nakji

It's quite a common dish, or at least it was, at fusion Italian places in Korea when I lived there. I've never made it myself, but if I did, I would saute the bacon and some finely sliced kimchi together, and then when the bacon had rendered and the kimchi had turned orangey-brown, I would slowly stir the cream in. It works when I add cream to tomatoes, and I can't see why kimchi would be more acidic than tomatoes. Reduce; toss with pasta, etc. And I absolutely would add parmesan. No more than 50 g or so each of kimchi and bacon; finely sliced. Not so radical a departure from mentaiko spaghetti, really, which has got to be in the same family as pasta bottarga.

Ori-dori-tang? Yum. What's her method, if you can share? We need to do Korean mum outreach here, get all the mums on-line sharing their recipes.

Pasta with a kimchi, cream, and bacon sauce. It just works. I don't know why, I don't want to know why. Try it; you'll see.

Sorry - I'm drawing a blank here. Domestic Goddess's your best hope at this point, since she's in Korea! Is it a "mountain vegetable"?

I really like the miso-marinated asparagus recipe here - I've made it a couple of times, and it's perfect with a glass of beer in the evening, before you start cooking dinner. It's marinated in miso and doubanjang, so it's got a great hit of salty-spicy. Oh, I think I need to make it again. I took this picture of drinking snacks ages ago - it's ginger green beans in the front, and the asparagus is the red splotch in the back. I also like to wrap asparagus in bacon or thinly sliced pork, pan-fry it with some sesame oil and shichimi togarashi, and serve it as a side dish or stuck in a bento. It's a common Japanese preparation whose name escapes me at the moment.

I'm not reading anything at the moment, but I'm moving to China in the autumn, and I'm looking for books on the styles, history, philosophy, any other -ies of the food there. I'm moving to Jiangsu province, if that helps. Suggestions?

Well, that looks just as beautiful as anything I've seen in the pastry shops of Tokyo. And you'll never be able to learn to turn everything out flawlessly unless you have a chance to practice like this. I imagine you have a great big notebook somewhere, filled with notes like, "Bury the tip!!!" and "Never trust the friends!!!" double and triple underlined.

I second this, but I always read the label to make sure they were packed in Italy, too - not just an Italian bottle with Albanian anchovies in it. Not sure what I have against Albanian anchovies, but there it is. I guess if I'm going to pay a premium for an Italian brand, I want to know that they're actually Italian. My gochujang has to be the Korean brand in the red box. I'm open to trying olive oil from a variety of countries, though.

Is it o-hanami time again? The years just fly by. This year, we planned for an early party, and barely saw any blossoms at all! We did eat well, though. I made this vegetarian, European-inspired box for some foreign friends - fresh vegetables, bean spread, cheese, olives, and Marcella's pickled eggplants. I had crusty bread on the side for making open-faced sandwiches. Then two slightly more Japanese style boxes: With karaage, potato salad, aspara-pork rolls, more fresh veg, and rakkyo/cucumber pickle skewers, which bemused my Japanese friends. They brought along onigiri to supplement, since I was too chicken to make onigiri for Japanese people. My husband's Japanese teacher gave him a really super excellent bottle of nama-sake from Kyoto for his birthday, which we brought along as liquid refreshment. It was exceptionally smooth and delicious -dangerously like water.

I'm glad to see it worked out for you! I make lemongrass tea all the time, and people are always surprised how much they love it. It's really refreshing, and great mixed with orange or lime juice as well. I'm interested in your asian slaw - what vegetables did you put in it? In Japan, shops often put hijiki into a salad with cabbage and carrots, and it's a great complement.

Recently a co-worker of mine and I got into a discussion about "cream tea" and "afternoon tea', and the types of teas that go best for each occasion. He thought that for cream tea, where the tea is usually accompanied by scones or cakes, a strong tea like Assam matched well and cut through the sweetness. Do you take afternoon tea, and what thoughts do you have on matching the food to the tea?

When I come across this sort of thing, it drives me into a real rage. I want to tell them where they can "stick" their $%#@ butter. I know I can look it up on-line, yes, but I hate having to write "translations" all over my recipes. It should work from the get-go, as far as I'm concerned. It would be solved by a simple switch to proper weight measures, as others have noted. We really should organize a letter-writing campaign to publishing houses. As for the spiral binding, I suppose I could have guessed the publishers were behind that outrage as well. What other industry makes its product with the assumption that purchasers won't ever use the product they've bought? Aside from exercise equipment manufacturers, that is.

Oh, sweet rhubarb! How unbelievable is this? After I posted this, I went into work, and stopped by the depaichika on my way, as is my custom. What were they selling? Strawberry rhubarb cheesecake!!!!!!!!!! Inconceivable! Of course, I fell on it, despite the fact it was 900 yen. We had it for dessert last night, but I find, I must agree with Klary and bluechefk - it's best on its own, isn't it? I found the strawberry overwhelmed it with sweetness. I like my rhubarb like I like my friends - the tarter, the better. Oh, well, it took the edge off. This sounds gorgeous - especially the cube of poached fruit. Please post a cross-section photo when you're done!

This picture made me moan out loud! And not just because it's a pretty picture. It's been seven years since I last ate rhubarb. I'm going to e-mail my mother and ask her to put some rhubarb in the freezer for me as soon as it pops up in Nova Scotia. My mother-in-law used to make the most fabulous stru-barb tea cake, which somehow involved whole chunks of rhubarb and a packet of strawberry jell-o. I think rhubarb-white chocolate ganache would be excellent with strawberry macarons, because even with a lot of sugar, rhubarb is still intensely tart. Or - could you make a rhubarb-infused custard as a filling? They go together really well.

I'm going to have access to a garden for the first time in a long time this summer. I'm putting in herbs for sure, although I can never seem to get basil to grow happily. And I'm death to rosemary. I also want to get some Japanese greens going, like mizuna, perilla or mitsuba. Hopefully I can find a seed source in Canada.

The New York Times reports that Michelle Obama is planning an organic vegetable garden for the White House lawn. She hopes to use it as an opportunity to help educate children about fresh vegetables, as students from a local school will help dig and plant the garden. Included in the garden will be things like cilantro, tomatillos, and Thai basil. They are also going to keep bees. Apparently, the Clintons were container gardeners, but this is the first lawn garden since Eleanor Roosevelt's victory garden. What gardening are you planning this year? Anyone starting for the first time in response to Michael Pollan/ Global Economic Downturn/ zucchini fetish?

Oh, like on bibimbap. Or on a salad. That is an interesting trend.

At the end of the day, all I really want is a spiral binding. But that pretty much never happens, I'm sure for some super-logical reason.

How about inarizushi? Little pockets of tofu, simmered in soy and mirin, then stuffed with sushi rice? Still a little labour-intensive, but it avoids the nori problem.

p. 232 Fettine di Maiale in Saor con Aceto Balsamico I've never been to Venice. When I think of it, the only images that come to mind are Canaletto paintings that I've seen in books or on posters. Venice looks golden, and if you hold out your hand you can almost feel the warmth of the sun on stone buildings. I've travelled to many other famous places around the world, however, and I can with some confidence write that the reality of Venice these days is probably much different. I hope that, unlike the Great Wall of China, there is not a toboggan ride; but I suspect at the very least there is one McDonalds with a long queue of sweaty, underdressed tourists, and an unmopped washroom with the rubbish bin overflowing with crumpled paper towels. I am only speculating here. If this is untrue, and my Canaletto-vision is the real thing, then I am happy to be wrong and cynical. Marcella writes that this recipe was her own creation, inspired by sfogi in saor, a classic Venetian dish. She says when she has offered this dish to Venetians it, "..tastes as though it had always been a part of their city's cooking." The beautiful colour of this dish, graded from the dark brown of the raisins, the maroon of the balsamic, and the gold of the simmered onions, sauteed pork and pine nuts seems inspired by Canaletto's palette. It's her innovation to use pork tenderloin instead of the more traditional sole. I've read that Venice is famous for seafood; but since I don't have fresh sole from the Adriatic, I decided to try her version, as I do have access to excellent pork. In the absence of the real thing, the imitation might be more beautiful than the original.

Both of your recent soups look lovely. To paraphrase Brillat-Savarin, the discovery of a new zucchini dish does more for human happiness than the discovery of a new star. I don't think I've ever seen a heart of palm. Could you be so kind as to post a picture? Only I'm wondering if I could substitute bamboo shoots and get a similar sort of soup.

There's a Henri Charpentier located (dangerously) close to my office in Yokohama. I walked by their Spring line last week with my husband, and we couldn't resist picking up a couple cakes. My husband selected IIRC the "Fromage Maniee" This had a layer of cheesecake, topped with a cheese mousse, sultanas, and a cheese-shaped accent in white chocolate. Sometimes I don't like mousse-based cakes, because I feel like I'm eating Gillette. I did not get this feeling with this cake. I had to have chocolate: A layer of dense chocolate cake with - perhaps praline? It crunched, in a sugary way. A layer of thick salted caramel, chocolate mousse, and thinly sprayed ganache. The "caramel" on the top is actually salted caramel mousse enrobed in caramel jelly-like ganache. I'm not sure what you'd call it. It was flexible like jelly, but tasted like ganache. I'm going back tomorrow.

Ssamjang is a mix of doenjang (Korean fermented soybean paste) and gochujang (Korean chili paste). Ssamjang You could sub miso for the doenjang, if you like. It's so salty, it's an addictive dip for cucumbers and carrots.

To the "Asian" table, he could add various crudite with a trio of dips: Spicy peanut; ginger-miso (thin white miso with ginger juice, sesame oil, and a little warm water; mirin if you like); and tofu-avocado. ETA: or samjang - the Korean classic of deonjang and gochujang mixed. That would give a nice colour contrast, too.

It could be. Hmm. I can get those pears here, too. I'll have to try that as a comparison. Yes, there are quite a few side dish basics here. A sampler: Geran chim (egg custard soup) Cucumber soup (oi naeng-guk) Seasoned spicy cucumbers (Oi muchim), carrots, and spinach Seasoned daikon (Mu saengchae) Seasoned shredded leeks (ppa muchim) Bean sprouts (kong namul) Pancakes: Seafood (haemul) Seafood and onion (haemul pa) Zucchini and onion (Aehobak and Pa) Potato (Gamja) Kimchi Asparagus As well as a range of corn and vegetable fritters. Kimchis: White kimchi (baek kimchi) Daikon kimchi (kkakdugi) Cabbage kimchi (Yangbaechu) Cucumber kimchi (oi) Good stuff, all. Well, the short answer is - I don't know. Andong jjim dalk is definitely served in a soy-based sauce. You can see my picture over here. But - and Korean native speakers, please feel free to correct me if I'm wrong - Jjim dalk (chim dak) simply means chicken stew. So while Andong chicken stew may be made with a soy-based sauce, not all chicken stews in Korea might be necessarily constructed. The recipe in this book is "Dak Chim", or chicken stew, which may mean that this is simply the author's personal recipe for chicken stew, and is not version of the Andong dish. Dakdoritang, on the other hand, is usually made with gochujang, as I understand. But it's a tang and not a chim or jjim - the difference of which I'll have to leave to someone else to explain. But I think a tang is more of a soup. See: Galbi tang and Galbi jjim - two very different dishes.