nakji

No worries, Melonpan! I'm flattered to have been mistaken for smallworld. I can't help but feel there is some expression in Korean that the server in restaurants says when she sets down the food in front of diners, which means essentially, "Bon Appetit", or similar. I used to hear it all the time in restaurants in Korea, but now I can't remember it. Anyone?

Well, it's that time of year again - the cool weather puts me in the mood for (beef) nikkujyaga. We had this with an enoki takikomi gohan, kabocha salad, and tsukemono and sake from my Takayama trip. I couldn't taste a speck of it, since I had a particularly crappy head cold, but my husband pronounced it "best nikkujyaga ever". I didn't tell him I added instant dashi powder, which he says he hates. I keep sneaking it into things so he'll gradually get used to the taste. Does that make me a bad person?

I eat in markets too, but the only places, with, like, names I can remember in Vientiane were the expat-y places - Jo-Ma coffee and Sticky Fingers, on the main drag near the river. Good, FWIW. But really, the best food I had in Laos was in Luang Prabang and north-eastern Laos (where the only place you can eat is the market). Any reason you're going to Vientiane in particular?

Wow, Hiroyuki, everything looks like it was really authentic, based on my experiences in Korea. Especially the free kimchi! I hate paying for kimchi in Japan Did this have lots of soft tofu in it? And did you break an egg into it? Maybe it was sundubu. Or if it had a lot of kimchi and firm tofu in it, it was probably kimchi jigae. I thought so too, when I first lived in Korea, but after a while, I got used to the heat and was able to notice the subtlety of flavours. Although - it'll, to my mind, never have the complexity of flavour of Thai or Indian food, because, ultimately, there are a limited number of seasonings used in Korean cooking, in comparison to those cuisines. That doesn't make it any less delicious, I should hasten to point out - I think the marriage of pork fat and kimchi is one of the finest flavour combinations I've tried to date. When I first arrived in Japan, I thought all food was just salty. But maybe that was because I was in Kanto. This is the only dish that doesn't look quite right to my eye. The sauce should be much thicker, and coat the mochi smoothly. There shouldn't be so much soupiness on the plate. This is a dish best eaten on a paper plate with toothpicks, in a red-and-white striped tent on the street somewhere in Seoul, with a cold wind blowing in off the Han. It says "nu rung ji flavour candy" - nu rung ji is the crispy rice crust on the bottom of the rice pot, and is a bit of a delicacy in Korea. I am an admirer, as well. Actually, I'm not sure if it's just the crispy rice bit, or the soup they make out of it by pouring boiling water on it. Hmm.

I hate to be a downer, but pork and/or shellfish are involved in quite a large number of unmissable Korean dishes. Kimchi is the main area to watch out for, because most of it is made with brine shrimp - small shrimpies that dissolve into the kimchi spice paste that give it its characteristic tang. A friend of mine worked in Korea for two years and carried an epipen the whole time, since she's allergic to shellfish. Deonjang jigae, often served for lunch, is usually made with small clams to flavour the soup, although it may be possible to find vegetarian versions in some places. Safe things: Bibimbap is usually made with beef, and usually contains no kimchi, although it's worth checking beforehand. Beef galbi - delicious and wonderful, but please note most places that sell it also sell pork as well - go with someone who knows what they're ordering, or when in doubt, try "Suh gogi ee ye yo?" - "Is this beef?" Beware the "Duagee-gogi" - this means it's pork. Ddalk galbi, while extremely spicy, is unmissable - and cheap. Any big entertainment district in Seoul, like Jongro or Shinchon, has a large collection of these places - chicken, vegetables, and a spicy sauce are fried together in a large pan on your table. One of my favourite dishes! Samgyetang - a small whole chicken is stuffed with rice and ginseng, and boiled in a soup. Very nice, and a test of your chopstick skills to get all the chicken off the bone. Fall is great for street food, and she should try the fish waffles stuffed with red bean paste (bunggeopan) or hotuk - a fried pancake stuffed with brown sugar and other things. These are really popular in the Insadong area. When I was living there, jjuk was really popular - basically like chinese congee - there are lots of chain shops that specialize in it, and it would make a good lunch. I'm not sure if octopus qualify as shellfish or not, but if she's adventurous, she could always try the san nakji! (live baby octopus). Spam finds it's way into many dishes at cheap lunch cafes! Beware the Spam! Whatever the case, she should make sure to have a phrasebook or someone with her to translate, to make her dietary requirements clear. If they're due to allergies, she should also have some medicine with her as a back-up. I hope she has fun - I feel like it's an under-promoted cuisine, and there's lots of fabulous things there to try. I just booked my tickets to Seoul for Christmas - I'll be there in December, for the first time in two years. I've already made my eating list!!!! Also, she should check out Zen Kimchi, and I have some old posts on this topic.

Oh....that looks divine, Bruce. Thanks for cooking along! The marriage of bacon, butter, and cheese is one of the all time best threesomes I can think of. Belgian endive has a faintly bitter taste, right? I wonder what I could use as a substitute.... I see you also had bread with pasta. Clearly something is needed to wipe up all the amazing juices! What kind of mushrooms did you use? Hmmm, I think wonton or shumai wrappers they sell in the shops have eggs in them - they're more of a yellow colour than gyoza wrappers.

What a fascinating read. It sounds like she's had quite the life. I'll look for this the next time I'm in Tokyo. There's a recipe for brodo in my book as well. I've wanted to make some ever since reading Heat, where's it's discussed at length. My husband is a huge fan of risotto, and would probably love it even more if I actually put down the cash and got a bag of arborio rice, instead of making it with koshihikari like I usually do. (Not that that's particularly cheap either - now that I think of it.) I'm not sure how I'd go about getting a large piece of brisket, or any other large cut of meat, for that matter, in Japan. There are several proper butchers in my area, but I'm not sure what I'd ask for - any Japan members care to weigh in? I have to urge you strongly to try the aubergines. We ate the last of them last night with dinner, as an antipasto, and the flavour had only improved from last week. The flavour of the garlic had mellowed somewhat as well, We ate them by dipping our bread into the olive oil, and topping it with the pickled vegetables. Unbelievable!!!! Between snorts and grunts while we ate, I mentioned to my husband that we'd never get anything as good in a restaurant here for less than 1000 yen, and it would be two paltry pieces, accompanied with one or two paper-thin slices of bread, to boot. The whole jar couldn't have cost me more than 500 yen to make, and most of that was olive oil - Helen, I completely sympathize with you - I can often eat a lot better, or at least just as well, by staying at home in Japan. At least at my price point. Of course, it's a lot more work. As for our main course, I took your suggestion, and tried the sausages with cream and tomato sauce. This time, I read the direction thoroughly, and made sure all the ingredients were actually in the house. I learned something new by reading her note on choosing appropriate sausages - I guess not all commonly held presumptions about Italian food have been banished, as I am familiar with "Italian sausage" having peppers and fennel in it. I was surprised to read that those are not traditional flavours, although I shouldn't really be surprised, knowing what I do about what gets passed off as "Western" food in Asia. Anyway, I chose the simplest sausage I could at the supermarket - not that there was much choice. And the only pasta I saw that was vaguely cartwheel-shaped were some dodgy-looking Halloween themed pasta shapes dyed orange and black, which I sensibly passed on in favour of shells. Normally, I look forward to cooking on Tuesdays, because I have the next day off, and can relax and chug around the kitchen at my own speed, glugging some celebratory red wine, while my husband surfs the internet out of my hair. This week, however, due to ongoing pesky work obligations, I have to work on my day off, after an already late finish on Tuesday. Normally, my husband doesn't cook. He washes dishes extremely well, though, so we have a system worked out: I cook; he cleans. But I knew I'd be a mess from work, so I asked him this week if he could prepare dinner. Since I rarely cook anything from a recipe anymore, unless I'm making it for the first time, my husband is under the impression that cooking is some sort of alchemical task that requires innate talent. Imagine his surprise on the rare occasion I've asked him to prepare something from a recipe, and it has turned out not only merely edible, but delicious. When I came home last night, bags full of bread and (usually celebratory; tonight consolatory) red wine, he was standing next to the stove with a proud look. In the pan - sauce. It took a few minutes to put the pasta on, which we filled by decimating the aubergines and watching "Gossip Girl". The pasta was great - just the thing for a cold, rainy fall night, and with the aubergines I felt like I'd had some approximation of an authentic Italian meal. I'm not sure about the bread, though - do Italians usually have bread with a meal that includes pasta, or is that just me? And if they do, what kind of bread? We didn't eat it with the pasta, but rather before, with the aubergines, as it absorbed the oil so well. I think my next project will be to try making a three-course meal from the book, maybe with - *gasp* - guests. I need to figure out how to put a menu together. How do you pick complementary dishes? I had some chilis from Takayama that I turned into pickled chilis in oil following her recipe - I used a neutral oil, since I'll probably end up using them in Vietnamese cooking, as well. Hopefully the oil will infuse in a few weeks, and it can be used on gyoza. Multi-tasking chilis!

Certainly more expensive than in Korea! I'm going back for Christmas, and I can't wait to hit a galbi place and order indiscriminately with no fear of the bill. And all the kimchi I can eat! I haven't been to Shin-Okubo in months, I need to get back and see if I can find any place that serves ddalk galbi, my favourite dish. I also love the hotuk they do on the street - I miss street food.

I think offering savoury bread and pate, meat, and cheese for breakfast is very European. I remember in Hanoi that "le petit dejeuner" offered at most cafes included a baguette, butter and local sausage. Porridge, muesli, and yoghurt with mixed fruit also seem like popular with European travellers. Baked beans, mushrooms, and grilled tomatoes also elicit cheers of joy from most Brits I know. I've gotten used to going without scones and muffins in Asia, clearly I need to travel to Bhutan more.

My favourite izakaya serves this on raw cabbage leaves as a table charge dish, and it's awesome. I think they sneak dashi powder or shoyu in as well, it's got a salty kick. If it didn't come automatically, I'd order it anyway. This made me realize I had no ketchup in my cupboard: I'll have to pick some up the next time I'm at the store. Which begs the question: Which brand? For me, it can only be Heinz.

I feel like somewhere in Shin-Okubo must have it. There are a few restaurants on the alleys off the main street that serve more than just the yakinikku/bibimbap standards.

Wait: I want to ask for clarification: a good sausage roll should have sausage meat, but not an actual sausage? If this is the case, I think I need to have real sausage roll, since it's clear I've never had a proper one. My mother used to talk about Melton Mowbray pies as if they were some sort of religious relic, but I'm sure the last time she had one was in 1972. I'm not sure if she's tried the one at Pete's Frootique, I will have to recommend it to her.

I guess it depends on what style of curry you're looking to make. I associate galangal, ginger, chilis, and other wet ingredients with a Thai curry. For Indian curries, I always think of dry spices, like mustard seeds, cumin, and turmeric, along with others. My recipe for green curry paste - which I make when I'm in a place with all the ingredients available, which is - sadly - practically never: 20 small green chilis 3 tablespoons of lemongrass, cut fine 3 tbsp of shallots 2 tbsp of garlic, minced 3 kaffir lime leaves, thinly sliced 1 tsp of galangal. chopped 1 tsp of salt 1 handful of Thai sweet basil The whole thing gets pounded into a paste, and then topped with a little oil, to help it keep. The recipe comes from a cooking lesson I did at Pum's restaurant, on Ko Phi Phi. The first "curry powder" I made from scratch was from a recipe in Gourmet magazine. I can't remember the issue, but I think it was a Malaysian style curry, with coconut cream and bananas involved. Back then, my father was obsessed with recreating the curries he'd eaten during his childhood in Southeast Asia, and Saturday nights at our house were spent pursuing this goal. My mother and I drove around to two or three supermarkets trying to find the coconut cream, and were finally contemplating buying a coconut and making it ourselves, when we found some in a baking section somewhere. The spices were no problem, however, and after toasting them and grinding them all together, the taste was a revelation. It was the first curry I ever ate and enjoyed - until then, my father's curry attempts looked highly suspect, since they were ad hoc affairs relying heavily on doses of raw canned curry powder. My father was thrilled that it came out tasting of what he'd grown up with, but even more thrilled that my mother and I enjoyed it as well, since we were always ...polite... about his previous attempts. I lost that recipe years ago, I wish I still had it. What really haunts me about curry powder these days, is a Japanese-style curry that I used to eat in Hanoi. You might be familiar with Japanese curry roux blocks, which companies like Glico and House make. It's a popular sort of comfort food in Japan, and shows up in lunch places everywhere. When I was living in Hanoi, there was a lunch cafe that catered to the local expat salarymen - it served, among other things, a curry rice set. But, since curry roux blocks were expensive and difficult to find in Hanoi, the proprietor made his own blend. It was mild, like your standard Japanese curry, but also a little sweet, and faintly suggestive of ginger. If anyone has a recipe for making Japanese-style curry from scratch, I'd love to hear it.

Oooh, what kind of sausage do you use? I'm never really satisfied with the stuff I get at my local store. Do you use plain Meiji yogurt from the supermarket, or do you make your own? This sounds like a recipe my husband would love. You're right, reading through the book, I can't get over how many recipes I'm able to make. I usually get so frustrated if I'm working from anything other than an Asian cookbook. [small voice] Have you ever used gyoza wrappers instead of sheets of fresh pasta? I'm tempted for the recipe "pasta roses with ham and fontina" [/small voice]

Here are my aubergines: I fished one out, and tried it - it was fabulous, but I think I went overboard on the garlic. The whole time I was making these, I was doubtful - she has you layer them with salt and herbs, and tip the whole thing upside down for a day. I was more inclined to use my tsukemono-ki - a Japanese pickle press - but I like to try a recipe straight-up the first time I use it. The pieces looked really dry the whole time. When it came to the step where I had to pour vinegar over them, and then immediately tip them over again, I disregarded her directions, and kept them right-side-up in the vinegar, although I did put a weight on them. This morning, I poured olive oil over them and put them into a smaller jar. They're just unbelievably gorgeous. I think I'm going to portion them out to some co-workers who enjoy good food, and then make another batch immediately. This time I'll have to use the larger sized aubergines, though. For scale, one of the slices is about as big as your thumb: Thanks! Although next time, I'll try it with some bacon. Because bacon makes everything better. I think these are the most interesting things I've learned from the book so far. Just as if you'd toast your spices in Indian cooking, or saute your curry paste a bit in Thai cooking, the flavour has to come out of somewhere. And since Japan has a deep respect for seasonal cooking, I get a lot of help with the ingredients - that's why I've got a lot of aubergine things on the go - the farmstand in my neighborhood can't get rid of them fast enough. What books do you own, and what's your all-time favourite Marcella recipe? When you break her out for a special occasion, what do you cook?

Trust me, the same thought kept occurring to me while I was attempting to cook. More importantly than making a list, reading the actual recipe first would have helped a lot as well.

Comfort food? Is pork cheap there? Start off with a squash/sweet potato type soup, progress to roast pork/pan fried pork chops, (garlic) mashed potatoes, some sort of vegetable - green beans or roast carrot/parsnip matchsticks, applesauce, and for dessert some sort of crumble cake with ice cream? Oh, or brownies. Butterscotch brownies. If somebody put that meal in front of me right now, I would clear through it like nobody's business. And it's 9:30 am where I am. Do you need nibbles beforehand?

Oh yeah, I've made that recipe many times - it's the only thing that I keep ketchup around the house for. My husband and I often end up with spoons at the pan, trying to scoop up all the extra sauce. Now that fall is here, I have to put this dish back into rotation. They hold up great for bento the next day, too.

Oh boy. Now I don't know. When I think back, they weren't dirty like potatoes tend to be , but I didn't pick them up. I rather thought the good graces of the market ladies were already being strained by the boatloads of foreign tourists making funny faces at the miso. I should have asked, really, but my Japanese was really put to the test here, and I was afraid of embarrassing myself. I often know just enough Japanese to fool people into thinking I know a lot more than I do. They really looked like picture six from your line-up. What are akebi? How do you eat them? Are they sweet? Was I a fool not to have bought them?

Whew - has a week gone by already? Thanks for all the super kind words everybody, and I re-issue my invitation for everyone to play along. I'd like to see what people with access to a wider range of ingredients can do. As for this week, I wanted to do something non-pasta, but over the weekend, I visited a mountain town called Takayamathat had a wonderful morning market. Imagine my surprise and thrill when I found not only heaps of aubergine in all shapes, sizes and colours, but also fresh bell peppers and chilis. Bell peppers are pretty expensive here where I live, so I snapped up six for 200 yen, along with a bag of baby pickling aubergines, thinking somewhere in the back of my mind that there was a recipe that called for both in my book. And fusilli. Something to do with fusilli. But when I got it all home and opened up Italian Kitchen this morning I got completely distracted by the recipe for pickled eggplants on page 51, so I pulled out my trusty pickle jar (from Muji, of course) and went to town layering aubergine slices with crushed garlic, basil (no mint on hand, although I did briefly consider using some of my overgrown lemongrass plant, I thought that sort of fusion would be justification for Marcella hunting down and killing me), and chilis. They'll sit in my sink until tomorrow, when I get to drown them in vinegar. I make no excuses, it will no doubt be rice vinegar. I always forget to use gloves when I cut chilis, and today was no exception. My fingers are still burning. Right, a brief examination of my pantry yielded only thin pasta, so I got on my bike and went down to the local supermarket for some fusilli, (and this will be key) without checking the recipe. Marcella goes into some detail about the appropriate place for fresh pasta, such detail, in fact, that I can only guess with a sort of anthropological historian view that fresh pasta might have been going through, shall we say a vogue, when the book was written. And was perhaps being used in everything? She has no cause for worry in this area from me. Fortunately for me (and Marcella's nerves, I'd better pour her a bourbon, with where this is going) my local supermarket carries De Cecco in three varieties. My hand hovered briefly over the penne before selecting the fusilli. I pedaled home and clucked over my aubergines, and then went about doing some other things. And then I started to make dinner. Now- oh look - the recipe I was thinking of, on page 40, calls for - aubergine. I don't look at the sink, where all of my aubergines are sweating away. Instead, I look to the index, to find another recipe, one calling for peppers alone. What luck, page 133 has one for peppers and, er penne. Well, the pasta is short, that'll have to do. It also calls for pancetta. I have ham in the fridge. It's never been to Italy, but it'll be salty and meaty, which is the point of it, I guess. I do have the parmesan, I'm not a complete heathen, but there's no butter to be had for love or money in my cho. Olive oil it is. The directions call for sweating an onion in some butter, so I proceed andohfortheloveofgodIdon'thaveanonion. (One of the great bonuses of living in other countries is the opportunity to learn how to swear in new languages. The Japanese don't seem to have as many exclamations as other places I've lived, but yesterday, when I was on the Shinkansen, the man in front of us, after fumbling for several minutes with bags in the overhead compartment, dropped a bag full of apples on to his wife's head, to which she exclaimed : "Honto! Honto?" Which, loosely translated, means "Really! Really?" I feel I'm finally being able to grasp a bit of this culture) I stomped around the kitchen for a minute, muttering "honto?" under my breath, until I noticed my negi. (Japanese leek) They would have to do. I sweated the negi, sandwich ham, and olive oil and prayed to god Marcella never checks eGullet. What do they say? There are no atheists in foxholes and tiny kitchens? I completely agree. The peppers chopped up beautifully, and the kitchen filled with an amazing, smoky pepper smell. I've never worked with such fresh peppers. I grated some parmesan up with my ginger grater (What are you looking at?) and finished it with some basil and chili. The whole lot was gorgeous and peppery, and I can only imagine what the real deal must taste like. Won't somebody competent following along make this recipe and post a picture of it? I will keep you updated on my aubergines, I'm really excited about those.

Yeah I totally meant Gifu-ken. *coughs* The grilled meringue was awesome. Awesome. Crunchy and soft, simultaneously. Yeah, in retrospect they must be potatoes. They were surrounded by pears and apples, so at the time I thought they were some strange exotic fruit.

I'm just back from a fabulous, food-oriented trip to Takayama, in Hida ken. If you're looking to eat some beef, do some sake tasting, and enjoy some seriously hospitable people, Takayama's your town. I first saw Takayama featured in the JR travel ads on the Yamanote line last fall. Those ads really do their job, because I can never look at one without wanting to surrender all my cash to the fine people at JR and hop on the next train. The ads featured that actress lady - anyone know her name? - on some traditional looking streets. I like traditional, and to be honest, I haven't seen much of it in suburban Kanto, and it's been four years since I've been to Kyoto. My kanji wasn't up to scratch back then, so I had no idea where she was, and I sort of filed the memory and went about my life. Fast forward eight months, and I'm in Nikko, absorbing some fresh air and history. In the guest house's travel recommendation book is a long sloppy love letter from another traveller to Takayama. Looking at the postcard they've pasted next to the letter, I realize they're discussing my train town. Score! Fast forward another four months, and my time and money status have clicked into a similar enough orbit to fund an expedition. When I first planned the trip, I thought I would have the chance to chill out in a peaceful atmosphere - little did I know I'd stumbled onto a town that was serious about their food. Being snowed in a lot will do that to you, I guess. The local specialty is beef, and...it's good. It's also all over town. We had: Beef "tako"yaki: Which frankly, we ate while they were too hot, and thus didn't enjoy them as well as we should have. Beef sushi: I thought the wasabi underneath was great. Very "roast dinner". Beef ramen: Everybody and their brother had beef skewers, so we tried those, too. We had these in the morning market with a fresh jibiru on the side - it's okay to drink before noon in public if they're selling it, right? The beef was so tender the bamboo stick was earning its pay holding it all together. Our first night in town, we had dinner at Suzuya, popular with the guidebook set, and justifiably so. We had sukiyaki, and were able to communicate with the staff, in halting Japanese that has taken more than a year's work, that it was our first time having it. And what better way than with such gorgeous beef: We also had hoba miso, a specialty of the town - miso and vegetables are grilled over a brazier on a magnolia leaf. My husband commented: "I'm not entirely sure I can continue living without my own charcoal brazier". I told him he could be responsible for carrying it home, and he got quiet. We also had a couple of local microbrews with dinner - Korikori, which was very crisp and refreshing; and another, which I bought entirely because of the stubby bottle. Our poor language skills were hardly needed, though, as the cheerful staff were fluent in English. Getting featured in the Lonely Planet and the Rough Guide will do that for you, I guess. All through my visit here, I couldn't get over how forthrightly friendly everyone was - the sort of friendliness that I usually associate with extreme poverty, but the town was clearly prosperous - it's most famous for its semiannual matsuri, which features elaborate floats from the various merchants, including the numerous sake breweries that are located here. Oh, did I mention you could go sake tasting here? I was too completely inept to take any notes, but we were recommended by friends to go to Sansha, so we did. And we tasted in their wood-paneled snug with wood fire that must be super cosy in the winter. In the end, the sake we tried there was too heavy for me, and I purchased a bottle from another brewery, which I have sitting here next to me, but am completely unable to read. I also tried a third bottle, which I couldn't face toting home but plan to look for locally, called Yumeyuuyuu. Worth a try if you ever see it. The local area is also famous for its red turnip pickles, and I am such a sucker for pickles. I picked up a couple of packs from the morning market, where I struggled to understand the local accent while chatting with the obaachan who sold me them. I bought two packs at her suggestion, one sweet and one - not sweet. I have already eaten half a bag, I am ashamed to admit. The local markets were full of flowers and fall fruit - pears and apples, especially, but there were lots of nasu as well, and I snapped up some small pickling ones, to the bemusement of the vendor, along with red peppers, six for 200 yen. The vendor I bought them from was the only lady there under sixty - she was my age, I think, and was making an effort to have a variety of vegetables. Very smart, since almost everyone walking by stopped to exclaim over her white nasu. Somebody also had a couple of boxes of these, which I could not identify. What are they? Dango are also famous locally, and the little mochi balls are dipped in simple locally-made shoyu before being grilled, and are a steal at the price-fixed level of 70 yen a stick. At the end of the river market, there was a lady making her own shichimi togarashi, which - I mean, how can you resist? I bought a bag, and I have no idea what I'm going to do with it, but I was so overcome by the novelty I couldn't resist. Speaking of novelty, there was a guy selling grilled meringue. Yum. There were also a lot of senbei vendors, which my mind tends to filter out due to painful teen years spent on diets which heavily featured rice cakes. Sorry, senbei. Maybe in another life. Long story short: If you're visiting Japan, and want to see some pretty scenery and eat some good food - Takayama.

I got the idea from Harumi's dish of scallops in a miso sauce. The sauce calls for cream and parmesan, and the flavours complement each other remarkably. Kabocha is so sweet, I thought something really salty would help balance it out. I thought it was nice, but I can't vouch for people who are used to more traditional uses of miso.

Well, I'm digging up this topic, since it's getting to be that time of year again. One thing I like about fall vegetables is that I can buy them on Sunday, stuff them in my crisper, and they're still in pretty good shape come Friday night. I bought a quarter of kabocha last week for 80, and dug it out of the fridge tonight for dinner. I zapped it in the microwave, then mashed it up with two teaspoons of miso, a tablespoon of butter, and copious gratings of parmesan cheese. My husband, who is generally indifferent to kabocha, was fighting me for it. It went nicely with our shogayaki.

I made a Vietnamese coffee granita the other day. It tasted so good, I wished I had an ice cream maker to experiment with making an ice cream out of it. Trung Nguyen coffee and condensed milk - if you can get them, I urge you to try it.