SuzySushi

So, who are the heaviest hitters? I haven't read through all 52 pages of this thread yet. How are your/their cookbooks organized? By title? Author? Cuisine? Dewey decimal system?

I just counted 268, including about 15 I have up for sale on Amazon.com. There might be a few more strays in odd parts of the house.

What was your family food culture when you were growing up? American with a tinge of Jewish (i.e., my mother never cooked pork, except for spareribs! and we never had other ethnic foods at home except for take-out Chinese.) Was meal time important? Yes, dinner always at 5:30 p.m. Was cooking important? No. Nutrition was. What were the penalties for putting elbows on the table? No penalties. In fact, we'd often have family dinners where everyone was reading a different book at the table! Who cooked in the family? My mother. Were restaurant meals common, or for special occasions? Restaurant meals for special occasions. Chinese, in the neighborhood or a trip to Chinatown, occasionally a trip to West Side Manhattan for a French restaurant. Edited to add: occasionally, we also used to eat in Dubrow's Cafeteria, a Jewish deli where I first had dishes like kasha varnishkes (kasha - buckwheat groats - with bowtie pasta). It was also a rare treat to dine at Horn & Hardart's Automat. Did children have a "kiddy table" when guests were over? No. When did you get that first sip of wine? Probably when I was about 10 or 12, when we went to a Bon Voyage party on a ship. My parents didn't drink. Was there a pre-meal prayer? No. Was there a rotating menu (e.g., meatloaf every Thursday)? Not by the calendar, but my mother had a limited repertoire of dishes, so they rotated pretty fast. How much of your family culture is being replicated in your present-day family life? None, thank goodness, except for the cakes and cookies! Even though other threads cover memories of specific foods or dishes, please include those memories here if they illustrate your family's food culture. My mother felt that cooking was drudgery and it showed! (Strangely enough, she was a good baker and I fondly remember her cakes, cupcakes, and cookies.) Everything was plain -- she didn't know how to use herbs and spices -- and mostly overcooked. Leathery "minute steaks," hamburgers like hockey pucks, canned or frozen vegetables (with no additional seasonings!). Her piece de resistance, as I mentioned in another thread, was overcooked spaghetti tipped with ketchup instead of pasta sauce! I do, however, remember going with her to a farm in our Brooklyn neighborhood (yes, there still was one until the 1970s!) to buy fresh corn-on-the-cob, which we rushed home to cook. Every Sunday was her "day off" and we had Chinese take-out for lunch (always the same dishes: roast pork lo mein, chicken chow mein with no onions, and egg fu yong), and sandwiches for dinner. My sister and I thought TV dinners were a treat! Edited to add: My mother took after her mother, who was also a terrible cook. My paternal grandmother, on the other hand, a Russian emigre, was a fabulous cook, though we had her meals rarely -- mostly for Thanksgiving. I have fond memories of her sitting with a wooden bowl in her lap, using a half-moon chopper to chop celery, onions, and chestnuts for the turkey dressing. She also made fabulous apple pies with lattice crusts (and never measured the ingredients for the dough). And she always had an apothecary jar of dark chocolate chips in her kitchen, which she would count out in equal numbers to my sister and me for snacks when we visited.

Matzoh ball soup. Or chili over rice (canned chili is fine). Or Japanese curry over rice.

I agree about Pho To Chau! Their secret broth recipe must take days to cook! The rolls were ground pork wrapped in the soft noodle dough. The ground pork was a "loose" filling, not made into patties. They were served warm with nuoc cham as a dipping sauce. They looked somewhat like Chinese look fun, but were firmer (not as slippery) and the sauce was on the side, not poured over them. The flavor was entirely different, though, because of the Vietnamese ingredients (e.g., fish sauce instead of soy).

What, you mean you didn't understand the instructions in the link? : "Prepare for 1 egg. Beat the egg totally, and bake them on a flying pan.(Thinner texture like crepe would look nice) After baking, slice it into thin species." What you're basically making is thin egg crepes. Beat 1 or more eggs (depending on how much egg you want). You can add few teaspoons of water to the egg to thin it, or a few drops of soy sauce for flavor. Heat a lightly greased or nonstick skillet or crepe pan, then pour in a very thin layer of egg and swirl to cover the bottom of the pan. Cook just until set (it shouldn't brown). If the top still looks runny, you can flip the crepe over to cook the other side for a few seconds. Remove to a plate or cutting board and repeat with the remaining egg. When all the egg crepes are made, fold each one up (like folding a letter, or in fours) and slice into thin, noodle-like strips. ("Pieces" is what the author of the linked article meant!) Use this to garnish the cooked rice.

Ooooh.... those pictures are making me hungry! Thanks for posting the recipes! I love Vietnamese food, and luckily there are plenty of places to find it (restaurants and ingredients) where I live in Hawaii. A few years ago, Vietnamese friend served us a dish that I've never seen in a restaurant, fresh rice noodle rolls (not rice paper, but the dough that fresh pho noodles are made from) filled with ground pork. She said it was easy to make, but I lost touch with her before I could get the recipe! Do you know what it's called and how to make it?

Very nice! Congratulations! The "flavors" mean the number of toppings. "Five flavors" (gomoku) is a good-luck number in Japan. (Conversely, four and eight are bad luck because the sounds of the words contain homonyms for death.)

That looks beautiful, Kristin! I made Hina Sushi for my daughter. Not the neatest presentation (or the clearest photo), but this was my first attempt. She didn't want quail egg heads, so I used more rice!

Guess I can't stay away from Japanese food for long. Despite vowing to make this "Mediterranean week" in cooking, I couldn't resist making something special for my daughter for (Japanese) Girls' Day: Hina Sushi "dressed" to resemble an emperor and empress of an ancient court.

Oooooh, this is fun!!! I can't remember the last time I got Chinese take-out in Hawaii, so I'll do the answers for fast-food served on styrofoam, which is the same difference! 1- If getting a plate, I usually choose lo mein instead of rice. If ordering for more than one person, it's lo mein AND white rice. 2- The styrofoam containers are divided into three compartments, and I leave the food that way. When I used to get take-out in NYC, I'd place the rice on one side of my plate and the other foods on the other, so that I could mix the edges of the rice with some of the sauce, but the rice wasn't doused in sauce. 3- Chopsticks, always. Except for soup. 4- Usually eat everything except for chiles, but if there are a lot of gloppy onions, I'll leave them over. 5- No. 6- Both. There are favorites I *have to* have (like Hot & Sour soup at one particular place, or Cold Noodles with Sesame in NYC -- no one's heard of that dish here), but otherwise I choose "what looks good." 7- No one here does Chinese take-out like NYC, so my favorites are the chains that are most NY-like: Panda Express, and Patti's Chinese Kitchen (a local chain). 8- Best take-out experience was a little place around the corner from where I used to live in NYC. The food was good, they always had menu specials, and their Hot & Sour soup was soul-warming "comfort food." 9- Worst experience was supermarket take-out at a chain I shall not name. The main dish was overcooked! which is a no-no in Chinese food; the lo mein was undercooked - like chewing pieces of string; and the egg roll was cold inside (it must've not defrosted enough in cooking). Yech!

The calcium sulphate in tofu actually increases the calcium content, making tofu a better source of dietary calcium for people who are lactose-inolerant (as many Asians are). Here's an article about soy foods. Edited for typos.

Cute!!! Funny thing is, my daughter recognized most of the cartoon and anime characters in the second link. Japanese characters are big in Hawaii.

I also like Tokkuri-Tei at 611 Kapahulu Avenue. It makes me natsukashii (nostalgic, homesick) for the izakayas I frequented in Japan.

Late to the party again... No place I know of to get Persian food on the island (except possibly in someone's home), but you can find many Middle-Eastern ingredients at Down to Earth. I buy imported-from-Lebanon Indo-European brand tahini and pomegranate molasses there. The Asian Grocery store at 1319 S. Beretania St. (right next to Mercado De La Raza at 1315 S. Beretania, (approx @ Keeaumoku) carries a pretty good selection of Indian spices, chutneys, etc. For dining out, I can also second the recommendations for Casablanca (Moroccan) in Kailua, which does a fantastic bastilla as an appetizer, and The Pyramid on Kapahulu for Egyptian food (if you go at night, they have a belly dancer). For a short while, the family of the owner of The Pyramid ran a Middle Eastern store nearby, but it didn't generate enough sales to make a go of it, so they closed it down.

Okay, what's the recipe? (And I know what you mean about recipes that speak to the soul: Japanese curry rice and mapo tofu are two of my "comfort foods," right up there with good ole American mac & cheese.) ← I have no idea if this is traditional or authentic. 1 tablespoon of Chinese red chili sauce 1/2 tablespoon of Chinese fermented bean paste (I can't remember what's it's called, I'll have to check the next time I go to the store) 1 clove of garlic minced 1/2 tablespoon of grated ginger approximately 1/4 pound of ground beef (I don't eat pork) 1 package of medium firm tofu 1/3 cup of waterchestnuts, sliced 1/3 cup bamboo shoots sliced cornstarch to thicken 1 tablespoon of oil heat oil in pan, add garlic and ginger, sautee for a couple of minutes add the chili sauce and the fermented bean paste. Add ground meat, cook through, add bamboo shoots and waterchestnuts and about a cup of water, add cubed tofu, bring to a gently boil, add cornstarch to thicken. You can add more or less of the red chili sauce and the bean paste according to taste. ← Oh, yum! Yes, please let me know which fermented bean paste you use. There are a lot of different bean paste products in the stores here...

I'd have to add: Any of the market streets in Paris, or the market streets/squares in the smaller cities & towns throughout France. When we were living in a rental apartment in the Marais district, I loved shopping on rue Rambuteau/rue des Francs Bourgeois, which wasn't strictly speaking a market street as it wasn't pedestrian-only, but had a fine selection of local boulangeries, patisseries, charcuteries, produce markets, a gorgeous fish market, and a butcher shop where I bought fresh rabbit cut to order. By the middle of our stay, despite our broken French, we had become such regular customers that when my husband forgot his book in one of the charcuteries, the proprietress ran down the street after him to return it. It was also a revelation that there were additional service shops (laundromat, copy shop), inside the courtyards of apartment complexes. Further along rue des Francs Bourgeois toward the beautiful Place des Vosges are a number of tiny antiques stores that make for wonderful browsing.

Impressive photos! I love visiting outdoor markets. You really tell a story with these.

I had one of those days, too. Not enough sleep last night. A big restaurant lunch today, Pollo al limone. I had envisioned it would be a light saute. Instead, it turned out to be chicken and fettuccine in a gloppy Alfredo sauce -- and made me feel sleepy all afternoon. Tonight's dinner was simply sandwiches: my husband's, hot pastrami on real rye bread (which our son had brought home from a visit to LA); mine hot pastrami on Asiago cheese bread; and our daughter, the cheese bread without the pastrami (she didn't eat the crusts, either, strange kid!). Tomorrow will be better.

I know... but nigella are kinda hard (= maybe impossible) to find where I live. If I get to making these often, I'll mail order some.

Talking about green kari kari ume reminds me of when I first encountered them in Japan: in soup! When dining at the counter in a traditional Japanese restaurant in one of the Tokyo department stores, I was served a bowl of clear soup in which appeared to be floating an olive. I wasn't sure what it was, and whether it was edible (hey, some of the leaves used as garnishes on plates aren't!), so I asked the woman sitting next to me and she explained that it was an ume. Before that, I'd only seen the pink and red ones.

As noted the other day, thanks to joining eGullet, I've decided my cooking was in a rut (albeit a tasty one!), and resolved to browse through my cookbook collection and make the recipes I've always been meaning to try. This is Mediterranean Week, and my first two dishes were: Afelia, a seductive Cypriot stew of meltingly tender pork and onions seasoned with crushed coriander seeds, simmered in red wine, and Pide, a Turkish bread with a chewy, crisp crust and a soft interior. The cookbook suggested sprinkling it with nigella seeds, but not having any of those on hand, I used sesame seeds, suggested as an alternative. I served this with a green salad with Kalamata olives, dotted with goat cheese. Yummy, yummy!

Horsemeat is illegal for human consumption in some states -- ironically including Texas, where most of the horses slaughtered for food (for export or animal foods) are processed. I tried horsemeat in France -- if memory serves me right, in a cafe in Beaune -- and basashi, horsemeat sashimi, in Japan. The latter had a sweeter, more delicate flavor than beef. There was also a boucherie chevaline on the pedestrian shopping street in the Paris neighborhood where we stayed on our most recent trip (14th arrondissement, near Denfert-Rochereau).

Hmmmn... stopped at two Japanese markets yesterday to pick up desserts for Girls' Day (which is March 3rd). Also bought a nice piece of fresh hamachi (yellowtail), which I sashimi-ed and served for dinner last night, along with fresh shiso leaves, an assortment of Japanese pickles, and rice. Dessert was some of the Japanese pastries (who can wait?). Made Japanese food again for dinner tonight: oden (fishcake stew), made from a frozen "oden set" gussied up with more seasonings and hot mustard. I also added a good handful of frozen soybeans (out of their pods). Served that with fresh kabocha (Japanese pumpkin), which was sweet enough that I just microwaved it. Spurred on by joining eGullet, I've concluded that I've gotten into a rut and it's time to go through my hundreds of cookbooks and start cooking new dishes I've never tried. I'm planning to devote a week to each cuisine, starting with my collection of Mediterranean cookbooks. Tomorrow, afelia , a Cypriot stew of pork seasoned with crushed coriander seeds. If there's time, I'll bake my own bread.

Manhattan Special Espresso Soda (made in Brooklyn since 1895). When I lived in NYC, there was one pizzeria I used to frequent solely because they carried that soda.