Jinmyo

I could kill you where you stand with this paper clip. Just so you know.

VivreManger, that was an excellent post. Thank you.

Wow. Kerouac, table-top grilles are great. I'm glad your mini-kitchen is coming together. Arthritis hasn't gotten my joints to the point it has you, fortunately. Yet.

I LOVE MSG!

You're kidding, right?

Congratulations, Anna.

Nick, pressure cookers are the devil's migraine headache. Swampy, horrid food. I'd used them for a few years about twenty-five years ago. I'd have scars to show but they're all in my mind as I was careful of a bomb in the kitchen and am only emotionally and cognitively impaired rather than physically maimed. But I still can't get the horrid taste out of my mouth. I tried therapy but I kept jumping up from the couch and grabbing herr doktor by the goatee and yelling, "DO YOU HEAR A hiiiiissssiiiIIIINNNG?" We both agreed it was the better course to just not use the pressure cooker. Of course of course. Coking rice for fifty per your method is easy but requires about five pots (giving each peron only one cup of rice). Otherwise the rice settles, weighs in, and burns at the bottom leaving the top almost raw.

New Year's Eve, after midnight: Handmade soba (buckwheat noodles) with shoyu-mirin dipping sauce. Toasted mochi (rice cakes) with a citrus glaze. Sesame tofu (silken tofu with sesame mixed in then set) wrapped in shiso leaves. Thin apple and daikon napoleons with a miso and shallot sauce in rice paper wrappers. Gari (pickled ginger), takuan (daikon pickles). Deep-fried yuba (tofu-milk skins) with much salt. Flight of five sakes for non-drivers. Flight of three ancient China teas (one is 85 years old) for drivers.

Rachel Ray is awfully chipper. I like Rachel and I like Tony -- worlds apart though they may be. And I'm still dying to see a show with Rachel and Tony cooking together in Rachel's kitchen. With Vic looking in through the window licking the edge of a Henckel and chortling.

Nick, of course there's nothing difficult about cooking rice. If I'm making a small quantity of rice (say 8 cups) I'll just turn a pot down after adding the rice from a boil to low and let it cook gently for two hours or so and wind up with a nice crust to peel from the pot to salt and have as a crispy side dish. But if one is cooking rice for a dozen or more folk, a rice cooker is great. Or if one wants rice to be available all day for all comers, the fuzzy logic guys are good. Or if someone wants to just pop it in the cooker and not worry about it while trying to figure out which end of an oyster is up, then a cooker is a good thing. It depends on someone's context, I think.

The wonderful thing about cooking is that, because it deals with what is most essential for us all, we have done it as long as we have been at all and so have inherited a vast treasury of knowledge. And yet every time we cook it is fresh. Whether we follow recipes or leave new ones behind where we have been (like the best chefs I know), the craft of cooking fashions all of our lives.

Many have fuzzy logic thingees and are designed for keeping and holding rice at temperature for 8 or 12 hours. This is for families that eat rice at random times throughout the day. I have two 20 cup rice cookers that just cook and keep warm for about an hour. The labels have worn off so I don't remember the brand.

Hmm, that's a tough one. How about if you crumbled the bread (perhaps drying it a bit in a warm oven first), add it and ketchup to the ground beef (vintage 1995 not necessary, but it would that that extra something). Bake it, et voila, meatloaf. Serve iceberg lettuce on the side. Saute the ground beef. Mix in a bit of mustard. Chop the hamburger buns and toast the croutons. Toss the beef and croutons together. The ketchup is the original "ketsiap" fermented fish sauce so sprinkle liberally. Serve in iceberg lettuce cups.

Wow.

The new grimmer and grittier FN will have a new series of Vic Chanko stalking these gals.

Ellen, so he was basically re-heating Taco Bell food? I think I get it. One could do that with various such stuff were one so inclined. I note that you were a by-stander. I myself would have been standing back perhaps much farther.

Hey!

Seared scallop topped with rare chicken liver in a pool of mushroom and light citrus broth. Steamed pork, huagu (flower mushroom), and chive dumplings. Chinese cabbage, steamed, tossed with a red chile-peanut sauce, roasted peanuts. Chinese chive pancakes. Fresh shrimp and dried scallop shu mai dumplings. Daikon kimchee and pickled mustard greens. Wakame seaweed soup. Gohan (Japanese white rice) with gomasio (sesame salt).

Egad. When was the beef ground? Who made the ketchup? You mean "ketchup" ketchup? All right, I apologize, Matthew. Really though, Anna. It's a good idea.

This is a totally cool idea. Want to plan it, set the ground rules, and make an announcement? Lazy mods.

Matthew, that's interesting. I was deeply impressed by Heston's Q&A session here.

Heh.

I've never done anything like that, Ellen. So I'm waiting to hear about what you did. Did you fry an egg? Flapjacks? Salmon?

That was a wonderful article, Ellen. Very engaging as well as informative. And yes, it's nice to see more of your photographs. Steve, beer with miso-shiru. Feh.

Anna, here is Robert's The Bread Thread.