nakji

I have two favourite recipes I like to cook with beans. Great Northern white beans are great cooked with some wine and garlic, then finished off with sauteed leek and some creme fraiche. I like to use canned cannelini beans with another can of tomatoes, about a quarter cup of good olive oil, and some garlic. Lots of fresh ground pepper and some salt, then cooled and blended with a bit more olive oil and chopped italian parsley - it makes a great dip, or sandwich spread for vegetarians. What are some other things that I can do with beans? I have about 250g of dried kidney-type spotted beans that I'm trying to decide what to do with. Any good soup recipes out there?

I had excellent meatballs from my school cafeteria last week. They were basically ground pork seasoned with green onions and five spice powder, and served in a light sweet and sour sauce. Very excellent, and very unexpected - I'd never thought of putting five spice into meatballs. As for microwaving meatballs, I used to make big batches up, fried, then freeze them and microwave them as needed for bento, which I understand is a pretty common practice in Japan. I had a little microwave steamer that I used, and I goosed them with a couple of squirts of Bulldog sauce before zapping them. They came out nicely and held up well in the lunch box.

I don't know how much of a norm rice and miso soup is for breakfast anymore in Japan, at least with younger people in the cities. Most of the Tokyoites I worked with in Japan ate melonpan and other assorted sweet "bread" products sourced from the 7-11 on their morning run to work. One savoury thing that was universally popular, and I which I enjoyed frequently for breakfast, was onigiri. A nice tuna mayonnaise onigiri washed down with bottled green tea from Family Mart is a breakfast of champions.

Yes, at finer ramen-ya, they ask you how you want your noodles done. If you like them tooth-y as I do, you can request "katame". I think the frozen ones are fresh noodles, frozen instead of dried, as Susan has suggested. The best noodles are fresh-made, of course, but whether the frozen or dried ones are better probably depends on the quality of frozen ones you have access to. If they're made locally, then frozen, I would get the frozen ones. But if the noodles are frozen in a solid icy block that looks like it's been melted and frozen, I would avoid those. Common sense, I suppose, but there it is.

I have twelve cookbooks on my shelf. I use five frequently, and by frequently I mean, I pull them off the shelf and cook from the recipe, at least once a week. One or two more I have the recipes I like memorized, but I keep around in case I need to pass the recipes along. My high usage rate could be tied to the frequency of my moves - every two years I purge virtually all of my possessions saving only the things I use frequently, as I have to justify shipping costs. Those that made the cut are: Marcella Hazan: Marcella's Italian Kitchen Harumi Kurihara: Japanese Home Cooking Debra Samuels :The Korean Table Fuschia Dunlop: Revolutionary Chinese I also habitually use Bittman's How To Cook Everything for oddments like pancake proportions and cooking times for meat, and for things I should know but don't, like how to make an apple crisp. I like it because it's light for its size. Usually when I planning my grocery shopping each week, I set these on the table and page through them as I make up my menu plan and grocery list.

I've been trying to work this out this week, but since we shop at multiple places, I don't keep a running tally. I'd say we spend about $40 a week for staples, meat and some vegetables at Wal-mart. Then another $1-$2 a week at the wet market for vegetables. Another $5 for bread from the bakery, plus $20 for cheese and the like from the foreign foods store. Coffee is another $10, but I can't go without it. I'll call it $75 for two people for a week, not counting eating out once or twice.

That's a pretty genius method. Do you think it's possible to freeze pre-assembled individual apple crisps and bake them as needed? Would the apples suffer much, I wonder?

That's an excellent excuse. If PJ likes olives, they make excellent fillers to plug up any gaps in the lunch box. This? made me laugh out loud. Nevertheless, having systems like this are key bento strategy. But doesn't the maki get rubbery overnight?

I never used to own any cookbooks, because I move around so frequently, and books are expensive to ship. But then the odd booklet here and there started to slip in, and I heard about some great books I wanted to try via the forums here, such as Dorie Greenspan's Baking..., before I knew it I had a bit of a bookshelf of cookbooks started. I can still count them all, so that's keeping my freight costs down. The books I like the best are ones where the author has a clear voice that speaks to me and convinces me to try their recipes. Great pictures are nice, but I'm sold by a story.

Don't onions get stronger as they age? Where are you getting your onions from? It could be that they're older or being stored improperly. If you get stuck with a sharp one, soak thin slices in ice water for ten minutes or so, it'll leach out the bite.

I've known a lot of people, especially single people or people with small families, that do this. The theory is that cooking a too-small batch of rice in the cooker doesn't work as well as cooking a regular-sized batch. I've heard some people say they do it to save power, although I'm not sure how accurate that is - I guess the microwave for five minutes would draw less power than 20 minutes of the rice cooker.

I've often thought curries and soups taste better when you "cook" them, then cool them to room temperature, then bring them back up to a simmer again. It could just be my perception, but my Nanny always said a soup tasted too "fresh" if you had to serve it right away.

The only chili sauce I have on hand right now is a bottle of Vietnamese sri racha, and a tub of gochujang, but I don't either are appropriate mixes for cheese (or are they?), so I'll have to chase down a bottle of tabasco. In the meantime, I might add some dijon to help balance the cheese flavours. As for reheating - I'm staring down the rest of the pan for lunch, and yeah, it's not going to be as good as right out of the oven.

You too? I thought it was just the recipe I was using. My granola tastes great, but I'm not getting any big chunks, and I figured it had to be a binding or liquid problem. Is raw butter just what it sounds like...butter?

My Korean friends also swore by their pressure cookers for cooking rice - mixed or not. I tried it a couple of times before the seal on my old pressure cooker broke, and it worked a charm. 15 minutes, and the rice was on the table. I imagine it would help with the speed of brown rice, too.

Thanks for that, Kent! I'll add my findings: The xiao long bao I had at Crystal Jade were the first (of many, I hope) that I had, so it's hard for me to objectively rate how good they are other than to say the skins were sufficiently thin enough to make lifting them gently on to the spoon, before poking a hole and sucking out the broth, delicate business at best. My husband lost his broth to an overzealous pinch, and I laughed at him while guzzling mine. Obligatory pic: Special mention goes to their noodles, which had irregular edges that spoke to being handmade. Toothsome and tossed with pork, dark soy, and greens in perfect balance. My husband, who finds noodles "boring" unless they're pho, ate them, so. Hot, oily deliciousness. Turnip cakes had the most amazing skins - how do they do that? We had some other, less memorable meals in alleys and such, but we went to Lost Heaven for Yunanese food for our anniversary dinner, hoping for a bit of change in atmosphere. I's pretty scene-y, but the menu was filled with dishes I'd go back to try, and there was a wine list, which I appreciate. I expected it to be filled with ex-pats, what with the English name and all, but it wasn't. Heavy on the decor, with ladies in national dress at the front door as greeters, I nevertheless enjoyed to food. Lamb samosas with cumin, cilantro and a fruit sauce that I'm pretty sure wasn't mango, as I liked it. Scrumptious chicken I'll be making and claiming as my own invention. Crispy pan-seared chicken breast with a sauce of chopped cilantro, green chilis, ginger, garlic, spring onions in equal measure, with rich chicken broth poured over: A beef rendang-style dish. Bland and dry, sadly. Not one of their recommended beef dishes, but I wanted a stewed dish to complement the fried chicken one. I should have asked. Prolonged menu consultation seems the norm here, and I'll have to get more confident about that. Tamarind-broth vegetables with pork ribs. I ordered this as a vegetable dish, as the pork wasn't listed on the menu. In China, pork is a condiment like salt, I guess. Fabulous, anyway, and the broth was just the thing with steamed rice. All with a Clare Valley Reisling. I can't wait to get back to Shanghai and do some more eating.

Rice dope! That's what I call it. When I first moved to Korea, I was so ignorant, I thought people really liked to feed birds, and that's why they were all buying tub after tub of mixed grains. I know now that the "birdseed" is an excellent way to improve the taste and healthiness of white rice. The rice additives "bar" at my supermarket is now one of my favourite places. I like to mix red rice or millet in a 80:20 ratio, and have never worried about cooking times. I like beans in rice, but can never get the cooking times sorted out, although I understand modern rice cookers can deal with this. Occasionally I'll buy a pack of pre-mixed rice dope that can be dropped into the rice before cooking. The rice "bar", just to tantalize you, has: green soybeans millet some sort of corn flakes rolled oats barley mochi rice red rice dried corn adzuki beans big white beans kidney beans dried green peas And so on. Barley mixed with rice is great, but I've never enjoyed brown rice.

The flavours here sound intriguing, but when I think of an asian pear, I think of more of a textural element, and less of a flavour. In Korea, julienned nashi pear is used as a crispy garnish for cold noodle soup "mul naengmyeon". Have you thought of using the pear more texturally? Like in a cubed salsa-like garnish, maybe mixed with grated ginger, to drop on the top before serving?

This was on the menu tonight, and I made my standard pan, which uses a bechamel with a mix of old cheddar and parmesan, buttered breadcrumbs and macaroni. I didn't have any one hand, so I subbed in ditalini, which worked even better, I thought, at maintaining cube integrity after I cut it out of the pan than regular mac. I don't know why, but in my head, mac and cheese has to come out of the pan in a square, and hold like that, or it's just not a success. My husband asked me where I'd gotten the recipe, which made me stop and think - I don't use one, and haven't since I started making it as a kid. I don't know when the idea of mac and cheese made with bechamel came into my head, or why it stayed there, but that's all I've ever made.I'll have to use the trick of hot sauce next time - are we talking tabasco here? I served mine with sauteed green beans and a nice chardonnay.

What kind of picky eater are we talking about? Because rogan josh converted me to lamb, and I think that might technically fall under the "lamb stew" heading. But if said picky eater doesn't like "spicy" things, it might not help.

Italians eat sweets for breakfast, too, don't they? Biscuits and the like? That seems like an excellent thing to get away with if you can. I like sweet and salty equally, but savoury tends to set me up better for the day. A breakfast of blueberry muffins leaves me starving by ten. Sweet breakfasts like bread-type things - muffins, pastry, boxed cereal - seem to all win in the prep-time arena, though, they're faster compared to items like a fry-up, pho or congee. You need real infrastructure in the morning to get a bowl of congee or pho first thing. I wish I had some more fast savoury options - the only thing that comes to mind is an omelette or a fried egg. Or buttered toast. There are some dumpling places on my street, but I'm never organized to get in the queue early enough. I've been making my own granola, which I pack with nuts- that helps on the protein front. It's also fast, and portable if I'm running late.

Wait...is there a difference between an apple crumble and an apple crisp? I thought it was just a tomato/tomato thing. What distinguishes the two, to your minds? Is it only the oats that are different? I like a bit of cheddar cheese with my apple baked goods, but I've never thought of actually grating it into the baked goods themselves.

Pancakes. But they must have a crispy ring around the edges to best maintain the butter/maple syrup topping. This should always flow lightly over the top, and never sink into the pancake, rendering it soggy. My husband is a French toast man all the way, so it's really a wonder how we've managed to keep our marriage going this long.

Yesterday I wanted to make an apple crisp to celebrate the start of the fall weather in my neighbourhood. It's not something I've made since living with my parents, where the Purity cookbook ruled for basics like this. I dug out my "basics" cookbook, which is Bittman's "How to Cook Everything" and he was suggesting heretical ingredients (to me) like nuts and coconut. Over in this topic, some Canadians were talking about putting cheese in their apple crisp. That really blew my mind. Cheese. I can only conclude that, true to its name, the Purity cookbook is pretty minimalist with its oat-flour-butter-brown sugar topping, and that I have been limiting myself in apple crisp opportunities. What do you put in your topping, and what kind of apples do you favour underneath?

I find I can communicate reasonably well, and am understood using standard pinyin pronunciation of Mandarin. My point is, I guess, that if you don't need the proper tones, having tones won't interfere with your pronunciation any less than not having them. And if you are trying to speak Mandarin correctly, they make it possible to communicate accurately. Surely I'm not the only person in China using English-language Chinese cook books to try and cook local dishes, while studying the language? There are many flaws with pinyin, I'm sure, but it's the romanisation system we've got - why not use it, rather than some random version of the publisher's choosing? I could argue that the accents on French aren't useful to anyone who hasn't studied French, or may interfere with their pronunciation, but a serious French cookbook would still include them. For those who can speak it, and do know what they mean. An excellent suggestion; however, the publisher has chosen to use traditional characters to "illustrate" the recipes, rather than the simplified versions common to mainland China. In a book about mainland China. Many people would recognize both, I suppose, but my argument is that if there's a system to make a language available to non-native speakers, why don't we expect it to be used in a cookbook about that cuisine? All of that being said, I do quite enjoy the recipes. Last week I tried the farmhouse stir-fried pork with green peppers, p. 85. The green peppers at my local market are quite thin-skinned and have mild heat, and fried up to a nostril-twitching crackle. I didn't have pork belly on hand for the two kinds of pork, so I subbed in smoked pork instead. The smoke and heat made for a great dish, and it wasn't more than twenty minutes from cleaver to table. This will go into my rotation of pork fried with ______ dishes, which I usually hit once a week or so.