Underfoot

So I can't say that I got this recipe from a friend, but I think it's still quite bad. I was playing this cooking game made by Ajinomoto, the huge food company famous for their popular mayonnaise, when I came upon a recipe for fruit salad that consisted of fruit and... mayonnaise. Literally chop up the fruit, add the mayo and presto! Here are some screen caps. Sounds to me like a good way to market their mayo but a terrible way to ruin some fruit! They also had a "bonus recipe" of parsley sauce that was milk, parsley, and, of course, mayo mixed together. Does anyone love mayonnaise enough to love these foods?!?!

Once again I attempt the bread. Here's how it went: First you take this: And add it to this: Bake, and then you get this! And making two breads at the same time works out surprisingly well if you stagger the recipes (especially because focaccia rises 3 times!). Dunno if either of them rose well enough during proofing stages but they taste good enough. Especially the caramelized onions, yum P.S. Both recipes come from Good Housekeeping Baking.

Thanks for the reference, looks interesting.

Okay, so this may not be a new restaurant opening, but it's an oldie-but-a-goodie opening in a new location! Actually it's been open for a few weeks but to cut to the chase, Willie's Taste of Soul has relocated to Rainier from Beacon Hill. I just had some of their bbq chicken and sliced pork tonight, delicious, tender, and a great bbq sauce. And yes, the proprietor's name is actually Willie and my family has been patronizing him for years. Always good. Here's the website.

This is probably a really immature post, but it's been on my mind for a while. Recently I heard someone use the phrase 「ぶっかけご飯」(bukkake gohan) and its etymology has been bothering me. As an American I learned of ぶっかけ first in regards to something else entirely, something definitely more adult! Heh... I was wondering if any native Japanese make puns to that effect or whether the sole connection between both the phrases 「ぶっかけご飯 」and 「ぶっかけ」 is the onomatopoetic sense. I just can't imagine that saying the phrase 「ぶっかけご飯」would not bring up those images.

Okay so what I have seen probably isn't the greatest ever, but it sure is gross. We had a server who was also a manager at times, and loved to talk up the BOH to get rich dinners for free every shift he worked. They usually ran along the lines of wagyu, risotto, some type of roulade, basically something featuring the best we had that day. Even though one cook in particular seemed always to fulfill these wishes, I guess one day he decided to exact his payment for all those dinners he made at the end of his shift. Needless to say by this time the server had gotten used to receiving and totally trusted whatever he got. Let's just say he's now a lot more wary of mayonnaise creme brulees (hey that rhymes!). Truly, truly disgusting. Other than that I think the most common trick played by our kitchen staff on the FOH was the smuggling of burning hot peppers in free meals.

Thanks, I enjoyed decorating the people most of all. I think the gingerbread house is a particularly good medium for individualization, at least among desserts! We actually have a whole box of dinosaur cookie cutters that look like they were made in the 50's. I do indeed enjoy "special" gingerbread houses! Although I don't know what your proclivity stems from, I'm sure mine is some deep seated desire to stand out from all the other perfect houses that I know I could never replicate (Like the ones on this thread!). Plus it's nice to give people a little humor and make it interesting to look at. I like yours too! Now if only I had some awesome plastic figures to stick on mine next year... Okay where did that Power Puff Girls figurine go?

I don't know if this qualifies for this thread, it not being particularly sweet, but today I made Oatmeal-Molasses Bread from Williams and Sonoma's Essentials of Baking. I think I added a little too much molasses or used a much darker kind than they did because my loaves were noticeably darker than the example. Pictures of crumb and crust: It's a slightly moist bread with an almost cake-like texture. You can see that it is a little moist in this picture I took with flash: It was good still warm and spread with butter (even though the recipe told me not to cut it till it was completely cool, blasphemy! I couldn't resist). It seems like a good replacement for generic, store-bought, whole wheat sandwich bread. Thoughts or comments?

Okay here I go again. Reading the above replies reminded me of another instance. This night I was working as a food runner. I was reaching past a older man (70s?) to place a plate down, wearing a t-shirt, and the man said "Are you ticklish?" Now I may be a little sensitive but this seemed a really odd thing to say and only made sense as a weird come-on. There was another time when I was working as a waiter's assistant. He was a good-looking, charming guy in his early thirties and usually used the very subtle flirtation method with his tables. One table that night had a young lady at it with her friends and she and he were engaged in some conversation when I came up to the table. Right then she said "Oh I wouldn't mind doing it with you... or her." I guess she swang both ways! I think some people just enjoying shocking/messing with young-looking girls... But what can I say, I always give them the red-cheeked embarassment I assume they were looking for.

So I'm sure by now no one is interested in gingerbread houses any more, well, too bad! My sister and I worked on the basics of the house together - basically the walls- but she had to go back to her college town so I was stuck with the decorating. We had planned on making a cut-away second floor but we underbaked it and when we stuck it back in the oven to firm it up we blackened it! Well it certainly was hard then, but I didn't think we wanted to live in a smoky house. I should preface that I have a large family, and the cookie people below are only my mother, stepfather, two brothers, stepbrother, sister, and step sister. At least it makes the cookie decorating interesting! My sister is outside with her law book and comic. Inside are my step father in the construction shirt, two brothers, stepbrother, and me! Though I swear that looks nothing like me in real life. We are all holding video game controllers. Our two cats, Xena and PJ are in the background. Here you can see I went so far as to ice a tv onto the wall (surely a flatscreen, haha). I also stuck a christmas tree in the corner and our cats on top of and next to our fish tank. Also note table with festive settings and a (christmas?) cake. Our gingerbread house reminded me of a log cabin from Little House in the Woods because it was one-room and had visible cementing icing on the insides. Needless to say we did not all fit into the all-purpose room so my step sister became Santa (she loves christmas the most of any of us I think). Side view, we had some funny cookie cutters so I took our yard back to the Jurassic era. One of my favorite things about this house was the bright colors our food dyes made in our royal icing. My mom on the other side of the house with her yarn and needles. Please note also the Seussical tilting chimney. Last but not least, the peppermint roof and a ninja!?! Yeah, I'm pretty silly. I also liked the flowers. We used some Japanese vegetable cutters (do these have a name?) to make these. I think they are used to cut up carrots and such but we used them in a sweeter application Thanks for reading this egotistically long post!

Oh I have a classic embarassing customer story. And it is here.

I was a busser at a restaurant a few months ago and one night one of our regulars came in for dinner. He seemed to be the solitary type, always bringing a book, but he was friends with the chef so nevertheless sat at the chef's counter and chatted with the chef off and on. He looked to be in his late fifties/early sixties and he always smiled at me, so I was friendly to him, in what I thought was a granddaughterly-way (I am 20). However I was soon corrected! The chef, customer and I were talking and the customer made some joke and proceeded to slap my rear with his book! I was so shocked that I didn't say anything and just walked away. The windows from the kitchen into the restaurant were about one and a half feet above the counter, so the chef didn't see what the customer had done. I told my FOH co-workers, because I felt the need to tell someone. But for some reason I didn't tell the chef; I think I didn't want to make it awkward for him with that customer. From then on whenever the man came in I did whatever I could to have other people help him and avoided eye contact. That probably wasn't the best answer, but I really didn't know what to do. I'm sure someone else has a much worse story, but I was mortified.

Thanks for the tip, they look delicious! Another interesting note, the site with the recipe told a little anecdote about how a couple of yolk-focused recipes came to be in the Philippines: Link I knew this was an age-old conundrum!

Hey there, I've been making a lot of royal icing recently for a gingerbread house (pictures of which I hope to upload to the appropriate thread soon), and I'm stuck with a bunch of egg yolks. I was hoping that I could maximize my egg use efficiency and make some delicious Christmas Cookies/Treats from them to give away as gifts. Naturally I've thought about Lemon Bars, but what I'm really looking for is something unique from you guys, plus I've already made a quadruple recipe of those. Thanks for any help brainstorming!

The Steelhead Diner at 95 Pine Street (basically 30 feet from the main drag of Pike Place Market) always has fresh ingredients, a chef who cares, awesome cocktails, a nice bar for watching the sun set on Elliott Bay, and a Louisiana-influenced menu with some very good gumbo and crab cakes. It's a good place for a semi-casual lunch or dinner. You can check out their menu here if you like.

That's funny. So you know how the whole savoury/sweet dichotomy is sweeping the culinary world at the moment? Well most of the recipes on this thread seem to be savoury but my Dad has made a kabocha pie for the last two Thanksgivings. This is amazing because a) he rarely bakes, and b) I always bring dessert! Maybe I should get that recipe...

Hello, I recently bought a sausage I think is called cottechino without acquainting myself with it beforehand. I think I remember seeing somewhere that it is made with... pork trotters? That would concur with my first impression, which was that it smelled and tasted very porky, and not necessarily in a way I like. - Is this sausage normally very porky, and is this caused by the pig trotters? - Are there any recipes you recommend for this sausage that go well with/ mute its porky nature? - What is this sausage usually purchased for? Thanks for any help you can give to an annoyingly curious person.

Oops, thanks for that. I hope I'm not misleading anyone. I think I should leave the Japanese lessons to you, heh.

I read something in a short story where someone had 「スコッチの水割り」(scotch cut with water), would you call this 「お湯割り」(cut with hot water)? I have to admit I don't know much about hard alcohol and its drinking practices but if you could tell me what kind of ideas there are about this kind of drink in Japan I'd be very interested to learn. What kind of people usually drink them? Is this a native practice or something that came along with western alcohols? I understand that there may be a complex answer due to the vagueness of my questions, so I apologize in advance. Thanks for any illumination you can provide.

Thank you for reading it! Though I think I still haven't worked up the courage to burn my caramel properly, but I look forward to doing it next time. Maybe you can live out your dessert desires vicariously through the pictures posted here...?

Both Japanese words are approximizations of the English. So here are the romaji and the katakana for each: Nutrasweet: nyu-torasui-to ニュートラスウィート Aspartame: asuparute-mu アスパルテーム (the dashes represent long sounds for the preceding vowel)

I hope people are still interested in this topic! Anyway, I read through this whole thread a few weeks ago when my dad requested I make "one of those french apple tarts with the puffy crusts." I figured out that this was what he meant and set about to trying to find the best way to do it. So I will probably never be able to do anything "perfectly" but to have a little fun I decided to test out four different apples in four miniature tarte tatins. Pictures follow. I started with this "puff paste" recipe from my 1946 version of the joy of cooking, chosen just for fun. By the way, does anyone know the derivation of puff paste-->pastry? Sadly I am pretty ill-equipped (as we will see later on as well) and I had to use this bottle of mixer covered in plastic wrap as a rolling pin. How typical of a college student. The recipe actually had an interesting technique where one kneads the butter underneath cold running tap water. I can only postulate as to what the purpose of this was, incorporation of water? Making the butter more malleable while keeping it cold? I bought four different apples at Whole Foods, from left to right: Braeburn, Jonagold, Winesap, Ambrosia. I prepped them in the way suggested upthread by culinary bear. I made caramel in a large pan and tried to distribute it equally among the pans. These were the only things I could find that fit the criteria of: small, roughly the same size, and bakeable. Again, left to right: Braeburn, Jonagold, Winesap, Ambrosia. I put them in one by one, once I had laid the puff pastry on top, so you can see the slightly different states of the puff pastry. I actually got really excited by this and took a little bit of a photo montage: I'd love to see some stop-motion photography of this. Man I'm such a nerd. Anyway, moving along they all came out eventually with only minor readjustments correcting absconding apple slices. WARNING: bad lighting ahead, terribly sorry. Ambrosia Braeburn Winesap Jonagold Among the taste-testers (about 7), the Winesap was most popular because of how the apple's structure held up, it seemed to have a finer structure than the others, it was had a more subtle, fruity flavor. The runner-up was Braeburn, it held up in the same way as the Winesap, but lacked the flavor nuances. nothing much to say about the Jonagold except that it was a pretty boring apple. The Ambrosia smelled and tasted great raw, but as its juicy nature belied, it broke down under pressure (or is that heat?) and was way too mushy and a little too sweet for this presentation. It was also interesting to see that the Winesap oxidized immediately while the other apples took a little while. I definitely enjoyed collecting opinions and noting the differences between these varietes when raw and when cooked. I hope this report helps somebody make their decisions about how to make their own tarte tatin, because there certainly are a lot of opinions on the best way to do it! **edited for consistency**

This is a bit embarassing for my first post but.... I think you missed an "n," making it "none" not "one." This makes it quite literally an issue of one: one letter, one rank. I'm just learning Japanese so I'm very happy to find such an interesting forum! Thanks for everyone's contribution. ← Thanks for the correction! Yes! None, not one. (Where's the blush smilie?) ← Under "Clickable Smilies" on the left hand side of the screen when you go to make a post there's "Show All" in blue. When you click on that, a window pops up with all the smilies. Or you can just type in ": blush :" (without the spaces of course).

This is a bit embarassing for my first post but.... I think you missed an "n," making it "none" not "one." This makes it quite literally an issue of one: one letter, one rank. I'm just learning Japanese so I'm very happy to find such an interesting forum! Thanks for everyone's contribution.