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touaregsand

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Posts posted by touaregsand

  1. the howondang logo features a serious portrait...  although it doesnt really look like her, it does remind me of my mom and i feel slightly guilty and at the same time comforted by it...  i bet thats how a lot of people must feel, no?

    <center><img src="http://www.rawbw.com/~coconut/eg/04/041005logo.jpg"></center>

    Korean moms and guilt? This is not an uncommon combination.

    I've never been to howondang. Where is it? I think I'll go buy some stuff for my mom there to make her happy only to have her scold me that I spent too much money on things she can buy in Korea for better quality and better prices. But she'll be happy, after she's made me feel bad... :laugh:

  2. By far my favorite is the "oh my god this shit is spicy as hell" Nongshim Shin Ramyun Cup, which is probably laced with like a kilo of MSG per serving:

    It comes in a package that is decorated like a containment vessel  for one of Kim Jong-Il's science projects (click on red cup-o-soup product on the extreme lower left)

    http://eng.nongshim.com/eng/pro/nood_deft_lst.jsp

    Apparently its the top selling Ramen product in Korea and does very well in Japan and Taiwan as well.

    That brand is the most popular in Korea. And I also see it everywhere in LA even at Mexican markets and catering trucks that cater to a hispanic crowd.

  3. Nuts added to tajines or savory pastry stuffings for briouts such as spinach, pine nuts and raisins. Ground almond sauces.

    Ground walnuts added to Korean bbq marinades.

    I have some recipes I can post later if you're interested. I have to take the kids to the park now.

  4. I'd disagree, if you can get genuine spanish ones, they are likely to be better than any fresh ones you can find.

    Which brand?

    I have to admit I have a general aversion to almost all jarred/canned vegetables. So I'd probably just use a fresh red bell pepper.

  5. they're showing up in la farmers markets now .. just last week i had them twice.

    Which LA farmers market?

    Probably Glendale and Santa Monica.

    I just bought some at an Armenian/Middle Eastern Market called Golden Farms on San Fernando Road. They also have fresh fava beans and fresh garbanzo beans.

  6. Wow, I always thought pork roll was a national product.  Though it is hard to imagine life in a place without readily availible scrapple.

    The Broccoli Rabe is a good idea for a veggie, but I would also vote for sauteed escarole.  I made up a big batch last week sometime after reading some recipes online supposedly from the Philly Red Gravey joints.

    What is a pork roll? Scrapple?

    For pork roll, think a tangier, more heavily processed version of Canadian Bacon.

    For scrapple: all of the bits of pig too undesirable for sausage making, ground up with corn meal, spiced, and pressed into a brick. It is usually fried up as a breakfast meat, and gets wonderfully crunchy on the outside, and soft, steamy, andmelty on the inside.

    Come to think of it I've probably seen pork roll in supermarkets around here. I don't recall ever seeing scrapple though.

    I'm in backwards LA. The last time I went to a friend's house for brunch she served soy sausage. :shock:

  7. How about a North African theme?

    You can serve hashish brownies and dress up as a belly dancer to encourage silly behaviour. :biggrin:

    It's great party food, alot of the dishes can be made ahead and reheated or just served room temp. I don't think I have ever met anyone who did not like good North African food. The flavors can sound exotic but it's very appealing to most people.

  8. Regarding monkey food, we tended to let snack be a little treat without overregard for the nutritional content, and work on getting the good food into their systems at regular meal times.  Lotta peer pressure at snack time.

    Exactly -- all he keeps telling me is what other kids brought into school. Today we settled on some yogurt and with much discussion a banana. Tomorrow its chips.

    I think you wrote he just started first grade? Year round school system?

    I let my first grader choose what goes into her lunch bag. She knows she has to choose from the healthy food groups and she's allowed to have a "fun snack" everyday. The peer pressure thing at her school isn't so bad. She attends a French private school with a large International student body, lucky for me most of the other parents are like minded about junk food so her classmates don't pack too much. Her cousins on the other hand are allowed free reign on sugary, processed crap. After a visit with them she starts whining about all the "healthy foods" she has to eat, even though she actually likes the "healthy stuff." The problem is the good stuff doesn't come in cute packaging with cartoon characters.

    Anyway, I talk to her about overall nutrition and good health. She prides herself on being pretty and smart so lines like "this makes your hair shiny" or "this is brain food" usually work.

    Great blog by the way. Looking forward to more this week.

  9. Wow, I always thought pork roll was a national product.  Though it is hard to imagine life in a place without readily availible scrapple.

    The Broccoli Rabe is a good idea for a veggie, but I would also vote for sauteed escarole.  I made up a big batch last week sometime after reading some recipes online supposedly from the Philly Red Gravey joints.

    What is a pork roll? Scrapple?

  10. Something fairly similar is described in

    this post: a new line cook gets a little overwhelmed by a large souffle order, so the exec chef steps in and takes over -- but doesn't check what the white stuff is, that he mixes in... Salty Grand Marnier souffles...

    :smile:

    At home we usually cook with fleur de sel. I recently bought some Kosher salt to make preserved lemons. I usually keep the salt in the box, but this time I put some in a little glass container. My highly trained, oh so experienced chef husband put some salt into his coffee thinking that it was sugar. Our six year laughed hysterically as her papa gagged on his morning coffee. She told him, "Papa the crystals are different. It doesn't look the same as sugar."

  11. With the cost of fuel headed to $60, everything will be a lot more expensive this year. Fuel prices eventually effects every industry.

    Get used to it - it's just the price of creating a war.

    Average price for 87 unleaded in LA is in the range of $2.65-$2.75 per gallon. I don't do much driving around to save money on groceries anymore.

  12. When a customer goes to a high-end restaurant -- Trotter level, say --  he carries with him or her a couple of assumptions. Among those are that the chef, within his budget, is using the best possible ingredients to cook his meals, regardless of the blandishments of the various suppliers and salespeople marching through his kitchern.  Another is that the menu is the result of the chef's (and his team's)unique genius and determination, undiluted by outside influences and consideration.  I think that's what Menton1 was referring to when he used the phrase "objective" -- that the chef is making decisions based purely on what results in the best possible meal (within buget etc. considerations). 

    The fear is that, when an endorsement is involved, that the chef suddenly has other considerations besides taste.  Chefs are human, they are also business people.  To pretend that they're somehow immune to the temptations that everyone else on earth deals with is to ignore reality.  If a chef's TV show has a big sponsor, the sponsor's wishes are going to be in the chef's thinking.  If you have a choice between two types of chocolate, one of which can be had much more cheaply, you're going to think about that.  It's not necessarily a bad thing, there are probably a dozen good reasons for chefs to cut a good sponsorship deal.  But sponsors don't just give money away, they want something in return.  The thought that their interests as sponsors and my interests as a diner might diverge is a troubling one.

    I think the sense of "outrage" -- probably too strong a term -- is also fueled by endless reams of PR and stacks of coffee table cookbooks that present chefs as modern day saints, cooking all night over a hot stove and foraging all day for the perfect organic peach, with nothing but their customers and the perfection of their craft in mind.  Chefs are marketed like indie rock bands, pure and unsoiled by thoughts of commerce or marketing.  It's a ridiculous notion, but it apparently sells.  Trouble is, when people find out that their idols are human, they they can react poorly.

    This really applies to a specific category of well known chef. One who has a restaurant and writes a cookbook to promote the restaurant. I can think of just a few cookbooks like this that are actually cookbooks, they are more often than not monuments to the chef erected by the chef himself. These chefs have their PR machines who create the idol from a mold. Who buys these cookbooks but idolators? They put themselves in the position of having to be 'perfect."

    I'd rather listen to fingernails scratching a blackboard than hear another precious chef talk about his little organic garden, painstaking techniques, taking cuisine in whole new directions, experimenting in a garage...

    I remember reading a post somewhere that questioned Bourdain's boeuf bourguignon recipe because it seemed so simple. You know what it is simple. There you go, it's a simple dish that should have a simple recipe that works.

  13. Ever since Rosie magazine went out of circulation there's been a literary void in my bathroom reading. I trust Rachel will tackle more controversial subjects such as Boeuf Bourguignon in 37 minutes or $40 dollars a week in her magazine that she doesn't have the platform to delve into more deeply on her FTV shows t w e n t y s e v e n t i m e s a w e e k a n d e l e v e n c o o k b o o k s.

  14. The bird he picked out was so cute and docile - I could easily see taking it home as a pet. "Kill it?" he asked. I said "yes, and remove the feathers."

    This is how I felt at the Korean restaurant when I was told to choose a duck. The restaurant had outdoor seating overlooking a pond full of ducks that could fly away. I told the server he could choose for us. I glanced over at the ducks in the pond and I felt a tinge of guilt. Afterall I could be eating a relative or a friend. But as the thinly sliced pieces of duck cooked on the hot grill I realized that the ducks were oblivious to the smell of duck meat cooking and that even though one of them would periodically dissappear they stayed in the pond.

    Poor cute little dead bird. But I guess that's what the food chain is all about.

    I came to the same conclusion.

  15. Analogies are the devil's work to be sure, but I'm always trying to make them. I'm wondering how I'd feel if I owned a professional sports team. (I do this when I get bored wondering what it would be like if Michel Bras was my personal cook.) Here I am paying multimillions of dollars a year to my stars, expected them to be in the best shape and prepared to do the best job and then I find out they chose the shoes they're wearing just because someone paid them a lot of money to wear those shoes.

    I suppose I would also be thinking that I have multi-millions on top of the multi-millions that I pay to the stars because of endorsement deals I've cut myself with all the banners strewn around the stadium.

  16. I’m not complaining. The day was for my son and his grandparents. And it was a great party. My sons, family and I had a good time. But I can’t help feel a bit disappointed that people didn’t really appreciate the food that I have so much connection to. Next time, I’m going to just get a bucket of chicken and a tub of potato salad. I don’t think I will be cooking Korean food for any future neighbor events.

    I feel for you. For my daughter's first birthday we made a lot of food and invited her friends from Gymboree. Biggest waste of time, money, effort and love on a bunch of people I wouldn't be 'friends' with were it not for my daughter's baby classes. I should have ordered from Panda Express. There was no next time with these people.

  17. I just remembered there is a place in downtown Los Angeles on Washington Blvd, east of Broadway called Imperial Chicken that has live birds. They also have a little restaurant next door. The owners are Chinese but the menu is Mexican. Roast chicken, chicken burritos, enchiladas, sandwiches, taquitos and chicken soup which they serve with a chicken foot. The broth is intensely flavorful and unctuous.

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