SuzySushi

Touchingly beautiful.

Tonging up chicken doesn't bother me; it's a creative way of turning a noun into a verb (much like spooning up chicken). I once overheard someone saying he would "sashimi a fish." Descriptive, and didn't bother me at all.

The French have a strong tradition of drinking cafe au lait in the morning -- but the milk is always hot and traditionally is poured into the cup at the same time as the hot, strong coffee. Your hosts might have been horrified because you added cold milk! I've never heard that French women avoid drinking cafe au lait -- everyone we know seemed to drink it (unless avoiding coffee altogether).

That, and uni.

Try GlutenFree.com as a source for gluten-free and egg-free recipes and products. It's fairly easy to get around milk/dairy allergies by substituting soy milk and dairy-free margarine, but is this person also allergic to soy? (Some people with celiac disease are.) You can also Google "gluten free" + "recipes" and come up with a lot. Many of these do not contain milk/dairy or eggs because of multiple allergies.

You mean all three in the same dish??????? Thats's a new one on me!!!!

Don't worry about it.... things like this happen to all of us! I recently called a repairman because neither I nor my new tenants could turn on the dishwasher in an apartment I own (and have owned for the past 8+ years!). There was a switch under the kitchen sink that no one had ever told me about!! Now, that's really embarrassing!

The Food of Singapore (Periplus World Cookbooks) suggests red snapper.

When it comes right down to it, the Japanese have perfected tempura, adopted from the Portuguese original centuries ago. I have to agree with Japanese curry and tonkatsu. Many Japanese baked goods (French-style pastries, choux cream, baumkuchen) are improvements over -- or at least the epitome of the best examples of -- their forebearers, for their light and delicate touch. Coffee jelly!

They keep them from sticking to the pan. That doesn't mean the muffins won't stick to the liners!

Ah, yes. How could I forget?? That's just one of the reasons I bought myself a toaster-oven.

It could very well be that the broiler is the drawer at the bottom -- that's how it was when I had a gas range (many years ago). Pull out the bottom drawer and make sure there's nothing in it. It may have come with a broiler pan, which you can use or use your own pan. Light the oven, set it to "broil" and put the food on the broiler pan and set in in the drawer. DO NOT CLOSE THE DRAWER ALL THE WAY -- you need to keep it open an inch or two to prevent flare-ups. You probably won't see the gas flame, but you should feel the heat inside the drawer and see the food browning.

Associating the invention of doughnut holes with the spokes of a ship's wheel seems a little farfetched to me, but I have a couple of additional theories: ring-shaped dough is easier to fish out of hot oil, and allows the finished products to be stacked neatly on a stick for sale. I seem to recall there was a recent eGullet discussion on why bagels are ring-shaped, in which it was pointed out that some Middle Eastern pastries of ancient origin are ring-shaped and sold from sticks by street vendors. The clever "invention," then, would be the idea of cutting out the ring with a biscuit cutter rather than struggling to shape the dough into a rope then a circle. As to when this first occurred, I haven't a clue.

We haven't been to Paris for a while, so our restaurant & shopping experiences may not be up to date, but one additional recommendation I have is to get yourself a Carte Orange for public transportation. You can buy it at Metro stations -- although our French was rudimentary, other riders helped us figure out the process. Both the Metro and the bus system are wonderful in Paris. If you can read a simple line map (know the terminus for the direction in which you want to travel, then count the number of stops between where you got on and where you want to get off), it's near-impossible to get lost, and buses often go through all sorts of interesting neighborhoods. I quite agree with the recommendation to frequent small neighborhood shops, and always greet the proprietor with a "Bonjour madame/monsieur" upon entering.

That's wonderful!!!

Yes, but that's not the main point of the concept. The easy meal prep meals are "homemade with love by [usually] Mom"! Although they essentially become frozen meals -- ready to pop out of the freezer and reheat in the microwave or conventional oven, consumers feel they're "purer" and higher-quality because they see the ingredients that are going into each dish (although those ingredients may themselves contain artificial ingredients). And the concept assuages consumers' guilt over using commercial frozen meals, fast-food, or supermarket take-out. They have prepared the meals with their own hands, therefore it's "home cooking."

When we moved into our new home (with a smaller kitchen) earlier this year, a friend gave us a clear acrylic (?) cutting board that's meant to fit over one side of the double sink. It has little rubber feet to keep it from slipping. At first I thought "just what I need... another cutting board" as we already have three others. But I find myself using it most often. The other neat trick is that when I use it over the basin with the garbage disposal, I can push scraps right into the waste. When I'm not using it, I stand it on end between the microwave oven and the wall.

Definitely a European thing -- not just French. Remember, the British also drink warm (room temperature) beer. A Swiss friend admonished me not to drink cold beverages when eating hot food, because it would interfere with proper digestion. It's always been my understanding that by the time a cold drink makes its way down your gullet, it has been warmed to body temperature -- but a couple of months ago I read some ayurvedic Indian advice (maybe a link from eGullet?) essentially recommending the same thing.

Here's a link of Independent Living Tips for Cooking and Dining that lists some vendors. Most of them have toll-free phone numbers, but the site doesn't list any webpages.

That's it. I was over at ou local Sam's Club yesterday and saw large packages of the seaweed salad, which they called Seaweed (Wakame) Salad. First ingredient listed was wakame (not specifying which type), then agar agar, the usual seasoning ingredients, and lots of artificial ingredients (preservatives, food dyes). So it appears that some brands use agar agar and some don't.

I don't remember the names of all of the sushi bars I went to -- most were in the 40s or 50s on the East side, and a few were between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. There was Kuruma, Hatsuhana... Takezushi was another one. If I remember correctly, Hatsuhana and Takezushi each had two branches. I also dined occasionally at Kitcho, but that was for cooked dishes as well as sushi (and that was where I took a crash-course in sushi making). Then there was a hole-in-the-wall in the 50s off Eighth Avenue, upstairs, where I'd go with a Japanese friend for cook-at-the-table dishes like shabu-shabu. Long gone! Wish I could recall the name of my first Japanese restaurant in NYC -- on East 29th Street, very old, famous for sukiyaki. That may have been the original Japanese restaurant in New York. Here's one article I found on the history of Sushi in America. The earliest English-langusge Japanese cookbook in my collection, BTW, dates back to 1949 and was published by the Japan Travel Bureau "to satisfy the desire of tourists on flying trips to Japan." It includes recipes for 6 types of sashimi and 10 types of sushi!

I don't remember exactly, but I'm pretty sure it was under $10.

Not to hijack this thread, but I was eating sushi at dedicated sushi bars in NYC a couple of years before my first trip to Japan, which was in 1973, so they had to date back till at least 1971. Kuruma Zushi was one of the sushi bars I frequented, but it was not the only one.

What other posters have said and... I own over 400 cookbooks. They tend to fall into two camps (and these are the features that entice me to buy new ones): 1) Knowledgeable, in-depth presentation of a particular cuisine or type of food, including background information and a strong author's voice. What makes some ingredients/brands better to use than others? 2) Clear-cut recipes with ingredients lists (in order of use) followed by explicit instructions. Color photos of the finished dish and step-by-step photos or line drawings of tricky preparation steps are definite assets. Ideally, a cookbook will fulfill all these requirements, but I'll take a well-written one without pictures over a poorly written one with pictures any day. It should be clear from a casual perusal of the book whether it's geared toward professionals or toward home cooks. Celebrity status and endorsements are not on my list.

No no no. Even in Hawaii where the majority of the population is of Asian descent, I don't haggle -- and have obvserved very little haggling -- at farmers markets. Vendors often discount produce at the end of the day, or throw in some free stuff (ripe bananas, new items they'd like you to try) for regular customers, but it's their call.