nakji

Breakfast today was considerably less alcoholic: oatmeal. My Scots granny taught me to always salt it well, although I can't resist a bit of brown sugar and butter, either. I also stirred in some excellent green Xinjiang raisins, which are sweeter than brown California raisins, I think. Oatmeal is quite popular in the supermarkets - you can even get bags of it in the convenience stores. Unfortunately, not steel cut oats! I can't even find them in Shanghai. I wonder if locals use the oatmeal in savoury applications instead of rice - like congee?

Yeah, I don't actually like orange juice! It was a no-brainer, really. Shelby, if you're interested, we've got a great how-to for North Indian breads in eGCI.

新年快乐! That's a genius discovery! Thanks for sharing. I may have to go make some dumplings just to try it out.

Sometimes I don't peel carrots, I just scrub them clean.

David, I know you're a fan of pineapple upsidedown cake, so I had to bring this recipe to your attention, if it wasn't already: From February 2000 Gourmet: Pineapple Upsidedown Cake - with fresh pineapple. This is the best one I've eaten. Ever. Bar none.

Jaymes posted this salsa last June and I just found it yesterday. Made it this afternoon and now report back. Point #1: I had no idea how difficult it is now to find canned tomatoes without sugar and a lot of other stuff in them. Jaymes said canned tomatoes with tomatoes and salt only. In a large local supermarket I could find only one brand with the requisite tomatoes and salt only. Point number 2...which I already knew...just a fact of life for chiles. Some of the same type of chile are much hotter than another. I could not imagine getting fresh Jalapenos in Peterpatch, ON, so hot that I had to add another can of tomatoes to the salsa just to be able to use it at all. DH, Ed, still thinks it's too hot. It probably would have been safer under the circumstances to either use canned or to add the chiles one at a time. Still, all in all, a good experience. Thanks, Jaymes I love this salsa! But I've never seen a jalapeno in Asia. I use Holland chilis, (the long, thin red ones) and the heat is perfect.

That book sounds lovely. If I ever see it, I'll pick it up. I got "the Lost Chinese Chef" by Nicole Mones from the library - I'm looking forward to reading it. It's a novel about an American food writer in Beijing, profiling a Chinese-American chef.

The chef at the Bookwork is British, and the menu has quite a few classics like full English breakfast, and bacon sandwiches and the like. One thing I noticed after moving overseas is that North American baking items - like muffins, chocolate chip cookies, layer cakes - are less popular for bakery items than French. So often it's quite easy to get things like (badly made) croissants and pain au chocolat; sables; or mousse cakes, but not a breakfast muffin. Starbucks will stock things like muffins, but they're usually adjusted to the local market - like black bean or green tea flavour. And I don't get to Starbucks very often, either. The beer for breakfast was just for the holiday! Hoegaarden tastes faintly of oranges and coriander, so I had it instead of orange juice.

The nan is hard to describe. It doesn't taste like Indian nan, nor does it taste like a flour tortilla. It doesn't have much flavour at all, really, and it's usually fairly hard. I've never gotten it when it's been fresh made, though. I think they make it in the morning, then it's stacked behind the lamb grill outside until you order it. My husband and I often order extra from restaurants for lunch the next day - saying "wrap it up" was one of my first phrases in Chinese.

Nah - I wish. It was bottled, and it was a light pink. It wasn't bad, but you're right - it's not a patch on the dark red pomegranates.

Here's the recipe - I assume you just sub in potatoes rather than apples: Apples or Bananas Pulling Golden Threads

OK. Now *those* words together are just magic-sounding. Crazy, but magical.... Count me in as well. How do you think they were prepared? Was it meant to be a dessert item or is the line mushy? Also those noodle bits are calling me - toothsome is that the word when they are a bit chewy? Oh my- I have some recon to do because I know I can get just a little little bit close here in Los Angeles. I think the potatoes in caramel follow the same principles as apples in caramel, another common dish? There's a recipe in Yan Kit-so's Classic Chinese cuisine. The sugar hardens as you eat it, making it quite difficult to pry the pieces apart. Even my group, with its mad chopstick skills, was left fighting the potatoes across the table to pick them up. The resaurant cat was waiting nearby to get any splashback. If this cuisine looks interesting, try looking for Uigyur or Uzbekistani restaurants.

Here's a video on making lagman noodles. These ones were chopped into pieces, and probably - but I'm not certain - wok fried with the lamb sauce. They are rather toothsome, and I find them very comforting to eat. I believe Alford and Duguid have a recipe for making the long noodles in "Beyond the Great Wall", a book I have but don't pay nearly enough attention to - it focuses on the minority cuisines of China.

Tonight, to make up for our earlier sloth, we tackled a Xinjiang-style restaurant - a Halal restaurant that specializes in the cuisine from the majority-Muslim Xinjiang province. Although there have been political tensions between Beijing and this province, they have not seemed to affect the popularity of this cuisine - there are several restaurants that feature this kind of cooking within short cab-rides from my flat. Right away, you can tell you're not in a Han Chinese place, as the tables are rectangular; the waitresses are in minority dress, and the decor calls to mind a silk road caravan tent. There are even goat skulls on the wall, which I unforgivably forgot to take pictures of. The emphasis is, of course, on lamb and mutton dishes. They cook up all parts of the animal, and the lamb ribs are particularly fine. You can also get skewers of lamb heart; kidneys; and other offaly bits. We ordered skewers, which are cooked on an open-air grill on the street over charcoal; and dusted with cumin and chili. The meat is interspersed with chunks of pure lamb fat. They also make their own yogurt in-house, so we got a bowl of that to cut some of the chili heat, along with some Xinjiang black beer. I actually had a pomegranate juice instead, since I don't like dark beers. Dry fried beans, which are usually made with ground pork, are instead dressed with Sichuan peppercorns to give flavour, along with the requisite ginger-chili-garlic mix. Broccoli - it's strangely delicious here. We reckon it's doused in a rich chicken broth and sprinkled with MSG. It tastes better than broccoli has a right to. We got some nan bread to soak up the sauces from the braises: The braises being big-plate chicken, spicy with dried and fresh chilis and a hint of anise: And cinnamon anise beef and potatoes: I like to break up my nan, poke it into the sauce in pieces, and come back several minutes later to pluck it out with chopsticks. My friends and I often come here, but usually separately. It was fun to all order our favourite dishes and discover new menu gems. There is an English menu, but the translation is such that it offers you no more clue to the component parts of the dishes than do the Chinese characters. So when someone shows me a new good one, I take a moment to memorize the name. This one was a suggestion from my friend: Fine-chopped mutton with carrots and peppers; served with thin wheat pancakes for wrapping. We doused it in yogurt to excellent results. And my favourite: chopped noodles. These are noodles that have been pulled, then cut into little pieces, almost like gnocchi. They're served with a thick lamb ragu. And because we hadn't had enough potatoes: deep-fried potatoes in caramel. Hmm, looking at all these pictures, it's been a very meat-centric day. I'll have to rein that in tomorrow.

Somebody did give me a leg of wild boar once...in a plastic bag, with skin and hair attached...e careful what you wish for! Upside down luck - that sounds like my kind of luck, for sure. China or not, that coffee and white beer look very good indeed. Upside down luck! An excellent way to look at it. There was still hair on the hoof of that one tied to the banister.

And the tofu is all quite excellent, although I'm most partial to the fried cubes. The mole was all gone last night! We were fairly greedy. But I'll remember that trick the next time, and try to make it a day ahead. I think most dishes like that benefit from a sit to gel the flavours, don't they?

Apologies all - I wanted to show you some pictures of the teashops along the canal, but - I brought my camera WITHOUT the memory card. s-m-r-t. I managed to snap a few pictures on my husband's iPhone, though. It's okay, though, because after three days of frantic activity and cooking, I decided to kick back and enjoy the warm weather we had. We ended up back at the Bookworm, one of the teashops along the canal on Shi Quan Jie, since pretty much every Chinese place was shut. It was nice enough to spend the whole afternoon on the patio, so we did. So much for my walk! I, uh, had the burger. And a coffee. And, my breakfast beer of choice: Tonight, we're going to go out to dinner to a local Chinese Muslim place called Yakexi. And I will bring a memory card.

Like my eggs? What were you cooking? How did it get botched? We need to know! What kind of baozi are you going to make? Don't forget to post about them in the baozi topic!

Absolutely! I am so glad that you liked the potatoes. I usually feel uneasy about recommending a recipe – what if it goes horribly wrong? Anyway, Art of Mexican Cooking was one of my first cookbooks, so my note may have dated back to when I first started cooking and had no idea how to adjust seasoning and such. I will definitely give it another go. No, thank you for your recommendations. I was completely at sea looking through that book. It's quite intimidating, especially since I have no sense of how the recipes are supposed to taste. Kent and I'll have to get together for a Mole night, and he can school me in authenticity. Actually - doubled that recipe and fried the potatoes in batches - which I recommend, if you're going to serve it to teenage boys. And that stove? Yeesh. The red didn't come out of the cutting board I keep behind the burner. My ayi's going to have a start tomorrow.

I'm not sure. The legs must be fairly dry, cured, and salty so that they're shelf-stable, like jamon serrano, so that would preclude a lot of options such as baking them. My family (from Shanghai) primarily uses it by cutting up a few slices and putting it into soups, braises, or on steamed fish. But you use up very little at a time. Maybe you would use an entire leg in a year, but it seems inconvenient to have a store a leg for that long, and would be worrisome during the summer months. Some cuisines, like Yunnan, which is renowned for producing these hams, will slice them very thin and steam them, or toss it into a stir-fry. That would use it up at a faster rate. I personally buy the 1 kg (or so) vacuum-sealed packs of the ham from the supermarket. That usually lasts me a month or two. It's great for making a fast and easy stock. Of course there's a ton of other dried Chinese goods for that purpose like dried shrimp, mussels, fish, duck. Thanks, I knew you'd come through! I love preserved ham in a stir fry, mixed with another non-preserved meat. I think Dunlop has a recipe that has smoked pork, pork belly and green peppers in Revolutionary cuisine that's a keeper. I want to learn more about Yunnan cuisine, though; especially the minority tribe dishes. I forgot to say - the noodle maker was shut for the holidays - taken over by an opportunistic longan seller for the holidays, by the looks of it.

My papas guisadas: The roasted tomatoes seems to have made the difference for me. I didn't have serranos, so I subbed in Holland chilis. I have "Art of Mexican Cooking", but I've been too intimidated to cook out of it until yesterday, lacking the correct chilis and that sort of thing. But since I'm not entertaining Ms. Kennedy, or for that matter - anyone who can tell the difference - I think I'm going to try cooking from it more substituting what I have at hand. I may have to start an Asian:Mexican chili pepper comparison topic to get ideas for substitutions.

Hello, Pierogi. I love discovering recipes that make you completely re-think an ingredient. It's like finding an author that you've never read before with a twenty-year back catalogue. That soup sounds amazing - I'll have to remember it when the CSA sends me bell peppers and pumpkin together. Basically, tomatoes, onion, potatoes, chilis and cheese. Some salt and oil, too. I think the key in getting the good flavour is roasting the tomatoes and toasting the chilis - it adds an unexpected complexity.

Breakfast of champions: leftovers. A (thin) wedge of pineapple cake; a small bowl of potatoes guisadas. Bruce - I have to say again what a great recipe this is! You've got to give it another go! Now off to meet friends for lunch and hopefully a (long) walk.

Well, no one's given me a pig leg, either. I may have to go source my own. The thing is - how the heck is everyone cooking it? No one has an oven here, and I don't care how big your wok is, a whole leg isn't going to fit. (Although that is a great mental picture) Kent - help us out. What's happening to those legs?

I'm glad I could inspire - what are you thinking of making?