Prawncrackers

I went to Kappabashi last time determined to buy some of those food models you see in the all of the restaurant windows. Alas I didn't reckon on them being sooo expensive. Did manage to get some knives and a set of moribashi though. Gourmet tonkatsu sounds like a dream come true. I want some now! Especially Butagami mentioned by lobster, it'll be interesting to eat Berkshire pig tonkatsu in Tokyo as the last tonkatsu that I cooked was from a Berkshire pig. Is it so highly rated that it makes it as far as Tokyo? I thought Middle Whites were the most prized in Japan. Sammy's Ebisu plaza looks wonderful and is already on the list.

I will eat anything but yes I am particulary interested in getting some good ramen. My wife will love the tonkatsu suggestion though as that is her favourite of all Japanese dishes - 1st floor, Shin Marunouchi building near the station, check. Keep them coming please, especially Shibuya recs.

Hi folks, I don’t know why I haven’t asked earlier but I will be in Japan from this Friday for a brief 8 days and have some last minute questions. I’ll be starting in Fukuoka to visit my brother-in-law and his family for a couple of days then catching the train to Osaka on Sunday. We’re leaving Osaka on Tuesday to go to Tokyo then jet off on the Saturday. It’s going to be our first time in Osaka and we’re staying at the Cross hotel near Dotonbori. Obviously we are going to hit Dotonbori hard and gorge ourselves. I’ve got my eyes on a Crab Kaiseki at Kani Doraku - I know it’s probably very touristy but hey we are tourists! I’d also like to go to Kuromon market and Dogayasuji (the catering mall near Namba Sta), does anyone know when the best time to visit these places is? I’ve been told that the fugu at Kuromon is excellent and depending on how brave my wife feels we’d like to try some. Apart from that is there anything else that we must must eat in Osaka? Also is the national holiday next Tuesday going to affect anything? It will be our third time in Tokyo, this time we’re staying in Shibuya (Cerulean Tower). Apart from the sushi pilgrimage to Tsukiji, we’ve already made a booking at Kozue restaurant in the Park Hyatt Shinjuku because we had such a wonderful meal there last time. Those are the only two foodie things we’ve planned as we thought we could be a little less obsessive about things. But now that the trip is almost upon us, I’m thinking it’ll be good to have a bit more ammunition. Where else should we consider in Tokyo for foodie hit? Consider also that we really want our Kozue meal to be our dearest so any ideas about the 5000-7000 would be great. Thanking you guys in advance.

If you're talking about plain steamed/boiled long-grain or jasmine rice then we always fluff, I know not of any Chinese family that wouldn't. Just a few minutes before eating, use the rice spatula (not a fork) to loosen the rice in the cooker. It makes it, well, fluffier. I suppose it matters what kind of rice is cooking, doesn't everyone do this with plain white rice? Probably don't need to with Basmati thinking about it.

Wow, i've had to rescue Dinner from the ignominy of Page 2! Did everyone eat out this weekend? Here are a couple of dinners from last week, first off was a pork chop with mole poblano sauce and salad: First autumnal meal of the year was roasted pigeon, celeriac mash, braised kale & shitake mushroom. The rich sauce was a red wine & meat gravy reduction with a hint of juniper and star anise: Last week was National Baking Week in the UK. I made a traditional Bakewell Tart and finally got the hang of making macarons - after many failed attempts i'm so happy:

Ok David, it was a couple a months ago and there were five of us so we managed to eat a good selection of dishes. It’s quite a small place, the one here in Brum, about 30 seats but not crammed – so comfortable even for the big hungry Brummies I was with. The décor is fairly dark and slick but what is strange is the Chinese travel agency as soon as you step in. I say agency but it’s in fact one desk with a pc and fax. Though throughout the restaurant there are Chinese travel brochures on every table. It’s quite a novelty picking through the menu as you try to decipher which cruise you’d like to go on. As for the menu, it’s one of those big chunky wipe down affairs with photos and names of dishes in both Chinese and English. Handy if like me you speak no Mandarin and the waiters speak no Cantonese! Anyway not much communication is required because the ordering is by way of little bookie style betting slips. You can choose the heat level and simply fill in the numbers that you want. We went for the hottest option of course and the following dishes:  Beef Poached in Chilli Oil, a must in any Sichuan restaurant. Good generous portion but strangely not hot enough. A little disappointing.  Man & Wife Lung Slices, I insisted on this dish because I’ve never had it in this country. It was good and surprisingly my friends liked it too. Very textural dish, the slices have a unique quality.  Mouthwatering Chicken, another classic done very well.  Jellyfish and Cucumber in sesame oil, this was another surprise textural hit with my friends. As good as any I’ve ever had.  Twice-cooked Pork, disappointing. They used long rashers of belly pork that weren’t crispy and didn’t taste vibrant enough. I could’ve done a lot better at home.  Gong Bo King Prawns, again slightly disappointing. It didn’t have instant “wow” sweet & sour hit. Another that I could do better at home.  Choi Sum in garlic sauce, good but hard to mess this one up. So all in all a mixed bag, we enjoyed it on the whole but we haven’t been back since. Why? Because we eat better and cheaper in our regular, BBQ Village, around the corner. Sichuan food and Northern Beijing to boot. Imagine having your Beef in Chilli Oil but with crispy lamb ribs and chargrilled skewered chicken hearts too. There are a couple of other Sichuan restaurants in Brum but we haven’t got round to trying those because we are so in love with BBQ Village. What did look impressive at Red N Hot (bad name btw though the literal translation of Red Contentment Heaven doesn’t exactly roll of the tongue either), were the hot pots. Every table had a discrete built-in induction plate. The adjoining tables had very impressive cauldrons bubbling throughout our meal. Though I find it amazing how on a fairly hot day mainland Chinese folk can eat such a thing, sweating buckets they were. Maybe we will come back when it’s cooler to sample it.

I haven't been to the one in Manchester but I have the one here in Birmingham, does that count?

The only time I've ever used mushroom powder i rolled some monkfish in it before cooking. I was trying to recreate I dish I had in local restaurant. The restaurant dish was spectacularly tasty, mine wasn't as good.

After all the unanimous rave reviews in the national press earlier in the year, I took my wife to Dinings back in June. Surely all those big-name London critics can't be wrong. So I took a little camera in anticipation of a great meal and posting some pics here but felt afterwards that it wasn't really worth mentioning. It was alright, but we won't be rushing back. We had a fairly broad range of dishes, shame to waste a good set of photos, so here they are: Little scallop "tacos" (actually potato crisps) - tasty and tiny Braised Pork Belly - a bit bland Unagi & Foie Gras Nigiri - by far the best thing we ate A selection of salmon sushi, mean London sized pieces, underwhelming Chu-toro nigiri, if you can believe it, again mean and poorly sliced on top. Decidedly Yo Sushi! standard Grilled Rib-eye, not bad but they didn't have the Wagyu we'd originally wanted Zaru Soba and Udon, both very nice but difficult to mess these two up We had the tea (i think Earl Grey) panacotta, tasted good but looked a mess and the matcha creme brulee which was much better So all in all i've still yet to have outstanding Japanese in London. I don't come down all that often but i have managed to eat at half a dozen Japanese places in London. I would rate this above Tokyo Diner in Soho and Saki near Smithfield but below the Centrepoint near Tottenham Court and Cafe Japan in Golders Green. I like Cafe Japan a lot but even that is not a patch on my regular, Ebi Sushi in Derby. Yes Derby.

I don’t think I’ve ever fried rice without egg, in other words I’ve always made egg-fried rice. I like to keep mine pretty pure in a Cantonese sense, just a little garlic/scallion/ginger/soy and finished with peas. If I’m lucky there may be some bits of Char-siu too. But there is one thing I do that is unconventional and that I’ve never seen anyone else do. I mix the egg with the cooked rice first, really beat it in with a pair of chopsticks so all the grains are covered and the mixture is really airy. Does anyone else do this? I really like the way it turns out, each grain is separate and there are no lumps of egg anywhere.

I have the same Atlas machine as you M!axH, bought it for £10 on ebay, absolute bargain. Only started making pasta this year, what i found really annoying was the uneven sheets i was getting. You know when the leading edge becomes tongue-shaped then you either have to square it off and waste a little pasta or put it through the cutter as is and have uneven lengths. Then the last couple of times i tried folding the sheet over and creating a loop of pasta. Bingo! It works perfectly, everytime you turn the dial the pasta gets thinner and loop gets longer. When you get to the right thickness you just slice against the top of the machine and you get perfectly straight edges. What I found tricky too was how to deal with the pasta after it had been through the cutter. It was such a messy job until i bought a Marcato drying rack which also has this great tool that makes transferring the pasta to the rack so simple. Freshly made pasta is so good, the silky texture just feels so special everytime you eat it. Last time i made pasta was with duck eggs and little saffron. I think i enjoyed it more than the lobster it was accompanying!

Hmmm, miso soup with clams sounds like a wonderful breakfast option but where is the egg?! Everyone knows this thread is really a front for runny egg yolk porn I wonder if poaching an egg in miso soup would work? I had leftover brown crab meat and salmon roe (it's egg, it counts) on toast. The brown meat is one of my favourite things to eat, topped with the salty roe it was a sensation. I love having nice leftovers to put on toast in the morning, it's instant satisfaction. I think Percy knows where i'm coming from with that one:

Last night we had some friends around and I made a nice starter of crab mixed with a little mayo, lime, chilli & coriander. There was some avocado, cucumber and tomato petals to give it a bit of body and some salmon roe on top of the crab claw that I pressed into the middle. The dressing was made from chilli, crab roe, evoo and some sweet moscatel vinegar. I took unusual extra care with the presentation as you can see and it turned out brilliantly. First time that i've ever used a presentation ring! There was Osso Bucco with saffron risotto and home-made baklava too though sadly i didn't have the opportunity to take photos of those. In fact I only managed to take the one photo so that's why the focus is a little soft.

I am suffering from such uni envy you just can't believe! Would love to experiment cooking with it as you are Percy. Alas my wife isn't really keen on it so I will have to make do with eating the odd morsel at my favourite sushi joint. Keep them coming i want to see more Uni food porn

It'll just be the three of us so we'll eat in the kitchen. No fear of me ignoring the guest whilst i'm cooking. Chris spotted the a la minute cooking for two and three easily. I would say two has the most but it is the most practised so that balances out eh? One would be a breeze, it's a midweek dinner and i wouldn't even have to leave work early for that one!

I was going to post this in the Dinner thread but then i thought your responses could be interesting. They could say a lot about your tastes. I haven't had the time really to post let alone cook anything recently because of professional exams coming up. Due to constant study I missed my good friends birthday this week and i'd been promising that i'd cook him a seafood meal for ages. As a gift i sent him the slightly tongue-in-cheek dinner voucher below. It's basically a greatest hits of the "fancy" seafood dishes that i've ever cooked. Before you think, like my wife, that i'm going to cook all of that for him... I've asked him to pick just one menu, no mixing or matching. I'd enjoy cooking all three meals but I know which one will be for me the most difficult. We're planning for around the middle of October so he hasn't made his mind up yet, so it got me thinking which would you choose to a) eat and b) cook? It's a bit lobster heavy but that is because i'm pretty confident of getting good fresh lobsters at the market. The other fish, especially for the Chinese menu we will have to see on the day. So let me know what you think, of course there's scope for change. My friend knows the chef is temperamental and the menu is likely to change without prior notice!

I love the idea of Hot Dog with truffle and fois gras Percy, maybe next time some gold leaf too!? I've been on my own for the past few days and trying to resist the temptation of getting take-out for every meal. To help me do this i have to cook the food that i really like to eat but that is also quick and easy to make. First off is some Gong Bo Prawns and today i grilled jerk chicken:

Its definitely Laap Yuk, even my shoddy written Chinese can recognise the last two characters, and it's from Shanghai. Any more than that and I'm guessing. I would go with Chris's suggestion of steaming it atop rice, even better if you can get some Laap/Yun Cheung (preserved pork/liver sausages) & Laap Ap (preserved duck), maybe some nice fat gai-lan too. Then you have some Laap Mei Fan (臘味飯) - assorted preserved meat rice. Use slightly glutinous rice and if you can cook in a clay pot that would be the ultimate! This is a Wal-mart in Japan?

I smoked my first brisket last weekend. It was very small, 1.5kg just over 3lbs. The flavour was wonderful but i overcooked it a little. All the recipes i'd read suggested cooking for 8+ hrs and pulling off when the internal temp reached approx 75C but like a shmuck i didn't check the temp till about 5 hrs in. By then it had reached 85C already, so i pulled it off and rested it for 2hrs before slicing. It's a shame because it was a lovely piece of Dexter beef. I feel i've let you all down but I promise to do better next time! Here is in all it's slightly dry glory

That's the way i see it too. When i get to the forequarter stage i split it into two, parallel to the spine along the line where i take the chops out of the middle. The top half is the "butt" which I've found this summer is the best thing to smoke on a bbq for some pulled pork. If you're looking for the swank (as Mr Blether has put it) then are some Chinese pork dishes that are pretty impressive like Dong Po pork.

You can still make some brawn with your heads mate

Not all that charcuterie is for me you know, I think I would turn into a pig if I ate all of that I sell most of it and what money I get for them pays for the next pig. So for me, I get all the prime cuts paid for and the pleasure of making all that nice stuff for people I know. Blether yes we get lots of daikon in the UK, it's usually found in the Indian/Pakistani shops where it's known as Mooli. The two sauces with the tonkatsu were English mustard and a soy/worcestershire sauce mixture. A very quick and easy impersonation of tonkatsu sauce as you can see. More authentically the rice was Japanese Nishiki rice though I've never heard of Japanese pork crackling so that's another point in the minus column. But it felt like such a waste to throw the skin away. Do you get crackling in Japan? It was a very nice addition to the meal, maybe it could catch on...

Having moved house this year i now have the luxury of having two fridge-freezers, that's eight freezer shelves in total. Just thinking about it now i keep a lot of uncooked protein, 6 shelves of: - Pork Chops, Belly, Butt, Ribs, Trotters and other odd bits - One massive rib of Beef, one rolled brisket - Lamb Shoulder, Lamb Burgers - Duck Legs, Breast, Giblets, pack of duck hearts, bag of duck trimmings to render into fat - Big bag of Iberico ham bones (makes wonderful stock) - Ostrich Burgers - One sea bass, two lemon sole, squid, some small mackerel - Block of 8-12 count whole king prawns, block of 21-24 count headless king prawns Phew, it's good to have stock take, i really need to get to busy on all this stuff! But i'm like my mother, i like to hoard stuff in the freezer and keep it full all the time. I start to panic if there's not at least a dozen portions of fish or meat in there. The other two shelves have: - ice of course, coffee beans, pandan leaves, turmeric root, galangal, kaffir lime leaves, lemongrass, curry leaves - Filo pastry, peas, spring roll wrappers - The only cooked food i have at the moment is a shop bought Jamaican lamb pattie and two portions of rendang

That's a big piece of rolled pancetta hanging in the middle of some chorizo and saucisson sec, i love pork! Just another week or so to wait till it's ready to eat. If the chops were anything to go by these should be really tasty.

I broke down a nice fat Berkshire pig last week and had some amazing chops from them. They reminded very much of Brigit Binns' Embarrasment of Lard! Ok maybe they really can't compare to hers but nonetheless you can tell from looking at these that they were going to be so juicy: I like to cook pork chops simply so first off was just pan-fried and served with potatoes, chorizo & peas. The crackling was cooked separately so it was perfectly crispy: Tonight was Tonkatsu and Miso Soup, again i couldn't resist making some crackling!! What did i do with the rest of the pig? I made a load of charcuterie of course :