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I came across a used copy of Culinaria: European Specialties (Vol. 1 and 2) in a used bookshop in Charlottetown, PEI. I couldn't buy them due to luggage space issues, d'oh! I'm keeping an eye out for China at the local Costco, but this: Is a pet-peeve of mine with Chinese cookbooks. I hope at least it's got the correct recipe name in pinyin; something other than names like "pork and bamboo shoots" for the recipes.

And the nice thing about using your cookbooks rather than just the internet is that you know that the recipes come from sources that you trusted enough to purchase a book from, rather than just "the cloud".

Can I just say that I'm enjoying the "location" function? Since I have cookbook collections in two countries, I can make sure I'm searching for recipes in my current location. A small thing, but valuable for me. As someone who has a rather small cookbook collection (I've added 13 to my bookshelf; 11 have already been indexed), I was shocked to see how many recipes I have at my disposal - more than 3000. And I find it almost easier to browse the recipes on a computer screen than through the book; especially with books like "How to Cook Everything". One question: is there an easy way to tag recipes as "tried"?

The autumn is the most beautiful time of year there! Of course you should check out Zenkimchi's site, but one thing I would really recommend doing is to go hiking, if you're up to it, in Bukhansan park, up near Uijeongbu. You can reach the summit easily in the day, then hike down and have dubukimchi and o-gyeobsal at one of the many little huts that dot the rivers at the bottom of the park. Of course, you can load up on gimbap, kyul, and cucumbers before you hike up the mountain at the shops that line the paths on the way into the park. All accessible by subway - the orange line, I think. Other than that, fall is the BEST season for street food. Anywhere is fine, but notable (and popular) spots to find good street snacks are the hoetteok vendors along Insadong - choose the one with the longest queue, they'll have the freshest product. And back in my day, there was a good white-bean waffle vendor outside the gates of deoksugung palace near City Hall station. I'm jealous!

Like calling the chanterelles! I'm hoping my source comes through with another bag this week, so I can try them in rice. Please keep posting;)

I just received about 500g from a friend - I'm tempted to mix it in to regular jasmine rice as about 1/4 of the mix and cook it in a rice cooker. Will it come out too mushy this way? Based on the colour, I suspect it's been commercially processed, if that matters.

Thanks for all the suggestions! My current region is Nova Scotia, but I don't know if we have false chanterelles in the area. The forager was one with creditable experience, and the cleaned, stripped mushrooms were eaten with a steak and a nice tempranillo, with no unduly strange alcoholic reactions. My parents, who'd had another bag previously off the same forager, said they'd cooked them whole and not particularly enjoyed them. I cleaned this batch with a nut pick, lacking a brush, and stripped them as described. They were exceptional sauteed in a bit of butter with pepper. The taste was more of maple than pine for me - I would love, love to try these mushrooms in a Japanese dish, but no hopes of getting another bag before I head back to China sadly. A family of pheasants lives in my family's back garden! My father and I have eyed them hungrily from time to time, but to my mother, they're friends. She'd be annoyed if I hauled out the .22!

Aha. So it just provides the recipe name, book and page number information.

So the idea is that you enter in the ISBN of books you already own, and EYB will index only those recipes for you? What's to prevent you from entering in the ISBNs of books you don't own to access a wider library of recipes?

A pound of chanterelles landed in my lap thanks to my mother's foraging co-worker. My plan is to saute them simply in butter to serve alongside steak. I would have liked to use them in a takigomi-gohan application - cooked in rice and dashi to bring out the piney flavours - but the family wouldn't go for any application that didn't involve dairy and meat. So. Questions: What's the best way to clean them? What does "stripping" mean? Does this mean tearing the mushrooms vertically rather then slicing them with a knife?

Kimchi. In Korea, they have special fridges that are supposed to help keep the kimchi at its appropriate temperature, but one of the side benefits is not getting waves of kimchi smell blown about the kitchen every time you open the fridge.

Mix it with soy sauce and vinegar for a potsticker/dumpling dip.

Even better, one of those wooden spatulas with the hard edge for scraping non-stick pans.

Nova Scotia lobster salad - knuckle and claw meat, with a hint of chopped radish for textural crunch. Soft red potato bread and lettuce. Served to my 89-year-old grandmother to celebrate the start of her "birthday week".

For me, it's my silicon spatula. I'm cooking in other people's kitchens this summer, and I can't count the number of times I've reached for it already only to realize the kitchen I was in didn't have one. Making scrambled eggs, getting lobster salad out of a bowl into a container, deglazing a pan for bacon dressing - three times yesterday I wanted it and it wasn't there. I'm going to start packing it as a matter of course now. Also: tongs.

I love a good aloo gobi for dinner - potato and cauliflower are hearty, so it's filling, but they're also cheap and last in the crisper well, so I can buy the ingredients early in the week and still rely on the ingredients being usable at the end of the week. It reheats well for lunch the next day, too.

So...what kinds of vinegar are people using? I use Maille or Kuhne since that's usually all I have available. For Asian dishes, I use Mizkan rice vinegar; unless I'm finishing a dish or making a dipping sauce, when I use a fine Chinkiang.

A whole stuffed chicken! I've never thought of grilling a full chicken like that before, although I've heard of doing turkeys in that style. Do all the juices just drip onto the coals, or do you try to save them somehow? I had a holiday in Malaysia in February this year, and I'll be heading back in three weeks for some more roti canai and satay love. Everywhere we ate we had something we loved, so as soon as I got back from my trip, I ordered "Cradle of Flavor" and had it sent to my parents' house in Canada for some holiday cooking with my Dad, who spent a couple of years of his childhood stationed with his family in Singapore. Especially delicious were the grilled chicken satay we had in Kuala Lumpur. I wanted originally to take a stab at the satay recipes for this cook-off, but the only chicken around the house was a Costco-pack of chicken wings. Since I didn't want to go and buy more chicken when we had two kilos of wings sitting around anyway: Grilled Coconut Chicken with Lemon Basil. This recipe has you cooking your chicken in a curry paste-and-coconut milk based sauce, then grilling them off after the chicken has mostly cooked through. Since I used chicken wings rather than a whole cut-up chicken as called for, it actually turned out to be a pretty quick dish to put together - after I'd done all the prep for the curry paste, of course. And as I said before, the skin-to-meat ratio was succulent. Paste: Made with fresh turmeric, lemongrass, garlic, and more. Initial cooking on the range, in the curry sauce: The curry sauce had lemon basil, coconut milk, and kaffir lime leaves. Onto the grill: Turned: Thoughts: These cooked rather quickly on a gas grill, and were tender and juicy, which is what I'm looking for in a grilled chicken. The flavour penetrated, and there was significant finger-licking involved in the eating. I served the extra curry sauce, reduced, on the side for mixing in with rice. I cooked these on a gas grill, so it was irrelevant this time, but in Malaysia, whenever I saw chicken (or anything) being grilled, the grill master furiously fanned the coals once the meat hit the grill. I asked why over here. But through both the satay and the coconut chicken recipes, author Oseland says nothing about fanning your coals. I haven't read through the book carefully, but I can only conclude he considers it an unimportant step for cooking chicken on a western grill. Does anyone fan their coals when they use their grill?

It's summer, and fresh raspberry season, so I dug out Dorie and made a tart: "Quick Classic Berry Tart", p. 377. As you can see, I under-baked the crust, but for my first attempt at both pate sablee and pastry cream, I was very pleased. The tart came out perfectly, despite such user errors as putting the egg into the pate sablee at the wrong time, using salted butter, and not having any jam to glaze the berries with. It was quick and easy to put together, and the best part was watching the family polish it off in one sitting.

I usually use rice vinegar. It's mild and cheap where I live. Of course, you could always try to make your own: Making vinegar topic Making wine vinegar topic

Thanks! I won't be back in Shanghai until September most likely, but when I am, it's on my list. Any other menu stars to recommend?

I just checked a copy of "Out of Old Nova Scotia Kitchens" from my library, which has a lot of old-school, Maritime/New England-style recipes. Off the top of my head, Blueberry Grunt and Hodgepodge come to mind. Baked Beans?

Bento rice is usually eaten at room temperature; some safety precautions are necessary, but it's generally safe. Isn't the problem when it's kept in chafing dishes?

That is my main complaint about sauces and marinades for my grilled chicken; they never seem to truly penetrate. I made the Grilled Coconut Chicken with Lemon Basil last night (pictures to follow). Braising before grilling worked great for infusing the flavour, and rather than using a whole chicken, I used what I had on hand: chicken wings. The ratio of skin to meat meant the flavour really carried through the chicken, and there was no bland white meat untouched by the sauce.

I just saw this yesterday when I was searching availability for The Essentials of Mexican Cuisine - I didn't know it was a newly available book. I can't imagine ever being able to cook from it, but I'd love to hear more about the dishes from Oaxaca.