jkonick

Shumai are good, and a lot easier to make since you can buy the wrappers premade, and they don't need to be sealed. For lunch today I decided to make bahn mi, so I went back to Viet-Wah to pick up some supplies. Sazji, I tried to get a picture of Mt. Rainier for you, but it was totally obscured today. Here's one of downtown with Puget Sound off in the distance though Here's the view coming into Chinatown from the north. The are where I took this picture from used to be the predominantly Japanese neighborhood, but after many Japanese lost their businesses because of being put in internment camps, the neighborhood fell apart. There are still a few Japanese restaurants around there, but it's nowhere near as vibrant as Chinatown or Little Saigon. Back at Viet-Wah... Here are some more pictures: Seafood counter Soup bases and sauces Lots of different kinds of flour (including wheat starch and tapioca, for more dumplings) Produce I decided to pick up a sandwich which I would base my own on, so I got the "special" sandwich from Bahn Mi 88 in Little Saigon, which had three kinds of Vietnamese ham, along with the usual pickles, cilantro and mayo. Now for my sandwich. Here are before and after veggie to pickle pictures While I was working on it, my upstairs neighbor stopped by with some cookies. I ate... a fair number These are the three different meats I used. From left to right: something wrapped in leaves, which basically just tasted like balogna, another lunch meat typed meat, which tasted a lot like salami, and a Vietnamese head cheese. Finished product! Now I'm off to my parents' house in about an hour to make latkes and lemonana (this time with REAL mint!).

Yeah, I'm sure they have it there, and given my encyclopedic knowledge of the store that sounds about where it would be. I'm gonna go there again today to pick up some more shrimp, I'll look for it.

Just when I thought I couldn't eat any more... I made these two things last night, although by the t ime I was done eaeting them I was too tired to upload the pictures. It was my first time working with this kind of dough, and it was definitely tricky stuff to work with. It gets hard very quickly, which is why you can't find it premade. It was almost unusable by the time I was done, so this project was a real race against time. Here are the two mixtures, which are basically the same except the one on the right has chives. They have a dash each of the following: xiaoshang rice wine, light soy sauce, sesame oil, salt, and a little bit of chopped up fat from bacon (QFC, which is pretty much the only thing open at 1 a.m. ,doesn't carry lard, unfortunately). Oh yeah, and shrimp Here's the raw ingredients for the dough: 1 1/2 cups wheat starch (it's reccomended that you use a little tapioca starch too, but I didn't have any), one teaspoon oil, and a dash of salt. Next you have to mix in one cup boiling water, then stir until it forms a rough dough, then put on a (important - it's very sticky) cutting board dusted with more wheat starch. After a minute or two of kneading The best way to make them into wrapers is to make three cylinders, then cut each cylinder into eight or so pieces. You then press down on those with the blade of a large cleaver (or something else big enough to stretch them out to about three inches across). The process for the har gow is pretty simple: basically but the stuff in the middle and close it up like you would a potsticker. There's also a fancy method involving pleating, which I tried, and failed at repeatedly (good thing I had extra dough). The chive dumplings are a little trickier, you can't get away from the pleats this time. Put the filling in the middle, then pleat the edges so they come up around and form sort of a "wall" of pleats around the filling. Then bring all of the edges together and pinch shut. You should have a little hockey puck looking thing. These ones, unlike the har gow, are not steamed. They're pan fried until both sides are brown, then water is added and they're steamed just for a few minutes. And voila! Finished product

At the store, the guy basically slit its throat and belly. All the internal organs were still intact, so I had take those out myself. In order to get it to that nice looking filet for the unagu, you also have to take out the spine, which is a real pain. I didn't take any pictures of the process - eels are very slimy ("slippery as an eel" isn't just an expression) and I didn't want to get eel slime on my camera.

Could be an American Japanese restaurant thing? Although I could've sworn it's come in prepackaged unagi I've bought. Hmm. Now I'm gonna need to redo this with sansho...

No sansho? I think sansho is standard for unagi--more so than shichimi togarashi (at least at all the unaju restaurants I've been to). I've always wanted to try Szechuan peppercorns with unagi, since sansho is more difficult to find in Canada (perhaps I should stock up while I'm still in Japan!). ← I've actually never had it with sansho... I do have some sichuan peppercorns though, so I could try grinding some of those up. I bet Uwajimaya has sansho though.

Alright, project eel is officially done. For one half, I sort of used a recipe from Kaiseki. The recipe wasn't exactly for unagi no kabayaki, but I used the first part: put the eel skin side up in a strainer, cover with cloth and pour hot water over it, immediately submerge in ice water. Simmer in half cup water, half cup sake, quarter cup mirin (sweetened Japanese rice wine) and a quarter cup soy sauce until cooked all the way through. That's the Kaiseki part. After that I basted it with the sauce, then broiled it for about five or ten minutes. Finished it off with some shichimi togarashi (a Japanese spice mix that contains peppers, herbs and orange peel, and is an essential condiment with unagi, in my opinion). (sorry for the blurry picture) For the Chinese style, I used Kent Wang's steamed eel recipe, although mine didn't have scallions, and I added black bean sauce. I had a similar dish at Sun Sui Wah, a restaurant in Vancouver, B.C.. This one wasn't quite as good... I'm pretty sure the skin had been removed at the restaurant, and I don't much care for the texture of the steamed skin. Before And after I've been slowly working on a carton of egg nog while doing all this cooking. Screw wine, egg nog and eel is probably one of the best pairs out there. Now time to return to my shrimp for dim sum... expect har gow and chive dumplings in the next hour or so.

jkonick or others: what are the major cross streets of Seattle's Little Saigon please? I haven't been there and will visit in the future. ← 12th and Jackson is the big intersection. It spreads out about three blocks either way from there, bordered by I-5, Yesler and Rainier.

I think I'm going to be making latkes tomorrow night at my parents' house, need to find some shmaltz before then...

Hmm.. like a virgin mojito.. can't be a bad thing. Were you on a Birthright trip? I've wondered what kind of food they provide on something like that - and if there were restrictions from wondering off to find the good falafel and shwarma stands. ← I was on a Birthright trip. We ate dinner in the hotels most nights, but during the day we were out and about and in charge of our own food. Pretty much the only thing I ate was shawarma. I probably ate at 15 different places in the ten days we were there. We didn't get to do a lot of roaming around, but when we did I ate as much food as was possible. The lime lemonana I actually found in a grocery store. I'm pretty sure it was lime anyway. My hebrew's basically non-existant so who knows. It tasted like lime and it was green though, that I know for sure. I'm off to the grocery store now so I'll have to look for spearmint.

Just got back from doing some shopping in Chinatown, and I picked up all sorts of stuff. Here's a picture of Little Saigon, with Mt. Rainier off in the distance (although you can't really see it). Here's Viet-Wah, where I actually didn't end up buying anything, but took some pictures and scoped a few things out for some bahn mi I'm giong to make tomorrow After Viet-Wah, I headed over to Uwajimaya, Seattle's largest Japanese grocery store, and probably one of my favorite places on earth. Fearing being scolded like hhlodesign I didn't take any pictures, but you can see some by clicking on his name. Next stop was Wong Tung (I'm pretty sure that was the name) Seafood, for an eel. I've spent a long time searching and it seems like this is the only place to find live or fresh eels in Seattle. Viet-Wah carries frozen ones, but they are not good at all, they tasted like tuna Here's a picture of the unlucky creature just moments before its death: I wanted to get a picture of it when the guy killed it, but before my camera could get back to picture mode, he had already slammed it against a table quickly slit its throat and belly. The whole process took about 20 seconds. I did get a video of the bag moving, as it kept twitching for about twenty minutes after it was killed. I'll try to upload that later. Here's the Uwajimaya bounty (SheenaGreena - note the chips, I'm pretty sure they're chicken flavored and I remember you saying before that you liked meat flavored snacks. They weren't that good though): going counterclockwise from the bottom right, there is: oden, a kind of Japanese fish cake stew. This particular mix is my favorite, it has about 10 or 15 different kinds of fish cakes in it, chicken flavored snack, bulgogi sauce, unagi sauce, pork, Japanese eggplant, shrimp (wrapped in the paper) and a Kabocha squash in the middle, which is a kind of Japanese pumpkin. I'm going to start on the eel and cook it two ways, one Chinese, one Japanese. Half will become unagi no kabayaki, which is the kind of eel you usually find at sushi places. The other half will be steamed with black bean sauce, Chinese style. I also picked up some shrimp, and bought a new dim sum cookbook today, so I'm going to try my hand at making har gow, and shrimp and chive dumplings after I'm done with the eel. I may or may not also make that eggplant tonight, still not sure how I want to cook it. Is that enough food for you BryanZ?

Wow, that doesn't look like any mint I've ever seen before. This is what mint should look like. Are you sure you got the right herb? ← The mint actually did look like that, but it's been cut up and sitting in lime juice overnight so it looks got kind of "mushy." I know it's usually made with lemon, but I had some with lime in Israel and thought it was a lot better. I never thought of the blending technique though, that's a good idea. It never looked like it had actual mint in it, so I figured they must've gotten the flavor by steeping it somehow. I think I will look for a better mint source though and try it again.

I usually use it when roasting chickens or ducks Chinese-style, or making a dip for dumplings. Sounds good with the lo-mein though, I'll have to try that out. Although I will admit a little food quirk of mine: I hate cold food (with the exception of desserts). I hate the feel of it in my mouth, and I think it takes away from a lot of the flavor not to serve it warm. In fact, I have a habit of heating things like pasta salad up because that's the only way I'll eat them.

Man, I never knew there was such a wide variety of gelt. I thought that turning-white-around-the-edges chalky stuff my grandma always gives me was as good as it got. Speaking of Jewish related things, I tried the lemonana today. It turned out fairly well - the mint permeated it pretty well, but something's still not right and I'm not sure what it is. It sort of tastes like tabouleh I think it could have to do with the type of mint. I'm not really familiar with the mint family, anyone? The lemonana in Israel had a very "herby" mint flavor. I also get all of my mint from Vietnamese grocery stores, where I do most of my shopping, so since everything's in Vietnamese I usually just go by smell. As was requested, here are some more kitchen pictures. The fridge is probably not that exciting - it's shared between four people so everything is really jammed in there. See if you can guess which shelf is mine (although I've started invading other shelves so that might be hard). I do have a monopoly on the door though. And the cupboard, just for the hell of it... Playing dreidel in front of the Christmas tree, which you can't see (my sister, my brother and me with said crappy gelt in center) And the lemonana Not pictured is a couple pieces of leftover brisket that I had for breakfast (or lunch... does breakfast at one still count, if that's when you woke up?). I'm headed off pretty soon to Viet-Wah, one of my favorite grocery stores in Seattle, then a seafood place to pick up an eel. Expect pictures, and lots of experimentation later this evening.

Went over to my parents' house tonight for a very mixed up holiday dinner. We had latkes, then lit the menorah and decorated our Christmas tree (my dad's not Jewish, so we celebrate both holidays). There's just something weird about listening to Christmas carols while playing dreidel. As is customary with playing dreidel, I also ate a lot of gelt, which are chocolate coins usually used (and won by me) when playing dreidel. I'll upload more pictures tomorrow, and I also hope to work on some eel and har gow tomorrow, as I have the day off and will be doing some serious cooking.

I suppose I should also mention what I ate today: so far, just a pizza at work and a four shot espresso, along with lots of iced tea which I can drink as much as I want to at work. The pizza was one of my favorite pizzas we have, apple, gorgonzola, carmelized onion and pancetta. It's pretty rare though that I eat stuff off the menu - I like to experiment a lot. For instance, once I made a "biscuits and gravy" pizza, using sausage fat leftover from cooking a big batch of sausage as the base for the gravy, which was the pizza base, along with some of the sausage and some potatoes. So here are some pictures of my kitchen, so you can get an idea of where the action happens. I had to get an extra bookshelf just for sauces, wouldn't all fit in the cupboard And for Pam R, here's my lemon(lime?)ana: It's basically just limes, sugar, water and mint. I'm going to let it sit for a few hours then strain out the mint. For those who don't know, lemonana is an Israeli drink with mint and lemon or lime juice. It's basically a virgin mojito. I drank probably more of this stuff than is even healthy when I was in Israel, and brought back ten bottles with me. Only had five by the time the plane landed Hopefully this will work... might also try making a simple syrup using mint too. We shall see.

I lived in the dorms last year, so I did eat a lot of food from the cafeteria, although I did a lot of cooking in my room. I think I was probably the first person ever to deep fry in a rice cooker. Now I eat a lot at work, because I get free pizza every time I work. I also do a lot of shopping in Chinatown and make a lot of Asian food. One of my favorite things is Okonomiyaki, a sort of Japanese cabbage pancake... thing. Basically you can put anything you want in it. I'll probably make some this week.

I have some limes and mint at home right now. I'll be making that later tonight I am Ashkenazi, and that's the food I don't like. Sephardic food is a little better... although like I said, I'm something of an Asianophile, so that's where my real passion is. I will admit though that I'm looking forward to the leftover brisket in my fridge right now from my family's Hanukkah party yesterday. I do like Israeli food a lot though - I went there earlier this summer and fell in love with shawarma. As part of this blog I'm hoping to recreate the shawarma I had in Israel. Bryan - good call on the facebook group. If you make it, I'll join... Also, I'm planning on going to get another eel today, so I'm going to try for the unagi again. I recently got the book "Kaiseki," which has a good recipe for eel in it that I"m going to try later. I'll also tell you about the neighborhood I live in, as there are lots of different kinds of restaurants and stores nearby. About half a mile away from me is Little Saigon, Seattle's Vietnamese/Southeast Asian neighborhood, and just west of there is Chinatown/International district. There are also a lot of East African restaurants and stores in my immediate neighborhood, which is (at least by a few people) known as little Addis Abbaba. I love East African food, and I think it's pretty underrated, so hopefully I'll be able to eat out at a few restaurants there this week.

Hi! Welcome to my life for the next week! Hopefully you'll enjoy it. I've got to keep this short, because it's 1 am and I have to work at 9 tomorrow morning. I live in Seattle, Washington, and I've lived here basically my whole life. I'm a sophomore at the University of Washington where I'm studying French and comparative literature. I also write a weekly food column for the UW's paper, which if you're interested, you can find here: www.thedaily.washington.edu (click on "Intermission). In addition to being a student full time, I also work as a cook at Mioposto, a pizza place in Seattle (where I will be at 9 tomorrow morning...) Over the week you'll get to see me in action and get a look at the restaurant, as I spend a fair amount of time there. In addition to that, I spend a good chunk of my time at home cooking as well. I've always been really interested in food. When I was a kid, my favorite shows were Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and The Frugal Gourmet. My foodblog "preview" pictures never ended up getting posted (I don't think anyway) but they were of chopped liver which I made, and chicken's feet at dim sum. These two things are very representative of my food background: I'm Jewish, and although I think I make some pretty mean chopped liver, I don't particularly like Jewish food. The chicken feet on the other hand have nothing to do with my cultural background, but are far more representative of my food interests. Since I was about 15 or 16 I've had a great interest in Asian food, particularly in Japanese cuisine, almost to the point of obsession I don't have any special event that this blog is based around, but I'm out of school for the next three weeks and thus will have a lot of time to do a lot of cooking and eating. I'll post some pictures tomorrow so you can get a better view of my food filled world.

Personally I prefer the thinner style noodles in general, but that does make sense. The thicerk noodles would add to the body of the soup. I just didn't like the way that the thicker noodles were more seperated. I like the thin ones because you get this big clumpy bunch of noodle, but it all sort of seperates out in your mouth.

Went to Samurai tonight, man that's good stuff! Light years ahead of the other places in Seattle that do ramen. We got the shoyu and pork - Rocky, I noticed the noodles in the shoyu were bigger than the ones in the pork. The pork were more similar to what I'm used to, not sure why they had different noodles though. The noodles were really the only thing I think could use some improving. The broth was great though - I echo the liquid bacon sentiments. Good roast pork too. I even got a stamp card, so looks like I'll have to go back at least 11 more times...

Real ramen in Seattle!?!?!? Do they serve anything else, or just ramen? Man, I have to check this place out. Now if only there was a good okonomiyaki place in Seattle...

The other day I noticed a new kind of Pocky at the grocery store in the cookie aisle - not the Asian food aisle where all the Pocky products usually are. They were made by LU Biscuits, and they didn't look like they had any Japanese on them so I'm assuming they're not an import. Are these available in Japan? I couldn't find anything about them on the LU website, now I'm curious...

The salt grilling technique is great with oily fish, if you can get some. Mackerel is my favorite, I just made it the other night in fact!

I like making korokke with a combination of sweet potato and kabocha, but if deep frying's out of the question...