nakji

Thanks, I'll report back. The book is Madhur Jaffrey's Recipes from the Indian Spice Trail, and if I recall correctly, it's a Pakistani Kofta curry. I'm looking forward to it. They also put these same meatballs into Chinese hotpot - although since the pot is usually going at temperatures to melt lead, the broth seems overall to be unaffected by their addition.

Ah, the Grand Canal! It's around here somewhere...I know it hits Suzhou at some point, but since we're criss-crossed with canals (big and small) I'm never been sure whether I've seen it or not. At any rate, lots of good stuff here to eat, and easily accessible, too. Since we're such a major domestic tourism destination, there are a lot of dining options. Although Jiangsu cuisine is not really famous in its own right, there is regional representation here as well.

I've been to Malaysia twice this year and bought "Cradle of Flavor" to help recreate some of the really excellent food I had while there. Very happy memories of some of the food courts in KL with pan after pan of vegetable dishes, curries, salads, and rice. I don't have regular access to a lot of the ingredients like kaffir lime leaves, galangal, etc. in this book, but there are a few recipes that will survive minor substitutions intact. Two of which I made this evening to hold in the fridge for Monday's dinner - I love a curry the second day. Green beans with Coconut Milk, p. 216: This is the second time I've made this dish. The combination of green beans and tomato is a classic, and the subtle seasoning - just the shallots, garlic and chili without the galangal and leaves - doesn't compete if you serve it with a curry. Asiah's Eggplant Curry, p. 229 : I'm not happy if a day goes by and I don't get a bit of eggplant. This is one of the nicest preparations I've tried it in lately, although I think I went overboard on the tamarind this go round of making it - Oseland calls for a tablespoon of the thick kind of tamarind pulp thinned in 4 tablespoons of hot water, but I have the liquidy kind. I split the difference and put in three tablespoons of what I had, thinking I could always add more - but the three tablespoons seemed to make it more tart than I recall when I tried this dish earlier in the year. Note to self: always start real low. It's still quite enjoyable, though, and I look forward to heating these up tomorrow night.

I'm making some koftas for a curry later in the week, following a Madhur Jaffrey recipe. I'd like to fry up the meatballs tonight, but then make the rest of the curry later this week. When I go to make the curry, should I add the meatballs from frozen, or let them thaw in the fridge during the day before making up the curry for dinner?

Is she selling something other than her point of view? I didn't read more than a few issues. I can just see a Gwyneth Paltrow line of ...pizza ovens? Kitchen towels? Vegan protein substitutes?

One of my favourite restaurants in Suzhou, Yang Yang Dumpling, is actually right at the end of my alley. I blame this place for not exploring more of what Suzhou has to offer, actually, because it's so conveniently located I can never get up the motivation to go anywhere else. This location, however, has helped us achieve status of laoke（老客) - "old customers", which means we get perqs like not being snarled at when we order and the communal tea pot of barley tea being left on our table a little longer than average. There are two cold dishes I always alternate getting here; one is the standard pickled cucumber, although they do a hot version with strips of fresh red chili and ginger, and rice vinegar instead of black vinegar. The other, which I ordered yesterday, feeds my unholy love for white radish - they chip off thin shards of medium daikon, then marinate them with soy, vinegar, sugar, and sesame oil. We got a plate of their specialty - fried pork dumplings heavily flecked with cilantro and that teaspoon full of rich pork juice inside. They're fried crunchy on one side and thickly doughy on the other side. Their dumpling skins have heft, and you can see the kitchen staff come down from the roof to the kitchen hourly with fresh-made flats. We also love their gan bian dou jiao (干扁豆角）, green beans fried with pork and chilies. Actually, we order this so often that when they hand us the menu they ask us if we want it before we can get our order out. I can't resist eggplant, either, so we got a plate of their hot-plate eggplant - tie ban qie zi (铁板茄子）， in which eggplant sliced lengthwise is stuffed with small nuggets of ground pork, laid on a bed of red onion and cilantro, covered with brown sauce, then wrapped up and served on an iron plate, still sizzling and threatening first-degree burns as it sends up a hot spray of eggplant juice and oil as it's unwrapped. It's located on Shi Qian street, almost directly across from the UNESCO World Heritage Master of the Nets Garden, meaning that they're used to foreigners, and have picture menus to help order, if you need one. They do a mean sweet-and-sour chicken; my co-workers swear by the restorative properties of their hot and sour soup; and as we're approaching hairy crab season, I'm looking forward to the annual installation of their crab tank.

Over in this topic, Fat Guy wrote, And it got me thinking about potatoes in Chinese dishes. As far as I can tell, they're usually used as part of a larger dish as a vegetable, rather than representing a starch mainstay in most of the regional Chinese cuisines - is that an accurate assumption? I've had several potato dishes I've quite liked in China, not the least are the two mentioned in the Northeast Chinese in Flushing topic - the sugar potatoes and the crunchy julienned wok-fried potatoes with green peppers. Although, I was under the impression that these were Xinjiang staples; obviously there's some overlap in the cuisines of these regions. I've also had a crispy potato pancake billed as a Yunnanese specialty in Shanghai that was quite enjoyable and would stand up against any other potato pancake I've ever had. Potatoes are also in braised dishes like "big-plate chicken", and one dish that is another favourite of mine - chunks of potato braised (maybe fried first?) with the small, slightly hot thin-walled green peppers so common here, and eggplant. I don't know the name of this particular dish, but the three vegetables complement each other with taste and texture, and the braising sauce - I'm at a loss to describe it, other than to reckon soy and chili oil are both heavily involved. I'd happily eat this dish over rice for lunch every day if I had to. Are there any other potato greats out there that I'm missing?

Was the jar you got just eggplant, or a mix of marinated vegetables? I can recommend highly Marcella Hazan's recipe for pickled eggplants from her book, Marcella's Italian Kitchen. In fact, if you're interested in learning more about cooking Italian dishes, I found her books a very helpful introduction.

I used to be able to comfortably ignore the existence of Gwyneth Paltrow. Yeah, she'd appear in the odd movie from time to time (ones which I usually enjoyed), but as long as I stayed away from tabloids and E!, I didn't really spend a lot of time listening to her thoughts on food. In 2008, she appeared in that series about touring Spain with Mario Batali, and I figured it was a kind of celebrity stunt. Wasn't she a vegan? What about the jamon Iberico? I never watched it. This week, I was reading through Vogue - something I do from time to time to see what Jeffrey Steingarten is up to. Turns out he's interviewing Gwyneth Paltrow about her lifestyle and food site, "GOOP". Where she's interviewing Jamie Oliver, showing people how to make a basic vinaigrette in a jam jar, and, uh, de-toxing with Chinese medicine cleanses. But is she bringing anything new to the table, so to speak? Anyone out there following what she has to say?

Nothing beeps in my kitchen. The toaster oven dings when the timer expires, but it's quite cheerful. But then, it's also the only appliance I have.

Firefox. It seems sorted now - must have been that glitch. I had recently updated my browser, too.

I wonder if that's why the site keeps on telling me that I'm using Internet Explorer 6, which is not supported. As if I'd use IE /scoff/.

I don't have either Grace Young or Eileen Yin-Fei Lo's books, so I can't comment on either of them - although Chris Hennes has cooked quite a few recipes out of Grace Young's book. I have Barbara Tropp's Mastering the Art..., and have only used it to learn how to season my wok. None of the recipes really speak to me. I can see how it was an important book, but it's not the sort of cookbook that I can grab on a Wednesday night and cook something out of, mainly because I find it hard to read through. I like pictures. I also have Yan Kit-So's Classic Chinese Cooking, and found it great to read through to get a sense of various regions' cuisines, and the technique of cooking with a wok. I don't cook from it very often, though. The book I cook from most frequently is Fuschia Dunlop's Revolutionary cuisine. I can pick it up and bang off many of her recipes in a half hour, using ingredients from my market. I keep meaning to pick up her other book.

Great! I'll check that link out. I usually page through "City Weekend" or "That's Shanghai" to make eating plans before coming into the city, but it's nice to have another source. Great character practice, too.

What is it about those two books that you like in particular? For the record, the restaurant is using the ketchup in their sweet n' sour, unless I miss my guess. The mapo tofu is ketchup-free.

I thought this was the case also (as I had done in the past), but when I went to update my credit card information, they said the account couldn't be linked, and asked for bank account information, thus pissing me off. Anyway, it's an issue with PayPal, not EYB. Well, this is good news, at least!

I see a case of a ketchup a week delivered to the best Chinese restaurant on my street (in China). They ain't serving fries, either.

The Supersizers, a BBC programme does this a bit. Can you get that in the US? I especially love the Elizabethan episode (or was it the restoration?) when they're drunk on small beer at breakfast.

That's too bad. I'm not really keen on linking my bank accounts to PayPal, and some of the information required by that site is not information I can acquire without some back and forth between myself and the bank, which I doubt can be resolved before my free trial is up. I guess I'm stuck.

I tried to sign up for a lifetime membership today, but couldn't make it through PayPal's opaque account set-up system Are there any plans for alternate payment options?

I caved and shelled out the equivalent of $6 for two small avocadoes yesterday. Normally I wouldn't do this, but I was making a Cobb salad and for once, the avocadoes in the display seemed ripe. So I used one up in the salad yesterday, now I'm looking at the left-over bacon bits, cherry tomatoes, Boston lettuce, and the last avocado and thinking....BLATs. Only - the cherry tomatoes pose a problem. Would it be weird to chunk the tomatoes and the avocadoes into a sort of guacamole to spread onto the bread, as a sort of cushion for the bacon?

Alright, here's another stumper: I bought a bag of corn flour at a bulk foods store over the summer, hoping it would be the same as maseca. Only lime treated corn can; how can I tell if I've got the right stuff without mixing up a whole batch?

Ah - "Moichandising!" to quote Spaceballs. Depressing, but understandable. I don't get any food networks, and to be honest, I don't have any networks, I just keep my TV around for watching DVDs. I wonder what the sales are like on those lines? I can't imagine buying any cooking equipment because Bobby Flay or Paula Deen had used it, but then I assume I'm not really the target market.

I love this idea! I haven't seen pantyhose holders around, but I have seen shoe organizers along the same lines. Unfortunately, my kitchen cupboards are completely unusable, due to an ongoing mold problem. I may be able to hang them off the wall, however. If the pockets are opaque, it should solve the light issue.

I just realized all the glass pots I'd been accumulating from the posh German yogurt I buy as yogurt starter make the perfect containers for all the dried spices I brought back to China from Canada with me. And I don't feel a speck guilty about writing on the tops with a Sharpie. Now if I could just figure out what to use as a spice rack...