nakji

It's sad to lose something like that. Do you think it could be re-created with a regular pound cake recipe?

That's real winter food, right there. I like 'em with sour cream and applesauce, but more than three? Not happening.

Chocolate cake with boiled frosting is an excellent combination. Cake is one of those things I always want to have around the house to eat, but since I'd be the only one eating it, that would be a sure path to caloric ruin. My top vote has got to go to carrot cake, though. Whenever I see that on a menu, I can't resist.

In the eG Forums management team, we do our best to be responsive to the needs of Society members. We hear from you through the PM system, email at the feedback account, and more. One thing we've heard loud and clear over the last several months was that, in our interest to keep things organized, we were merging new topics too quickly into old ones. With our new moderation management system, we have a broader range of tools for handling merges, including the ability to tag something for merging after the initial new topic energy dies down a bit. As a result, you'll be seeing fewer merges of new, exciting topics right off the bat, as we wait for the topic to fall off the active list before we slide it into the more organized archives. That means if you're seeing a topic that we've discussed before, we're probably letting it "find its feet" before merging it in to previous discussions. Keeping our forum discussions lively, active, and organized is an important part of what our volunteer staff does. If you have any more suggestions, please feel free to contact us through the channels mentioned above.

Yeah, radish kimchi with rice and egg for breakfast - breakfast of champions, right there.

A Tale of Two Boroughs is still going strong, in case you haven't checked in recently. Pam is off this week, so she's asked me to bring you a couple of photos from our next blogger...

Is anyone doing noodles? This piece in the NY Times made me think of it.

It looks like he's taking a more political turn - I wonder if his op-ed pieces will include recipes? I guess we'll be seeing more Michael Pollan-style pieces?

Mark Bittman bids farewell to the Minimalist in the New York Times Dining section. I'll miss him, quite frankly. His style of cooking - make do with what you've got; simplify a dish if you need to; don't be afraid to try new things; cook on a hotplate if you must; reexamine the tools in your kitchen periodically - I think makes cooking accessible to a lot of people who are afraid of it; thinking they need special equipment or ingredients they see on TV. And he helped bring us Jim Lahey's no-knead bread, so. From his farewell piece,

I'm happy to see that, almost entirely by accident, I follow all your rules for good coffee. Beans on the counter; stored in an old Illy can, a superstition I picked up a few years ago; beans are fresh roast locally and come from Yunnan; beans ground daily, as the grind is the only noise that really wakes me up in the morning; water is filtered, since it's all I drink anyway; and then brewed with boiled water than has rested - since I put it on the boil and wander away to dispense with other minor tasks. Best and only cup of coffee I get all day unless I have time to stop into my roaster - which is virtually never. Your Chinatown snowman shot made me smile, too - we just had a snowfall, and every shop had a snowman out front with improvised hats. No traffic cones, though. I'm wondering - can you speak English in those shops or do you muddle through in Chinese? Also: shots from Eataly made me snivel a little.

Agreed! Pork with apples and onions, that's what I remember.....*sigh. My books are all in a box in the attic at my parents' house, otherwise I'd be cooking along with you.

My grandmother has a set of this as well - she and I share a passion for dishes. When I moved to China, I sent five boxes of kitchen equipment and serving ware on ahead of me, most of which I'd collected in Vietnam, Korea, and Japan. When I arrived and picked them up from my company fixer, who had signed for them and was keeping them, she asked me what they contained. I replied "Dishes." To which she said, "You sent china to China?" I love subtly patterned bowls and pottery for serving. I agree with Prawncrackers - sometimes the colour, shape and texture can make a dish "pop" as much as a plain white dish. I have some plain white soup bowls and coffee mugs, however - those get a lot of play, too, but the shape and the texture of them say more to me than the colour. They're quite heavy, with tiny ridged rings around the inside. As for plating, I always plate in the kitchen if it's western food. My family always did this growing up, I think because both my parents came from large families that couldn't count on family service to make sure everyone got a fair portion! If I've made an Asian dish, it gets plated as well, but we serve ourselves family style with bowls of rice.

Amen. I gave up on sandwiches a while ago. Now I repurpose whatever was dinner the night before. I'm a filter-over-cup brewer, too. I've got my time down to about 6 minutes, but mostly because my grinder is the small-cup attachment to a blender. Very jealous of "Rocky".

My first attempt: After "kneading": I put it on the towels rather than parchment, as it's much cheaper to wash them than it is for me to procure new parchment paper. I thought that the 1 tsp of salt made for a good enough flavour. The crust was very crisp, and the crumb was quite moist. I was disappointed with the height, though - it didn't rise much in the oven. I've got another one going now, this time with 2 tsp. of salt for comparison. I'll heat the pot for a bit longer, I think to try to get more oven spring. Otherwise I'm quite happy.

I'm wondering what we'd call this in English: The label says 小白菜 (xiaobaicai) - it's a sort of bok choy that comes together in a short, wide head.

Oh yeah, sides...you've got to have a lot of sides... I like some sort of salad with creamy sesame dressing; pickles or kimchi; fried potatoes with garlic salt; fried chili peanuts....

Annalisa tomatoes from Italy. They have Asian distribution I guess. They're not San Marzano, but they're incredibly sweet.

I often do hotpot on the coffee table, a leftover habit from when I lived in Japan. I have a low-profile hotpot plate and pan that makes it easy to reach in, but you could sit people around on proper chairs so you're able to see in the pot. The great thing about hotpot is the minimal prep and festive atmosphere - the bad thing is the clean-up! You should get everyone to wear aprons to avoid the splash back.

Maybe it lets the cheese "breathe" somewhat? I like it for wet vegetables like greens for the same reason.

ACCORDION FILE! That's genius. I have one going for all the brochures and business cards to places I've travelled, but I never thought of one for recipes. Here's our EatYourBooks topic. When I started out with them, about 20% of my library was unindexed - probably because I have a lot of less popular regional books. Since then, they've indexed most of these books. Every time I log in I find new recipes up. I think they're hoping to move into magazines at some point, too. Rarerollingobject - Evernote looks great, and has the added bonus of being as-yet untouched by Chinese censors. I have neither an iPad or a smart phone (still working with my classic Nokia 1110 candybar that refuses to die) so picture and searching functionality are less important to me now, but eventually I'll have to upgrade.

A friend gifted me with a large-ish clay pot for Christmas this year, so I thought I'd have a go at this bread. I introduced the recipe to my parents in Canada, who bake it regularly in their cast iron dutch oven, to great success. I have a hard time getting my hands on proper Western-style bread, so if I can get into a rhythm making this bread, it'd improve my morning toast frequency dramatically. I put on a batch this afternoon at 4pm, and am hoping to punch it down tomorrow morning at 8 and bake it off at ten. The dough is shaggy but not nearly as liquid as some of the doughs I have seen in this topic - having just read through all 16 pages! I used dumpling flour, which I hope will have enough gluten to produce a good loaf. I can see that already I should have upped the salt to 2 tsp; I've noted that for future use. With the clay pot, I'm hoping I won't have any sticking issues. I can see that many people eschewed the towels listed in the original recipe; am I right in concluding from the experiments here that a successful loaf can be produced by just mixing down after the long rise in the same bowl as before, and then after the short rise, turning the dough straight from the mixing bowl into the heated pot? Or should I turn it onto parchment or something else? The other question I have is with regards to creating a starter/flavour enhancer. While any bread will be an improvement on the local product, I would like to make a reasonably-decent tasting loaf. On page 10, annecros lists out her method - This addition is meant to improve the flavour, but not replace the yeast in the recipe, is that right?

I think these are meant only to be enjoyed drunk, at 2 am when the local takeaway has stopped delivering.

My climate is so humid, even Morton's clumps. Since moving to Asia, I've used local sea salts whenever I can find them. I particularly liked the product available in Japan. How does "Kosher" salt differ from table salt?

I also have a binder of photocopied sheets from books I've gotten out of the library; copied favourite recipes from large cookbooks I've left behind in Canada; and magazine tear-sheets I don't favour a computer myself mainly because I don't have a printer - so things eventually have to be put on paper by hand so they can come into the kitchen! I like the idea of building a permanent collection of on-line things on GoogleDocs; although it's blocked more often than not in China.

Well, I had no problem with goat's cheese before reading this, but I'm going to take a second look at it now.