nakji

I will, but I've just discovered that I don't have the right converter for my camera charger. D'oh! I can tell you that it was Mizkan brand, and it says hon teri in hiregana on the label. And of course, there are numerous kanji that I can't read. It was very cheap.

Oh yeah, that ddeok on a stick is a classic. Peter, it's great to see all these photos of Korea. When I was living there, that museum was still by appointment only, but I wanted to go in! Maybe when I get back for a visit. I don't suppose you remember the name of the artist that did those spiders? Because I'm sure they have one of them in Tokyo, in Roppongi Hills. It's hard to forget something like that. I need to get back to Korea so I can catch up on the trends for bottled liquors - I miss sansachun. (But I don't miss Hite).

Yes, Hiroyuki, I'm living in Tokyo now. I made nikomi hamburger tonight for dinner, which was a hit with my husband. No photo, since the plate looks almost exactly like the one I posted of the meatballs above. I found carrots on sale for 98 yen/bag, so we've been eating a lot of them. I made a mistake in the sauce, and put vinegar in instead of mirin ( the bottles look quite similar next to each other - I should have read the label first!) but I just added more sugar, and it tasted great. I ended up scraping the pan with the leftover rice!

Ooooohhh....merguez frites is one of my favourite meals, but merguez tacos? They look fantastic. And that pie floater makes me think of Australia - ooh, I miss the meat pies there. I especially liked the ones with a scoop of mashed potato on the top. As for that amazing Halloween display, I think I'm going to go watch the Nightmare Before Christmas, just so I can sing "This is Halloween".

I cannot even begin to count the number of times in Asia I have seen strawberry yogurt employed in capacities beyond what it was meant for (that is to say a socially acceptable breakfast dessert and/or a wimpy dessert your mom would pack with lunch, along with an apple) - not the least of which was as a salad dressing on iceberg lettuce and corn. So strawberry yogurt masquerading as tzatziki doesn't shock me at all. Getting decent Greek food in Asia is hard. What island were you on?

D-uh. (smacks head) Of course, it's in katakana. I'll know what to look for now. I can always hit Koreatown, too, though. I go through Shin-Okubo every day on my way to work. It's the stop between Takadanobaba and Shinjuku, where no one gets on or off. I like to mix a little ginger and sesame oil into the miso when I use it for dipping. It is indeed a great beer snack.

That was miso. But I also love dipping in daengjang - are miso and daengjang functionally the same? I've never done a side-by-side taste test. I can't find any Korean sauces at my local grocery store - at least; not the ones in the brown and red tubs. I'm dying for some gojujang. There's probably a Japanese brand in the store somewhere, but my kanji doesn't stretch far enough to identify it.

First and second breakfast! An excellent tradition. One of my favourite quotes from a movie is: "I don't think he knows what second breakfast is!" -from Lord of the Rings. That cheese looks lovely. Can I ask what epazote is? A kind of chili or herb?

They look great. I wish nem nuong paste was available here! What are you dipping them in?

I made a dish that we used to get at one of our favourite restaurants in Hanoi - I don't think it's traditional Vietnamese food, but I love it anyway. It's thinly sliced beef, sauteed with garlic, and topped with a dijon-cream sauce. I served it with garlic scapes and baked potatoes. I also learned that having the microwave and both burners of my stove going causes the power to cut out in my kitchen pod. Also: I hate induction stoves. There's no traction for my fry pan.

Wow, this echoes my experience exactly. Although I often don't end up cooking food from one country until I've moved to another country, and start missing it. I'm looking forward to seeing daily life in Mexico. I'd love to learn more about the cuisine, and the type of food you eat on a daily basis!

Dinner tonight was quick to make. Red leaf lettuce salad with a sesame and red chili vinaigrette (like the galbi houses in Korea serve), Pan-fried mok-sal (pork neck); And because there wasn't enough pork fat already, some gyoza I had in the freezer. Please note the empty butter container doubling as a dip container. I need some dishes! Chufi, your salmon looks so fresh. Now I live near a fish shop, I have to remember to go in and pick a piece up some time.

Yes - about two or three strips. I leave the fat in the pan. It makes the tomatoes cook down nicely. I was hoping we'd have leftovers for my lunch, but we ate it all up.

That beef pot pie looks amazing! I would totally have to stop myself from eating the whole pan! Now that I'm finally in a kitchen with running water and a working stove again, I've been back over the heat! Last night was a pasta amatriciana that was perfect after a rainy day spent exploring shrines. I don't have an oven anymore, though, so I'll be watching this thread for recipes I can make on two burners.

I made these chicken meatballs I picked up at the supermarket with a 1:1 soy:mirin ratio for the sauce. I put a tablespoon of sugar in, as well. They were scrumptious! Next time I won't put the sauce on the plate, though, as it was quite salty after it had reduced. I think I'll use better quality soy sauce the next time around, as well. But I was pretty thrilled with how they tasted! Thanks, Hiroyuki, this thread has been really helpful, especially now that I'm cooking in Japan.

Glad to hear it! I don't feel so decadent now. With Torakris's help, I finally uploaded my nikkujaga picture. I cooked this meal on Sunday - Canadian Thanksgiving! Not exactly traditional, but I had just come from seeing a hockey game, so I guess that was Canadian enough for the day. I made nikkujaga, and cut the carrots into flowers, because I know Hiroyuki is looking. I made it on the soupy side, but I liked it. Side dishes were fusion-y. I made stir fried bean sprouts with sesame oil, something I ate a lot in Korea, and spinach with sesame dressing, a kind of spin on the traditional spinach with sesame. I think there was a bit too much orange on the plates, but there you go.

That fish looks lovely, helenjp. Is that a flower garnish next to it? I was so surprised to see flowers for sale in the produce department in my local grocery store. Are they edible, or just for looks? Here's yesterday's lunch, made with some leftover curry rice I had from earlier in the week, and some rosu katsu from the supermarket. I also included some cucumbers as a side, so I felt like I was eating something healthy. It's the first time I'd tried Japanese cucumbers, and they're fantastic! I'm not sure if I can ever go back to North American ones. Apologies for the tonkatsu sauce and the curry sauce. Appalling, I know, but I can't give up an opportunity to have it. I wanted to post a picture of tonight's dinner, which was nikkujaga following Torakris's recipe from the eGCI course, but Image Gullet isn't letting me upload, for whatever reason. I'll try again tomorrow, I guess.

Yo, sorry, just moved to Tokyo: I've been out eating ramen. Yeah, the seal I had was cooked. It has kind of a rich, fatty taste - the meat's really dark. I can't say I liked it. Caribou, on the other hand, is delicious. My favourite meal up north (in Labrador) was eating river trout I caught with my dad and great uncle. We went fishing, and pulled a ridiculous amount of them right out of the river. I remember the black flies were so bad, they were crawling in and out of our eyes and nose. But my uncle fried the fish up right next to the river, and they were soooooo sweet. I have never ever had fish that tasted like that since then. As for parasites, don't seals have a lot of worms? Or am I just making that up in my head? Every year when the seal hunt in Newfoundland comes around, and the CBC does its obligatory story on how appalled the rest of the world gets about it, my mother gets all high dudgeon-y and (picture her ironing in front of the TV) shakes her iron and shouts "Club 'em all! The little bastards eat all the cod!" Those are my seal memories.

Try subbing in a rice vinegar. Although, to be honest, if you'd asked me what was in the nuoc cham I was eating in Hanoi, I probably wouldn't have guessed limes were in there. Limes in (northern) Vietnam are small and round, unlike the ones I used to see in Canada, with the small nubbly ends. They tasted a bit different, too - sweeter? Depending on where you are, the restaurant might be using a different type of lime than you're used to. Why don't you ask the staff at the restaurant? I'm sure they'd tell you how they make it.

I've never had rijstaffel before. Were there any notable dishes in the selection you tried?

I don't know if you've been and gone yet, but here are some of my suggestions: Grab breakfast/lunch at any one of the Gimbap Cheonguk/Gimbap Nara chains (hard to miss, they're everywhere and they're orange), where you can get gimbap, bibimbap, kimchi jigae and the like. Good if you're eating alone. Walk through Insadong in the afternoon and stand in line for a hotuk - a pancake filled with brown sugar and ground nuts. Go into any one of the teahouses that run off Insadong and order some bokbun jaju; a kind of sweet berry wine; and kamja jeon (potato pancake) or haemmul jeon (seafood pancake). At night, hit Sinchon, and wander through the alleys until you find a Chuncheon Jib Ddalk Galbi chain, and enjoy a hot pan full of chicken and rice cakes in spicy sauce. Alternatively, try any of the amazing galbi jibs (Korean barbecue houses) in that area. They're all cheap, because it's a student area. Just look for a place with real coals in the table, and lots of people. Order at least one bottle of soju. There's lots of good street food here, as well, like ddeok bokki and odeng stalls. That should get you started, and if you walk into any restaurant the Korean staff will be happy to help you choose something - just remember, even in Seoul, not a lot of English is spoken. Be adventurous and you'll be rewarded.

Do they still do "Roll Up The Rim To Win"? Yeah, if someone showed up with a box of Boston Creams right about now, I wouldn't turn them down. Someone once told me their coffee has MSG. I believed it, since their coffee is so old by the time it gets brewed, they need something to boost the flavour. Urban Legend? Can you even add MSG to coffee?

"A Mormon Cookbook: Food, Facts & Friendship", which a friend bought for me in a gas station in Idaho. It contains recipes for "Apples slices and Peanut butter" (just that) and "Polygamist Potato Pancakes". It's not really all that strange, I guess, but since I own a total of 4 cookbooks altogether (How To Cook Everything; a book of handwritten recipes from a Thai friend; a small Vietnamese cookbook, and A Mormon Cookbook) it kind of sticks out.

Chop them in half, and put them in an omelette with chopped red onion and cilantro. I had this for the first time in India, and fell in love with it. Sometimes they'd add a spice mix - I have no idea what, they just called it masala - and put it between toast with a slice of American cheese. Heaven!

Tim Hortons Tries for US Expansion (NY Times link; requires free registration) It's been four years since I've been in a Tim's, long enough to lose my Canadian passport by some people's standards. In that time, I've had my first drink of Vietnamese coffee, and my first bite of a warm Krispy Kreme right off the conveyor belt. Nostalgia aside, I have no further reason to ever enter a Tim Horton's again in my life. According to the article, it seems that Tim's has achieved near market saturation in many parts of Canada, and is now looking South for growth. I recall that the Tim's in Halifax converted a central bakery that distributed donuts to most of the franchises in the area. Donuts were almost universally hard and stale by the time you got them. As for the coffee, I thought it was undrinkable - a long time black coffee drinker, it tasted like tar without the two creams and sugars most people drink it with. I do sometimes fondly recall the chocolate chip muffins, however, with the big sugar crystals on the top. They got me through almost all of my third year of university. And when the article image of a donut loaded up on my computer, I got a lump in my throat - it remains a powerful image of "home" to me. Have you tried Tim's product? What do you think? How do you think it compares to Dunkin Donuts?