jkonick

That website is so cool! I already need to find about half the things on the first page...

They're really easy to make. Break up and soak one stick of kanten, then transfer to 275ml of water and heat gently until melted. Strain, return to pan, mix in 300g sugar, and heat to simmer. Cool a bit, tint, and flavor as you like, then cast in a mold (appropriate-sized flat pan will do). The thicker, broken edged version mentioned already is one version, but it's also nice to cast them about 4mm thick and use small cookie cutters, too (maple leaf, plum blossom, that sort of thing). It's best to wet the mold and cutters. The cut shapes can then be transfered to a rack; allow them to dry until tacky and dredge in caster sugar, or allow to dry longer until they have a nice crust (as you describe; as they are thinner this won't be much longer than a day). Pack them up until ready to serve. My tea instructor tends to flavor with mint, lemon, and so forth (not too much), but I've had entertaining results with other flavors - add some cardamon pods or saffron to the mix when you simmer it. Best, John ← Thanks for the info, I'll have to try that. The ones I had were unflavored, and I never even thought of including a flavoring but that would be good. I have a surplus of saffron right now... hmm

Tonight I found myself with an intense craving for a peanut butter and bacon sandwich. Of course, I wasn't going to stop there - I had to figure out how I could possibly improve on perfection. Looked in the cupboard and found not only peanut butter, but also cashew butter. I'm already a step up. Then I remember Daniel's toffee covered bacon and the rest is history... For extra ridiculousness, I mixed in the fat from the bacon with the toffee. There's no flavor better than sweet bacon grease.

That's basically nasu dengaku, which has been mentioned a couple times in this thread, it's one of my favorites! Although I don't know about the inclusion of mayonnaise in the sauce I know a lot of modern Japanese cooking uses mayo, is this done in Japan at all with this dish? I personally can't stand the stuff, so I'll stick to the non-mayo version.

This might be a stupid question but... is the bar menu available if one is not in the bar? While I'd love to eat it in the bar, and the cocktails sound nice, I'm not 21 and don't have a fake ID (although this might be worth looking for one )

Hiroyuki, Thank you for the recipe! I actually DO have quite a bit of free time on my hands, and spend a large amount of it cooking Japanese food So tonight, I decided to try the recipe for jinko. It was not too much fun squeezing the dough in dashi for 10 minutes (I couldn't make it the whole 15), but the result was definitely worth it! They Akashiyaki were crispy on the outside and had a soft, almost custardlike inside. I think I even prefer these to regular takoyaki! I'll have to look for jinko at Uwajimaya, which is a large Japanese grocery store in Seattle. They carry a lot of otherwise hard-to-find products there. If not, maybe I can find some non-Japanese wheat starch to use as a substitute.

I have a lot of friends who dumpster, and some who live almost entirely off of dumpstered foods. I've eaten it, and most of it is pretty decent stuff. Some a little stale/icky tasting, but for free it's hard to complain. I've only dumpstered once myself, as research for a story I was writing, and it was pretty fruitful, and hardly as gross as it may sound. I just walked up to a dumpster, grabbed a bag of bread off the top of it, and left. Didn't eat the bread, but it made a good meal for some birds I've also seen waste from the other side, working in a restaurant. Most bread or pastries that we get are thrown out their second day. We waste lots of things like whipped cream and fruit too. Fortunately the kitchen staff takes home a lot of stuff, but there is still tons that goes to waste.

Hiroyuki: thanks for the recipe! I will have to search for some jinko flour. I tried it with regular flour and it turned out pretty well, although I don't really have anything to compare it to other than regular takoyaki. I do like the dashi dip though, it almost reminds me of a Japanese version of matzo ball soup!

In my opinion, organic milk tastes better than non-organic, but sugar-loaded junk cereals taste better than the organic or health food-y ones. Healthier? Certainly not. Tastier? Certainly!

I'll have to send Brian the description and see if it rings a bell. It definitely sounds like something worth tracking down. We're also thinking about changing our weekly date to Saturday or Sunday, but work schedules are complicated so we'll see. I think next week we're going to New Kowloon.

I have heard about this variation on takoyaki and seen pictures, but I haven't been able to find a recipe. I think it has more eggs in it than takoyaki? Does anyone have a recipe, or a rought estimation of one?

Cburnsi - bad news. We went to China Gate today, but they didn't have fukien rice. I'm not sure if it was good enough to warrant a weekend visit when they might have it again. I've never had fukien rice before, so for future reference could you give me a description of it? That way hopefully I can spot it on the cart in case they misunderstand our request (which might've been the case today - Brian's Chinese is a little bit shaky).

This would be good with some matsutake mushrooms when the season comes around... Ahh, I can't wait for fall!

I just returned from Israel about a month ago, and I've really been missing the food. It's pretty hard to get anything like the stuff I ate in Israel here in Seattle. I plan on eating vicariously through you! Looking forward to this blog.

cburnsi - we're going to China Gate next week, so I'll be sure to ask him about it.

I don't know about Sunday being better than Saturday, but weekends are probably better. Unfortunately with work schedules, Tuesday seems to be the best day for us, although our original plan was Sunday. I guess when we're done I can start a "weekend dim sum" blog Thanks to Brian's command of Chinese, we were also able to special request a few things, so I don't think we'll be missing out too much. In my experience, I've actually had less variety going in on weekends by myself than the last few Tuesdays with Brian.

Thanks for the translation, Kris! I would definitely say that it was a delicious explosion! Also, after peeling off the English ingredient list sticker, I saw a website for this particular product: http://www.suntory.jp/BOMBE Again, it's all in Japanese, so I have no idea what's going on... But it looks cool!

I read your review and you said Brian thought JG had the best dimsum outside of HK. Has he had dimsum in Vancouver/Richmond? Just curious. ← He just moved here about a year ago, and I don't think he's had a chance to eat up there yet. We are planning an extracurricular trip to Sun Sui Wah though, so that'll probably make him change his mind!

I came across this drink at Uwajimaya in Seattle. I had no idea what it was when I grabbed it - I'd never seen it before, so I thought I'd give it a try. Imagine my surprise when I looked at teh ingredients, and saw listed: water, fructose, and CHILI PEPPER. I don't read Japanese, so I don't know what this is exactly, but it had a peppery, cinnamon-like taste. Not really spicy, just sort of peppery with a subtle chili flavor.

A Hong Kong native and self-appointed dim sum expert friend of mine and I have decided to try to eat at every dim sum place in the ID, and I've created a blog to chronicle our adventures. We'll be trying a different place every Tuesday, and after we get done with the ID we'll move on to the rest of Seattle. Check out www.seattledimsum.blogspot.com for reviews. You can read a longer review on there, but I'll add to this thread that Jade Garden is hands down the best dim sum I've ever had in Seattle. Great dumplings with "real" filling - i.e. whole pieces of shrimp/scallop etc. Just very high quality in general. The closest thing I've had in Seattle to San Francisco or Vancouver.

That looks really good! What is the consistency of the fish after they are soaked?

I've been working in a restaurant kitchen for about a month now, and it's the first real restaurant job I've had. So far I've made it with only a few scrapes and cuts from errant knife work, but a sick part of me deep down has been waiting for that one great burn or slice that will put me up in the ranks of my much injured coworkers. The other night things got really hectic during the dinner rush, and I was simultaneously pulling pans out of the oven and making salads. At one point, I grabbed a hot pan with a towel, but got the angle wrong and half of my palm was on the hot metal. I was so frazzled that I didn't even care, and I got a nice big welt on my hand to boot

The tap water here is no bottled water, but it's acceptable. Pretty much everyone I know has a water pitcher with a filter, and that seems to do the job pretty well.

I agree that the berries and cream tastes a lot like a worse knock-off of the Dr. Pepper kind. The strawberry one was a lot better though - it actually tasted strawberry-y. Not like real strawberries, but very much so of fake strawberries, and also had more of a cream flavor than the berry one. I'd pick up the strawberry again, but I'd like it if they made it in a non-diet version. I'll have to be on the lookout for that lime berry one too, didn't see it when I picked up those two though.

Happy to report that I woke up feeling great this morning. The mess in the kitchen, on the other hand, was not fun to wake up to