C. sapidus

Spaghetti with carbonara sauce (Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking, p. 202). This was my first time making carbonara. Pasteurized eggs and grated Parmesan and Romano cheeses soaked up generous quantities of bacon grease and garlic-infused oil. Boiled-down sauvignon blanc lent a subtle tang. Good stuff, but the youngsters were surprisingly unenthusiastic.

We live in a town of 50K located an hour from DC and Baltimore. Readily available: creme fraiche, Mexican crema, miso, frozen duck, pancetta, pig trotters/tails/tripe. Other pig parts would require a 45-minute drive. We have most of the other ingredients in the kitchen, but I had to mail-order them. No specialized butcher. I am amazed that so many people can find sherry vinegar locally. I searched for weeks, and finally ordered a bottle from Kalyustans (along with pomegranate molasses, oddly enough, and a few Indian spices). Good luck with the cookbook! (edited to add a few pig parts)

Thank you, Katie. Yup, the recipe is pretty simple. My Bombay Kitchen is well worth getting, but in the meantime here is a link to the recipe: pumpkin roasted with curry leaves (clickety). I hope you enjoy it.

Butternut squash with curry leaves, adapted from My Bombay Kitchen. Sliced squash tossed with olive oil, garlic, fresh and dried chiles, and salt. Strewn with curry leaves and baked in a hot oven. The savory flavors contrasted nicely with the sweet squash, and the browned bits were especially delightful. This was not our whole meal, but for me, it could have been.

My favorite take-out pizza topping combination is jalapeno and anchovy. When a large group orders pizza, this can be a surprisingly popular combination, often one of the first to disappear (definitely before the pineapple pizza -- sorry Katie, I shouldn't pile on ). When we phone in an order, we invariably get a call back: “Did someone order a jalapeno and anchovy pizza from this address?”

Chris, we installed a Blue Star RGTNB366BSS (36-inch rangetop, six burners) when we renovated our kitchen three years ago. We have been delighted with it. The 22K burner does a great job when we stir-fry, although one must still avoid adding too much cold food to the wok at one time. I also greatly value the Blue Star’s ability to hold a low simmer on all burners. If you choose a Blue Star, consider whether the standard burner arrangement fits your cooking style. If not, you may be able to specify an alternate burner arrangement. If you can swing it, giving up an extra six inches of counter top yields a bonus of two extra burners. If you get a powerful range, pair it with a comparably powerful ventilation hood. We do a lot of high-heat cooking and the 600 CFM Vent-A-Hood captures cooking oil effectively. In our previous house, a wimpy vent hood allowed an underpowered stove to leave a film of greasy gunk throughout the kitchen. We looked at induction but options were much more limited three years ago. I am not a particularly gentle cook, so I was also concerned that banging and sliding pots and pans on an induction cooktop could scratch or crack the ceramic. Good luck!

A friend's daughter is living with us while her parent is stationed overseas. A few of the boys' friends have become honorary family members and live with us from time to time. Thanks, Shelby!

Wait, even better (or worse) -- bitter melon instead of Brussels sprouts.

Braised shallot confit (clickety), from Molly Stevens' All About Braising.

The children prepared and served a romantic dinner for two. The boys cooked and temporary teenage daughter served. We began with beer, wine, and shrimp cocktail in the “lounge” (ok, the living room couch). After being seated, we perused the printed menu by candlelight while enjoying the warmth of a roaring fire. To begin, we chose a green salad with slivered almonds and ranch dressing. For the main course, we selected steak burgers with bacon, Swiss cheese, and sliced avocado, accompanied by fried potatoes. Dessert was turtle cheesecake and chocolate-dipped strawberries with mascarpone cheese. Truly, this was one of the most enjoyable meals we have eaten at this establishment. We tipped generously.

Rocky road ice cream, Brussels sprouts, shrimp paste. If no shrimp paste is available, substitute sardines packed in mustard.

You are quite welcome, bobmac, and I hope you enjoy your wok. Batard is right, thin cast iron woks are reputed to be fragile. I am not especially gentle with ours, and we have had no trouble. As long as you don't sing like Frankie Valli.

Hmm, I see this thread as primarily about cooking Italian food, with a strong subplot of doing so in Japan. Besides, in a year or three nakji may be spending Tuesdays with Marcella in Phnom Penh, Vientiane, Bangkok, Shanghai, or . . . Anyway, I followed Marcella’s food processor method to make pesto for the first time. So easy and so delicious tossed with fettuccine and a little pasta water. I look forward to making pesto this summer with freshly-picked Genovese basil rather than plastic-packed basil from the supermarket. Has anyone tried making pesto with Thai basil? We accompanied the pasta with store-bought “Italian” bread and trout meuniere, which was cooked with sufficient butter to qualify for Marcella’s approval.

When I was single and burning way more calories, I used to make fettuccine Alfredo weekly. After a while I stopped looking at the recipe, stopped measuring anything, and even forgot where I found the recipe in the first place. This became a problem when I tried scaling up to family-sized portions. It never turned out quite right. We don’t make Alfredo sauce much any more, but I did finally rediscover the recipe. It came from a slim paperback Good Housekeeping cookbook that dates back to when I first started feeding myself. I cooked up a batch of fettuccine Alfredo not long ago, and the scaled-up recipe tasted as good as ever.

I do safety for a living, so risking life and limb for kitchen implements would be hard to justify. The calculus would be different if you asked whether I would save my vinyl records, though . . . Sigh. Okay, I’ll play by the rules. Assuming that insurance would cover replacing pots and pans, I would probably grab my gyuto. I can cook with any old pots and pans if necessary, but I hate working with crappy knives.

We have a 14-inch and a 16-inch “traditional cast iron wok” from the Wok Shop (click). These woks are made from thin cast iron. They are lightweight, season readily, heat up quickly, and seem to transmit heat better than our old carbon steel wok. The finish is a bit rough, and some don’t like that, but I love them and use them constantly.

Wow wow wow, what an amazing spread, and what gorgeous photos. How did you ever decide where to start digging in? I would go for one of the gorgeous shrimp dishes first. The difficult question would be what to enjoy next. Hmm, probably yue sang. I have never tried it before, but it looks like a fabulous mix of flavors and textures. Great action photo, too. Thanks so much for sharing!

claypot2, welcome! Is your collection diverse or specialized? Six more books on the way, for a net gain of five (one replacement). Cookbooks will displace another shelf of knickknacks. Monisha Bharadwaj: Indian Spice Kitchen: Essential Ingredients and Over 200 Authentic Recipes Camellia Panjabi: 50 Great Curries of India, Tenth Anniversary Edition Jaya Chaliha, et al: The Calcutta Cookbook [one of the Penguin India series] Rick Bayless’ Mexican Kitchen: Capturing the Vibrant Flavors of a World-Class Cuisine Diana Kennedy: From My Mexican Kitchen: Techniques and Ingredients Marcella Hazan: Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking [replacing a falling-apart 20+ year old paperback of The Classic Italian Cookbook]

The Cookbooks & References forum has an excellent compendium of cookbook threads (clicky), including two threads on Thai cookbooks. Thai cookbooks, lookiing for the real stuff "Thai Cooking", by David Thompson The two Thai cookbooks that we use the most are David Thompson's authoritative Thai Food and Thailand: The Beautiful Cookbook (multiple authors), chock full of enticing pictures and brief but reliable recipes. Kasma Loha-Unchit's site, Thai Food & Travel, has some excellent tutorials and numerous recipes from her excellent but unfortunately out of print cookbooks.

Hi, turando, and welcome! Here are two recipes that we have enjoyed very much. If you try them, please let us know how they turned out for you. Austin's Panang curry with beef (click) Hot and sour prawn soup, from Thailand the Beautiful Cookbook (click) I'm still searching for a green curry that really hits the spot, so I will be interested to see what folks recommend.

dividend, I wish you the best of luck in finding a balance that works for you. When my cooking obsession threatened to interfere with other parts of life, Mrs. C and I worked out a compromise. Monday through Thursday she cooks the protein and starch; I contribute a vegetable or salad. Friday through Sunday I am free to cook to my heart’s content. This arrangement provides me with more time to plan weekend meals. On weeknights, I get my cooking fix without the three-ring circus of producing a full meal before basketball or boy scouts while discussing the day at work, helping children with homework, adjudicating disagreements, planning family activities . . . Um, my family hasn’t quite given up hope that someday I might come to my senses.

Susan, here you go: Fried catfish with chile. Clarias fish is catfish, so this appears to be the same product with a different label.

On merstar’s recommendation I made curried cauliflower soup with coriander chutney (with lime juice instead of lemon juice because that's what we had on hand). The roasted cauliflower tasted delicious but the finished soup seemed a little bland, so I added cayenne, garam masala, and more curry powder. The coriander chutney (subbing coconut milk for yogurt) pulled things together nicely.

faine and scubadoo, thanks for the kind words! Susan, yes to the bird chile sauce. Nuoc cham also hits the spot.

kalypso, enjoy your trip to Veracruz. You make a compelling case for mole de Xico. My book already had an asterisk by the recipe, but I added another. What meat did you grace with your mole?