C. sapidus

Mmmmm, delicious-looking dinners and fascinating history. Sometimes it is difficult for those of us living in the “new world” to remember that history goes back much further in other parts of the globe.Half of last night’s dinner was Chinese: Fuchsia Dunlop’s fish-fragrant eggplant (yu xiang qie zi). The eggplant was deep-fried until soft and golden, then drained, tossed briefly with the sauce, and finished with sesame oil. I found it delicious, but the rest of the family had issues with the soft texture. Is eggplant normally soft in Chinese cooking, or should I have left more “chew”? Description from the Dinner! thread: Vietnamese pork in claypot was delicious, too, but the family didn’t like the chewy rice noodles. Guess I need to work on their appreciation of different textures.

Teepee: Thanks! I do like some heat with my dinner, but the beef turned out to be flavorful but fairly mild. Heck, even our youngest son, the least chile-tolerant in the family, didn’t complain.

The National Kitchen and Bath Association recommends the following minimum widths: 36” for walkways; 42” for single-cook work aisles; and 48” for multiple cook work aisles. Providing adequate passageways may not leave much room for an island in an 11x14 kitchen unless the long side is open. Our 10x12 kitchen opens to the dining room on the short side. Pre-renovation, a peninsula between the kitchen and dining room was a major bottleneck. After evaluating several island and peninsula configurations, we decided that a galley layout was the most efficient and functional. Good luck!

Teepee: Your photography is amazing, and your dinners look delicious (especially the pork ribs). Please keep posting. Our dinner may have been fusion rather than Chinese, but we had “Genghis Khan” beef and Sichuan dry-fried yard-long beans. The beans were nearly authentic (including ya cai – Tianjin preserved vegetable), except I used our abundant supply of Italian sausage instead of ground pork. The beef was cubed flank steak with hoisin sauce, soy sauce, sambal oleek, sesame oil, scallions, Thai chilies, and about a head of sliced garlic. Next time I’ll give it a bit more heat by increasing the sambal oleek or mincing the chilies. Out of curiosity, does anyone know why Chinese stir-fry recipes (at least those in English) often call for whole chilies? I understand that the chilies are supposed to flavor the oil, but that can be done much more efficiently by mincing (or even bruising) fresh chilies or by reducing dried chilies to a paste or powder. Those methods allow the chile flavor and heat to spread uniformly through the dish, rather than remaining concentrated in chile land mines to surprise the unwary. ETA: oops, forgot the picture.

Christian Z: Wow, that is an awe-inspiring pictorial. Your dedication to authenticity while dealing with ingredient limitations is truly inspiring. The finished meal looks absolutely delicious. I’m drooling here. Wow. Mole poblano is one of my favorite things on earth, and I haven’t made it for way too long.

man, i'd completely forgotten that book! i've got one from the '60s or '70s and it really is the bible when it comes to my new mexican cooking. in other words, that's where i learned to make my red and green sauces. ← This one? A Taste of New Mexico Kitchens (Bolerum Books)

Marcella Hazan has a wonderful, simple fettuccine Alfredo. It takes maybe two minutes beyond the time to cook the fettuccine - the residual heat from the fettuccine and from the pot will do all of the cooking necessary. I have been making this so long that my method has probably strayed from the original, but it goes something like this: 1. Cook fettuccine in boiling salted water and strain in a colander 2. Melt butter using residual heat from the pot. 3. Add cooked fettuccine to the pot with the butter and mix. 4. Add heavy cream and mix. 5. Add freshly grated Parmesan a little at a time while mixing. 6. Season with freshly ground pepper and nutmeg, if you like. Since cost is a factor, tell your friend that the recipe also works with asiago cheese (but don’t tell Marcella).

When I have a home office again, it will be decorated with pictures of chiles, crabs, dogs, gardens, and old vinyl album covers – the finer things in life, y’know. I would love to take photographs that were good enough to display.

Beer, steamed crab meat, and saltine crackers = crab cakes. Saltine crackers

This thread is a great idea – there is a similar Thai home cooking thread that has helped many of us to share successes and learn from our less-successful attempts. I recently started experimenting with Chinese food, working from Fuchsia Dunlop’s Land of Plenty and Grace Young’s Breath of a Wok. To cheat, I am posting a few of our recent dinners, and welcome comments and suggestions from the wonderfully experienced cooks here. Apologies if I have mangled Chinese names or cooking traditions. Cashew chicken and tiger-skin green peppers (fu pi qing jiao). I used Poblano peppers – delicious but definitely not traditional. Sichuan dry-fried chicken (gan bian ji). I think this was chicken with Sichuan peppercorns and dry-fried green beans. Salt and pepper shrimp. I believe that eating the shells is traditional, but our sons prefer the shrimp to be shelled before cooking. Gong bao chicken: Dry-fried beef slivers (gan bian niu rou si), chicken in red oil sauce (hong you ji kuai), and tiger-skin peppers (fu pi qing jiao). Some sort of Sichuan chicken (la zi ji, perhaps) with stir-fried bok choy.

Rachel: I-70 and I-65 carried us through your fair city on our way to Wisconsin and a delightful family gathering, marred only by a slow-to-nonexistent internet connection. Returning home to skim your foodblog has whetted my appetite for a more careful reading to come. Your writing is worth it. Back to an earlier question, our boys have a Grammy and a Grammasaurus. Elder son mustered his then-halting English to bestow the latter sobriquet, and it stuck like glue. Fortunately, Grammasaurus doesn’t mind being named after an elderly brontosaurus in the “Land before Time” cartoons. I have my Scottish Granny's shortbread recipe, although I only met her twice. Transcription errors have transformed the recipe into an exercise in adding a little of this and a dusting of that until the dough looks right. The shortbread always tastes good, but never turns out the same way twice. This is probably a fair tribute to a woman who raised three children during the London Blitz, survived an unexploded bomb in the back garden, and accompanied her children and botanist husband to Ghana. Maddy seems to have a great joie de vivre. Our Jack Russell mix observes the humans closely and imitates them (us) with disquieting accuracy. Between naps, he terrorizes the local squirrel and rabbit population. Thank you for sharing your life and wit with us this week.

Pontormo: Excellent idea! In the spirit of this thread, and to purge excess protein after last night’s chili cook-off, I made chayotes al vapor for lunch. This is the sort of Mexican mostly-vegetable fare that I lived on for many years. For me, adding beans, cheese, eggs, a little meat for flavor, and/or lots of spices avoids the feeling that “something is missing” after a mostly-vegetable meal. I would cook this way more often, but the rest of the family is relentlessly carnivorous. The chayote was quickly seared with chilies and onions, covered and steamed in its own juices for a few minutes, and then uncovered and cooked until al dente. I topped with cilantro, feta cheese, and a squeeze of lime. Cooked this way, chayote has a nice texture and comports well with a wide variety of flavors.

Green curry with bamboo shoots. Bamboo shoots.

Tzatziki suggests gyros. Since lamb has already been chosen, gotta go with feta cheese.Feta cheese

What have you named your ginger beer variation? Sounds refreshing! ← I'm pretty new at making cocktails, so I wouldn't presume to name a drink. It was nice, though.

Limes were eight for a dollar at the grocery store, so last night we made this Santiago Variation from Cocktail DB. Simple and refreshing. Mrs. Crab doesn’t like full-strength cocktails, so I mixed hers with Jamaican ginger beer, which was also good.

Hey, who put the good tea in our break room, and what are you doing with my knife? I had that same Chicago Cutlery knife for 20 years, but recently replaced it with a Hattori HD (also very light, but much sharper). I envy your taco selection. More Salvadorans and fewer Mexicans have settled here, so we see more pupusas than tacos. I find pupusas a bit heavy - do you have them in your area? Mmm, pumpkin ice cream.

Building permit requirements vary greatly by locale. We had to get a permit for our kitchen renovation, which included closing in a doorway, changing plumbing and electric, adding a hood, and running a gas line to the kitchen. We did not need an architect because we did not make any structural changes. A screenshot from the Ikea kitchen planner was sufficient. Again, different cities and counties have different requirements. Local requirements also vary on what jobs require a licensed contractor. In our city, we could completely re-wire the house ourselves, but we would need to hire a licensed plumber to change out a sink or faucet. Go figure – I’m way more dangerous around electricity than plumbing. The best advice is to check with your local building authority. Some building authorities have a web site with frequently asked questions, permit application forms, etc. Since you are in earthquake country, I expect the building authority to have pretty stringent requirements, especially if you move any walls. Good luck!

Coconut milk. Coconut rice is delicious, no other ingredients required.

Agedashi looks delicious, so thanks for the suggestion. Funny that you mention ma po tofu - I had that in mind as the destination rather than the starting point. Elder son loves hot/spicy food, but we are building up younger son's chile tolerance. My wife reminded me that the boys enjoy tofu-based meatless "BBQ ribs", so perhaps this windmill has already been tilted at. I didn't mean to hijack this thread, which has been fascinating. Please carry on.

Perhaps some of you, for obvious reasons, are missing the positive aspects of this societal pressure on mothers. If I feed our children a steady diet of Spaghetti-Os and chicken fingers, society will condone my behavior while judging my wife mercilessly. Sometimes, it is good to be a guy. Please note the above, OK? The other day, younger son described how he would vomit if he had to eat tofu. I asked him if he knew what tofu was, and, long story short, he had no idea. It turns out that a recent cartoon episode (Camp Lazlo, FWIW) featured a camp cook who made tofu hot dogs every Friday. Somehow, the cartoon cook managed to impart the resilience of vulcanized rubber into the normally soft soybean derivative. No recipe was provided, so I can only surmise that molecular gastronomy was involved. Anyway, my new goal is to prepare kid-friendly tofu. I will probably start with tofu playing a minor role in something the boys already enjoy, such as fried rice, and work up from there. Since I have never cooked with tofu before, this will be an interesting challenge.

I took two water polo vacations in the Bay area 20 years ago, so I look forward to seeing what it is like to live and eat in The City. Despite your disclaimer, testing computer games is our sons’ ultimate fantasy job. Can I tell them that you had to study very hard and get very good grades? You understand that I’ll tell them that anyway, right? Your avatar is beautiful, but I have no idea what it is. Would you enlighten, please? Your kitchen feels light and open. Is the curved, open cupboard in the second picture your bar? Is your range next to the refrigerator? If so, how does that work when you are cooking? Thanks!

Thanks, Rachel. I'm pretty sure it isn't me, um, unless this is even more secret than I thought. I'd be happy to chow down on that taco, though.

We also chose Blue Star, in our case a 36-inch cooktop rather than a range. After nearly a year, we are absolutely delighted. As Marya points out, Blue Star has dedicated burners that go very high and very low. Even the regular burners have no problem melting chocolate without a double boiler or steaming rice. Fabulous FB makes a good point: sales and service are spotty in some areas of the country, so do enquire. Also, make sure your vent hood will handle the high-powered burners. Even with a 600-CFM Vent-a-Hood, I occasionally drive everyone out of the kitchen with capsaicin fumes. Prizer-Painter (Blue Star manufacturer) David Rosengarten article comparing Blue Star, Viking, Jade, and DCS. And for the truly obsessed, the archive of all Blue Star threads on GardenWeb. I’ve posted this before, but this is our setup.

I’ll go out on a limb and mention a controversial choice: Ledo Pizza (click). Caveats: it is definitely not Philly or NY pizza. Few have neutral opinions about Ledo’s – most folks either love it or hate it. It is a franchise (albeit a local franchise), so quality varies somewhat by location. The crust is unique: medium-depth and almost flaky like a good pie crust. The sauce is the most flavorful I have ever had on a pizza, and the toppings are generous – thick hunks of pepperoni, huge chunks of Italian sausage, thick-cut crispy bacon. I grew up minutes from the original store near the University of Maryland, so I am probably biased. I also like pizza with jalapeno chilies and anchovies, so consider yourself warned.