Evan

California Spiny Lobster First bite was heavenly, dipped in vinegar soy sauce and ginger. Also made some tacos using the meat from the tail.

Vermilion rockfish Sebastes miniatus I used one single fish of about three pounds caught locally in Southern California. No presentation whatsoever but it was quite good. Used everything but the gill and guts. It is now my favorite rockfish.

I've always been taught that you should not mix or eat persimmon and crab together. here is an excerpt from a website...http://www.eatingchinese.org/dazha/dazha1.htm

Two words for you... Fried Turkey

May I suggest steaming the fish in addition to these grilling and braising methods? But I would only suggest that you use fresh fish. A little chinese flavor but add salt, sliced ginger, scallions, and garlic to the fish and steam. You can also add soy sauce but I prefer without it. Very simple but very good, I've done this with halibut, sole, striped bass, tilapia, rockfish, pretty much most any fresh fish will do. Of course anyfish fried is also good too.

Funny because it's not just from the ocean. I was at a Sushi restaurant and I ended up with a tamago sushi that was glowing. I felt that it was not normal to see that so I let the waitress know about it and she took it to show the itamae. I saw the puzzled look on the itamae's face as the waitress was showing it to him. Then the waitress brought back a different sushi. Fortunately, the sushi that was brought back did not glow in the dark.

The one to the right appears to have a large whole in the skull. Is the brain used for anything in particular? ← There is a specific way of preparing a tuna when captured called the 'Tanaguchi' method. The tuna when captured, will get a club to the head to shock it and then a spike is inserted into the soft spot to stop it from thrashing and bruising the flesh. Once that is done, the head is split open for pithing, insetion of a thick string like mono filament which will destroy the brain and the spinal cord to stop the biochemical reactions which may contribute to deterioration of the flesh. The fish is then bled, gilled and gutted in a specific manner and flash frozen. All these things are done to keep the flesh in its most prestine condition so that it retains a high market value.

Can't leave out this tastey morsel from the local sea... Pacific Sand Dab (Citharichthys sordidus) aka potato chips because you cannot just eat one. Take the head off and gut. Lightly dust them in flour and salt and pan fry til golden brown. You can eat the fins and all that will be left is the backbone. One of my favorite eats but you most likely will have to catch them yourself because they rarely sell this at any fish markets. Sorry no picture of the final fried product, I was too anxious and eaten it all before I even though about taking a picture.

Here are some of the locally caught fish in Southern California that I had a pleasure of catching and eating California Scorpionfish (Scorpaena guttata), more commonly called sculpin, locally. I had it as sashimi with ponzu, soup, and steamed. California Halibut (Paralichthys californicus), different species than the pacific halibut but just as nice. eaten in a similar manner as sculpin and also grilled. Albacore ( Thunnus alalunga, fish with the long pectoral fins), bonito (Sarda chiliensis, two fish at the top left with lateral stripes) and yellowtail(Seriola lalandi, fish with the #4 tag attatched). I only caught the albacore which was eaten as sashimi and also grilled. Yellowfin Croaker (Umbrina roncador) on the left and Barred Surfperch (Amphistichus argenteus) on the right. Both were floured and fried in oil.

I don't have a picture but I have a story of a burn mishap that took a turn for the worst. I knew a guy from high school who was a cook at an Italian restaurant. At the time he was putting something in the oven and on the same hand, he was also holding a knife with the blade pointing towards him... You know when you acidentally touch something hot, you tend to pull your hand close to you away from the heat source, really fast? Especially when you are not expecting it to happen? Well, his forearm touched the side of the hot oven with the knife wielding hand and ended up stabbing himself in the chest when he pulled his hand towards him. The injury wasn't bad but it's something to think about.

I agree with yimay, Taiwanese cuisine is very simplistic and typically tries to be simple in their cooking, most of the dishes are either fried, boiled, or steamed, at least within my Taiwanese family. When I was in Taiwan, most of the meals consisted of meat, fish, vegetable and soup. Mostly stir fried vegetables with garlic or ginger, fried or steamed fish, boiled pork or chicken that you dip in garlic soy sauce and the water used to boil the chicken or pork would be used as the base for the soup. Also very common was soy braised bamboo, meats, and eggs and steamed ground pork in soy. Also we ate lots of mi shen (string noodles) flavored with soy from the soy braised meats. Breakfast would be either gruel or you tiao with peanuts, rou song, picked bean curd skins and pickled vegetables. Lunch and dinner menu seemed pretty similar to me. My favorite dishes for dinner made by my grandma would consist of stir fried ong choy with garlic, fried white pompano, egg with pickled vegetables and green onions, bamboo shoot and pork riblet soup, and boiled pork slices with garlic soy sauce.

If its in and around the Los Angeles area, the locally caught (within couple hundred miles off shore) species around here are albacore (bincho), bluefin and yellowfin tuna, and yellowtail. So if the sushi restaurant gets them locally, I would try for any of those sushi's. I will also add that sea bream or tai is also in season.

Years ago, I bought a pint of B&J Maine Blueberry ice cream. It had whole blueberries in blueberry ice cream. Simply put, it was the best ice cream I've ever had. It could have been a limited production ice cream because I have never seen it since.

One of my friends and I never mention the "M" word as a substitute for butter, matter of fact, that word is not even in my vocabulary any more. Albeit growing up, my family would get the fleishmann's(sp?) butter substitute and they still do.

Oh my, I think the ramen splash guard use to be the face guard for kids who are scared of water running down their face when washing their hair. That one is the most useless of them all but I do see good uses for butter on a stick

Interesting, this is the first time I've ever heard of anyone eating the gills of a fish.

Decided to make gomoku (five ingredient) takikomi gohan for a holiday pot luck lunch at my work. Since I've never made it before, I did a little tester batch first to test out the seasonings using Hiroyuki's recipie as a guide adding only dried shiitake, hijiki, and carrots. Well, it helped out because the first attempt, I didn't add enough soy sauce and used only water and it was a tad bland to say the least. So for the actual dish I decided to make a vegitarian takikomi gohan; for ingredients, I used dried shiitake, hijiki, renkon(lotus root), aburaage, and carrots with dashi made only from konbu. I opted not to use any of those 'dashi no moto' since I wanted to stay away from the MSG. It came out very well except I forgot to mix the rice and ingredients after steaming so most of the ingredients were gone before the rice. But by the end, it was totally gone so it was a success. In previous pot lucks, I made some creme brulee which was also a hit with the crowd, and year before that I made some potato salad which did not go over very well. So now, I'm on a good streak, yay.

Looks like the sasa kamaboko from Sendai, which apparently is supposed to look like bamboo leaves but I don't remember them having any shiso in them. Whenever my family was in Sendai visiting the foreigner visa office, we would buy a box of them for the train ride home.

I once saw a japanese tv show where they were testing how to make the best looking and tasting steamed rice. One of the method was to use a couple of teaspoons of honey in with the rice before cooking and found that it gave more tsuya(glistening) on the rice. But the winner (chosen by how many people liked a sample) was rice steamed with initial ice cold water and the honey version was a close second.

I been told that kougyoku apple is very good for pies as it is more tart than your run of the mill apples which are breed to be sweet. Make apple pie with it and brew some tea using water that has been boiled with the left over apple peel for a little bit of apple tea to go with your apple pie.

Ahh brings me back some memories, I was in a Taipei elementary school (East Gate Elementrary) for a semester back in 1982 and was shocked at the fact that they have your lunches heated for you. Realize that there were 4000 kids going to school there so it must of been a huge steam room. I guess that's chinese culture for you since they never ever like hot dishes served cold. I also had the pleasure of having Japanese school lunches while I went to school, back in the day. The menu rotated between western and wafu lunches, which ultimately meant, you either had rice or bread as the main starch. Most of the classmates and I always looked forward to the curry, cream stew, or spaghetti days. It was very much frowned upon to leave any food since the teachers still had memories of the time after WWII when they had little or no food to eat, so they made sure that we were greatful for all the food given and the teachers were not going to allow any food to go to waste. I also remember having had my only ever whale meat served during a Japanese school lunch and remember it being very good. That's all I remember from my Japanese school lunches. I also had American school lunches and looking back at it now, I realize that the Japanese school lunches were much healthier with more variety and more appetizing than the American school lunches, as many have posted.

Yes there are plenty of chain "california" hamburger places like In and Out, Fatburger, and Tommy's. For me, hands down, Fatburger is the best, then In and Out, and then Tommy's. The meat at fatburger tends to be more juicy compared with the other two. I don't care much for Tommy's because when I have their chili cheese burger, the meat is almost always dry and the chili on top looked like someone just took a big ole wet dump on top of the dry patty to reconsitute the moisture back in the patty. I believe the king burger patty is a 1/2 lb patty and the normal fatburger patties are 1/3 lb. I've taken down a few double kingburgers in my school days. I love the relish and feel as though it makes fatburger different from the rest, to each his/her own I guess. I get the fat(steak) fries but as my friend mentioned before and I agree completely, that the skinny fries has more surface area for the grease, which equals more goodness. Mmm fatburger (insert Homer Simpson drooling sound here), I guess I know what I'm having tonight. I may have to try the double king for old times sake, just to see if I can polish that thing still.

For Burgers/local institution, you should try the Apple Pan in LA on Pico Blvd just east of Westwood Blvd, they are closed on mondays. Also Howard's Avocado bacon burger on Venice Blvd just east of Sepulveda Blvd gives a nice grease stain on the brown bag. For LA local fried chicken institution, try Dinah's on Sepulveda Blvd just south of Centinela Blvd north of LAX and of course you also cannot miss out on Roscoe's chicken and waffles.

Has anyone tried Mukago? It is also part of the mountain potato but since I've never had the opportunity to get it, it remains a mystery in terms of taste and texture for me.

I'm wondering how is the alcohol content used to determine if its a beer, malt liquor, or barley wine, (anything else?). Correct me if I'm wrong but I think anything above 8% is malt liquor, and anything above 12% is considered barley wine. Any input? The strongest I had was a locally brewed barley wine at 12%. A little too strong for me to be drinking that often but it was flavorful.