nakji

I usually make it just as she says, but then I serve the whole recipe to two people. It seems a little small, but I think it's meant to be served in the Japanese manner, accompanying an array of other dishes. If I make it for more than two, I just double the recipe. Warning: it is incredibly delicious, and there are virtually never any leftovers. When I make it, I serve it alongside other dishes such as Harumi's tofu steak, a pickled vegetable salad, and some rice. As to the cucumbers: first, if you can use anything other than your standard North American supermarket cucumber, do. Ideally you could get your hands on some small pickling cukes, or similar. What you want are the thin, long, green ones with a rough dark green skin. If you've got an Asian market in your neighborhood and feel like a trip, check out what they have. Otherwise, English cucumbers will do in a pinch, but they tend to be quite watery. Then, you don't peel them. Rather, you use some salt as an abrasive exfoliant - rub the salt roughly along the skin, so it scrapes it lightly in some places. You should smell a kind of "green" smell coming off the cucumbers, especially if they're fresh. This process is meant to take the bitterness out of the flesh. Then you rinse the salt off, and cut them as per the recipe. But if you're stuck with a standard cucumber, I would peel and core it as usual.

According to the preface of my copy of Essentials, it's made up of The Classic Italian Cookbook and its sequel. Is there any reason to recommend the original "Classic" over "Essentials"- other than the fact it's no doubt shorter?

Of course, everybody knows about squeezing in a wedge of lemon or lime into a coke to add polish to your soda. And we've all heard the urban myth about dissolving a nail/fly/rational skepticism in Coke overnight. But one of my favourite tea shops takes it to a new level - they make a hot drink by adding a knob of fresh, peeled ginger slices into a mug of coke, boil the whole thing up with the espresso steam wand, and serve it as a restorative tonic. It sounds appalling at first, but my husband ordered it after another friend had one - and is now hooked. It's kind of strange without the characteristic nose-tickling bubble of the carbonation lost through the steaming process, but it's not without merit. There are, of course recipes for coke-on-a-ham and diet coke cake, but I'm interested in keeping the coke as a beverage - what else can you do to it to liven it up?

You got a picture of that fridge? What kind of dimensions are we working with?

Fusion! Well, consider what Pizza Hut does to pizza in Japan to make it more palatable to the local population, then why not twist sushi around? Not sure I'd really want to try it though, although that's more my opinion of Hamachi House than the concept of sushi pizza itself talking.

Mmm, the pork fried with scallions looks excellent. I guess one of the reasons these dishes are starting to look the same to you is that they're all wok-based dishes, which are going to be cooked in similar manners. The ingredients are going to be treated similarly before cooking, and so on. Tell me - does the book include dry-fried items like dry-fried beans, crispy beef, cumin pork ribs or similar?

Well, peeled fruit is better than whole fruit, as risks go. Though I've read that things like watermelon can be risky as well. I try to stick to pineapple, if I must have roadside fruit.

I use a Japanese ginger grater which has a very fine tooth and separates the juice from the pulp to boot. It takes seconds.

I second Marcella Hazan. I've cooked through her"Marcella's Italian Kitchen" (except for the lengthy chapter on veal recipes - I can't get my hands on any veal), and learned so much. The dishes are uniformly delicious; although they will increase your olive oil consumption to an exponential degree. Any time I have a vegetable I don't know what to do with on my hands, I open up one of my Marcella books and sure enough, there's a simple recipe - hardly ever more than a handful of ingredients - that has me looking at that vegetable in a new way. Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking is still in print, isn't it? I just purchased a copy in Hong Kong.

I scrub my ginger with a vegetable brush under running water. If I'm going to chop it, I might sometimes peel it. If I'm grating it, I don't bother. I'm probably dicing with death, or worms, or worse, but there it is. Some recipes call for the peel - I can think of a braised Japanese eggplant one in particular that calls for the eggplant to be braised with dashi and ginger peel, with the peel being removed at the end.

For raw ingredients, I have virtually no rules. If it looks good and other people are buying it, I go for it. Most things that come out of the ground should look like they need a wash before consumption. For cooked things: 1) It must be during an active food consumption time of day, or the stall must have a queue/steady stream of customers. 2) I always request a "fresh" item - nothing that has been pre-made and waiting. Ideally I wait until the vendor is out completely and has to make a fresh batch. Roadside food should necessarily NOT be fast food. 3) I watch to see what other people are paying and have correct change ready. 4) I only buy what other people are buying. If it's a steamed bun vendor who also happens to have a few ears of corn? Never buy the corn. Go to a corn vendor if you want corn.

I love making this recipe by Harumi Kurihara: Steamed Chicken Salad with Sesame Sauce - it's great if you have one or two odd thighs left over. Don't worry that it calls for thighs with skin - I've made it without the skin and just draped some green onions over the meat to protect it in the microwave. You can also serve the salad on a bed of lettuce to stretch it further, if you like. Whenever I make this for a group, there's never a scrap left at the end.

What a beautiful yunomi! I would have bought it on the spot, too. The weather has just turned here, so my teas will all be room-temperature soon. I'm wondering - what's appropriate equipment for not hot tea?

Our congee topic to the rescue! No morning in Suzhou would be complete without the long queues outside our local dumpling and baozi purveyors. They're nothing more than a room full of giant steam baskets with a grandpa at the window taking your order and making change - although correct change is always appreciated. The steam is so much that next to the window at my favourite place, there's a bamboo grove twice the size of all the other stands on the street - the heat keeps it warm all winter. I usually get a giant meat baozi which has a mix of pork and beef and succulent gravy. Most people in line with me are people on their way to work buying whole bags of standard baozi for their co-workers. It's the Chinese equivalent of a donut run, I guess.

I think, and YMMV, that they taste less bitter. The sprouts I usually get are super fresh, and the sprouty-bits at the end have a slightly green taste. If you like that, then why not keep the ends on? With the ends off, they provide more of a crunch and less of a flavour. The difference is subtle, at best. Is that chicken above pre-fried before being sauced? One of my favourite local restaurants does a SAS chicken that is not only the best I've ever had, but I would put up against all comers, and would satisfy Moms and Foodies alike. Their trick is no vegetables or fruit at all; cut the chicken in whisper thin slices, so it's almost like you could be persuaded that you're actually eating chicken skin; fried, and then tossed in a gossamer glaze of sauce, so thin it clings only to the chicken, and creates no pool of sauce on the plate. Now that I have seen chicken cut in this manner, I'm never chunking again.

Try a Vietnamese twist - you always get a nice dipping plate of chopped chili, salt, pepper, and a wedge of lime to squeeze over the lot when sitting down for a meal in Vietnam. If you were up for it, you could make your own flavoured rub by mixing salt, pepper, chili flakes and lime zest.

That does sound incredible. Please take pictures and write down proportions. What kind of apples are you thinking?

I have a lot of rice on my hands lately, since I've been working through my organic rice allotment that comes with my CSA each month. So..my husband's already sick of fired rice, and I thought - "Rice Pudding! That uses up rice! And it's great cold for breakfast!" I'm going to use this recipe cited earlier in the topic, because I have cold rice on my hands anyway. But I'm wondering - how does this thicken? The rice puddings I made (and hated) in my younger days were baked in the oven and I'm pretty sure included eggs. Does the thickening just come from the evaporation?

I made up a bean dip by accident the other day when the can of what I thought were chickpeas turned out to be cannelini beans. Think of it as a mock hummus. One can of white beans, partially drained Juice of half a lemon, or to taste Three tablespoons of tahini One or two cloves of garlic, finely grated 1/3 cup of olive oil Salt and fresh ground pepper to taste And if you're a lover, not a hater of cilantro, a small handful of fresh leaves. Load the lot into a blender, and whizz until it's smooth and flecked with green.

Food in and around Shanghai and Jiangsu does tend to be...subtly flavoured, I think. Using everything at peak freshness is important. I notice you didn't top and tail your bean sprouts. This has always been for me one of those tasks (like peeling chickpeas) that is tedious but rewards the final dish. Have you ever tried trimming your sprouts?

Malaysia another danger zone for me..although I know I probably don't want to live there, the food is very, very tempting in Kuala Lumpur. Anyway, I always love places where you can get a wide variety of cuisines, which is why I'll probably ultimately end up moving to Toronto or Vancouver when I eventually move back to Canada. The thought of being able to walk around and have access to quality Chinese, Vietnamese, Indian, Greek, Italian, Ethiopan food...the mind boggles.

I moved to Hanoi for this very reason. I was travelling there with my husband in 2003, when on our first morning we stumbled out of the hotel and into a bakery with fresh loaves of bread and hot strong coffee. Not five feet away was a pho stand packed with morning commuters having a bowl before riding off to work. We decided then and there we had to live there to fully appreciate all the eating opportunities. We made the move in 2006 and stayed for almost two years. Now, when I visit a new country on holiday, I'm always thinking..."Hmm, could I live here?" This is why I've not yet travelled to Italy. I'm afraid that once I go in, I'll never come out again!

If it's got more green than crinkly pale yellow leaves, you might consider a radish-leaf style kimchi.

That's also popular in Vietnam, but the avocado and SCM are blended together in a smoothie. A bit too sweet/creamy for me - I like something with a hit of acid for contrast.

Really? Have you checked out our yogurt topic? As soon as I started making my own granola, I also started making yogurt. It's a snap - the bacteria do all the work, and all you're out is the original pot of yogurt and a litre of milk.