Blether

Smetana ? I had to look that up The only way I've used roe in my own cooking is the way you see linked in my last post - and of course that's milt, or 'white roe' as it's called. We get the true roe in Japan in New Year's cooking, and occasionally in sushi. I don't find the hard style served at New Year to be very palatable (unappealing mouthfeel, and tastes like cricket bats, to my mind), and run-of-the-mill stuff of the same character laid on sushi rice isn't any better. Now and again, though (like I did yesterday) you come across a good (i.e. a non-preserved ?) one, and I think it's also herring roe that's sometimes served up on the seaweed to which it was found naturally attached, and that's more reliably worthwhile. The fish you had certainly looked beautiful. Which kind of roe/'roe' are you talking about ?

I've tangled with the odd herring myself. How do you use the roes ? And while we're at it, where are you, exactly ?

Don't tell me you boned 'em yourself.

The repel cuisine scene in Betty Blue / 37.2 Le Matin. Zorg & Betty are waiting tables in Eddy's pizza joint: troublesome customers lead to the construction of a 'special', assembled mostly from the trashcan. A special which proves a remarkable hit: Then Betty stabs one of them in the arm with a fork. Of course.

Looks great - appetizing and very nicely shot ! How did you go about making the dish ? Did the Baltic herring start out raw-pickled ?

I'm not in the US (nor do I know the US well), so I can't tell you specifics for where where you are. Sorry.

It was Akamatsu-san, the Buddhist monk with a post-grad degree from Toudai, known to his friends as Aka-chan, who introduced Takasago to me. Seen here pierside on Moorea, 2001, with his Vietnamese hat from the trip immediately before. Kobayashi-san on the left took a heart attack and died after a Yokosuka half-marathon, a year or two later. His wife had always looked at his running somewhat askance, but finally it was that particular run that she joined him. Yes, actually trained up and joined in. She gave a very affecting speech at the funeral, surrounded by their kids, about how this had come about and how finally he had run on ahead where she couldn't follow. I was the ultimate clueless gaijin by wearing a black coat made of leather to the ceremony... Kobayashi-san: great sailor, great photographer and wonderful friend.

Dejah, mmmmmmmmmmmmm to both of those. Lamb moussaka ! I want some ! PS does it hurt oliver to provide the oil ?

There's a good, stylish Izakaya-type place maybe 100 or 200 yards up the hill towards Shinjuku, on the left. It's been a few years and I forget the name. Sorry. Ushigome-Yanagicho is something of a backwater, blessed with a few sleeper stars. Kagurazaka - one stop or a pleasant walk away - is an entertainment centre with a long history, and it's also convenient for Iidabashi station which has direct trains to Yurakucho. If you weren't focusing on Japanese food, I'd suggest you find out if Shara Diner (French) is still running: "when you book in advance, just ask us for any French food that you'd like & we'll make it", on top of the regular menu; and very good French wines at great prices. Again, old information, but either way, Kagurazaka will spoil you for choice. I should probably renew my own wings - give me a shout if you like and I'll join you. Do track down thelobster, he's been in Tokyo forever and runs bento.com, Japan's biggest online English-language restaurant guide.

They're an interesting case, aren't they ? I wash my hand grinder's parts after use, dry with paper towels (to stop the otherwise-instant rust, more than anything else) and wipe the unplated surfaces with vegetable oil, using the paper towels again. Before use, I pour boiling water over / through everything.

Yes, in general frozen versions of peas, corn, green beans, broccoli, cauliflower etc. are better than canned. In some cases frozen approaches very closely the quality of fresh - where the processing is done conscientiously and the time before freezing is short. As Mjx says, what's available varies a lot from region to region. Here, there is a lot of cheap canned seafood (mackerel and the like), and for foreign palates, various kinds of tinned (shelled) beans, not least baked beans in tomato sauce from Italy, ~1USD/can (I'm looking at you, Heinz, ~4USD/can). Tinned Italian tomatoes, of course. Portuguese sardines, next-to-nothing, but you need to salt them some. Here again, tinned coconut milk / cream from Thailand can be had for under 1USD/can, and Campbell's soups are a reasonable cupboard standby for occasional use. I find I can beat the price of tinned beans by a good margin, buying dried from Pakistani/Indian online sources - say red kidney beans (rajma), lentils (masoor, whole and/or peeled), chickpeas (chana / kabuli chana), maybe some black-eyed peas (lobia) - and ordering enough to get free shipping.

All the above, and think about a potted laurel tree, and tarragon.

You need to hear from thelobster on this one, I think. He comes from New York, too, IIRC. In the last few years I have not been eating out often enough to answer sensibly on trends and new discoveries, but Shinjuku and Yurakucho, I know something about. I've lived in Shinjuku ward since 1995, and I spent 3 years in the 90's working in Yurakucho. Have you been to Soba no sen Takasago, about 2 minutes' walk from Ushigome Yanagicho ? Probably on the 'undiscovered' side as far as white foreigners go, though I did meet a group of buyers from Britain's Marks & Spencer eating dinner there a while back. They harvest the buckwheat from the shop's own fields in Fukushima. 03-3260-3908; Shinjuku, Naka-machi 22. Soba for connoisseurs.

As I understand what you wrote, thirtyoneknots, you're talking about freezing after cooking. IME, perfectly safe, but it changes the pate's texture. It makes it more crumbly. I like your freeze-uncooked idea, Mark.

I read to the end, and I'm still laughing about the windowless basement. Another tour de force. Please keep them coming.

I start to feel blue if I ever get to having no wee containers of that sauce left in the freezer. Gorgeous-looking gnocchi, though without a standard-sized prop I'm little the wiser as to size

I'll bite. What's a Raja, and what's a longanisa ? Even my eG post spell checker doesn't know them.

Overall, I prefer the first plated pic to the second. I think the reasons are (1) the natural lighting in #2 is too harshly one-directional for the way you've posed & framed the shot, and (2) because the first pic presents the pasta and the bread, both. As for the plating, I do like the carving fork trick, and you made a great job of getting the food into the plate without extraneous smears or drips - or you wiped well, who knows ? I suspect the flash-from-above flattened the roe: and perhaps the depth-of-field-squeeze was a little excessive in this case, losing too much of the bread ?

Personally, I wash dishes & cookware under a running tap and with a soapy sponge. I rinse everything off under the running water before stacking in the dish rack. Back in the family home in the UK, the procedure was to fill the sink with soapy water, take things out in turn and sponge them, and place directly on the drying rack or directly towel them off. The thought of it now is quite unappealing, but I know it's standard practice back there, and my dad was an ex-medical-lab-technician and my mum a pharmacist. Simon_S, the plates dry out, as does the sink. Then bugs die. If you're looking for bacteria farms, look to towels, sponges and cloths that remain wet. And on the subject of hand-washing, at restaurants I will generally seek out the washroom and wash my hands before eating. I see few others do so - and then they reach for the bread basket...

Yes, the foecal-oral route is the most common source of "foodborne illness", isn't it ? There's no denying the importance of proper kitchen hygiene procedure - washing hands before cooking, separation of raw & cooked foods, care over temperatures and hold/storage times, appropriate washing of ingredients. At the same time, "clean is good" doesn't translate to "absolute cleanliness of everything is best". It's worth understanding the mechanisms of infection and being aware of which hygienic procedures are effective and necessary in practice, and in which specific situations.

I wonder how many people suffer from a misconception about the sterility of vegetables in the first place, which grow out in the fields under an open sky, where birds can excrete over them, and beetles, caterpillars and other bugs, and rodents and birds live amongst them. They grow in soil - see that word, 'soil' ? And do we imagine that farm workers wash their hands conscientiously before every picking session ? I didn't when I hand-gathered spuds as a schoolkid, but then they'd already grown in earth full of god-knows-what. I felt it was more the potatoes that owed me a favour in the cleanliness department. Disinfectants notwithstanding, I don't think the domestic kitchen will ever be a sterile environment. Surgical instruments are sterilised at 125C, aren't they ? Food canning uses a similar hold temperature, doesn't it ? Water on its own is quite effective at washing away the bulk of bacteria, and hot water more so; soap takes out grease and oil. Drying also contributes to cleanliness - life needs water. I don't see my tableware or cutlery as sterile after I wash it, but once it's dry I'm happy for it to sit in a cupboard for a long time before I use it again. I feel happy that the dish sponge dries out completely every day, as does the sink once emptied, and as the chopping boards do between uses. As for my sink, I like to sponge it over with dish soap once I've washed it empty of dishes, particularly when it's visibly dirty with greasy spatter, but I don't do so every time. I gave up washing chicken and other meats for cooking, some time ago. I do prepare quite a lot of seafood in it, but I don't use any "sterilising" agent of any kind on the sink. Every so often the plastic draining rack & board get a soaking in bleach, in that sink, but if I wasn't doing that I'd not be concerned about bleaching the sink for its own sake. The "wash a week's veg" idea has a surface attraction - I can wash & dry carrots. But green leaves, as has been said, will quickly dissolve, and will retain water so that any small amount of bacteria on them will have that week to reproduce. Wash-for-use is my approach, under the tap without filling the sink or laying the veggies in it. If they touch the sides, I'll re-rinse that part. For use unpeeled, I'll use the scourer side of the dish sponge on carrots, spuds and the like. For anything that'll be cooked, I'm less concerned about cleanliness than am I am for things that'll be served raw.

ChrisTaylor, that looks good. I took an attempt or two to figure out thickness for fresh pasta too - it expands and you end up thicker than you planned. Personally, I don't think "ugly as hell" is right at all. I think I remember reading about your challenges, but not the specifics. You don't mention them in your profile.

I too use a baking soda boil as a heavy-duty pot cleanse. I used to use it on my Le Creuset stuff. Then one day, the boil-with-baking-soda-in-water didn't get the inside of my most-used pot as clean as I liked. I searched online and followed advice on the web site of Le Creuset Australia that said "make a paste of baking soda and washing-up liquid, and rub it in with a sponge". I did so and the enamel surface went from tarnished-shiny to dull, abraded matt. Perfect for every food and its dog to stick to. Now, I bought that pot - a 30cm cocotte ronde - from Le Creuset in the US by airmail, because of course Le Creuset Japan markets little pots for dainty housewives and heart-shaped enamelled crockery moulds and branded spatulas. It was USD250, USD400 with shipping. I contacted Le Creuset Australia to take issue with their advice, and they denied it even existed and brushed me off with rough language, and an insistence that before anything happened, I must mail the pot round the world to them. I have since re-evaluated my stance on Le Creuset - it's overpriced rubbish, with a finish that degrades and isn't recoverable. My advice ? Have it bead-blasted back to bare metal, oil it and hang it up as a dinner gong. I'll be continuing occasional use of the few pieces I still have, till each goes beyond its useful life and I can get rid of it.

Thanks, RRO. For my part, I always love your creations, and these fritters keep that tradition robustly alive.

That's a cracker.