Blether

You could try Kawasho Soen on the Ginza side of Tsukiji - a pleasant 15-minute walk in this season. http://r.gnavi.co.jp/fl/en/e349900/

Brown crab meat... (sigh). And the contents of prawn heads when the prawns are good quality and fresh. I have to correct an error - I said 'shionuki' when I meant 'sunanuki'. 'Brilliant' ? That's very British.

I visited Edinburgh (where I was a student, 1983-1986) in August. In advance I searched eG and read what seemed to be the two main threads on Edinburgh eating. I concluded that the Witchery was somewhere to avoid, in spite of its having been the city's premier dining venue when it was first established.

Hamaguri miso shiru - miso soup with clams. I used a standard dashi and was still surprised by how little miso it took to reach the right level of saltiness. The clams were given 'shionuki' overnight in a bowl of salt water with a teaspoon or two of flour - no sand here. I was out of fresh spring onion. Bruce, once again your food pictures dazzle. What's your secret ? From the angle of the shadows, it isn't on-camera flash.

How about breast escalopes cooked from raw / pan sauce, as a second menu option to limit the amount of bone-in you have to risk ?

Is the Ernest Borgnine in category 1 ? I'm going to add grapefruit (not exactly exclusively Japanese) and natsumikan. There are other Japanese citrus fruits that come under the western heading, 'bitter'.

A homely-looking Eve's Pudding with poured cream From this recipe, with lemon zest added to the apple.

Come to think of it, I've also made flapjack a couple of times - sub-ing honey for golden syrup. Yes, I ran up against the price of oatmeal - in fact I brought a kilo over from Scotland in August. Now I see Nisshin WD carrying a big (5kg ?) box of American oats that works out at an almost realistic price per kg. These may be back on the menu.

Thanks for an enjoyable read, Peter. Terroir remains endlessly fascinating, and to see everything from what's at the daily supermarket, through to a view into what's happening in a higher-end British restaurant these days, was great. I'm glad you made the effort

- nor do any of the cookbooks say 'American edition - volume measures'; 'UK Edition - weight measures in metric/imperial'. Now, if you buy from Amazon.com or Amazon.co.uk, there's some element of faith. But when you buy English-language-versions through Amazon.co.jp, you're all out of luck. (I've managed to avoid getting sucked into Aubrey-Maturin (makes sign of the cross). So far. (I did watch Master & Commander, which I enjoyed, though I was disappointed that they tried to 'heighten' the storm sequence with a lot of flash short-cutting that just made you feel remote from it, rather than letting some storm dynamics speak for themselves)). Ahem. Cookbooks. I have ordered three Marguerite Patten books, so I can report when I have them. From Amazon.co.uk - the upside of the new financial order being that the pound has reached par with the Matabele gumbo bead. Yay ! MP always seemed more authentically British to me - Delia started doing things like putting garlic and tomatoes where they never had been. YMMV.

Mmm... potatoes. that looks nice. Tonight, ad-libbed garlicky chicken curry with cream, and spiced Basmati. The rice: a little golden-fried chopped onion, cumin, turmeric, 2" cinnamon, 3 bay leaves, home-bottled ghee, 1 pint of rice Curry: golden-fried onion, cumin, turmeric, whole cardamom pods, home-blended mild curry paste; chicken breast marinated in salt, minced red chili from the balcony, lots of minced garlic, and for the last 15 minutes, the juice of half a lemon; crushed canned tomatoes; finished with garam masala and a little cream. Having read Shalmanese's great new topic today, I wrote it down

Jointing poultry, before or after cooking.

Gouya (the Okinawan gourd) really is bitter - I've not been able to find the pleasure in eating it. Sanma guts, for those that choose to eat them, are bitter, so likewise. Uni can be bitter when the quality's not very good.

My guess is that Delia was so ubiquitous and so dominant all the way from the late 70's to the early 90's, that no Brit would be surprised if she'd been published on Mars (and MaxH, we relied on Delia to read & translate that one for us. Eliza Leslie and The Boston Cooking School in the States, then. Thank-you. Noted). For my part, I grew up in a house which in the 70's featured an ever-growing pile of a particular magazine/periodical - whose name escapes me for the moment (oh-oh, there's a pattern here - was it simply called 'Cooking' ?), with Marguerite Patten's name on them: "She was one of [Television's] first 'celebrity chefs', presenting her first television cookery programme on the BBC in 1947. She has sold 17 million copies of her 170 books, and continues to contribute to BBC food programmes to the present day." - They were good. More details here and here: "She has since written more than 170 books, including The War-Time Kitchen and her latest, Best British Dishes (Grub Street, £25)." - Daily Torygraph, December 2008. Jumanggy & Darienne, thanks for your suggestions on Canadian cookbooks. The truth is that if I really want to confirm the name of that book, I can call up my friend and ask I still hold to my comments about Amazaon, which I've loved and with whom I've done business since - when was it - 1995 ? 1996 ? They always made a great interface, and they've provided a real service in creating such a database of books, making it so searchable, and delivering great customer service, all in the comfort of your home and without demanding a premium. On a shallow level, it's a lot more convenient than finding books by browsing high street stores, spending endless hours queueing up and making out-of-stock enquiries, returning to pick things up, and finally lugging home masses of dead tree. Again, what they don't do is let you discriminate easily - buying from them can be such a 'pig in a poke' experience. Absent extensive user recommendations for the title(s) you're interested in, you're at the mercy of the publisher's blurb, according to which every book in the universe is indispensable. For me, this is the one big hole in Amazon's business model. eGullet is a great resource for cook book information, so we're all lucky. But Amazon's accumulated a pile of cash - where's their investment in qualitative customer support ? "Dear Amazon, I'm looking for a book that does this..." - "Dear Customer, here are three to five recommendations, and some brief comments on their good and bad points"

This cook's forearms disagree with you Cream and eggs are the two most frequent victims of my ballon whisk, but I'd have to be really keen to throw genoise at it in preference to swinging the ten minutes over to Yodobashi Camera and its ever-demonically-tempting kitchen gadget floor. They have Cuisinarts too. I already have a couple of pieces of equipment on a seat and on the floor... evidently my priorities are in a fankle. I only fed that batch of tablet to foreigners (myself and some Aussie friends), but previously it's gone down well with sweet, sweet-toothed Japanese ladies. Careful audience-vetting goes a long way. Ecclefechan tart is kind of like a Canadian butter tart, but with a layer of nuts / raisins / dried fruit - so easy to make once you have pastry, and so good. I make it in one big sheet in a shallow tray. I like shortbread, too - I've been using cornflour in the millionaire version, and I'm grateful for your comments about rice flour. I tried-but-rejected a Heston Blumenthal formulation with egg yolks in it - at present I use 8oz flour / 6 butter / 6 sugar / 2 cornstarch. In the past I've used Delia Smith's idea of semolina, but it's not something I generally keep on hand. I also have a 'hot-water-crust-method' shortbread recipe I need to try out, via Google from Meal-Master at cs.cmu.edu - Carnegie Mellon, apparently ? Kind of appropriate for Scottish shortbread. IIRC the handmixer I looked at the other day claimed 120W. What would you say is a good power to be able to cope with the heavier stuff ? I remember reading about it somewhere, but not where. A few years ago I was introduced in Nakatsugawa to local specialty kurikinton, which were very good, and of course made from whole chestnuts. The recipes I see in Japanese that include chestnut flour seem to use imported Italian stuff, which seems kind of strange. Am I just badly informed, or does Japan not produce chestnut flour even though it has a chestnut crop and so many chestnut vendors in the winter ?

Perhaps it's intentionally designed to encourage the drinker beyond the point where taste matters.

Hi, SyntaxPC. What particular flavours are you thinking of ? To my knowledge it's true that alcohol will dissolve flavours that water won't, but it's also true that fats will dissolve most of those same flavours. (And again, also true that alcohol prefers water to fat: in the presence of both, it will tend to release the fat and amalgamate with the water).

Because you find White Horse so wonderful ? Could you elaborate on that, please ?

Hi, Prasantrin This is my development recipe, as it stands. I know what I mean by everything, but it's not edited for the general reader. Use at your own risk ! Getting the quantities right is what will make the dish succeed. I overdid the lemon juice, and was caught out too by how much the sauce thickened with the uni and just one egg yolk. More pasta water ? Parmesan cheese - this was OK. Anyway I'm looking to avoid any hint of 'oh, uni... and cheese' and just enhance 'uni' to 'uni with real savour'. The garlic, butter and cream are about right, though the cream measurement is a guess after a free pour, as is the lemon juice, still. Who really measures the stuff ? What I mean here is 'a smaller squeeze' (this amount of grated parmesan I did by eye, too). I've said it could be yuzu juice, but as you and I kmow, there's not much character in the huice, just as with lemon or lime. So Yuzu juice could be good if it's in season and you've some around, or if you stock the bottled stuff - or wanted to sound fancy on a menu - but isn't important and I think adding any yuzu zest / real yuzu flavour would be too much when there's already so much other flavour going on, a gilded lily. I was surprised how far one little tray of uni goes - it could easily stretch for four, maybe more, only increasing other sauce ingredients in proportion with the pasta. Put another way, you could use much less and keep the rest for something else. Getting onto the unibonara idea, you can see my notes. I love smoked salmon, but have been disappointed with it cooked in the past - it feels like a waste. So, in Japan, maybe some hokke. Back in the UK, kipper, or hot smoked salmon, which came into fashion in the time since I left. Smoked trout would be delicious, and the ubiquitous (as was; still ?) smoked mackerel another alternative. I started out experimenting with umeboshi in a curry recipe. I like what it provides and I think it could find a place here. For the occasional refresher, I like to keep some large, soft, 6 or 7% salt jobs around, the hachimitsu (honey) type, which makes them my default.

That's a beautiful piece of uni (and a beautifully-done picture), percyn. You must have a good supplier. The other day I finally got round to faking up an uni cream pasta - I also used a raw egg yolk in it. I got to thinking that smoked salmon is one of the options for moving it towards "Unibonara"; where I am, hokke is another.

Ah. Thanks, Rona. I did a pre-search on 'The Japanese Tradition' and found nothing. Thanks for the warning. I don't mind people taking offense. I always tell them there's plenty more where it came from.

sushi - noren - neta - biiru - toro - geta - o-shibori - shoyu - agari - shio Are other eGulleteers familiar with ?

Let's recap on a basic piece of kitchen physics. Liquids rise in temperature as they absorb heat. In the same pan over the same heat, different liquids will warm up (their temp will rise) at different rates. Once a liquid starts to boil, its temperature remains constant as it absorbs more and more heat. This heat goes to changing the liquid into gas, boiling it off. Different pots and pans will absorb different amounts of water in order to heat up. So, not 'wrong', but a question of communication. How can we write a repeatable recipe ? Boiling water at 100C is a known quantity - if you adjust the heat so it stays on the boil, that's a bath of water at 100C, regardless of the temperature of the room, the min & max heat-producing capacity of the stove, the size & shape of the pot, or crucially the actual rate of heat input over quite a wide range. So I can give a recipe that has a timing for any given pasta - or put another way, pasta makers can quote a cook time. What's a little unclear to me is whether the timing is meant to start once the pasta is entirely submerged or once the water boils again (or something else). IME (and cooking on powerful gas) there's not a big time difference between the two, and timing factory pasta from immersion gives good results: we are encouraged to judge our pasta by testing to the bite, and that's entirely correct and one of the reasons why the method you saw isn't 'wrong'. My practice is to set a timer based on the factory-stated cook time (adjusting for any final cooking together with a sauce) anyway. If I have hands enough and time to test diligently, that's one thing; if the timer catches me I have a backstop: anyway you need the bite-testing when you make your own pasta, but De Cecco's products - and those of others - are consistent and I'm quite relaxed about it. Secondly, in a field with so many a la minute sauce preparations, it's often vital to be able to predict when each piece will be ready in order to get best results - so again, predictability is important. Lastly, I like to follow the advice to use a rolling boil, because after a first stirring as the pasta first softens and the water boils again, it means I don't have to stir any more. The kitchen is full of - brimming with - myths of every colour. I've been indebted for some time to Aidells & Kelly for their advice on pre-salting meat. Isn't one of the beauties of food work, that we can 'suck it and see' ? There's always an ultimate proof - for each individual cook

Yes, I smell besan as well as dahi; and dhania is prime suspect number three. It's up to you, Jenni - so you're advertising but there're no loss leaders. At least we know you're not a supermarket

Hi, Mattsea. As a Scot now living in Japan (surely part of an American sphere of influence) for many years, I'm surprised how very little exposure I ever got to North American food when in the UK. We knew about Hot Dogs and some of us who had exotic connections came across things like Brownies. Otherwise, "who knew ?", even if in younger years we grew up unaware that things like Heinz, Kraft and ketchup are American. Likewise, upside-down food - a Kiwi buddy here turned me on to Edmonds; Family Circle was the standard for Aussie cooking in the UK, when it was represented (and as far I knew it), this of course back in the 70's and early 80's. What's your favourite Canadian cookbook ? I bought a big, pretty, colourful one on Amazon as a present for a Canuck friend some years ago and I wish I could remember which one. For me the lack of a librarian service at Amazon is its biggest weakness. They've replaced the high street bookstore but they're nickel-and-diming us on knowledgable storekeepers. A day or two ago I went back to look for Canadian cookbooks - (1) there's no category for them as you 'drill down' through what turn out to be very limited national categories, (2) a search for <canadian food> is unsatisfactory, and (3) user comments are some guide, but they're sparse and the only other guidance available is the publishers'. Hopeless. eGullet is quite American, naturally as you say, but for me stands out amongst American web enterprises for the extent of its internationalism, and I think Chris, an American and one of the movers and shakers here, starting this topic is a reflection of that.