coquus

Great book, and one can read it for free on Google.

I love RI fried dough. But only with real maple syrup and butter, as a kid I could eat it the traditional way as Chris described, but somewhere along the line I changed, and after that she had to cache real maple syrup to please me the few times I would visit each decade. What a bastard I am.

Where's "around here"? Around where I am, I doubt there's a single Asian restaurant (Chinese or otherwise) that has butter for the rice, but I'm in Japan...But I don't even know of a single Chinese restaurant back home (Winnipeg, Canada) that would give you butter for your rice. Butter on jasmine rice would definitely be a sin. ← I think most Chinese would tell you it's a sin. I cannot imagine both together. Actually, I can and it makes me feel a little sick. ← I live outside of Buffalo, NY, USA, in a small city/town that has a 4 Chinese Restaurants, or rather 3 and a buffet. They are tolerable maybe once every four months or so, the buffet about once every two years so I hope they do want to vomit when they are forced to serve butter with rice, I mostly want to vomit when I eat what they call Chinese. It makes me sick to think of butter on rice, but I wouldn't stop someone else from putting it on there if it would help them eat the rice when the are out at the Korean BBQ joint for example. Basically, I don't care what anyone does as long as they enjoy themselves. There are two schools of thought that lead me to this decision. One, that whatever makes a person want to try new things can't be bad, and, the other, that the only way we can learn more about our likes and dislikes is by trying new things. <-----Dionysian Barbarian However, I still feel a little sick when my wife adds ketchup to her scrambled eggs in the morning. Sorry, ketchup is for french fries, other sauces, and hamburgers only.

Ok, ok, soy sauce on rice is bad, but how about butter on rice? I bet all the Asian(Chinese) restaurants around here have to stock butter.

I found some yellow's last year near mountain ash, and four years ago under a hickory, but I have yet to find a good patch.

Where did you find those, I seriously have been looking for them here and haven't found even one yet. Unfortunately, I haven't seen any elm trees here, and the old apple trees seem to be confined to low lying washed out areas and fields with lots of high grass. The times I have found them were in neither area however, so maybe I'm going about everything wrong.

Ask again later.

Hear, Hear!

You miss my point, I was just replying to the notion that all that matters is taste, maybe on this website we sometimes forget that food has a purpose as well. When we eat, we should always consider what our food does to us.

I notice the labels to be very confusing on the matter, as here in the US I doubt I have seen any real truffle oil, I notice some bottles deliberately attempt to mislead us with "made with white truffles" right in there in the ingredients list, right before the white truffle aroma. And what's with white truffle oil and black truffle oil, do they actually differ in flavor, or just price? I don't think there is anything wrong with not wanting to eat synthetic food, and if it were just a matter of taste people wouldn't be dying from mad cow disease.

You must be Korean if you eat MD style blue crabs that way!

I am very much over this. How, you ask? My father, he will eat anything, in any combination, and wants to try them all. I can't believe some of them, he's really gotten extreme with his eating, I bet the Jackass people would have a tough time with some of it. I remember when it started years ago, he found out that his mother would sometimes add goat's cheese to her marinara, he thought this was the best thing in the world. Then one day, maybe my mother wouldn't add the goat's cheese all the time, whatever the reason, he made his own doctored up sauce, which also included grape jelly. Needless to say, nobody else ate with him. I haven't taken the time to document any since then, I probably will someday. I would love to see him at a chef's table some time, I'm sure he would draw a crowd.

If you have a well stocked Japanese kitchen, it's not much else, chile flakes, buckwheat noodles, sweet potato noodles, mung beans, fish sauce, some rose hips and barley for tea and you're set you can substitute Japanese ingredients for the most of the rest you need. Or the other way around, I find Korean ingredients just a bit more intensely flavored than the Japanese counterparts, probably because they use chiles elsewhere or in combination so it needs to stand out a bit more. A great starting point for Korean food is to make your own Napa Cabbage Kim Chee. There are lots of recipes out there for it, mostly good, just don't substitute for the chile flake or powder, use the Korean kind.

I like some things for a while, it's always changing, but the only ones I'm watching regularly now are Ming's Quest on Fine Living is about the newest Ming I can find, Lidia's and Rick's on PBS, nothing else(on my cable here that is) really interests me over the long haul.

I have found exactly two mushrooms this year, a fawn, and a little brown one. I went out again today with no luck. I keep looking for the trees that will yeild morels, but I haven't seen that many. I'm sure they are around by now, it hit 80 today, somewhere

Of course, and it's usually pretty bad, but I have had a few decent buffets, all Asian or Indian of course, and maybe some breakfast buffets. Unfortunately every time I try to recreate those experiences I have been disappointed in recent years to the point where I don't try. There has to be some sort of middle ground for the average diner, I just hope it doesn't take place at a bar. Maybe we will continue to have to stalk out our own favorite spots, or stake one, maybe someday, after the loans are paid off and before we have too many kids.

Sure, it's what you do with it that counts. So why do the salesmen always want to foist all this ridiculous premaid crap on you at every possible opportunity. And just who are their monkeys working to produce it. And what is with all the different minimums. They don't just deliver what people order, that's as much nonsense as what the other guy said.

Find out what they are called in your neck of the woods, then put a cooler out in front of your home, and make a big sign with some cardboard in black spray paint at the corner. The honor system is where it's at. Otherwise I suppose you can try Craig's or Ebay. I don't really know, I know a guy who markets locally, just takes his cooler around in his truck, and don't think he's really turning a profit. I suppose if you were in an urban environment, or knew some nice restaurants you would at least be able to get some nice meals out of it. Where are you, Pacific NW?

As the rain and the turkey hunting season is limiting my foraging today, I can only dream of different dishes to cook with my future finds. I usually use my really nicely flavored wild mushrooms for flavoring the fat in any dishes. I guess I will never understand why people eat these types of mushrooms raw, they are too precious to me, I want to extend their flavor as much as possible.

Hey, isn't that the chemical additive the Chinese were putting in the pet and animal food that caused the big panic here in the States?

Yeah, Bessette says the Gyromitra esculenta contain hydrazines, which can be deadly. It looks similar to the fastigata which some people eat.

A little plug for Alan Bessette, he has a new book Mushrooms of the Southeastern US coming out April 30, if you live anywhere from Florida to NC, over to and including some of Texas I think. *edited to add that I saw my first little brown mushroom today

Those Calphalon Katana's seem pretty reasonable when purchased by the set, individually they are way overpriced. I haven't used them or seen them locally, but they are aesthetically pleasing, and seem to be fairly practical as well. I would be interested to see how they perform against a Henckel's. Pretty much any individual Japanese knife below $500 seem to be mass produced, and how many knives does Mom need anyway. The Kershaws with the colored plactic handles seem to be the best gift in the she needs something now, but I won't be using it category. I think a little six inch Kyocera would be a great tool for Moms, it certainly requires a lot less maintainence or special handling.

The real eye opener for me was when I found out that the Chinese people who worked at the best restaurant in town were Cantonese, not suprisingly their lobster sauce was awesome. Apparently Canton is where a lot of the Chinese immigrants in the business are from, at least the first generation ones. So the trick is this: if you are afraid to talk to them, understandably around here as the language barrier is so thick, find out by cruising their family style meals, then order accordingly, it's not going to be the same thing, but it's likely there are analogs. And just printing Ma Po Tofu on the menu is no indication of anything good. I can now say that I have had bad Ma Po for the first time at the new restuarant that opened in my town, how psyched was I just to see it on the menu only to be flummoxed with generic brown sauce and a taste reminiscent of jarred thai chili sauce.

The only Korean sushi I would eat would be the spam kind. Asian food has been here for a long time, I don't know what to think of fusion 2 however, but maybe the call has already been made more guinea pigs are needed to test on. I would leave the fusion to the experienced however, and hope people would at least have the sense to think for themselves when they get Asian food. Who knows though maybe some kid eating Korean Kimchee Beef sushi will one day won't be afraid to venture into a Korean restaurant and eat some Jigue and bop?