Blether

Unless, say, you work as well as cooking every day for a family & have no special interest in knives ? You don't care about sharpening, you don't want to be upset if it gets broken / mislaid, and when in a year or two you feel it's too blunt you'll buy another one. You want it to be cheap but to look nice and be easy to use. Your best may not be everyone's, Paul. The fact that the Kai's are such big sellers suggests that they're far more people's idea of the 'best' knife than others mentioned in this thread, doesn't it ? I'm a bit bemused, thinking of Japanese knives as an answer to jfresch's quest for a carving knife. Japan didn't eat meat till not much more than a century ago, and till today has no tradition of big lumps of meat cut up after cooking. And yet westerners are to abandon their traditions and their accomplished knifemakers to buy a carving knife from them ?

Yes, salmon's a bit like tuna - once it's cooked to 'hard' you have to mix it with some mayo, or make it up into fishcakes or the like. One thing interesting to me in this thread is the sushi meme. I can remember clearly in to the 80's, when the hierarchy in white western culture was the other way round and it was raw fish that was thought beyond the pale.

Kai is big in Japan, in fact - at least in the Tokyo area it's the most common knife brand, retail.

Is curry big in South America then, PanCan ?

And England's best flatfish - best fish, according to some - Dover Sole, also improves on a few days' holding. (And belies the thought that sole is plain or flavourless, a crime there more of Lemon Sole, in fact a very different species).

Break out the offence, we'll have a competition.

Funny. You guys have prawns in such abundance you're probably coming at it from the other direction and are just bored of them. Still - most of the smell comes from the shells and heads, doesn't it ? You can make that sauce with pre-peeled, and little or no prawn smell. But then why push yourself if it's not your thing ? I screwed the sauce up the first time (didn't blend hard enough), but when I made it again this summer the scales fell from my eyes - it's truly wonderful, the wine and garlic are in just the perfect amount. You can see some of that incarnation used cold here, if you didn't already.

No-one who's not intimate with your feet is going to be able to come on here and tell you "these are the shoes for you". You need to find a maker building on a last that suits the shape of your feet, and/or concentrates on fit & orthopaedics. There are good suggestions here. Swiss maker MBT is another I've heard good things about.

Your shout, mate ? Depends what you think of as 'ills' that need a 'solution'. For myself, I'm just happy we're not living in a dust-bowl and can be as choosy as we - myself included - are about what we eat. Sure, if I had a bomb and a plane to drop it from, I'd drop it on you.

Hey, Snadra. Good story. Of course like the US, Germany his its coast, and strong nautical and naval traditions. Would I guess right that your uncle isn't from Ulm or even Munchen ? Sorry to generalise while talking in general. Have you ever tried prawns done as a pasta sauce alla Marcella ? Of course you're right that there is a natural differences in taste from person to person. There again, the prevalence of seafood-aversion in landlocked areas cf coastal ones says it's not just that, doesn't it ? The "what you grow up with" element is a big one with all foods, I think. For me, hunger is the ultimate test - how many fish-loathers with nothing else to eat for a week would refuse properly-prepared seafood ?

It's an uphill battle in a surrounding culture that isn't fish savvy - if you don't have the demand, you don't / can't have an effective distribution network, and for fish, fresh is everything. Isn't German (still) the most common "ethnic" background of Americans ? Germany's another place with a big landlocked centre and a meat-centric diet. I remember when "seafood poisoning at Mediterranean resort" was a popular news headline in the UK, before the cleaning up of sewage systems on (especially) the Italian and Spanish coasts. That influenced a generation of attitudes to shellfish. Here in Japan, fresh meat is well-handled, but in low-volume imported stuff like fancy (& expensive) deli meats, you can get caught out spending a lot of money for something that turns out to be turning rancid. As for mackerel - for me they lose nothing in deliciousness compared with other fish, when eaten fresh enough. Mackerel, however, loses its eating quality faster than most fish. In the autumn, when they're at their best, well fed & round with fat, just salted & grilled ? Superb.

Funny, that I was disappointed in it, on top of hot pasta, because of the wilting collapse. I should have known - that I can remember, you don't see nori - in kizami form - on top of hot Japanese dishes. It's all katsuo bushi with its wonderfully snaky waving in the thermals. Sheet nori in (well, on) ramen's common enough, of course.

Those both sound good. What did you think of the nori as a garnish ?

Good chance to hone your cooking-without-the-use-of-an-oven skills ? Japanese & Chinese homes haven't had them till very recently (most Japanese still don't); French & Italian ones until what ? The 80's ? What is it that you feel the oven's essential for ?

I bought a retractable, felt-tipped (marker) pen specifically designed for kitchen use. It writes directly on tupperware-type plastic, or freezer bags, and washes off. It's proven good at resisting being accidentally rubbed off. Of course it has one of those splendid Japanese product labels that are written so small you can't decipher them. The big letters say "Deruzou", the product name.

After Shelby (?) suckered me into once again rambling on here about Trout in Cream, I decided that rather than keep pining for good trout, I'd recreate the dish with... wakashi, or immature yellowtail (in truth I've done it before with salmon - also good, but there's something about the smaller fish). Come to yesterday and there was a whole one at Hanamasa, I guess it was about 1lb and 2 or 3 oz, JPY290. It (came ready-scaled ! and) yielded two fillets, total weight 255g or about 9oz: - I gutted it because I like to do that soon, and having done that got the salted fillets in the fridge and took stock from the remains. As I've mentioned before, yellowtail gives great high-jelly stock. Here it is again today, before reducing some of it and using it to poach the fish: Finished dish: A very successful substitution, this works beautifully. Having the reduced stock to deglaze into the cream added extra flavour (hey, fish filleting is a useful skill, buying fillets maybe a sign of more intelligence). All in all, delicious.

Maybe depends whether you have a lid on the crockpot ? I have no crockpot experience to make a more sensible answer. I'm sure one could make a breast of it (!?) on the stovetop, coupled with a few stirs - the oven just adds to the easy, for me.

I haven't used or laid hands on that model, but it's from the same maker, Iwatani, so will be good quality. Japan is a wonderful place to buy second-hand because the stuff has typically been looked after, sellers are straight about defects and second-hand is so unpopular as to make surprising bargains common. That said, it only says it's 400ml capacity, so I wonder if you only get the single cup, or multiple ones ? Mine is the IFM-170G, big cup ~260ml (I measured), smaller one maybe 160-ish ? I remember it having cost about 50 bucks, and the size is just about what your first post suggests. 400ml is halfway to a stand blender - which might or might not suit you. There's no telling how old a model the 300XG is - my Google search doesn't find it mentioned much (I can't find a spec). Second picture along (with the celery & stuff), shows a street price of ~JPY17,000. Fourth picture along is the 800DG, street price JPY5,764. If you're lucky it'll have the same small footprint (mine: 4" x 4.5") and you'll snap it up for cheap. You can sure get brand new current models from Amazon Japan - I wonder if they ship internationally ? PS1: you are in the States, aren't you ? 100V only, I think. Ps2: "Healthy is your life"

I sure did, and I've seen your thoughtful and skilled approach in the kitchen - I'm picking no fight. I cut down the quote for brevity - everyone can seen it further up the thread, and it's even at the top of this page, for now at least. And hey... I've done it again !

Sounds like a read I'd really enjoy.

I'm left wondering if Oliver Schwaner-Albright ensured his pork racks were from the same animal ? (I'm guessing he wouldn't have ensured his roast chickens were. Are you on eG, Oliver ?). My own long-pre-salted roast loin of pork is exquisitely juicy cooked to 63C internal at 170C; nastily dry to the same at 180C. So I'm not swayed at all by the "pork for roasting = salt late or it'll be dry" argument at all. People's opinions vary because they've had different experience, don't they ? As well as because, well, they're different people. As for this article at least, the scientific method has a lot of value but experimental results won't lead to valuable conclusions without due thoroughness.

Or, (toast &) grind, wet through with vinegar, fry in ample oil till all water driven off, and have your very own 'keeps forever' paste.

Does Iwatani not sell its 'Millser' series in the States ? Or do you have any way to pick one up from Japan ? - solidly built - realistically priced (about USD45 - USD65) - good wet or dry, also minces meat or fish - very practical size for cramped quarters http://www.google.co.jp/search?num=20&hl=en&safe=off&biw=1920&bih=1113&q=%E3%83%9F%E3%83%AB%E3%82%B5%E3%83%BC&oq=%E3%83%9F%E3%83%AB%E3%82%B5%E3%83%BC&aq=f&aqi=g-e2g-r2g1g-r1g1g-r3&aql=1&gs_sm=e&gs_upl=2871l3173l0l3845l3l3l0l0l0l0l176l317l2.1l3l0 - the i-cg site is the maker's own.

I'm reminded by talk of yoghurt that one of the easy dishes I cooked up is chicken joints, salted & scattered with sliced onion, and topped with good chutney stirred into yoghurt (a tray of 6-8 chicken joints, a 500ml tub of yoghurt, several heaping spoonfuls of chutney). Bake at 180C till done, about an hour.

Ha ha ! Nice (though it looked like it might have been 11 seconds). Love the expression on his face while he does that, too.