was happy with.

A quick skip through several web pages give conflicting theories. Some said Mongolia, others said Turkey, others said Europe. One thing for sure, it's been around a heck of a long time. It's allegedly been cultivated for 4000 years. Apparently the ancient Greeks and Romans loved the stuff, and (allegedly) it was fed to the Chinese labourers building the Great Wall (3rd century BC). One of the sites I looked at mentioned that, when speed of growth is taken into consideration, it gives the greatest yield of all the vegetables one can grow. I would imagine that this would explain its popularity among poor people pretty much everywhere. And would also explain its being coupled with pork, as pigs could be fed on scraps. And as far as the stupid comment goes about pork and cabbage being Polish: one could just as well claim that traditionally combining cabbage and pork (products) is 'only' Irish, or 'only' German, or 'only' African-American... (Thinking about this, the number of traditional pork and cabbage combinations is huge.) Bottom line: that customer is an ignorant twerp. Being that closed-minded, I wonder if he enjoyed his meal?

Is the idea to preserve the cake as long as possible, or to preserve it as long as possible and still have it edible? Also, what was the cake originally made from (as this can vary quite a bit, I'm sure)? If wanting to eat it: First, is it that very rich Australian fruit cake? If so (hides head in shame here), I've actually kept a cake at room temperature (un-iced) wrapped loosely in foil and sliced bits off and eaten them for about six months with no ill effects whatsoever. (I was making my mother's Christmas fruit cake recipe, and when my husband saw how much butter went into one cake, he refused to eat any . Well, it did make it last longer.) I figured that this was the type of the cake that people used to send by ship from England to relatives in India and other 'exotic locales', and so it would be fairly robust, able to tolerate high temperatures, etc. I found out that it was even more robust than I thought when I found out that my younger brother had been doing the same thing, but that his cake was kept for room temperature for over a year. So, if it's the same type of cake, and you want to eat it at some later point, then I'd say you're safe keeping it on the shelf for at least a year, probably longer. I can't often any suggestions about preserving it. M. X.'s mother's cake is pretty amazing. In fact, that story takes the cake. (Sorry, but I couldn't resist).

It wouldn't hurt to try to clarify what 'real, homestyle Chinese' means. For example, China has many different regional styles of cooking. Some (like Shanghai) use more sugar. Others use less or none. So the dishes cooked at home will vary considerably in different regions. The situation described by Annachan is not that far back for some. Which Chinese are you comparing to, bobmac? If you are talking about Chinese who are not living in China right now, it's worth bearing in mind that some are refugees from Vietnam and Cambodia. I used to spend a lot of time with Chinese who were refugees from these countries. They were very poor and, for them, 'home-style cooking' meant one (relatively small) plate of cooked vegetables with maybe a small amount of meat in it, over lots and lots of rice. That one plate of vegetables was for a whole family of 6-10 people. So it wouldn't matter how much sugar and cornstarch you might put in such a dish, it's not going to have much effect. Other people I've met in parts of the Chinese countryside didn't have quite such sparse food. But memories of hunger are not that long back. Food, for many, is something which is treated with great consideration, but this does not mean that it will be prepared lavishly or excessively. At home they certainly were not cooking anything as rich, sweet, oily, and meat-heavy as the food in many Chinese restaurants - be those restaurants in China or some other country. A bit more about former hunger in China: the diet in China has been changing a great deal over the last 50 years. Particularly in the south, the correlation between improved diet and increased height is quite amazing. When you see three generations of one family walking together, with the oldest person as little as 4 foot high, the middle generation 5 foot, and the youngest 6 foot, it really drives it home how much the food situation (historically, not just inadequate protein, but downright hunger or even starvation for many) has improved in China, and how bad things had been in the past. A couple of other aspects which are probably causing fewer people to be overweight (in China, at least). I don't know if you're writing from the US, but anyway: compared to the US, sweet dishes are eaten far, far less in China. (In fact, sweet dishes tend to be eaten in lesser quantites than in the US pretty much everywhere. I had never even HEARD of anyone eating icecream straight from the tub, for example, before I went the US). So a bit of sugar in the savory dishes is not going to be doing much to one's body compared to a large serving of something sweet eaten at least once a day or even more often. Also, this is still in the process of changing, but most people in China still get a lot more physical exercise than people in other countries. Obviously, people in the countryside are engaged in a lot of physical activity, but urban dwellers also walk and/or cycle a lot. Plenty of people I know still walk to the market twice a day to buy fresh vegetables and meat or fish. People cycle to work even when that means cycling across Shanghai... It adds up.

I think the Israeli couscous is something quite different, and is made from toasted durum wheat without other ingredients. This is discussed in an article here.

I'm not going to quote individual responses here, as I'm replying to several different things upthread. First, the concept of 'sweet dishes coming last' is not actually a concept in many parts of the world. Three examples. In Chinese formal banquets, a sweet dish is usually served in between the other savory courses. The savoury courses are not served with rice, and it is the rice that is served last. In Chinese home cooking, soup is the last course served. (I've had the reason for this explained to me as follows: while eating the rest of the meal, you can simmer soup ingredients that arose out of the food preparation for the other dishes - fish heads for example - and it'll be ready by the time you've finished eating everything else). The appearance of a sorbet to refresh the palate in Western dining is also a case of a sweet dish appearing between savory ones, and one which - because people are more accustomed to it? - is not thought of as odd. Hungarians sweet cherry soup is eaten at the beginning of the meal. Secondly, the idea of sweet dishes containing animal flesh is not nouvelle cuisine, but might better be thought of as a link to ancienne cuisine. Present day blancmange, for example, evolved from a sweet dish that contained rice, chicken (or sometimes fish), almonds, and sugar. There is a scrumptious-sounding Turkish dessert made with chicken tavuk gogsu, (maybe Abra can use this one as a starting point for her list . It's not the best recipe for it that I've come across, but the only link in English I could find). There are also Indian milk-based desserts that contain meat. One I know of contains chicken, the other minced lamb. Thirdly, the combination of sobresada with a basil icecream (in addition to the other ingredients) sound rather like taking an existing idea (eating the sobresada with honey), and taking it just a little bit further. I don't see this as any more silly than the tomato icecream (no, not sorbet) flavored with basil and oregano which I ate in Nice one time. Fourthly, how about if it were not called a 'dessert', but were instead listed in the main courses. Would people still be put off by the flavor and ingredient combination?

Damn. You mean that basil coffee I just bought won't taste any good?

Linzer torte

Gonna cover several different things here. First, thanks for the info on Chinese sausage. Mine seem to have way more sugar than that , but it is a starting point. The roasted chickpeas have to be cooked first before baking. I've tried this a couple of times, and always taken them out of the oven too soon, meaning they were not dry and crisp enough. You have to watch out for the amount of these that you eat when you're diabetic. Since they are dried out again, a very small quantity has a lot of carbohydrate. Easy to eat more than you realize. Incidentally, the same can be done with mung beans (whole ones, boiled till just soft, then treated the same way). I was first given these in a private home in China. Not just fat, but the quantity of meat eaten also makes a difference to blood sugar. In fact, basically everything you eat will affect blood sugar. The time they take to affect blood sugar take longer than with carbohydrates. I used to have the times written down somewhere, and can't find them (can't find anything since I last moved house, even though it's been almost a year now). I do know you can find the information on the web, though it might take a bit of searching. For what help it's worth, fat takes longer than protein. But it does boil down to things like: eating a much larger amount than usual of greasy food, or of protein, may well cause one's blood sugar to behave unexpectedly at unexpected times - major upward spikes in blood sugar, for example, several hours after eating a lot of protein. And many people on insulin can't cope with the particular combination of carbohydrate and high fat that you get in pizza, for example (you can read more about this on the internet using the keywords "pizza effect" and "diabetes"). You can end up with high blood sugar for up to 8 hours later. I have an insulin pump, and have tried playing around with varying the timing of the insulin so as to be able to eat pizza. No matter how I did it, my blood sugar skyrocketed. This is one of the few foods I have now given up on completely as not compatible with diabetes and insulin. Other foods that are particularly fatty might be similarly problematic. (I am talking REALLY fatty here, though). The few times I had breaded deep-fried camembert, for example, it always turned out to be a bad idea later... Different subject entirely: with the blood glucose meter, are your test strips are the kind that come individually in a foil packet, which then has to be ripped open and put into the meter? (this is the kind I used for years). If so, a big plug instead for Accu-chek Compact. You get 17 test strips in a type of drum which you just put as is into the meter, then all you have to do is press a button, and the strip is ready for testing. It's way easier to deal with than anything I've used before. Basically it allows you to easily test your blood sugar one-handed, or while standing up, or in a jolting bus, or wherever. Far, far easier. Don't know if its far more expensive over there than the regular test strips and meter. German health insurance companies are far more generous with this kind of thing than US companies.

Milagai's suggestion about the inclusion of channa dal is a good one, but I think it important to elaborate a little before you start cooking and serving it. Caveat first: I know only the results of eating particular foods on my own body. Other people may react differently to the same foods. Most people I know are Indian and eat beans or lentils every day, or are non-Indian, and don't eat beans or lentils at all. Unlike me, they don't fluctuate between eating a lot of it occasionally and other periods where I might consume none. Therefore, I've never been able to compare with others and see if they actually have the same experience. Firstly: all beans and lentils have an extremely strong impact on blood sugar, not just channa dal. Chickpeas (garbanzos) and soy beans both have the lowest amount of carbs out of all the various bean and lentil varieties (soy beans being extremely low indeed). So, if you are trying for some reason to get a lot of food for a small(er) amount of carbs, these are the two to go for (or to be avoided if you want to get a lot of carbs without having to eat too many beans). Secondly: the impact that eating beans or lentils have on my blood sugar is quite radical. If over half of the carb component of the meal comes from these sources, I have to reduce the amount of insulin I'm taking for that meal, otherwise it is absolutely guaranteed that I will have low blood sugar later. If not reducing the insulin dose, I wil eat extra food. Thirdly: I find this blood-sugar lowering effect to be cumulative. That is, by the time I have eaten meals with beans or lentils for 2 meals a day for about 3 consecutive days, I have to reduce my entire insulin dose: not just that for the meals, but for the time in between as well. Low blood sugar at night can get to be a real problem during that period. This is not an observation from just a one-off event. We go back to India for 4-6 weeks at a time each year and, while there, I tend to eat far more dals and beans than I do at other times. This is a consistent pattern that I've noticed over several years. Now, as observed in the caveat above, it may be just me. But the effect certainly goes beyond what I'd expect based only on the glycemic index of the beans (eating a lot of other foods with an equally low glycemic index does not produce the same reaction). I do recall reading that beans contain a particular type of gum (??? forgotten all the details) that is known to have this effect. This possible effect is something to bear in mind, I feel, if you are going to be eating more beans or lentils. If making something like pea and ham soup, for example, and serving it as the main carb source in a meal, you might do well to serve it with bread as well, and to be sure to check your daughter's blood sugar 2 hours after the meal. If it were only a very small component of the meal - such as a small helping of bean salad, say - I don't think you should need to be concerned. And now a request from my side: does the ethnic part of your book include the carb content of Chinese sausages by any chance? In Germany, they have no legal requirement to put the nutritional info on food packaging, and so - to my great frustration - they don't (even for brands that are present in the US, and where the label is otherwise identical, the nutritional info. part is left off here). And the books available here that give nutritional info don't include Chinese sausages, nor is the information anywhere online that I could find. But the sausages clearly do contain plenty of sugar - as my overly high blood sugar will attest to every time I've ever eaten them. I'd LOVE to know what the amount is. If not in the book, is it on the package labelling of the sausages in the Chinese grocery store, and could you take a look for me the next time you're in the vicinity? Thanks in advance!

How about this garlic peeler? I can understand the garlic peeling gadget where you roll the garlic clove in a type of tube, as this might be useful for those with arthritis. Of course, my preferred method is a hefty thwack with the side of the cleaver. It's not that often that it's important for the garlic cloves to be whole.

I always use the pressure cooker too. But the softened chicken bones are usually eaten as the cook's treat.