nakji

I'm cleaning out my cupboard as I'm moving. If anyone has any idea for projects involving corn meal, chinese black vinegar, fish sauce, and spring roll wrappers, I'm all ears.

Are the cookies thin, chewy, and brown? What makes them so addictive? I once tried a Martha Stewart recipe for chocolate chip cookies, but they turned out much thinner and browner than I like - they were too chewy and crunchy, and not cakey enough for my liking. I like plump chocolate chip cookies, ever-so-slightly-underbaked in the centre.

Spongy is an excellent way to describe the texture. My pleasure. But how do you usually prepare your tofu? If you crumble it into a salad, or use it in a stew as Max suggests, the looser texture wouldn't be so noticeable. I often have an extra bit of tofu left over that I usually throw away. I think I might start freezing it to add into hot pot.

Tofu brains? What an excellent name, I can't wait to see how you make it. Is it a Japanese of Chinese dish? Okay, after a day in the fridge, the tofu externally still held its integrity, but the inside was a noticeably more crumbly. It also let out a lot of water, so you'd have to be sure to drain it well.

Well, this worked a treat. I used three teabags to a cup, then diluted it with a litre of cold water. Perfect for me, since I don't use ice. Herbal teas should be marked as such. Iced tea should be a guarantee of a certain product.

I have mise en place cups because of all the prepped ingredients, but re-purposed yogurt containers or whatever would work as well. My Dad always used to try in Canada, and he'd get really frustrated. Of course, electric heat is not as responsive as gas, and it's difficult to go from really strong heat to low heat. You can use two burners set to different heats if you don't mind having an open burner and switching pots around. My Dad felt that you couldn't get an electric burner hot enough, so he would pre-heat the burner, then put on a heavy cast-iron pan that he hoped would retain more heat, pre-heat that, and then start frying. But once it was hot, it would stay that way. I'm not sure how successful this was.

Yes, I think this step is really important; Overnight steeping will give you a nice strong product that will stand up to a lot of ice. I hate ice in my drinks, so I may prefer a weaker drink.

Sichuan chili peppers aren't chilis at all - they don't produce so much heat in the mouth; rather they numb your tongue a little. I don't particularly care for the sensation myself, but I find it wholly different from the heat generated from chilis. I'm not sure if it's the same plant or not, but Japanese sansho produces the same feeling - you should be able to find little green bottles of the powder in an Asian market.

Yes, yes, yes. I want to report that I was shocked by it, but actually I was bored by it. I think the texture is really what some people find challenging, rather than the taste. But either way, I didn't react nearly as strongly to it as I have to other foods in Asia. If it shows up on the table, I'll eat it. If not, I don't go looking for it.

Okay, I had some fried tofu leftover, and I just put it in the freezer. I'll defrost it in a day or so and let you know how crumbly it gets.

If the lemongrass is fairly fresh, three or four stalks, crushed and chopped to a litre of water, steeped in boiling water for about 10 minutes should yield a fairly strong infusion. If you can, get it from an Asian market for better freshness - the stuff from the Superstore, at least the kind I found in Nova Scotia, is sad and tough. I had to double those quantities to get a drink I was happy with. Sugar to taste, of course. I kept a lemongrass plant going in a pot in my apartment here in Japan for a year - have you thought of growing some this summer? Is it possible in Canada?

What kind of ratio do you think is appropriate? How many tea bags/ grams of tea to how much water? It would be much easier and faster to cool a small amount of supertea; I like this idea.

When I've made it, I just steep freshly chopped lemongrass in boiling water, then cool. I sweeten it with whatever's on hand - a little brown sugar, or palm sugar. I like mine with fresh lime juice squeezed in as well.

I'm making jugs of iced tea every day now to beat the heat. I alternate between generic supermarket Oolong and generic supermarket green tea. Occasionally I'll make a jug of iced jasmine tea, which I find exceptionally refreshing. I don't sweeten. I can't decide the best method for brewing, though. I've experimented with brewing hot, then stowing it in the fridge until it cools, but this brings up the temperature of my fridge, since I only have a tiny bar fridge, and it takes forever to chill - and I worry about food safety. I've also just thrown a bag into a jug of cold water and left it over night in the fridge - but the brew is predictably weaker. But it doesn't melt and refreeze all my ice. What's the fastest and safest way for me to make iced tea?

Hmmm. I just got a kilo bag of coffee from my favourite roaster in Hanoi, Cafe Mai. I was going to save it for when I get back to Canada, lest my family disown me, and I've just had it sitting in my kitchen (staring at me; tempting me), but based on this: I'm going to wedge that sucker into my freezer until I go. I had always heard that freezing did nothing, but now I see I should have been questioning that all along.

To throw another method on the pile - often when I am making chicken to go into a salad like Vietnamese chicken cabbage salad or chicken with sesame and cucumber, I'll put a chicken thigh with a little salt and pepper into a bowl, pierce it a couple of times with a fork, cover with saran wrap, then microwave on high for four or so minutes, and let it stand covered for a few more. Then I shred. You can season the chicken with a bit of fresh ginger, green onion, sesame oil, etc. as you like, too, although that probably wouldn't be appropriate for burritos. It's quite common to use your microwave for actual cooking in Japan. This method has the advantage of not using a ton of power or heating up the kitchen in the summer. And it makes a small pool of really incredibly flavoured broth at the bottom of the bowl that I use to kick up whatever else I'm cooking.

I would not have thought to toss them in ikura - how intriguing. Did you dress the two with anything, or just leave it as is?

I got some fava beans (I think) at my supermarket the other week. There weren't very many, so I blanched them, then tossed them whole with whole boiled new potatoes, poached chicken, and halved cherry tomatoes. I used a simple vinaigrette of lemon juice, nice olive oil, crushed garlic, salt and pepper to bring it all together. It was really a nice combination. My husband enjoyed it so much I bought some more - but then got too lazy to scrub new potatoes. So I boiled the latest batch, and had them whole, dipped in Hakata salt my friend brought back from Shikoku Island for me, along with small cups of cold sake. I love spring!

That looks like an excellent book! It looks like her focus is on the flavours of Southeast Asia, though - how comprehensive are the sections on Northeast Asia? I often judge a book on Asian cooking (biased as I am) on the seriousness with which it discusses Korean food beyond kimchi.

I did some sleuthing through my Laos pictures, Susan, and found these: Here's the local market in Sam Neua. In the bottom basket, you can see the long purple-stemmed leaves for sale, located near the lettuce vendors. Then, in this picture: I have another basket of herbs I'm tearing up for bus-station pho - including lettuce. I'm willing to bet - whatever they are - you can use them as an herbal garnish for soup or salad, or to wrap meat.

Chwi namul is ligularia fischeri according to the Life in Korea site. I couldn't find any English sites mentioning don namul, although I do remember eating that in the spring, with a lovely gochujang vinaigrette. Mmm, spring greens.

I use Japanese negi all the time in the place of green onion, since I have them on hand more. Mapo dofu is satisfying on all levels - except it's hard to take a flattering picture of it!

Congratulations on your new additions! You run isn't at all "redneck" - Chickens are trendy now! Even The New York Times has an article today about raising chickens, "Don't Cluck, Don't Tell", discussing city ordinances that allow urban livestock. Hens and goats get a pass from many municipalities, but roosters seem to be a cock-a-doodle-don't.

I felt really conflicted picking a dish to make for this cook-off. Obviously, I should have picked any one of the awesome tofu dishes from Korea, like sundubu or my personal favourite - dubu kimchi. Whenever my friends and I went hiking in Korea, we would always murder a plate of dubu kimchi when we came down off the mountain to the drinking huts that inevitably ringed the bottom. Pork and kimchi are a marriage made in heaven, and smeared over thin slices of sweet tofu and chased down with cold rice wine, it's hard to find a better reward for exercise. Or at least a chigae. Throw cubes of tofu, clams, zucchini, chili, garlic and doenjang into a pot and you've got a stew that's way more than the sum of its parts. But that's still a tough sell for my husband, who I've yet to get eating shellfish, despite all the strides I've made with him. For the longest time, I couldn't even get him to eat tofu at all until I introduced him to the tofu gateway drug that is ma po tofu. But honestly, I never really saw the point of eating tofu as more than a vehicle for pork myself until I lived in Vietnam and ended up working with several (European) vegetarians. Suddenly every table I was at included a dish of tofu cooked with tomato; they could never convince the staff to serve the mapo tofu without the pork topping, and tofu and tomato was pretty much always the other tofu dish on the menu. It seemed so simple, but with really fresh tofu and tomatoes, I started seeing the possibilities of tofu without meat. Of course, I haven't gone vegetarian - I always serve this dish in concert with another meat dish - but the flavour is simple and sweet, and I think it goes well with chicken or fish dishes. The mise en place: I take equal measures of chopped ginger and garlic - in this case about four cloves of garlic, and an inch of ginger; along with four or five chopped green onions, and saute them in vegetable oil. When that's fragrant and before it browns, I add three or four medium-sized good ripe tomatoes, chopped. You can substitute canned, if you like; and you can blanch the tomatoes if you're using fresh, but I never bother. I also add a tablespoon or so or chicken powder I bought in Vietnam, although fish sauce can be used as well. When I cook this for vegetarians, I adjust the seasoning with salt and a bit of sugar instead. I cook it down for about 10 minutes, then add some fried tofu - I added about 250g, which I purchased pre-fried at the supermarket. [if you don't have access to fried tofu, you can use plain firm tofu - and if you like, you can fry that yourself. Just make sure to drain it well - under a weight for ten minutes - or you can nuke it for a minute in the microwave. Then fry until golden on all sides in a neutral oil.] The finished dish: Sometimes when I'm feeling fusion-y, I serve this alongside a chicken breast which has been pan-seared, drenched in ponzu-soy sauce, and covered with a mound of green onions. But tonight I decided to go completely Vietnamese and serve it with caramel chicken wings - Canh Ga Khon Gung, and a salad - Ga Xe Phai.

Welcome to the eGullet Cook-off 47 - Asian Tofu Dishes! Click here for the Cook-Off index. Our last cook-off took us to Mexico, where we learned to make the enchilada in all its glorious varieties. Tofu: much maligned, long the subject of jokes involving hippies, health-food stores, granola and Birkenstocks; it may now be poised for a moment in the spotlight. Low calorie, low in cholesterol, and low in price - it seems like an ideal protein for these lean times. However, its bland face and demure demeanor on the plate have left many of us wondering what to do with it. An answer can be found in the profusion of dishes made in Asia, whether it's a boiling bowl of sundubu jigae in Korea; a subtle side dish of agedashi tofu in Japan; or a searing plate of ma po tofu in China. In Asia, fresh tofu can be silken or firm; fried; braised; boiled in a stew or served cold with seasonings. As Asian tables feature a balance of dishes, tofu is rarely used as a meat replacement on its own. It's often used to stretch or complement the flavour of meat, or as a cooling counter-point to other dishes. Good quality fresh tofu is worth seeking out for its creamy texture and delicate flavour, which will benefit your finished dish. Here in the forums, we've talked about where it came from; discussed Japanese dishes and even fermented tofu. In true eGullet fashion, we've also made our own. In our eGullet Culinary Institute, we have an excellent course on Japanese soy products, along with an enlightening Q&A follow-up. Maybe you've always cruised right on by the tofu section in your local Asian supermarket, or turned your nose up at the plastic packs in your produce department. Maybe you already know your momen from your foo yu. Either way, please join us here in learning new recipes or sharing your favourite Asian tofu methods and dishes.