nakji

Do you think a biscuit dough would be too soft to flip? Also, my rice cooker doesn't have a timer, just an on/off button. Where have you seen these recipes? Just so I have a starting point....

Excellent video! In retrospect, I think my rice cooker is too small. And there's no yeast at my local market. But I might be able to try biscuits, as I have some baking powder here.

My Japanese teacher cooked me a banana bread in her rice cooker the other day. She ran it through the cycle three times, then finished it in a frying pan. It was great. It also prompted me to think about baking regular bread in a rice cooker - after all - isn't a bread machine just like a rice cooker but with a kneading cycle? I have a really cheap rice cooker that I'm getting rid of in a week, as I'm moving to Japan. If I could get my hands on some yeast... ......dare me?

Mon nay ngon tuyet! Sorry I can't render the tones. First word, rising; second word, falling; third word, flat; last word, one syllable, with the sound pinched off at the end. Or you can smile and pat your tummy, which is what I usually do; I'm hopeless at tones.

A small nit to pick: Korea is generally considered to be in North-East Asia. It hangs out right next to Japan. That being said, I'm not sure if I know of any English magazines that focus on this kind of cuisine. Have you tried looking at Australian food magazines? I find they often features dishes with south-east Asian influences.

Oh no. Egullets reveals another sad addiction. I collect bag clips. In fish (and other sea creature) shapes. My prize clip is a red octopus clip. I also have squid, crab, and fish. I also use the binder clips, as they're more readily available. I like the range of sizes they come in.

Your description of roasting coffee sounds just like what I see every day in Hanoi. Lots of little cafes do their roasting out on the streets, using a wok and little coal burner. It smells kind of burn-y, and it always makes me want to pull my bike over and grab a quick cup. That cake made my mouth water. I've been coveting that book for a long time, but I just don't live in a place where I can reasonably do any baking.

I'm tickled you enjoyed them. My husband loves beans, and this is one of my favourite ways of cooking them. Another way I like to do them is to stir-fry them with lots of garlic and a bit of fish sauce. It makes a nice side to lemongrass chicken, or a thai curry.

When I was travelling Australia and New Zealand, all of the "barbecues"/grills at the campgrounds - and peoples homes - looked like that. I think I saw an actual grill once. They cooked burgers and sausages really well, with the added bonus that you could fry up onions in butter on the side. It went a long way in convincing my husband to eat onions.

Sometimes I blanch some beans, then saute some bacon and garlic in a pan. I drain of a bit of the fat (not too much, though!) and then add some honey, dijon mustard, and red wine vinegar to the pan, making a kind of dressing. Toss the beans in the dressing and serve warm or cool.

Virtually all of the best Vietnamese restaurants in Hanoi are named after their street address. I don't know why - tradition, I guess, or maybe because certain streets are famous for a particular dish. Either way, it makes them easy to find.

Blueberries and pine trees? I'd say Maine. Is it johnnyd?

Isn't that funny? I just mentioned that tip in another thread. If keeping it all together is a concern, definitely a sturdy roll or mini-baguette will help - and wrapping in tin foil is better than plastic wrap, too. Although that might be more expensive.

My husband's cork is that he likes to put the mustard between the cheese and the meat - not on the bread (where it would sink in), because he enjoys the mustard as a topping in its own right, not as a condiment. We go through a lot of grainy mustard.

I agree, the only sensible way to cut up kimchi is using (red-handled, of course) kitchen scissors. That way you save all the yummy juice, instead of getting it all over your cutting board. I also use them for cutting quesadillas, and occasionally for the really soft baguettes we get here in Hanoi.

Hmmm...so basically, you fear that most meat and cheese fillings wouldn't survive the heat of the trip? Is it possible to get a cold pack for your bag? Alternatively: Hummous and veg on multi-grain bread. (Just be sure to put the hummous on both sides of the bread and the veg in the middle, to keep the bread from getting soggy). Roasted veg and feta cheese (harder cheeses seem to hold up okay in the heat). Avocado (or even better, guacamole) and crispy bacon. Or Sun-dried tomatoes. If you're not worried about calories and carbs, maybe leftover pasta in a baguette. (A rugby player friend swears by this). A cooked omellette in bread. A chip butty? Onigiri? Not sure about the strict food safety of all these suggestions...

Thanks Hiroyuki, that is a great site! I'm a beginner at Japanese, but being able to sound out oishii on the page was a great confidence booster. Sheetz, you might also want to check out Torakris's great "Daily Nihongo" thread: Daily Nihongo

Wow, that was fascinating. Coke and bananas appear almost universally! It was their "Favourite recipe: soup with fresh sheep meat." that choked me up. I wonder how often they get that for dinner? It really made me appreciate how lucky I am. I'd have a hard time guessing what I ate each week, though - I shop on the day I want to cook, and eat out more than I cook. The only things lying around my house are condiments, bags of dried pasta and rice, bottled water and coffee. It was also interesting to see the relative cost of things - In the UK, about $250, In China and Poland, around $150, almost $200 in Mexico, $350 in North Carolina... ...although a lot could be chalked up to the age and number of family members. I'd like to see their food expenditures as a percentage of all household spending. Which family looks most like yours? Mine looks like the family in Kuwait, mostly due to the bag of rice, flats of bottled water, and a small amount of meat.

Today I made the double-mustard potato salad from this book, for a barbecue I'm going to. It's amazing! And since my husband and I are of two minds about how we like our mustard (I like standard dijon; he likes grainy) we'll always have the ingredients on hand. I think it'll go with sausages quite well, it's so tart.

"...Um...Guys?....I kinda fell down here.....Guys? Guys? It's getting a little hot....Guys?.......aw, nuts...."

I'm reading, too! I'm just too hot to type. What sort of thingy-majig were you doing your potatoes on the barbecue? Are those new? I can't remember ever seeing one of them before.

(Sorry to butt in here, but years of junior high school history classes are aching to be put to use, finally!) Nova Scotia is latin for New Scotland; owing to a number of Scottish settlers who began and continued to immigrate to various parts of Nova Scotia beginning in the 17th century, probably because they found they weather more temperate (ha ha, I kid, I kid). Fewer than 5% of the population in Nova Scotia is Francophone Acadian. We have our own tartan, and are the only province to have been created by a royal charter. (Take that, Ontario!) I'd say more people consider our background to be Scots/English than French. Nova Scotia has mixed roots. Although there has been a lot of discussion about Acadia in this thread, in fact Halifax was a British garrison town, founded in 1749. It was founded to counterbalance the French fort at Louisburg, in Cape Breton (The large island in the eastern part of Nova Scotia). The Treaty of Utrecht ceded much of Nova Scotia and what is today New Brunswick (Acadia) to England in 1713. The French got to keep Prince Edward Island (Ile St-Jean) and Cape Breton (Ile Royale), where they built Louisburg in 1719. The English asked the Acadians to swear allegiance in 1730, but later got nervous about the whole affair and shipped them off in the 1750s, most notably to Louisiana. Later, some of them came back, but were given the (relatively) crappier land along the Fundy Bay, the southern tip of Nova Scotia, and on the south and northern coasts of Cape Breton. They didn't get to go back to the middle bits, where all of the lovely arable lands lies, and where you can visit a statue of Evangeline, if you happen to find yourself in Wolfville for the Apple Blossom festival, or touring the local wineries there. Try the coffee at Just Us! Roasters down the road: it's really great. Halifax has an English colonial history, and not a particularly notable place to taste poutine; Poutine is of course a Quebecois invention, and the Quebecois are culturally separate from the Acadians. I can't comment on Acadian poutine rapee, although I have gone on record about my feelings for rappie pie, a true Acadian dish. How Acadian food evolved into Cajun food is another question entirely. Now that I've thought about it a bit, I can't think of a particular dish strongly associated with Halifax. Donairs, perhaps?

Yay! A blogger from my hometown! (Okay, I'm technically from Dartmouth, but don't hold it against me.) Will your visit to the valley coincide with the Apple Blossom Festival? Will you be visiting Pete's Frootique? Is Pete's Frootique still a going affair? Is Ca Hoa Pan-Asian grocery still open at the corner of Queen and Victoria (the best place in Halifax IMHO for Asian groceries)? And most importantly..... Does Pizza Corner pizza still taste like rubber?

I liked the brownies in this book, but then, I like my brownies fudgy, and I used the best chocolate I could find. It does yield a small batch - just perfect for my house, where it's up to me to finish the pan. I really like the cross referencing and lists in this book, which I think are the killer app. "20 dishes that are good at room temperature" - etc. I don't own Joy of Cooking, or similar, so this is a good "basic" book for me. I might take it down to the photocopy shops and have it rebound with a spiral binding, though.

Do my eyes deceive me, or is that eight kinds of feta for sale in the photo above? Sometimes I hate living in Asia. The white jelly-like thing you had for lunch was probably some sort of muk. The brown kind of muk is made from acorns, I believe. It's really nice with a bit of sesame oil and chili flakes sprinkled over. Will there be any Vietnamese food stops in this blog? I'd love to see what your bun bo hue looks like!