nakji

What network is this show on? I've never heard of the show before as I basically live under a rock when it comes to TV programming. Can you comment on some of the things they'll be covering?

I love her books! Try the sesame chicken salad - it's grand. The broth that forms in the microwave is incredible. I've also made her somen salad to great acclaim. I can't help with the chinese soup paste, as I can't recall making a recipe that called for it, but the wine is, as far as I know, Shao Hsing. I use it interchangeably with sake, depending on whatever I've got in the cupboard. Although I only recently found out that the supermarket sells cooking-grade sake. Until that, I'd been using Hakkasan. I have a large tub of Knorr chicken base in my kitchen as well. Vietnamese cooking uses it a lot, and I find it useful for adding flavour, as a kind of MSG substitute. There's probably no reason why you couldn't do the same until you get it sorted. I wouldn't let anything get in my way of making some of her recipes!

Spot on, spot on. In fact, my boss lost at least three cats as well to local neighborhood stockpots. C'est la vie! It's important not to get too attached. This is really exciting for me to read, as I'll be back in Hanoi tomorrow, if everything goes to plan. It's great to get revved up for my trip. I've not travelled extensively in the south, however- did you notice a dramatic difference between Northern and Southern cuisine?

I'm seeing a sort of Venn diagram here. In one circle, there are some people want a truly delicious and beautiful looking cake to have for dessert, or a special celebration, or whatever - these are the people you want to make your cakes for, right? And then in another circle, there are people who see a cake as a kind of symbol, a blank slate for conveying their celebratory wishes on, one that happens to be really sweet, and perhaps, if the occasion demands, blue? And you don't really want to make those kinds of cakes, and those people normally sort of self select, and just get a cake at the supermarket, but occasionally (or frequently?) in the space where those two circles overlap, you have customers coming in asking for a delicious cake which is also blue? It sounds like you're eager to establish your business, and so you've been decorating cakes on demand, and maybe compromising a bit on how you'd normally present your cakes. I'm not really sure about the sort of market you're in, but I'd be worried that if you start making all sorts of compromises on how you present your cakes, that eventually your market may start to see your cakes as the supermarket kind- blank slates, as it were. At the same time, you don't really want to lose the sales...I would suggest a compromise. Let your customers know that you're not really a cake decorator, as suggested above, but try to work out some way that birthdays, anniversaries and the like can be recognized. Maybe you could develop a chocolate/white chocolate plaque onto which a message could be piped or transferred, and charge a small premium for adding it?

Or you could go to a completely crazy place and use it to coat chorizo, as per post 185 in this thread. Sugar covered meat? Yes, please.

A random sampling of this week's groceries: (from xe.com, 100 yen = .92 USD) Corn, 5 ears for 200 yen Japanese cucumbers, 1 for 29 yen Eggs, 10 for 208 yen English muffins, 4 for 158 yen Rice vinegar, 300 ml for 88 yen 1 kg potatoes, 200 yen Red onions, 2 for 100 yen Boneless chicken breast, 2 for 421 yen White sugar 500g for 178 yen Milk, 500 ml, 130 yen I shop at a farmer's market for my produce, and take advantage of the vegetable stands in my neighborhood to keep my grocery bill down. Cheap rice can be had, if you're not fussy about quality, for around 1,600 yen for 5 kg, which is the largest size bag I can reasonably get home on my bike and store in my cupboard.

I'm glad you finally had a chance to try it! I love that recipe - I should put it in the "Recipes that Rock" discussion. If you like that style of cooking, and like Japanese food, I really recommend Harumi Kurihara's book, "Japanese Cooking". The recipe is on the New York Times site: Scallops in Miso Mustard Sauce I've been looking for an excuse to make it again, and my in-laws are visiting this week, so I might trot it out.

Isn't it because of price controls from dairy boards in Canada? I always thought that was the reason our dairy was so much more than in the US. Anyway, it's nothing compared to what I pay here in Japan. Butter, when I can find it, is 398 yen for 200 g - around $3.70 US - things like sour cream and whipping cream are so expensive, I never even consider buying them.

Jjang! Thanks! Gochujang comes in a red tub (or jar, sometimes) but I think you could use any red chili paste to get the flavour, as long as you don't mind the heat. I have a picture of what it looks like here. I think the cilantro is a good choice, because it has a kind of sharp flavour like ganeep, which Koreans use in a lot of their dishes. Is ganeep the same as shiso, does anyone know? They look the same. So how did you learn about Dakdoritang? I've never seen it outside of Korea.

Ooooh, that's one of my favourite dishes from Korea! Once, my friends and I were on an island and stopped into a country restaurant for lunch. We ordered the dalkdoritang and the cook killed a chicken on the spot for us. There's fresh, and then there's fresh. Recipes for it that I've seen call for a pressure cooker, but that looks like it was baked in the oven - was it?

My husband loves hard-boiled quail eggs in his bento - I think they're a pain to peel, so I just pop them in in their shell. Here I used some for a "Totoro" themed bento I made for our visit to the Ghibli museum in Mitaka, Japan. They're quite common as a panchan in Korea, too, where they're served whole with salt and pepper for dipping, or included in potato salad. But the best way I ever had them was hardboiled and wrapped in bacon. It was at a lunar New Year feast somewhere in Vietnam - they were the perfect little mouthful, although I can't imagine how long the ladies must have spent peeling them, because there was a huge platter for every table, and there had to be at least 100 people there.

I'm not quite sure why, but this made me laugh out loud. My husband came home with some punnets of raspberries that he got for the unbelievably low price of 150 yen each. Considering they usually retail for about 900 yen each (around $8 US), I was thrilled. I didn't want to waste them all on out of hand eating, and I already had some frozen in the freezer. Then I had a brief flash of kitchen serendipity, when I saw a had a few lemons that needed dealing with, and a box of Fauchon butter cookies that a student had given me. Ta da! Lemon raspberry parfaits. I made a custard with the lemons and crushed the cookies up, which was about all I could manage in a hot summer kitchen. This thread makes me so sad I don't have an oven

Isn't vichyssoise a cold soup? I've never made it, but it's got potato, leek and onion, so it sounds quite good. I always steer away from melon soup, too, since I don't really like melons. I didn't really want to call my soup as gazpacho, since I don't think a real gazpacho has corn in it. It would have gone nicely with corn chips, though, now that you mention it - I don't see what would be wrong with that! I fell in love with a cold soup in Korea called mul naeng myeon. It's a light beef broth that's been semi-frozen. Cold, chewy buckwheat noodles are nested in the middle, and garnished with julienned cucumber and nashi pear. It's topped off with a cold hard boiled egg and thin slices of boiled brisket. They bring it to your table with mustard and vinegar to season the broth, sesame seeds, and scissors to cut the noodles. Once again, I lament the absence of a drool emoticon.

Has anyone seen the new Pretz flavours in the recloseable bags? I picked up some basil and pumpkin flavours over the weekend, and I really enjoyed them. The pumpkin flavour was a nice blend of salty/sweet - it would be really good with beer. I found them at my supermarket, but I haven't seen them at the conbini yet.

Every time I walk by my local vegetable stand, I can't resist buying another bag of tomatoes. I've been watching them grow and ripen on the vine since the patch owner put them out - gosh, was it in May? I've been mentally rubbing my hands and say, "soon, my pretties, mwahaha". Is there anything better than getting garden fresh tomatoes without all the work and heartbreak that goes into growing them yourself? And for 100 yen a bag, you can't go wrong. Today I put several large ripe ones into my blender, along with some stale bread, garlic, salt, pepper, olive oil, and sherry vinegar. Chilled, with a dollop of corn jumble salad, I had a great soup - in the style of gazpacho.

For presentation, could you make a tartufo-style ball, using kinako instead of cocoa? Then it would look like a frozen mochi, sort of. You could do an umeboshi layer, surrounded by a sweeter, creamier layer - I'm not sure what, although I'm imagining houjicha or kinako moulded around it, and then dusted in more kinako powder. Something red to garnish. That might be too fusion for what you had in mind, though.

Mmm, those all sound great. The kinako one, especially. How about a houjicha flavour - am I spelling that right? I mean, roasted tea. It has a pleasant smoky vanilla taste that would make a fine ice cream, I think. Other seasonal suggestions - sakura? sweet potato or kabocha? Chestnut? Mikan sorbet? What about a take on those waffle cakes with red bean - koiyaki? Red bean ice cream with bits of waffle inside? Or ichigo daifuku, with strawberry ice cream and mochi pieces?

When I lived in Vietnam, where rice is harvested three times a year in some places, I noticed a difference in the taste of rice - it had a stronger taste and fragrance, to my mind, like the difference between coffee you've been keeping in your freezer, and coffee that you've freshly ground from fresh roasted beans. In Korea, a lot is made of eating fresh rice at Korean Thanksgiving (Chuseok), since that's the time when the crop is harvest. I noticed, as Prasantrin has mentioned, that it seems to cling together more, and yield softly in your mouth. As for basmati, I'm not sure, but I've seen it labeled as "aged" before, too. I don't know what the difference is there.

I feel really intimidated by fish. And I'm surrounded by good fish, so I feel like I should be taking advantage of that, and every week I walk into the fish section of my local supermarket, stare blankly at the array of fish laid out, and then turn around and walk back into the tofu section. Do I have to use fish the same day I buy it? Can I stick it in the freezer to defrost and use later? Do supermarket fish come prescaled? I have so many questions...

That looks delicious, LaCookrasha. Are there olives in there? What else? I had a craving this week for curry - not proper curry, mind you, or Japanese curry, but curry-shop curry like I used to eat in Vietnam, where the sauce is all blended up and a random protein is thrown in. So I made some, with some Patak's curry paste, tomatoes from my local veg stand, and a bit of yogurt, all blended up and simmered briefly with some seared chicken. I made some pan-fried naan to go along with it, using a package mix from the Japanese chain store Muji. I'm consistently surprised at how good their food offerings are, as I always think of them as a clothing and home furnishing chain. I folded some crushed garlic into the mix as I went along, and the whole meal was exactly what I wanted. It's nice when that happens.

A lot of traditional fishcakes in Nova Scotia use a bit of mashed potato bind everything up. You really notice it's there, though, with the texture. You might be looking to focus on the fish flavour. The other thing I could recommend, and I'm not sure if it would work or not with ground fish, since I usually do it with ground beef and pork, is to use a little egg and bread crumb like you did before, and tip the whole lot into a bowl. Then, pick it up and throw it at the side of the bowl. After a couple of shots like this, it should start to bind together as a mass. When it's holding together like a dough ball, you can break it up into little cakes. I got this technique out of a Japanese cookbook, to make hambaagu; and some eagle-eyed posters saw Richard Blais using it on Top Chef 4. You also might try looking up shu mai recipes to see how they make the shrimp filling work. I've never made them before, but it sounds like a great way to use up shrimp.

It's been heating up in Japan, and I've been trying to keep everything seasonal in my kitchen - I figure centuries of tradition must be right about something. So tonight, we had somen for dinner, with garnishes of green onion, sesame seeds, wasabi, and grated ginger. I also served it with ginger-stewed eggplant, on the advice of my Japanese cookbook. I got the eggplants for the ridiculously low sum of 100 yen for 5 at my local veg stand. It was just right for a hot summer's night.

I find the convection is also great for baked potatoes. I don't like microwaved "baked" potato but the convection one does it in about 45 minutes depending on the size of the potato. The skin is crispy and the middle tender. I love baked potato skin so it works great for us. I also love baked sweet potatoes roasted in it. ← Well, I do love a good baked sweet potato. Have you ever tried anything like cookies or cakes in yours? I'd like to be able to make things like that as well.

Thank you, ma'am. I've printed this off, and I'm folding it up to put in my wallet as we speak. I think you lost me at "Brunswick", because where I'm from, that's one province over. My life list includes touring the Southern US and trying to find out which state makes my favourite barbecue. As for potato salad, well, I've already come out for the non-traditional side - I wouldn't dare enter the fray on what makes a proper potato salad. And slaw, well, I prefer the vinegar kind, but my husband prefers the creamy kind. It's bad enough I'm a Canadiens fan, and he loves the Leafs.....

That was my favourite quote. I think this is the most enjoyable read I've had in a while. Despite growing up in the (global) neighborhood, I've never been to NYC, and I hope to someday visit it with the sort of planning and organization that you brought to your trip. There are several Doughnut Plants in Tokyo, too, and I'm intrigued by their offerings, but I can't bring myself to pay 300 yen for a donut.