SuzySushi

That's not completely true, IMHO, because you're not distinguishing between French haute cuisine and everyday French cooking. A case in point: tonight, I cooked Steak with Sauce Chateau. The reduction sauce (cooked in the same pan the steaks were browned in) consisted of 5 ingredients (minced shallots, white wine, beef stock, a dab of tomato paste, and butter) plus salt & pepper, and took less than 5 minutes to put together. It can't get much simpler than that. The other night I made French crepes for 2 adults and 2 kids -- they took about the same length of time to cook and assemble as a batch of American pancakes and were so much more elegant! How about omelettes? Salade Nicoise? Boeuf Bourguignon (= beef stew), Boeuf en Daube (= pot roast), Coq au Vin (= chicken casserole). All these dishes take little more skill or cooking time than their American counterparts. I'd list more easy dishes but it's 1:00 am here and my brain is not functioning... but you get the idea.

No pix tonight... Continuing with French week (DH wanted "one more French dinner"), dinner was: Steak with Sauce Chateau.... a recipe I've had for a long, long time (I don't remember where it came from ) of sauteed shallots in a reduction of white wine and beef stock, swirled with a dab of tomato paste (is that French???) and finished with butter... Complemented by Chevre Mashed Potatoes. No green veggie because I had trouble getting everything on the table at the same time. My 8 year old wanted the steak minus the sauce, and the mashed potatoes minus the goat cheese but topped with plain brown gravy, and the Sauce Chateau came together so quickly that there was no time to do anything else. Maybe we'll have some as a late-night snack.

From NewLeaf.com: "Sesame Seeds -- Widely used in Asia Africa and the Mediterranean these tasty seeds are an abundant source of protein vitamin E and calcium the latter being concentrated in the hull. Unfortunately the calcium is bound up with oxalic acid rendering it unavailable for use in the body. Soaking the seeds overnight in salted water and then lightly roasting them will lessen the oxalic acid content." Hulled sesame seeds don't contain oxalic acid, but removing the hulls also reoves the calcium. From other sites, I found that sesame seeds contain just 2% to 3% oxalic acid, so if you're using them for garnish, it doesn't make much difference one way or another. Hmmnnn... the presence of oxalic acid might be why some brands of Chinese sesame paste (which is made from unhulled sesame seeds) taste bitter.

I haven't been an eGullet member long, but IMO, it's because French (and Italian and Mexican, for that matter) cuisine is much more familiar to eGullet's largely North American membership, whereas we're much less familiar with how to cook Asian, Middle Eastern, and African dishes. I'm cooking French food at home -- at least this week, in part of my worldwide tour through my cookbook collection.

A few more thoughts: If the children are Dutch, they'll probably be accustomed to eating quite a bit of cheese (not sharp cheese). Also, many European children love Nutella (chocolate hazelnut spread), spread on bread or toast as an afternoon snack, used to fill crepes as a dessert, etc. You may be able to get them to try simple, not too spicy, Asian noodle dishes or fried rice. Leave out ingredients like scallions, which most kids pick out!

Continuing with France, tonight's dinner was homemade Pate de Campagne (country-style pate) -- I wish I could figure out how to type the accents! -- made of pork and chicken livers flavored with Cognac. Making it was a two-day process, but it's no more difficult than meatloaf. I served it with fingerling potato salad dressed with mayonnaise and a little umeboshi (Japanese pickled plum) paste -- thank you, Torakris, for reporting on the restaurant in Japan that does this!, baby romaine lettuce from the new Saturday greenmarket near me (YAY!), and the requisite cornichons. The pate disappointed me a little; it had a stronger liver flavor than I expected, but my husband liked it just fine.

Kew & Tepee, What a delicious blog! Thanks so much for posting it, and for the mouthwatering and explanatory photos! I haven't yet had the opportunity to visit Malaysia but have a friend in KL who I am trying to persuade to join eGullet. I've eaten Malaysian restaurant foods in NYC. There was a good Malaysian restaurant here a few years ago, but it had a poor location and so closed rather quickly. My friend sent me several Malaysian cookbooks -- one is Florence Tan's Secrets of Nyonya Cooking, and I've also perused "My Kuali" (at The Star) but the recipes can be hard to follow if I don't know what the ingredients are (many are available locally in Hawaii, but by different names!) or how the recipe is supposed to turn out. Thanks again for dispelling some of the mystery!

Anyone know of a source for fresh curry leaves on Oahu? I want to try some Indian and Malaysian dishes and don't recall ever seeing them in markets. I don't need an institutional quantity -- a couple of sprigs will do.

Yeesh!!! All this talk about how to disinfect sponges. I don't use sponges at all. I use disinfectant sprays and paper towels (thrown away after each use). When I really need to scrub the sink or range (if food or grease has gotten stuck), I use part of a fresh nylon scrubber pad (cut into halves or thirds with scissors) and throw that away after it's done its duty. Kitchen hand towels get washed in a hot washing machine with bleach, then run through a hot dryer cycle. If my hands are germy from touching raw meat or chicken, eggs, etc. I'll wash them well with soap & water (using the back of my wrist to press the pump on the dispenser) and dry them with paper towels, too. Paper towels are my friend.

Continuing with French week, our dinner was a crepe fest. The main course, crepes filled with ham and cheese and topped with the rest of the Meurette sauce I made the other day: For dessert, crepes (one per person) filled with mint chocolate chip ice cream and drizzled with chocolate sauce: Not only did my husband and I enjoy the dinner, but my normally picky 8 year old and her friend ate every bite! (The dog enjoyed the first "test" crepe, too.)

There actually is a popular Japanese dish called Oyako Donburi, which translates as "Parent and Child Bowl." It consists of a chicken-and-egg omelet served with a sauce over a bowl of rice.

Szechwan/Sichuan peppercorns were illegal to import into the USA since 1968 because they can carry citrus canker. However, the ban was not enforced until about 3 years ago when citrus canker began to affect Florida's orange crops. In 2004, the U.S. Department of Agriculture lifted the ban for Sichuan peppercorns that are heat-treated (heated to at least 140F for at least 10 minutes). Importers must present such documentation to import the peppercorns.

Our dinner was classic French... very good, but a lot of work (and I used just about every saucepan in the house): To start, a silky smooth Cream of Asparagus Soup garnished with the asparagus spears and shrimp (the recipe called for crabmeat, but my market didn't have any fresh crab). Followed by Oeufs en Meurette, a classic dish from Burgundy: Poached eggs on toast topped with a rich red wine sauce and sprinkled with crisp bacon, mushrooms, leeks, and carrots. Dessert was not quite French, but Tiramisu that my husband bought.

OMG, I'm salivating!!! My husband's cousin lives in a village near Strasbourg and we dined very well indeed when we visited her (both at her home and dining around the area), but I'll have to write this one down for the next time we visit!

Anthropologist Margaret Visser (Much Depends on Dinner and several other books on the anthropology of food) divides cultures into "Parsley Cultures" and "Cilantro Cultures." Very few use both. (I fall into the cilantro-lovers camp.)

Maybe bamboo fungus and bamboo pith are the same thing. In Google, I've been finding the same Latin name for both...

Asian restaurants do things right! It's the undercooked vegetables in Western restaurants I'm referring to... such as one steakhouse chain that regularly undercooks its carrots so much that they literally bounce off the plate when you try to pick them up with a fork.

If you're looking for cheap lunch places, try the restaurant floors of department stores, or the Japanese fast-food shops (ramen, curry, etc.) inside the lobbies of office buildings. The food is not outstanding, but it's "authentic" and won't break the bank.

This is actually an important precision about "tartines", a "tartine" refers to a "spread" rather and not necessarily an open faced sandwich. "Tartiner" in french means "to spread". Correct me if i'm wrong but if the spreading of anything "spreadable" on top of bread such as butter, jam, rillettes, tapenade etc..is not involved, then it cannot be called a "tartine". ← This is what I found on yourdictionary.com: "tar·tine n. A French open-faced sandwich, especially one with a rich or fancy spread. [French, from Old French, diminutive of tarte, tart]"

The only one I recall is La Dame Tartine right in front of the Stravinsky Fountain near Pompidou Center. (They may have other branches as well, but I never checked the Paris phone book.) I never saw tartine restaurants in any of the other cities or towns we visited in France; many cafes serve tartines and open-faced pain poilane sandwiches (even if they're not listed as tartines) as part of their menu but not the whole menu.

LOL! Maybe with a cold and congestion, the cold-sufferer can't smell it as much... but everyone else can!

I have a recipe for Jade Prawns that's cooked with cilantro; otherwise, as others have said, I've seen it mostly as a garnish. IMO, and this is after reading through scores and scores (hundreds?) of Chinese cookbooks, herbs -- whether fresh or dried -- are not used all that much in Chinese cuisine; instead, they are used for medicinal benefits. Chinese cuisine is much more likely to use spices and "aromatics" such as garlic and ginger. That being said, cilantro is my favorite herb and I use it as much as I can in anything!

My pet peeve is with the vegetables, too. "Crisp-tender" means that you should be able to bite into them, not have to wrestle with a knife and fork.

Any Japanese supermarket will carry bottled yuzu juice; I'm not sure of the availability of fresh or frozen because yuzu fruits are hard to come by in the USA. There's a humongous Japanese supermarket in Edgewater, NJ - Mitsuwa Marketplace - but I don't think they do mail order. Their phone number is (201)941-9113. They actually run a shuttle bus to their store from Midtown Manhattan. You can also try Katagiri in NYC, phone (212) 755-3566. Yuzu juice is not listed in their online catalog, but they may be able to obtain it.

Well, as I said, this was cut into neat rectangles (about 2" x 1") and it did have an unusual spongy, but pleasant, texture. The "bamboo fungus" was the best part of this dish, IMO, because it did soak up so many flavors. I thought the tofu part was too bland and could've used a dash of soy or other seasonings before being combined with the other ingredients.