DCP

FWIW, I was served a warm muffaletta at The Nodding Head in Center City, Philadelphia, and found it delicious. No New Orleans fare, to be sure, but mighty tasty in its own right.

Interesting. I've found that heating tends to reveal subtleties - or more correctly, chilling tends to hide them. I always need to spice more heavily for something served cold (or noshed upon as a leftover that I'm too lazy to reheat). Certainly, the convenience store fare that is meant to microwaved in-store would be pretty gross cold. (I plead the 5th as to whether I'd have tasted such a thing cold.)

You're not alone in having such a peeve. I can rarely get the stickers off without bruising the fruit. They are good for cashiers who can't identify one cultivar from another (and the rest of us who, in a moment of premature senility, forget what kind we picked up), but are otherwise a frustration.

Yes, rice ball filling. It can also be used as a dressing for daikon salad, for example. According to my memo 2 umeboshi 5g katsuobushi 1 tbsp mirin 2 tbsp dashi 1 tbsp soy sauce (No kombu in this recipe!) Real Japanese purin is made by steaming, but is not very popular because it's kind of hard to make it. We prefer another type of purin, which is set by adding gelatin and cooling. Premade purin mixes like theseare available at any supermarket. Purin contains eggs, and is sweet. There are other flavors like kabocha (squash) purin. The one I ate is a premade purin (not mix). When my children were smaller, I often made purin by heating the following ingredients in the mirowave, very carefully, making sure that it wouldn't boil: 3 eggs 80 g sugar 2 bottles of milk (= 200 x 2 = 400 ml) Some vanilla You can keep it at room temperature. I googled and found that it's good for 90 days after manufacture, but actually, it can keep for months. I just nibbled it by holding in one hand, just like many Japanese males. It requires no cooking, but you can cut it, heat it in a fry pan, with no oil (my preferred sytle), and add some pepper and salt. ← Oishii! Domo arigato for the recipes and information. I'll be duplicating at home as soon as I get another chance to trek to the market which stocks such things.

It is. Mr. Clean's 'Magic Eraser' cleaning product sold stateside is pretty much the same thing - a melamine foam.

It would be pretty gross if the whole thing was toasted indiscriminately. Fortunately, Quizno's puts the sandwich through the conveyor-belt-toaster after adding meat/cheese/sauce, but before putting on the cold vegetables. The complaint still applies to the warmed sauce, for things like Ranch - but isn't quite as bad as it's made out to be otherwise. My two cents as a former (recovering) Quizno's addict.

Don't know if you've tried this stuff (since the objection to leaving food uncovered would still apply), but I've had success with it: Goo Gone (Found at local BB&B)

Exactly what I do, on all counts: remove for gifts, keep for home (except wine), and re-package for fancy home meals.

Hi, Hiroyuki! I'm continuing to thoroughly enjoy your blog. I have a ton of questions, if you don't mind. I'm still trying to figure out what to do with umeboshi besides a small amount stirred into rice. What do you do with the mirin/katsuobushi/kombu/umeboshi paste? Rice ball filling? I would love proportions for this mixture. What is the purin like? It looks similar to a packaged flan. Is it egg-based? A little sweet, or a lot? Other flavors? Looks tasty. I've seen fish sausage in the market dozens of times, but never bought it. Is this the refrigerated kind? Do you just slice it up into the ramen? Does it need to be cooked? How long does it keep? I did check the Japanese sausage thread on this, but not much dedicated to fish sausage! Thanks to any light you can shed on my questions.

Certainly is. Peculiar name, but the same product. (Their website - beware of annoying music) A gelati with passionfruit ice and vanilla custard was a favorite of mine some years back.

I have not, but it's on my (ever-expanding and rarely shrinking) list. I'm enthralled with today's photos and descriptions. The clear soup with shiitake looks particularly easy and tasty. By the way, my best wishes for an improvement in your wife's health.

Now just wait one second... do you mean to tell me that the sausage king of eGullet doesn't have a meat slicer? For shame.

This article may not be exactly what you were looking for, but is what I immediately though of at your reference: ("You Are What You Grow" by Michael Pollan from last Sunday's New York Times.) And it's a great read, to boot. (Edited to correct duplicated article title.)

A belated welcome to your blog! Japanese cuisine is my favorite, and I will admit to being more than a little interested in the culture as well. Looking forward to reading - thanks!

I'm in vicarious pain just reading this.

Can't speak for bitter melon (and had a bad experience with a grass jelly drink from the local Filipino market) but can about durian. There are many different varieties, but the one I've had did not smell terrible - perhaps because it was shipped frozen to the US and I dismantled it when partially thawed. The texture (ripe) is gooey and stringy. The flesh, inside a thin membrane, has a creamy mouthfeel and flavor reminiscent of bananas, vanilla, and caramel (to me). It is also high in sulfur, and tastes a bit like ripe jackfruit. There is an aftertaste (with lovely 'durian burps' hours thereafter) of cheese, onions, garlic, and wine. YMMV, of course, as this is only my experience of one cultivar. I used most of the pulp to make Durian Breakfast Muffins, ans the rest is earmarked for a cake.

Indeed. Before I learned to cook, I had become accustomed to the overly salty, sweet, fatty flavors of mass-produced food. One impediment to cooking was that food made at home never tasted as good. Now, much processed food tastes like a salt lick (or cloyingly sweet) to me, or makes me sick to my stomach from all the fat. A deadening and corresponding un-deadening of the palate over time due to change in habits is a great way to describe this.

Amen to that. The subtleties of good chocolate are wonderful, but I find varied chewy/creamy/crunchy fillings/additions far more alluring than the overtones of one gourmet pure chocolate vs. another. Of course, the chocolate has to be good in the first place - Hershey's waxy-tasting stuff need not apply.

Rita's is one of my favorites. I've been to many from Maryland to Pennsylvania, and it's a treat. Good to know that the quality and experience are consistent across franchises.

MaxH, I think you've hit on a key point right there: those who want cooking to be a series of straightforward steps find rigid rules pleasing. Rather than learning, treat it as a set of instructions. This applies to any number of skills that people don't care to learn. I'll admit to being this kind of 'cook' years ago. When I first figured out how not to ruin a steak, it was with a very formulaic method - but it worked. I had to make sure to buy steaks of a very specific type and thickness, but the reproducible success was appealing when I just wanted to make food without buying it pre-cooked. Prior attempts based on recipes called for assumed knowledge of doneness and a working understanding of thermodynamics (and I feel completely justified in saying that with a straight face after reading this eGCI course material a few weeks ago ) Not to go off-topic, but I think many people treat cars the same way - turn the key, push the pedal, go. Doesn't work? Turn the key again. What if not then? Look at the lights. It gets too complicated to actually diagnose, so it's easier to call a professional. Or in the case of food, go out to eat. Learning the how and why is a wonderful thing for those of us who appreciate cooking as a malleable set of techniques and loose guidelines from which we may grow (and there's so much to learn), but that requires treating it as an art/science: not a utilitarian technique. Cook to survive and be nourished, or cook to make and enjoy culinary masterpieces? It's two completely different approaches to what (I'd argue) is not the same end result at all. Pardon the rant.

"baited breath" Is that the result of eating small raw fish? (ducks and runs very far away... ← Hey, I like my sashimi. Don't knock it.

Since I've been lurking this whole time, it's only fair to take the pause to mention that this a fabulous set of blog entries. I've been thoroughly enjoying the food porn, drooling over all the photos. Many thanks for sharing. (Waiting with bated breath for the next installment...)

And overlook it I did, especially with its curly brethren nearby. My apologies! Your typing, I squint now, is perfectly clear. Still unclear, if you ask me - 1" x 1" x slice thickness? Then again, more is better with lox.

By 'flaked smoked salmon' I assume you mean hot-smoked salmon. Lox generally refers to brined and (sometimes) cold-smoked salmon - depending on spices and exact method, you could be talking about Nova lox, Scottish lox, Gravlax/Gravad lox (my favorite), etc. I'd always use a cured and uncooked salmon product when a recipe calls for 'lox,' leaving the particular variety thereof as an exercise to the cook. '1 piece' is a poor unit of measurement because commercial lox is usually pre-sliced, but the slice sizes can vary widely with thickness and the relative size of the fillet. I'd love to cite a slew of eG threads on the topic, but I'm not quickly finding any. Good luck - post if you have more questions; there are lots of experts around!

I don't know whether to be elated or dismayed! And you? ← Dismayed. primarily. I have visions of even more Americanized (or bastardized?) dishes that don't hold a candle to the authentic fare, altered so much to appeal to [the perception of] an American palate as to be unrecognizable. In its defense, the article does talk about diners with more refined and global tastes, but I lean more towards pessimistic on the potential implementation when it filters down to restaurants below high-end. We are, after all, discussing the mainstream.