Blether

Well, there's only so much simple stew and "world's hottest chilli" that a guy can eat without a change, so tonight, first tonkatsu of the year - 'hatsu-katsu'. It's still kinda chilly, so again not too far away - Sankin (三金) at Yotsuya-mitsuke. Sankin are proud to have been in business for 50 years, and this is their 特ひれかつ定食 or special hire-katsu meal, at JPY1,650, evening service (currently a special - it's normally JPY1,850). The waiter explained that this is their 定番 teiban, the dish they're famous for. It has 1.5 times the amount of meat in their ordinary hire-katsu meal. It's also saved from being too plain by a splendid piece of parsley. I was delighted to find some of that yuzu-soy dressing for the cabbage, and gave it a good work out. The miso soup features shijimi. Here you can see the meat - good, thick, tender Japan-raised pork. The crust is the more standard dry, crispy type, with smaller crumbs. Sankin only rates a 2.87 at Tabelog, but there's nothing wrong with the food. The decor is definitely old-fashioned, reminiscent of Doutor or Pronto cafes. That won't help it to be popular with the young crowd. This picture is captioned とにかく、浮気がないのです, or "anyway, there's no atmosphere". So cruel ! Reading back I noticed that my link to Katsusei かつ精 isn't working - hopefully this will do more than return the list of search results and go direct to the Katsusei page.

Treacle toffee is traditional in Britain, and said to be particularly popular in Wales. There's a culture of eating sugar-based foods - from a myriad of confectionery styles through biscuits (cookies) and cakes - in the UK and UK-linked areas, that I believe is the legacy of imperial adventure in the tropics and the marketing of sugar formerly produced in 'the colonies'. A typical recipe nowadays, involves sugar and 'treacle' - a less intense version of molasses. I think kurozato can stand in for both. In fact what I made isn't treacle toffee, because there's so much crystallised sugar in it, but the flavour is effectively the same as treacle toffee.

On a whim I picked up a pack of kurozato when I was buying everyday sugar and salt. I want to try to make treacle toffee with this stuff - isn't it after all, just the whole product of boiled sugar cane juice ? This time I boiled it up with a little butter: I was concerned that the lumps weren't melting down, and added some water to help after spending some time beating them up with my wooden spoon. I boiled to 125C and ended up with this: - it's firm & grainy but has proved popular (and kept me going for a day on the ski slopes). Next, I want to try with some invert syrup (probably honey), maybe a little glucose, try to get and maintain proper solution, and boil to a lower temperature for something smooth and chewy.

Oatmeal apple crumble 6 apples from the 100yen store = 418yen (!). A little butter, sugar and the juice of a lemon and the zest of two. Crumble topping with jumbo oats and broken-up sliced almonds. Punchy, satisfying and full of flavour.

I think you need a knife made as sharp as you can, of course sharpened for slicing, and with a long, thin blade. A yanagiba / takohiki from the Japanese arsenal, or a filleting / carving knife from the western. Do you slice the lox parallel to the skin, gradually shaving off slices till the last one is one big slice between the flesh and the skin itself ? Or with the side of lox still skin-side down, cut vertically / on a slant from the top down to the skin for each slice ? The latter uses the skin to help hold the slice together and stationary while you cut.

Of course you and your wife can each have it as you like. In the spirit of serving seared, you could do that the Japanese way using a torch, and call it 'tataki' or 'aburi', as in 'gyuniku tataki', 'gyuniku aburi'.

Yesterday: the world's hottest shoulder-clod chili with brown lentil soup and toast Tonight, the world's hottest chili with eternal clapshot & broccoli, followed by this: Hot Marmalade Pudding from Shirley Spear's The Three Chimneys: Recipes & Reflections cookbook, with a wee dollop of clotted cream (80% reduced in the supermarket last Sunday. Sold). I cheated by 'steaming' it in the microwave (2/3 recipe, 8 minutes) instead of over a bain marie (recipe says 2 hours), and it worked well.

Roll up and pot roast.

I'm biting my tongue. (Picture shows 100yen-store knife). But if you get a thread going, I'll volunteer at least to go out and shoot some knife porn locally.

Awww ! You left out the best bit ? We love that stuff around here - knock yourself out. Extra points for pointless. What can you add to the bible ?

paulraphael is right on all points. I did manage to find this page on techniques for specific fish, which I've found very useful.

I wonder how washed -and-sauteed compares with simply cooked dry (no oil, no water).

After the chef's, the small (6") chef's. It works just right on the narrow chopping board in the space between the drying rack and the edge of the kitchen unit, for small work. Next would be the 6" heel-less kitchen knife. Opens bags & packs, slices cheese, pares, handles any in-hand cutting. Or the Thai-market pocket knife that I keep grabbing off the table to poke a whole in the warp for something I'm going to microwave - the one I bought the year that airport security on the way there actually found my sailor's knife in my luggage. I'm with David Goldfarb on a filleting knife - nothing takes ribs off fillets or takes fillets off the fish like my thin, flexible-bladed fish filleting knife. I've got it set at 12.5 degrees per side... (my chef's knife gets to cut through the ribs for anything bigger than a few ounces). Butcher knife for cubing large amounts of meat for sausage, stew or braise (this too has a finer edge than the chef's). I don't actually butcher whole animals or primal cuts (can barely buy bone-in red meat) so I don't feel I really take advantage of the unusual tip shape. I have a loooong carving knife that I carve roasts with, finished with a rough stone to help it through crispy crusts, and my cleaver only seems to get an outing for cooked birds, or breaking up fish carcasses for stock (I buy chicken carcasses already split up).

A simple beef stew, clapshot & sprouts, presented ... well, carelessly. Personally I like to think my presentation is artistic in its own way, that is to say even if it looks like it fell off a lorry, it does taste good. I sound like I'm trying to steal prawncrackers' signature, but in my case it's not so much becoming modesty, as the simple truth. That said, this one was a culinary triumph because all the elements tasted really, really good. The combination is of course classic Scottish/British winter food. The beef stew is beef, onion, carrot & turnip & a very little flour sprinkled on after browning. The flavourings are salt & pepper, bay leaf from the long-suffering tree on the balcony, lemon and just enough cayenne to give a very subtle bite (like 1/4 tsp for 2lbs meat). I trimmed the fat cap and the triangular strip of harder, grainy fat from between two muscles and rendered the dripping, which I used to brown the meat, and then (augmented with a little bacon fat when it looked scant) the onions. The cracklings went back into the stew with the browned meat and browned onions. (I pre-salted the cubed meat overnight after I trimmed off the fat). The carrots, bay, cayenne, the lemon juice and the two lemon halves went in from the start of stewing, and the turnip chunks 30 minutes before the end. (Actually I didn't mean to cook the meat till it was quite so falling-apart). The clapshot had just enough butter to come through in the flavour - about 1.5-2oz for 3 people, and is about 2/5 turnip. They're a bit watery, which in turn means you don't need to loosen the mash with milk. I microwaved the sprouts on high / 600W for about 4 minutes per serving, in a plastic bag with the top just turned underneath rather than sealed. They need to cook for about a minute after the bag puffs up tight with steam. Sprinkled with just a little salt to serve.

Oh yes, the whole range of industrial-chemical-food-science potato crisps from the UK of my youth - flavours including pickled onion, worcester sauce, tomato ketchup and prawn cocktail, and the cheeses of Quavers and Wotsits. I'll grab a bag or two of these when I have access to them.

I envy you your Sitram (though on a dark night and if I set my mind to it, I could surely persuade myself that was a waste of money too, much as I lust after it). I can see the point of heat retention - for a family that wants a pot of soup left warm on the stove so that family members can eat lunch when it suits them, say; or for a family that likes to have second helpings that have stayed hot. The idea that heavy cast iron is necessary or better for braising sticks in my throat, though. Baking bread or cake may be better done with heat coming from above and around as well as below; I just can't see that braising does. Heat rises. Your braise is held at whatever temperature you create, from a genuine boil to a mere simmer or less, and that heat can be applied from the bottom just as well as it can from all around - which is why you can make the same dish on the stovetop as you can in the oven, even if, for the purposes of this discussion, you call it a braise in the oven and a stew on the stovetop. If anything, 'braising' on the stovetop, enamelled cast iron simply conducts a greater share of the heat up around the food through the pot sides, to throw away in the atmosphere (aka heat the kitchen). In the oven, it brings no advantage. But we'll get thrown off the "waste of money" thread for letting the eternal cookware discussion seep into it

Hi, Helen. Yeah, me too, and those same trout are often on the breakfast menu as cold shioyaki in Japanese inns. In this region, the water's too warm in summer and the flesh ends up mushy, which counts them out, for me (nor are they the attractive pink I'm used to, and incidentally they're also small for filleting). I can imagine there is good trout in Hokkaido, but this far removed, Hokkaido is synonymous only with its great seafood. Maybe if I lived there I could find good trout. In Kanto ? Not yet, and I'm not an angler, either. ETA: size, I mentioned 3/4 pound fish. Those Japanese supermarket ones are around 4 or 5 ounces to my once-trout-factory-trained eye, occasionally a bit bigger but never more than half a pound, if that.

Cordon Bleu. Sorry. NB to me the chives are crucial in this recipe, though something else oniony can substitute in a pinch. Yes, the fish-cream-chive-salt-pepper-breadcrumb thing has you (has me, anyway) licking out the cooking vessel and looking round madly for more.

Hi, David. For me, the chances of burning the fond are much higher in the LC than in an ordinary stainless pan. I made two big fat braises of beef last week, in my 7-quart copper-disk-bottom stainless stockpot. It browned the pieces of meat, it browned the onions, it formed a beautiful fond and it let me crank up the heat for each new batch of meat and moderate as they finished off. That pot fits almost exactly in my oven (like 1/4" headroom), if I use foil as a lid. I have one 30-cm LC enamelled cast iron pot, 30cm across - one of the two-handed casserole types. It cost ~USD250. The stockpot is one of nine pieces that came in a set for ~USD250. On reflection I consider the LC a complete waste of money. In the first place, manufacturing cost for the cast is probably about 5 bucks. In the second, I bought it mostly for curry-making - i.e. braises. It's hard to control the onion browning, and finish off with them just right. You can try to quench it with the liquid ingredients, but it can be so hot it boils even those off further than you want. Water you can replenish. Cream can get hurt. On reflection (and with a bit more input from Google) I found copper-bottomed stainless casserole pots of the same size and realised that's what I really want.

Buy-before-you-look Amazon has furnished me so far with: (already mentioned) Harvey & Kinsella; Erlandson's Home smoking & curing; and (at last !) Jane Grigson. (not mentioned yet) Sausage - A.D. Livingston. I also have his Cold-smoking and Salt-curing Meat, Fish & Game. I like A.D., he has a whiff of the backwoods about him. Home Sausage making - Reavis. This one in particular is a victim of 'buy before you look' for me. a lot of it is things like Kielbasa that are part of American immigrant heritage, but not part of mine. Which is fine, but not what I was looking for at the time.

Have you tried this ? (for four) Trout with cream Mix breadcrumbs (1 or 2 cups ? Sorry, I learned and have always done it by eye) with equal quantities chopped parsley and chives (3-4 tablespoons each ?), and season with salt & pepper. 'Poach' trout* fillets (ideally from fish of about 3/4 pound) gently in a couple of tablespoons of water till done. Drain and lay in a grill pan or other wide pan that fits under your grill. Pour on double / whipping cream - 0.5 - 1oz per serving ? Sprinkle the breadcrumb mixture over them, drizzle with melted butter and grill (that's broil to you, is it ?) till nicely golden. Simple and very very good. I credit this recipe to my CB-trained Aunt Moira. *trout - impossible in Tokyo, in practice. I make it quite successfully with salmon, but trout has its own special flavour, doesn't it ?

I was surprised how far this thread got before anyone mentioned tomatoes - quite right of course, JAZ. Cheeses - in my kitchen not least mature cheddars - often carry their own acidity, and some coffees do the same into desserts. Nakji, I've said it before but I like a little lemon juice 8and black pepper too) in miso soup. That's what I'd have suggested for yours, but the ginger vinegar is a good one, too - funny that katsuo (the base of the stock - I know you know that) is typically served with ginger when it's sushi.

And your great eggs gave you a wonderful story, too. I missed this one till now, Maggie. You've prompted me (forgive me !) to fire up Winamp and use the media library to sort everything by length: at 5 minutes, I can let you have CCR Sweet Home Alabama, Bruce Springsteen The River or (5:01) Nirvana Smells Like Teen Spirit. Somehow 5:30 works for me and I get a more esoteric choice between Elvis Costello Man Out of Time (5:29 and maybe his best - he apparently thinks so, or did at one point), Art Tatum and Ben Webster Night and Day, and (5:31) Styx Domo Arigato Mr, Roboto - which has to be just the thing. "World Enough and Time..." - are you familiar with AD Hope's "Since you have world enough and time, sir, to admonish me in rhyme..." ?

Which is a genuine application for a dutch oven, isn't it ? Making bread or cake on the stovetop.

You could also try oatcakes - various recipes on the net. This one is typical. I have a book on Scottish food here that gives the ingredients as only oatmeal, beef dripping and some water. Think of them as a heavier substitute for crackers - they're very good with cheese. andiesenji, does that also include some dairy, or are oats sufficiently more complete than wheat that it's not necessary ? Flapjacks are a good sweet way to use up oatmeal. I'm not sure how they work with steel-cut oats, which I think are the same as what's called pinhead oatmeal. They're even a good reason to buy oatmeal in the first place.