nakji

Is it possible to work those kinds of dishes into your evening menus, so that you can set aside a small portion to go into lunch the next day? It doesn't have to be the mainstay of the bento, but it can help you round out the empty space. When I moved to Japan, virtually all of my bentos were constructed around leftovers, to help save money. Granted, my husband was better at sucking up the odd crappy lunch more than a pre-schooler would be, no matter what I said to him at the time.

Your case does differ from standard bento, then, in that it gets refrigerated and served cold. I'm not a big fan of cold rice, but sushi rice does seem to hold up better. It's the nori that becomes quite unpleasant after prolonged exposure to rice. In Japan and Korea, onigiri are often sold in cunningly-designed wrappers that keep the nori off the rice until you pull a tab to unwrap it after purchase. How about things that are traditionally bit more risky in a traditional bento - like potato salad or coleslaw? Vietnamese "summer rolls"? (is that what you call them? The ones that aren't fried) Heavily seasoned vegetables, like ones sauteed in sesame oil, soy and mirin taste nice at room temperature or cold.

When you start making bentos, it can seem daunting to keep coming up with fresh ideas to fill the bento. Helen has a great list of pointers here, which I must quote for you here, they were so useful for me: Especially useful is thinking about how you can re-purpose dinner for the next day's lunch. Fried rice with a bit of egg, chopped carrot, and frozen peas, packed with a spoon for easy eating, is a great way to reuse rice and bits of vegetables. I used to keep a small freezer container full of vegetable ends for just this purpose. Egg dishes like tamago-yaki seem appropriate as well. You can vary them by adding things like chopped mushrooms, leeks, sundried tomatoes...whatever PJ likes. Would korroke suit the school's dietary needs? Little fried cakes of potato mixed with curry, or bean would be great to make up in a big batch, and leave in the freezer, to help you round out the lunches. I've also use bean dip made with cannelini beans simmered in tomatoes and olive oil to stuff pita for quick vegetarian sandwiches.

I'm confused the more I read the reactions about the demise of Gourmet. I don't read American food periodicals regularly due to cost and availability, so I don't have my own opinion on what the magazine is today, but I'm seeing two general kinds of reaction emerge: Ruth Reichl saved/modernized Gourmet and Ruth Reichl ruined Gourmet. It seems the audience for the magazine was divided over what they expected the magazine to deliver. If the magazine used to be less ad-driven, but is now, in its ad-heavier version, being shuttered due to decreasing ad revenue, we can only wonder if it was ever profitable. I guess advertisers saw that their market for Viking ranges and Italy wine tours (or similar) shrinking, and reacted accordingly. I wonder if anyone with older, pre-Reichl copies, could tell us the type of ads the magazine used to run in comparison to recent issues. Has there been a dramatic change?

I picked up a more traditional Oolong in Shanghai over the weekend - not a Tie Guan Yin, but a more traditional darker-style. A good all-round tea for serving with meals, I think.

Matcha springs to mind almost immediately, of course. Okinawans also enjoy bitter melon scrambled with ham and egg - or is it spam?

Oh the Sainsbury cookbooks. My aunt used to bring over the in-store magazines for me when she'd come to visit my Mum. I used to dance around her suitcase waiting for them to be pulled out, along with a small bag of Thornton's fudge or chocolate eggs, depending on the time of year. Then I'd spend the next week or so, slowly melting each piece of candy in my mouth while turning the pages, sounding out exotic ingredients like "parma ham" and "punnets of raspberries" and "elderberry cordial" in my head. There was an issue with a recipe for a cheese croquette made out of a whole camembert, and a chocolate cake make by smushing a whole tray of Belgian chocolates into a frosting for a chocolate layer cake that I remember to this day. I wish I could get my hands on them now. As for Canadian books - it's been a while since I looked at Canadian cookbooks, but I recall the the fine editors at Canadian Living publish a range of workable, basic cookbooks for the home cook. My mother tried a recipe a month from their magazines, and while the recipes worked, I can't remember any of them being standouts, flavour-wise. Then there is the low-fat, cutesy Looneyspoons and its successors, which I've never been able to get over the recipe names and ingredient substitutions long enough to cook from. I understand they're quite popular, though, and made the writers very wealthy women. The only Canadian cookbook I've purchased is Vij's Elegant & Inspired Indian Cuisine (Douglas & McIntyre), which I bought after trying their amazing tamarind-marinated chicken recipe from the foodtv.ca site. It's not there anymore, but the recipe for beef short ribs in cinnamon and red wine is.

I wonder what will happen to the name? It's hard to imagine a magazine with this much name-recognition and history vanishing completely. I haven't bought either Gourmet of Bon Appetit in over a year - was there a definable editorial viewpoint that differed between the two?

Very cute! How was it received by PJ? I like the peas, corn, and tomatoes on the pasta - they add some colour. How does PJ generally feel about raw or crisp vegetables? Lightly steamed broccoli florets or carrot sticks with a squeezy of ranch dressing are great ways to add colour and fill any empty spaces in the box.

I have a Japanese porcelain ginger grater, which I picked up at the 100-yen store. You grate the ginger on the nubbly bits on top, and the juice pools along the side, which you can then pour off. I probably use about a half teaspoon to flavour my cucumbers. I imagine ginger juice procured by other means would work as well, though.

I brewed up a genmaicha that I just received from a friend in Japan. An excellent toasted cup, I used boiled spring water from the kettle, as opposed to my lower-temp water from the machine, and infused for about thirty seconds. A lot of toasted flavour, which is what I like, and not a lot of tea flavour. The second infusion had a much more of the "green" taste, and a milder rice punch.

Cucumbers, sliced, tossed and left to sit in a teaspoon of salt and a tablespoon of sugar for fifteen minutes. I pour the liquid off, and then dress them at the last minute with a bit of ginger juice and a splash of rice vinegar. This is the salad I put on the table most nights.

Sorry, i should add that mul yut is very pale - almost clear in colour. Light corn syrup would be a good substitute.

I choose the Revised Romanization of Korean! I'm pretty sure the malt syrup is made from barley, but it doesn't look anything near as dark as brewers malt.

Mul yut is a light-coloured syrup, isn't it? To this day, I'm not sure what exactly it's made from, but I have successfully substituted corn syrup into recipes calling for it. It doesn't contribute much in flavour, just liquid stickiness. You could use honey, but the flavour is more pronounced, and corn syrup is cheaper, I suppose.

A bag of genmaicha just flew in from Japan along with a friend of mine. I forgot to ask the provenance, but from the package, it looks like the tea is from Mie and Nara prefectures, while the rice is from Hokkaido. I normally like genmaicha for breakfast, as it reminds me of the years I spent drinking Korean nok-cha during my early morning classes there. Tonight I needed a mild pick-me-up after dinner. It's perfectly toasty.

Nuts! I've already pitched the bones! Well, the stock did provide an excellent soup base, and I'll know next time. I was expecting a more yellow colour to my stock, and it was quite light. What uses do you put your second-run stock to?

Thanks! Those tones will help my communication efforts. Most of the tea shops on my road sell bulk tea available by weight - the one I visited had five or six bulk oolongs, plus a variety of other greens and floral teas. I'm looking forward to experimenting.

I've seen this oil for sale in the supermarket. It's quite expensive - at least as much as the imported olive oils. I read about it in Fuschia Dunlop's Revolutionary Cuisine, but haven't seen any mention of it elsewhere. Does anybody use this oil, and how do you use it? Is it mainly used for health reasons, or has it got a distinct flavour?

Excellent. Is it possible to ask you to supply me the tones for those names, since I'll have to ask for them orally? I'm not sure my local tea shop speaks enough English to ask specific questions, but I'll give it a go. And for the record, freshly roasting houjicha is one of my top-ten favourite smells in Japan! I'm living in Suzhou, with fairly regular access to Shanghai. I'm going to assume the availability of fine tea is quite good where I am, since I'm in a fairly rich province. More of a problem in Suzhou will be my ability to communicate what I'm looking for. My husband, who speaks more Chinese than I do, was in charge of the buying yesterday and almost bought me a whole jin of the TGY! When I gasped, he said he didn't think 500g of tea was that much. It's nice to know I can ask for a taste - that really is the best way to know for sure.

I made my first chicken stock yesterday in anticipation of the return of hot soup season. I used Barbara Tropp's method from Modern Chinese Cooking, but leaving out the ginger, so I can use it with dishes from varying cuisines. I broke up a raw chicken myself, and threw in the feet, neck, legs, and back, but drew the line at including the head, and that went into the bin. I didn't roast or brown them first, just covered them with water and threw in the bottom of a smashed chinese leek. The recipe didn't call for any salt, so three hours of simmering later, I have a nice, relatively clear, extremely chicken-y stock without the sodium-intense flavour I usually associate with commercial stock. Ms. Tropp suggests that the stock be salted once it's been added to the final recipe, which seems easily enough done. The yield after using a very small chicken was about four cups of stock - I have frozen some and kept aside the rest for soup. It was hardly any work at all once I got through the chicken with my cleaver. I'm not sure why I never made it before, come to think of it. I guess I'd been pretty skeptical of all the pallid home-made "chicken soup" I ate when I was younger, made with leftover carcasses from roast chickens. Is there a difference between stocks made with fresh bones and ones made with already cooked bones?

Wholemeal Crank, what excellent and detailed notes. I'm starting to get a feel for the process, although I can see I'll have to invest in some more technical method of measurement than the spoon and cup I'm currently using! Speaking of the set-up, here's a picture: As you can see from the picture, my current set-up is pretty basic. That being said, my jug does have a barrier that comes down and keeps most of the leaves out. More problematic, I suspect, is its capacity - about 600 ml. Before coming to China, I would have said "oolong and jasmine", with oolong having a more traditional toasty flavour profile than the Tie Guan Yin. Having tried both Tie Guan Yin and a Pu'er, I quite like them both, and would like to try more types of these teas. Uh...yes, and no. I have a 200 ml white coffee cup, and some small-ish bowls I've been using for dumpling dip vessels. And some sake cups, which are a decent size, but are black, which doesn't so much for appreciating the colour of the tea. It's easy enough for me to acquire plain white or glass cups cheaply, though, considering where I am. No. Chinese tap water, I'm told, is not potable. I have spring water delivered, and the "hot" spout on the water machine keeps it at a consistent 71o C. I also have a kettle.

Are they water lily stems or lotus stems? I was reading a recipe recently - I of course can't find it in any book, that recommends lotus stems as a substitute for lotus root when they're in season. I treat my lotus roots with a blanching in acidulated water, followed by an immersion in a 50:50 ratio of rice vinegar and sugar. Not sure how Khmer that is, but they're tasty. If the holes are big, what I've seen here in China is the root stuffed with glutinous rice and then simmered in a sweet syrup. Sticky and yummy. If the roots are more like celery, though, a stir-fry with some ground pork flavoured with kampot peppercorns, cilantro roots, and garlic would taste great. If they seem starchy, you might want to blanche them first.

Well, I've just tried my first Tie Guan Yin; while visiting a local shop (I'm in China) I asked for an oolong because I like drinks with roasted/toasty flavours. Imagine my surprise when, after purchasing a small bag, I brewed it up to discover a delicate, floral tea that outstrips my favourite jasmine tea in light flavours. I love it, but I still crave a roasty tea, for when I want a more intense taste. I can see from the extremely detailed information in this topic that region or name alone may not be enough to distinguish a tea's flavour; what should I be looking for in the tea itself that will help me find a more roasted tea? I assume a darker leaf? A toasty smell? Or is this enough? And is there a producer that does produce a more roasted TGY? Additionally, if a more roasted TGY is difficult to find, what other sorts of oolongs should I be looking for to find this flavour?

Yes, the leaves were very green. Picture: It was so floral, you're right - for me it tastes better than jasmine, and I'll no doubt replace my jasmine habit with this tea, as it's floral without being perfume-y. It's such an amazing difference- it's like I'd never drunk tea before trying it. This sounds like the sort of oolong I'm used to, and love. I have some specific questions about these teas, which I'll take over to the Oolong topic.