mizducky

Thanks for a lovely blog! I have to say, from the few Dutch folks it has been my pleasure to have met so far, I have a general impression of the Dutch people as down-to-earth, fun-loving folks. Your blog has totally reinforced that, and strengthened my resolve to come visit Amsterdam one of these days. P.S. So glad your li'l critter found her way back home! Wow, bummer narrowly averted!

I am slightly bummed to report that, while up in LA this past weekend, I sought out Happy Family and did not have a totally happy experience. ← How crowded was it yesterday? What was the Asian/Round-eye ratio? Any tell tale sign? ← Good questions! I'd call the ratio about 50/50, which might have been a promising sign in other neighborhoods but struck me as rather low on Asian customers for a place right in the heart of Monterey Park. And I was concerned that at approx. 12:30pm on a Sunday the restaurant was only about half-full, as opposed to jam-packed. As I had just gone through the trouble of fighting my way through the crazy traffic first to the old location then backtracking several blocks to the new location, I wrote the smallish crowd off to other people's unwillingness to do the same. But in hindsight perhaps I should have taking warning from all these factors.

Let's see ... another Caucasian here who has adopted using chopsticks. And for anything that I can't get to my mouth with chopsticks, my weapon of choice is a big spoon. Forks and I just don't seem to get along--anytime I try to scoop up rice or peas or other small food items on that utensil, I always have a few escapees. I've been known to eat salads with a spoon (when chopsticks aren't available). Yeah, some people might look at me funny, but they'd look at me even funnier if I wound up wearing a third of my salad on my shirt. When I do use knife-and-fork, I eat in what I've come to understand is the Continental style. I just did it because I'm left-handed and it made sense. Come to think of it, I don't remember seeing any of my family ever do the American zig-zag method. Maybe it's because my grandparents were all immigrants and thus my parents missed being indoctrinated by Emily Post. I do also tend to have a favorte knife at any given time. Currently it's this little cheapo steak knife, completely unremarkable except for the fact that it just happens to fit my hand perfectly. Or something. I dunno. Human behavior shore is innerestin', innit?

I am slightly bummed to report that, while up in LA this past weekend, I sought out Happy Family and did not have a totally happy experience. Maybe it's because they just moved--I went to their old address first, and discovered a sign giving their new address--and the kitchen hasn't totally finished it's post-move shake-down, I dunno, just speculating here. I went with their "all you can eat" option, so I was able to sample three different dishes before I filled up. The service was certainly very nice, and some of the dishes were also quite nice. But I'm one of those freaks who like to actually order *vegetables* at a vegetarian restaurant , and whereas most of their fake meats had good flavor and mouthfeel, I found their vegetables to be uniformly watery and flavorless. And those of their "meat" offerings I tasted that were not good, also had that same problem of watery flavorlessness--like they had steamed them too long and/or with no seasoning whatsover. Speaking of which--I saw no condiment bottles anywhere on any table in the restaurant, including those tables full of Asian customers. Is this place doing that variety of Buddhist vegetarian cuisine that eschews strong seasonings altogether? I didn't think so as some of their menu items were marked as spicy. All I know is, I seriously wished I'd had some sauces to doctor up my congee, let alone those poor veggies. All the positive reviews I'd read on this place lead me to think that it can't have been like my experience with it yesterday. Anyone else dine here since it moved? Is it perhaps that customers tend to just stick with all the fake-meat dishes and don't bother with the veggies? I'm used to being able to trust Chinese as one of the few restaurant cusines that I can depend on for getting veggies right, so I'm a little bewildered nonetheless. (Oh yeah--the new location: the big pink three-level store/restaurant complex on the NW corner of Atlantic and Garvey, right across the street from the 99 Ranch there.)

Heck, just living across the street from a doughnut shop one summer put me off doughnuts by the beginning of August. I'd hate to think what the folks who actually worked there must have been going through.

What did I just say above, about children pouring a bunch of stuff into a bucket and proudly proclaiming "Look mommy, I'm cooking--just like you"?

Surely I can't be the only one who'd risk it... ← Yeah, but then again you're a professional, who cooks more quantities of food in one pre-Passover rush than I cook in an entire year. (Not to say that I've never done so. But the couple of times it backfired on me bigtime have turned me into a real wimp. )

Heh. These kinds of stories always remind me of an old co-worker of my mother's--a very sweet lady, but to be blunt, not exactly the sharpest knife in the drawer. Back when food processors were still very new (and very expensive) in the US, this sweet lady enthusiastically bought one. A few weeks later my mom asked her about how she was doing with her new gizmo. Not very good, this lady said. My mom probed a bit more, and with questioning it became evident that this lady had been under the strange delusion that you just brought this magic labor-saving device home, and food just magically ... happened. I don't think she thought it was like those food synthesizers of Star Trek; rather, she seemed to have just glommed onto advertisements featuring the processor sitting there among beautiful finished dishes, and just didn't think all the way through to the realization that there would still be some actual labor involved in making those dishes. Where I'm going with this: I am convinced there are numerous people out there who think they're cooks, but are subject to this same kind of magical thinking. You have a recipe, you have some ingredients and tools--voila, cooking happens! Nevermind that you have no comprehension of what the recipe is actually telling you to do; nevermind that you have no comprehension of the properties of the ingredients called for; nevermind that there are chemical and physical and even biological processes happening between the ingredients mediated by those recipe instructions. They have no idea of any of that. By their magical thinking, you just gather together something resembling the Magical Talismans of Cookery; the Food Elves are summoned and make it go poof! and look! There's a Beef Wellington! You can see children play at "cooking" this way all the time. You know the kind of thing I mean: when they pour all sorts of strange substances into a bucket or such, pretending they're making a cake or whatever. (Variant: pouring a whole bunch of stuff into a bucket, saying they're scientists making a "secret formula". ) Alas, stories like this always suggest to me that there's a whole lot of people out there who just have never quite progressed beyond this childlike conceptualization of the cooking process. And unlike my mom's co-worker, many of these folks may well be incredibly intelligent and insightful about other fields of expertise. Although, again to be blunt, at least a few of these very bright people may well have some history with not really accepting that someone else might know something that they don't. P.S. Mind you, I shamelessy screw around with recipe directions all the time. But I seriously research my permutations ... and I would never dream of bitching at the person who supplied the original recipe if one of my experiments falls flat on its face. It was my choice to fiddle with the thing, so it's my risk, my disaster, my learning experience, nobody else's fault. (Heh. And I don't go springing untested experiments on a houseful of guests, either!)

Heh. At the risk of major embarrassment amongst my eGullet peers, here is my list of culinary firsts (and not-yets): 1st foie gras: erm ... would you believe not yet? 1st caviar: well, I'd had other types of fish roe for years beforehand in various dishes (like taramasalata, and on sushi), but my first memory of eating sturgeon roe dates from only three years ago. 1st black truffle shavings: Not yet! 1st white truffle shavings: Not yet! 1st alcohol: junior-high age (a glass of crappy Andre blush champagne doled out by my parents on New Year's Eve) 1st raw oyster: high-school age (Haymarket in Boston) 1st eating something while it's still alive: Not yet (whew!) 1st escargot: High school (as one of a group of students my favorite English teacher took to a French cafe after he'd treated us to a dress rehearsal of Elektra at the Metropolitan Opera featuring Maria Callas. Also the night of my first martini. Make that my first couple of martinis. It was a memorable evening. Also a more innocent time, as my teacher never got in trouble, that I heard of anyway, for plying six underage persons with booze. ) 1st soft-shelled crab: not sure. First I remember was in Baltimore about 12 years ago, but there might have been earlier run-ins at Chinese restaurants or such. 1st blood sausages: Not yet! 1st fugu: Not yet! 1st coconut (cracked open fresh): Sometime in my teen years (I have no idea why my folks bought a fresh coconut, but I clearly remember my parents taking turns doing battle with it to get it open. ) 1st avocado: Sometime in my teens. 1st sushi: 1980 or so. 1st sweetbreads: Not yet. 1st beef tongue: sometime in childhood (stewed tongue was a special but regular treat in my Jewish-American family) 1st jelly fish: Not yet! 1st pineapple fresh from the stalk: Not yet! 1st In-N-Out burger: 2003. (This may be heretical, but I like Carl's Jr. better.) 1st Gazelle meat: Not yet! Lessee, other firsts that made a major impression on my still-impressionable mind: First spinach eaten raw as a salad: High school, at a friend's house. It really blew my mind as I had no idea that spinach could even be used as a salad green. First remembered restaurant experience, first ethnic dining experience: <2 years of age, at a local (Americanized) Chinese restaurant. First Indian taco/frybread: late 1990s, at a powwow at Daybreak Star Center, Seattle. First uni/sea urchin: 2002 or so. First lobster: as a kid, on vacation with family on Cape Cod. First bourbon: college (Wild Turkey 101, in honor of Hunter S. Thompson) First dim sum: mid-1980s, Boston First "gourmet" coffee: mid-1970s, in Cambridge MA, French-press Vienna roast at the old Coffee Connection (have they all been absorbed by Starbucks?) First sea cucumber: 2004--at an Asian buffet restaurant, yet!

There is a variety of shiritaki which contains tofu in addition to the konnyaku gel. I have yet to find the stuff in any of the brick-and-mortar Asian groceries around me, but my understanding is that it's a little less bouncy than the regular shiritaki, and thus a bit closer to the mouthfeel we Westerners associate with pasta. (It's also creamy white, so it looks more like flour-based pasta too.) Myself, I've had my best luck with konnyaku when cooked as part of long-simmered stew-type dishes; the long cooking time tones down the stuff's bounciness considerably, and gives the stuff a chance to fully absorb flavors from the other ingredients, and the konnyaku provides a nice textural contrast to the other elements in the dish. I'm really not too sure I'd like the stuff totally on its own. I think it's another of those food textures that are more acceptable if you grew up eating it. FWIW, I have even more trouble with the mouthfeel of agar/kanten. And yet I like the more tender moutthfeel of gelatin just fine. Odd, how much difference a little thing like that can make. P.S. I've found konnyaku in those Asian markets in all sorts of other interesting shapes. My favorite so far just for sheer novelty value was something labeled as "konnyaku squid". These were little square slices of white-ish konnyaku scored with a crosshatch pattern on one side, the way squid is often prepared for stirfries and such. You still have to figure out how to impregnate them with squiddy flavor, but gee, they were kinda cute-looking.

I'm going to let someone (anyone?) else sort this out. I just know that, on past occasions, I have been corrected on this and didn't want my point about msg to be obscured by a discussion of nut (or non-nut?) allergies (none of which I have anyway, I'm happy to report) ← Wikipedia on cashews, explaining that a cashew is botanically classified as a seed rather than a nut. (The so-called cashew "fruit" is apparently botanically not a fruit either, but the swollen receptical of the flower that produced the cashew seed.) Lurching back on topic: I think an Occam's razor-type solution to the MSG conundrum is to posit that there are indeed some individuals who are sensitive to the kind of excessive levels of MSG, such as result from over-enthusiastic use of the refined condiment, but that those numbers are far lower than the blanket anti-MSG forces fear. That would account both for the anecdotal evidence, and that haunting fact that Asia isn't a hotbed of migraines. I confess I was all anti-MSG myself for many years, until I found out more about exactly what glutamate was and where it came from. I'm still none too thrilled with the indiscriminate use of refined MSG in processed foods to cover the poor quality and processing of the ingredients. And while I'm no longer totally dead-set against MSG added to ready-cooked foods (either home cooking or restaurant food), I do confess I still think of it as, at best, a quickie shortcut for getting the glutamate in there the old-fashioned way, by means of naturally glutamate-rich ingredients. Meanwhile, now that I have a little knowledge (a dangerous thing!), I now have lots of fun deliberately boosting the glutamate content of my meals with those naturally-occuring glutamate powerhouses. Kombu and dried shiitakes have become permanent fixtures in my pantry.

I'm another who personally loathes most sweet-tasting dressings, so I would also be loathe to add sugar to a vinaigrette. But then I'm a freak who tends to make my vinaigrettes either equal parts oil and vinegar, or even with more vinegar than oil. In fact, the only dressing I can remember making that had any kind of sweetener at all in it is a mustard-and-maple-syrup vinaigrette I use on lightly-steamed brussels sprouts. I do realize that the tiny amounts of sugar some of you are talking about here are too little to make the dressing sweet, only enough to balance the acid. But like I said, I like that bite in my dressings, so the last thing I'd want to do is add something to tone it down.

Some baked cheesecakes don't have a bottom crust. ← Quite true. And I prefer cheesecake with a thin layer of biscuit (cake) underneath. ← If it's a discrete crust, it's crust. The composition is immaterial, the function is all. Oh, and just in case anyone is tempted to go there ... no, the "crust" on bread does not mean bread == pie. Bread crust is not discrete, but an integral part of the loaf. It's simply bread dough that happened to be lucky enough to be on the surface of the loaf where it could get browning. Whereas a pie crust is of a different composition from the stuff it's containing/supporting, usually constructed by an entirely different process from that which created the filling it contains. And now I just can't resist: "Pie "R" square?!? Pies aren't square! Pies are round!" (running away very fast )

Some baked cheesecakes don't have a bottom crust. ← In which case my statement about so-called "crustless pies" not really being pies applies. (How's that for internal rhyme? ) Edited to add--okay, I did not explicity state that "crustless pies" are not true pies. But the implication I left that such items were in fact some other category of foodstuff shows that I *meant* to say that. And that's my story and I'm sticking to it.

On whether to classify a baked confection as pie or cake, it's IMO important not to be swayed by whatever name has traditionally been hung on the dessert in question, traditional names for dishes being notorious for their sometimes-sketchy relationship to the thing named--just one of many examples: the egg cream, which contains neither egg nor cream. No, as in the biological sciences, you have to look at the form and structure of the item in question in order to establish proper classification. In the case of pie vs. cake, this is elegantly simple to do: If it's got a discrete crust (whether of pastry, crumbs, or whatever), it's a pie. If it doesn't, it's a cake ... or something. But a pie it ain't. So-called "crustless pies", while delicious, are often at base discovered to be some other food item entirely--usually a frittata or other omelette-type thing. Conclusion: cheesecakes have crusts, therefore they're pie. Boston cream pies don't have crusts, therefore they're cake. Regardless of the whims of history that hung those names on them.

Ah! But is cheesecake, despite the name, really a "cake"? And not a custard pie under an erroneous name? I present the following bit of anecdotal evidence: --From "Good Eats" episode "The Trouble With Cheesecake," full transcript here. As a cheese "cake" fan, I am more than happy to agree with Alton and "The King" that this confection more properly belongs to the pie family.

After due consideration, I have to come down on the side of pie. A truly great cake is a wonderful thing, but I find a truly great pie trumps it in my mind. It's the piecrust. A perfect crust is a thing of beauty (and something I've yet to achieve on my own, by the way). No cake frosting or topping on the planet has yet been devised that can hold a candle to a perfect pie crust. Yes, there are both pie abominations (ready-made pudding fillings, etc.) and cake abominations (supermarket sheet slabs troweled over with a ton of Dayglo-tinted Crisco). Both of these culinary sins are sideshows, and not to be given any more energy than they've already sucked away from their manufacturers' culinary karma. And as for the rest? I confess that I find the basic cake texture ... well ... boring. There. I've said it. Even in cakes that are admittedly excellent, I just find myself viewing the actual cake part as at best merely a vehicle for the fillings and frostings and such. Whereas a really good pie filling, with all its protean variations, never fails to hold my attention. Especially since a lot of pie fillings bear more than a passing resemblance to cake-filling layers--but whereas in a cake you would only get a narrow shmear of said filling, in a pie you get a huge heapin' helping of it, with chunks of fruit and everything. So--all other things being equal, I like a pie's outsides better, I like its insides better, I like everything about it better. So nu, what's not to love? Admittedly, cake has traditionally featured more chocolate than pie has, and some pie-ish attempts at chocolate have understandably earned a bad rep (oh, those wretched pudding pies). But those IMO are merely errors in execution. There is no reason in the universe why a chocolate pie cannot be a sublime experience. And finally, just two little words: "fried pie." I rest my case. P.S. And as a bonus round, may I suggest that pies can go into realms of savory (quiche, meat pies, etc.) where cakes dare not follow. Steak and kidney cake, anyone?

What a delightful blog this is already! Somehow I have managed to do very little travel in Europe in my life so far, and none yet in the Netherlands, but if/when I get it together to correct that, I suspect that Amsterdam will rank near or at the top of the list of cities I'd want to visit. So I'm really looking forward to a full week's worth of insider's views of the city. I'm happily anticipating anything you care to show us during this week. I know so little about everyday Dutch culture, it's all fascinating to me. I must confess, though, that I wouldn't mind it a bit if your rounds happened to give us a little glimpse of one of those coffeeshops whose herbal offerings go beyond Ceylon tea, if you catch my drift ... Happy birthday, and blog on!

Somebody put Pizza Smut on a "Best of Philly Pizza" list?!?!?!?!? That's just sick and wrong.

Heh. While I celebrate those here who are stoutly professing their love of food and freedom from guilt over that love, I would like to gently point out, as was already pointed out upthread aways, that this may simply mean that, according to this poll at any rate, you are part of a minority in the US as opposed to the norm. Rejoice--you beat the averages. Admittedly, I only have equally anecdotal evidence to offer in this thread, but based on that anecdotal evidence I am convinced that guilt and denial over the quality and quantity of food consumed is still very much alive and well in this country. It sure as hell played havoc with my head for many years. And I'm still picking psychological shrapnel out of my psyche over all the mixed messages my parents and peers laid on me over the enjoyment of food. This does not mean it isn't possible to eat healthily and enjoy it. It simply means that a whole bunch of people in this country apparently haven't the slightest clue how to do that. I sure didn't, until I finally took my brain back from the cultural dieting mentality and started trying to figure things out for myself. Another point of clarification: the existence of this cultural guilt does not contradict the suggestion from national obesity figures that people are still eating like crazy despite that guilt. I can testify from personal past experience that guilt is a very protean behavior-motivator here (as in many other spheres). Unexamined guilt can spin your brain in such a way that you decide to propitiate the evil food-guilt god by engaging in the most self-destructive dieting behaviors, everything from fad diets to out-and-out bulimia (thank goddess I never got tempted that far). Guilt can also send you into a denial state in which you "sneak" the most ridiculously unhealthy quantities and qualitites of food, only to awake the next day feeling even shittier about yourself than you did before. There's also the real fun version of denial that I engaged in for many years, in which I consciously declared myself on strike against anything even vaguely resembling a "diet", and maintained I felt no guilt at all about my liberal and gleeful food consumption ... which stance was belied by my constant low-level depression over how my food consumption was impacting my ever-expanding figure and ever-shrinking health, a guilt-fueled depression that I steadfastly refused to acknowledge or address. (Not to stray too far off-topic, but a similar function does hold sway in that other realm of guilt-inspiring pleasurable behaviors, that of sex. Guilt over sex, depending on how it spins in an individual brain, can produce behaviors varying all the way from revulsion and celibacy to reactive promiscuity. And yes, people do conceive babies even despite massive sex guilt--and boy, do those folks lay some super-mixed messages on their kids about the processes that produced them. Yes, it's a paradox, but no, it's not a contradiction.) Regardless of any design problems with the study cited at the beginning of this thread, IMO the phenomenon it's trying to get at is very, very real. Yes, there are individuals who do have their head on right about behaving sanely around food and enjoying it, but they are far outnumbered by the legions of people for whom this very natural and necessary life-function has become fraught with psychological pitfalls. I know, because I am an escapee from that unhappy state. You may find this guilt-ridden mindset incomprehensible and alien--be glad that you do, it means you were lucky enough to miss that bit of social programming! But that doesn't make the existence of that programming, and its baleful effects on many other people's heads, any less real.

As a matter of fact, I'm so intrigued by your interest in checking out the American grocery consumer experience that I'd be willing to help you in your explorations once you get here. Just remember to give me a heads-up when you're on your way over here, and I'll see if we can hook up for a little tour activity. (Dang--I really should be getting a commission from the San Diego tourism bureau! ) Edited to add: oh yeah, 92108 is right next door to where I live.

Baba ganoush is only one of many types of yummy dips you can make with roasted eggplant. I just Googled on "eggplant dip" -- and while a lot of recipes I turned up were for baba ganoush, there was also a number of others. There's a whole bunch of eggplant dip recipes on this website dedicated to eggplant--just plug the word "dip" into their onboard search engine. I didn't look at every single one of the dip recipes turned up by such a search, but of the ones I did, I noticed several that did not call for tahini. You could also just experiment. Eggplant is a terrific relatively neutral palette on which you could build any number of different seasoning profiles. I think it would be really cool, for instance, to try an Asian direction (soy sauce, sesame oil, grated ginger, slivered scallions, etc.) or an East Indian direction (garam masala, a little yogurt, etc.). Or you could even make a decent baba ganoush substituting a small amount of good "natural" (no sweeteners) peanut butter in place of the tahini. When I've done this, I've found myself upping the lemon juice somewhat to compensate for that missing tang the tahini adds, but it still produces a nice result of the proper consistency.

Wow! Thank you! PM coming up shortly ... Wow again. Now I'm having wicked pisser nostalgia flashbacks to Haymarket and the North End as they looked in the 1980s when last I lived in Boston. I have an odd confession to make--somehow I have never wound up visiting Philadelpia, ever. Even my parents somehow missed it in all our trips elsewhere in Pennsylvania. (I'm sure my brother, who spent a miserable four years attending Carnegie Mellon, would have agreed with the classic W.C. Fields line that he would rather have been in Philadelphia. ) Anyway, now I have some inkling of what I have missed. Hopefully I'll get to do something about that one of these days. Bravo, sir. A most excellent, thorough, and entertaining blog.

Okay, now I'm seriously jonesing for some Pennsylvania Dutch food goodness. When I was a kid my family would spend spring break vacations touring around Lancaster County, and local farmer's markets and Penn-Dutch style restaurants were always major parts of our itinerary. None of us, however, were ever quite brave enough to try scrapple. Actually, I think my folks were weirded out by it and planted their weird-out in the young impressionable minds of us kids. I'd probably like it just fine these days ... though of course now I'm on the wrong side of the continent to sample the real deal fresh. And speaking of markets--oh, the exquisite torture of gazing upon photos of yet another terrific urban public market while living in a town devoid of same. (Insert glyph of quiet weeping here. )

I have a wild guess that the Korean Tobanjon is the same (or very similar) as Chinese Chili Bean Sauce ("Dou Ban Jiang" in Mandarin). IMO Chili Bean Sauce it too salty to be used as a condiment. It is great for cooking. ← Well, this makes me feel good, because I think I've been naively using Korean and Chinese chili bean sauces interchangeably in my cooking. I am really enjoying this latest pictorial. Whenever I go in an Asian market, I find myself spending ages poring over the labels of all the jars and bottles in the sauce aisle--so many choices, so little time! I can just imagine some recent immigrant from China being similarly flummoxed by the big aisle of American-style condiments in a typical Vons/Safeway/etc.--only to discover how *boring* all those different brands of ketchup and American-style barbecue sauce are.