Blether
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Posts posted by Blether
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You're lucky to be able to buy those, Bob. Smoked haddock is of course also traditional for kedgeree, makes great fish cakes and a good fish pie, in bechamel with the usual seasonings and topped with mashed potato or puff pastry.
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Saturday: a dockside barbecue. Amongst other things, a rough Baba Ghannoush from aubergines cooked on the charcoal brazier you can just see in the background
and tandoori chicken, also always good cooked over charcoal
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... a fish called akamutsu, or better known as nodoguro...
Yes, I've come across it by both names. Nodoguro is one of the rewarding specialties of a fish restaurant in Yurakucho I sometimes go to called Shin-hinomoto. It is very good.
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Fennel makes a delicious soup - wilt some onion in oil, add the chopped / sliced fennel bulb, stir once or twice, cover (or more) with chicken stock, season and simmer for 20 - 30 minutes. Finish with a stick blender, optional cream or milk, and garnish with snippings from the leaf fronds. Mmm. Also excellent chilled.
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Hi I ordered a product from Rakuten, does the following mean they arent sending it due they dont ship internationally?
Yes, but it also says they are preparing to start international shipments from next year.
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You're very brave ! I don't know narezushi, but 'kusaya' rotted fish remains popular enough. Do you know Kusaya ? I'm interested to see your progress, and glad that you recognise the poisoning potential, in particular in mackerel.
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Hmm. In Sakamoto Kazuo's list, I don't want to agree with the fish listed between buri and shima-aji, as white fish (as opposed to oily fish, western-style).
But since, as you say, the split is white fish & 'red fish' rather than white fish & oily fish, it makes sense. On the other hand, it's funny that 'red fish' include only tuna & bonito (in the western tradition, katsuo is Skipjack tuna, i.e. also a kind of tuna).
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They are red-fleshed fish, but believe it or not, in many traditional sushi shops in Japan, buri, kanpachi, and hiramasa are considered white-fleshed fish.
To be clear, are we talking about the expression 'shiro-zakana' ? And if I may ask, other than the name, do you think this has any practical implications ? Maguro isn't a 'white fish', but the preparation for it and all of these is the same - served over shari with wasabi & soy - even if fish like aji, katsuo and sanma are often topped with negi (green onion) and/or shouga (ginger).
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Was it here at eG, or in the newspaper, that I read just recently that an organised tasting had determined that the red wines that don't work with fish are the ones that have a higher iron content ? (A rhetorical question).
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I really enjoyed the meal at Wako...
Great pictures as usual, Prawncrackers. I dunno, it's almost as if a there's special kind of light wherever you go. Spooky !
I was admiring the chawanmushi earlier, too. That's unusual as part of a tonkatsu set. I like chawanmushi. I haven't (that I remember) eaten at any of the Wako branches - I must do that at some point. The citrusy dressing in tonkatsu-ya is normally based on (or contains) yuzu and soy - it is good, isn't it ?
Hiroyuki, I've skied in Yuzawa (though it seems these days all the young people are on snowboards - it's only us wrinkly, crusty types who're still on skis). It's also on some of the motorbike touring routes we do, and this summer we were in the area again by car when we made a trip up to Arupu no Sato. I'm always interested to hear stories from the Snow Country.
Prasantrin, I like lemon with my tonkatsu, too. I could swear I've had it sometimes at tonkatsu-ya even when just ordering the pork, though I don't remember where or when.
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Blether, my dough definitely didn't end up anything like that, I wouldn't have described it as very bread-like. I suspect that among other things, I underproved it.
Yes, it needs some confidence to let the dough rise, then rise some more, and when it seems insupportable and likely to collapse at any moment, to give it quite a bit longer still. The same dough does make good Napoli-style pizza - the texture turns out quite different, because of (for pizza) shaping the dough after the rise, the thin, flat shape, and the short, hot baking.
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Did you have to anything special to get the bread so 'holy' ? Wow, I cannot my breads to be the airy. Yours looks great.
Thanks, Steve. I believe the important factors are the long rise, a little more hydration than the bread-standard 2/3, and good, strong flour. I thought that the fancy strong flour I was buying from Hokkaido was important - for that loaf I'd run out, and used the strong bread flour from the local supermarket with no noticeable difference. The yeast I use is SAF-Instant, just mixed in with all the other ingredients at the same time.
I enjoy the light texture, too - what really stands out though, is the flavour after the long development. It's a great bread to give to people just to see their surprise at how good it is. The flip side is that it has the keeping properties of real baguette - it really needs to be eaten within 24 hours, 36 at the most.
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... what expect from a long-retardation Napoli style dough?
As I make it, this shows the amount of rise to look for and the appearance of the dough when ready. Does it look like what you achieved ?
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Yes, I always preferred Whole Nut to Fruit & Nut - in fact it was a big favourite of mine for a while. Probably because they never had an ad campaign for it quite as effective as
. I think that's Frank Muir in at the end there, making it up as he goes along. -
In Japan, it is rare to grill a whole large fish like salmon. (It is not uncommon to present a whole large fish (still alive) as sashimi, though.) A fish is usually cut into smaller pieces and sprinkled with salt to remove any odor before being grilled.
It's a minefield, isn't it ? I was only thinking of thw whole fish that are always grilled whole in Japan (when they are grilled) - sanma, aji, others. Personally I don't rate grilling for fillets of larger fish, in general - with an exception for shiira / mahi-mahi, which as I'm sure you know is another story still, all of its own ! As for whole fish of the size of salmon, it's somewhat rare to cook these whole in the west, too, though households equipped with a fish kettle or an oven big enough have the option. (Come to think of it, the oven-baked approach is common enough).
As for teriyaki, too much of it is over-sweet, to my palate. My best ever teriyaki experience was fillet of beef at Yumi in George Street, London (of all places). Quite, quite delicious.
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Ha ha ! Maybe (one of the things) he means is that the all-too-common farmed salmon is too oily in comparison with wild salmon ? One of the things I love about Japan is the inexpensive wild salmon we have in the autumn. Wild salmon in the UK is very much a premium product, particularly when it's smoked.
It is a fact, not MY idea!Don't worry, I'm not holding you responsible.
In the western tradition, salmon is firmly in the blue/oily fish category. For example, it has the same (shorter) keeping properties in the freezer as other oily fish, compared with what's called white fish, i.e. fish with flesh that's genuinely white in colour as opposed to salmon pink, and not oily - haddock, cod, whiting, sole, plaice and so on.Trout are naturally pink in the UK (and in the same freezing category), but if you farm them with food that doesn't contain pink dye, they grow up with white flesh. The explanation we were given as fish farmers was that the natural pink comes from freshwater shrimp in the diet. Of course Japanese trout - all the ones I've come across in Kanto - are white-fleshed... as is Inada/Wakashi/Buri. Are the Yellowtail 'white fish' to you ?!
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They dont have different formulations. The brand gives the same recipe to each manufacturer (we have this info from the Cadbury factoru in Dunedin).. What they have is variation in raw materials... different from the IS one. Marked difference in 'caramelly-ness'.
Thanks for posting this. Let me guess - the UK/NZ version is more caramelly than the US one ? Is that right ? (I haven't tasted the US version, though I've had (grew up on) the UK one and have had the Aussie. Funnily enough before leaving the UK in my twenties, I'd developed a preference for Mars's Galaxy. Ripple was always a strong challenger to Dipped Flake).
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Hi, Rhonda. As a UK native I think that the pork pie is the most common vehicle for this. In fact there is a long, square-in-section version of it sold, in which (IIRC) egg yolks and then whites are pre-cooked in long, cylindrical moulds so as to get egg-clices-all-the-way-through.
I made a first attempt at pork pie this year. Surely you could use shortcrust or filo with the same forcemeat - either add pre-cooked eggs, or have fun making different-shaped holes in the filling as you fill the pie, and breaking in a raw egg. As I noted in the earlier thread I've linked to, the meat filling came out nicely authentic.
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Yes, tsuke-men is the equivalent of what you called 'dipping ramen'. Sorry about the soup - I had forgotten that you suspected it was pork. In your defence, apparently it's a very lush, thick soup that you wouldn't normally associate with fish (and I'd guess much of the gelatine is from the chicken).
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Velveeta - yes, though my pwn plate warming, if it's not heating the food in the actual serving dish, will be sitting the cooking container on the plate(s) or the plate(s) on top of the cooking container.
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I bore it
I'm not a big fan of Japanese karashi on my katsu - it was in a little lidded pot on the counter, and today I looked at it and left it there. There were also at least shichimi, shoyu and salt.
Can you describe what their tonkatsu sauce tastes like?
No, I can't. I said "The sauce followed the usual form by being clove-flavoured" - it was normal tonkatsu-ya sauce, not very different from the usual. I might have more to say after I have something closer (in time) to compare. I think this was my second tonkatsu of the year.
I remember you mentioned Yotsuya's Sankin as a favourite, and of course simple / elaborate, crunchy/soft, traditional/modern decor, friendly/reserved service and so on are all a matter of personal taste. What do you look for in particular in tonkatsu, if anything ? What's your favourite in your area of Niigata ?
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The ramen place is called Hakata Gensuke - it looks like they've only been open a year or so. Hakata is an alternative / traditional name for Fukuoka, IIRC. They have a photo sequence showing how they make their noodles, which are, as you will of course have noted, cut extra thick.
The powder is dried bonito / katsuobushi, and the soup is chicken and seafood, with the emphasis on seafood, it says elsewhere.
Takoyaki's based on a pancake batter mixed with dashi - I hope someone who's actually made them will help. They do look good !
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First up, Katsusei at Shinjuku-gyoenmae. I thought I'd start close by, so in Shinjuku. By chance the top-rated place in the whole Shinjuku area (3.73/5) is five minutes' walk from my office. It was a beautiful warm late-fall day here and I strolled over there at lunchtime.
You can see trays lined up on the counter here, each order waiting for its katsu to fry. I had a hire-katsu teishoku (set lunch) for 900yen.
Everything was good here. The cutlet comes in three pieces, flatter and thinner than most hire-katsu. My guess is that this is to allow the katsu to cook in ten minutes, the same amount that more usual, thicker pieces cook in the not uncommon 20-30 minutes, and that this means the frying's taking place at 120C or 130C (250-270F) as seems often to be the case (yes, I could have asked. No, I didn't. I'm a diner, not an investigative journalist (or a magician, captain)). In any event, the raw meat was a good dark red (tenchou-san was brandishing a batto with the cut slices in it) and cooked up moist, tender and tasty, and the breading exceptionally light and airy, rich with oil but not in an unpleasant way. I waited a reassuring ten minutes or so between ordering and receiving the food.
The cabbage was the usual heap of shredded cabbage, but served still nicely damp from rinsing - no dressing distinct from the tonkatsu sauce, so I used some of that. The sauce followed the usual form by being clove-flavoured (I use it judiciously, it's my one quibble with the tonkatsu genre - well, one of my two if you include shredded cabbage every time
).I left with a 'mata yoroshiku onegaishimasu' that I was able to really mean.
Using Breakfast Cereal As An Ingredient
in Food Traditions & Culture
Posted
In the 70's UK, we did a dessert that was in form similar to a crumble - sliced apples tossed with some sugar, topped with cornflakes, sprinkled with brown sugar, flaked with butter; cornflakes, sugar, butter; cornflakes, sugar, butter. Is that like 'apple crisp' ? It came out nicely toffeed and we used to love it.
Another one was a chocolate bar with a chocolate-and-cornflake mixture (sorry no details), topped with a thin layer of peppermint cream, and topped with melted chocolate.