Jinmyo

Yes, Nick. Like real sardines? Untinned? Check your fishmonger. They're quite wonderful.

Disclaimer: Professional kitchen, staff of three. Still, please try this at home. Thin tomato and ancho soup with sour cream and slivered scallions atop and some fresh corn tortilla chips on one side of the bowl. Deep-fried and battered roasted and skinned poblano chiles stuffed with roasted corn, panchetta, (leftover) chicken, onion, and queso blanco. Skewers of monkfish cubes with a lime, coriander, and mirin sauce. Mashed sweet potato and garlic quenelles in parmesan cups. Salad of romaine and avocado with chopped grilled sardines (bones removed).

Michel, I suppose you then must have some tremendous juicers. I'm very interested in this and will explore it. Thank you. On the other end of vegetable stocks, do you use tomato or cucumber waters for light soups or broths? And I am also interested in Liza's wondeful question about using sweet potato starch in gnocchi. (Happy Halloween and thanks for your kind answers.)

Michel, natto is (are?) fermented soybeans that stick together in a gelatinous, stringy web. Like edamame gone insane. Very smelly and very powerful but quite good. Not suitable for your restaurant though. I was just wondering if you knew of it. While I deplore the presence of onions (for example) in a miso shiru, I have no hesitation in using miso in an onion soup. There is a profundity of flavours in miso, shoyu, and tamari that work tremendously well with many Western foods. (The nifty thing is that while it might take hours of reducing and straining meat stocks, a similiar richness is right there in that tin of shoyu. )

Wilfrid, very nice. Was there a starch component?

Disclaimer: professional kitchen with staff of three. Still, please try this at home. Grilled asparagus tips and large shrimp served in a chicken and lemongrass broth. Fingerling potatoes roasted in chicken fat and butter with a spritz of citrus (yuzu). Lamb rib chops served on a bed of deep-fried asparagus shavings with a pasilla chile sauce around. Salad of wilted beet greens with a Dijon vinaigrette, fried halumi cheese on crostini. Packages of pickled beets wrapped in Napa cabbage leaves (blanched in court bouillon with champagne vinegar).

Does soy (as shoyu, tofu, miso, natto, edamame) appear in your cuisine at all?

Klink, Klink, Klink, Klink...

You bought therm Sunday. This is Wednesday.

An interesting meal.

damn, I thought Chicks dug "tacky" But then I thought that Chicks dug being called "Chicks" so what do I know? Yours Alone again or S Simon's so dreamy.

Michel, thanks for joining us. I don't know much about your cuisine at this point but I believe you use vegetable stocks, let the starches settle, decant and reduce in various ways to gain thickness. Could you comment on this, please? It's quite interesting.

Rhea, for the mabo tofu I used a very silken Korean tofu that I mixed with the cooked ground lamb; some Chinese cotton tofu; some (leftover) deep-fried tofu. These were combined with a rough dice of white onion in ceramic baking trays. The sauce was some ancho paste and some shoyu that mushrooms had been braised in that I wanted to use up, minced ginger and garlic, chile sesame oil, a touch of rice vinegar, some crushed and some whole Thai bird chiles, salt and white pepper. torakris, this was roasted in a convection oven at 350 F for forty minutes to give the tofu nice roasted edges and pocks. (Mabo of course means "pock-marked".)

Dave, not to speak for Gavin but... Sure to lemon and oolong. But I'd put the oolong in some cheesecloth or use bagged and slow baking is not so good by my experience.

They are different, but not by a lot. Galangal is, um, hotter and more earthy. It's just a Southeast Asian flavour profile thing. Sure, use ginger. Young pink ginger if you can get it.

That's the essence of it, really. The troutfat is exquisite.

Slice off the fillets. Rub the skin with salt and grapeseed oil. Take the head and bones and make a stock. Take the stock and add some green curry paste, fish sauce, galangal, and mushrooms and some spinach or somesuch greens. Make some rice. Get a saute pan hot. Add a bit of grapeseed oil. Put the trout in skin side down. Season or not (won't need it, really). After thirty seconds shake the pan to make sure the trout aren't sticking. After a few minutes, peek at skin. If crisp and if the flesh is beginning to cook add some sake or other rice wine to the pan and some slivered scallions. Cover. Remove from heat. Put rice in bowls. Put soup in bowls. Place trout atop rice.

That's great, Liza. I once took a pot of congee through a week of permutations.

Disclaimer: professional kitchen with staff of three. Still, try this at home. Fried lontong (Southeast Asian style rice cakes) with a Thai holy basil, mint, and tomato dipping sauce. Huagu (flower mushroom) soup. Roasted mabo tofu (three kinds of tofu, ground lamb, onion, Thai bird chiles). Sautéed Chinese long bean knots. Steamed yu choy with fermented tofu.

Okay, okay. I'll lay off the Nob Feely jokes.

Guerilla food critic.

torakris, yes jiu cai are nira. For the mint and basil sauce I puree fresh leaves with a bit of blanched spinach for colour with a bit of water and mirin. Pass this through a sieve and season, add lime juice and more mirin. edit: Also spelled as jiu tsai and for the Cantonese as gow choy.

I think the strangest thing I do with zaatar (how I'm used to seeing it spelled) is to toast it and sprinle it on cold silken tofu with a blood orange reduction. I did this last year and probably will this year when the blood oranges start arriving.

Thanks for writing, Charles.