trillium

Dude, even the Greek or German guys I work with get funny looks when they go out to the little towns around here. If you look or sound at all different then the norm, you get stared at. Outside of Portland, all bets are off, sad but true. (Honestly, though, if you look anything like your portrait, I'd stare too). Before you analyze the sociological commentary being made with food, I have to ask, are you sure the sauces were edible on their own? regards, trillium

This week I made a chanterelle quiche from Julia Child's book and we ate it with a leek, potato and corn potage, also from her book. Very tasty and we toasted her with our glass of Pinot Gris. I'm obsessed with these soups where you don't add a meat stock, but just let the vegetables shine. Fresh leeks and peeled potatoes in equal proportions by weight, simmered in some water and salt, then you add what you like, in this case corn. It's greater then the sum of its parts. Sometimes I blender it and other times I just mash up the potatoes with the spoon and leave it "rustic". Dave, I wish I could see the photos of your find, they sound so good. I love matsutakes in a nice clear and light Japonese soup. regards, trillium

Did you taste any Flemish reds? One of my favorites is Duchess de Bourgogne, which I didn't see on the menu, but maybe you tasted a different one? It's a revelation in a glass, and we're luckily enough here in Portland to find it on tap (the only way it tastes right, sadly) at Higgins occasionally. I've drunk it for dessert all by it's lonesome, which is how it has to be at $10/quaff. The dessert you describe sounds like a bloody nightmare. regards, trillium ps - what happened to insisting that threads are marked with their geographical location? hee hee...couldn't resist....

I like it with Old Overholt because it's such a bad-ass bottle of booze, but the van Winkle family reserve rye will make a spendy but smooth and spicey Sazerac in my book (in general I mix it into Manhattans). If you like more corn in your rye whiskey, then Wild Turkey makes one you may like...I find it too sweet and too close to bourbon to be worth the bother (I like bourbon, mind you, just not when I open a bottle of rye). regards, trillium

Not to usurp the discussion, but I liked Joseph's Food Mart (8235 West Irving Park Rd) even better then Caputo's while I lived in Chicago. It's what I miss most about living in Portland. Seasonal stuff like moscato grapes, chestnuts, milk fed lamb, Italian seedlings for the garden, and then that mortadella that is over a foot wide, the capers and anchovies packed in salt and sold in bulk, fresh ricotta, etc. etc.... great working class place run by a family originally from Naples. Check it out too! regards, trillium

Thanks for the hints. I was freezing my gelati solid and then warming it back up to eat, so maybe I need to eat it straight out of the ice cream maker. Yum, pistachio gelati, that's a favorite too! How I wish I had brought more pistachios back from Sicily. I've been thinking about trying a similiar infusion method for toasted cocoa nibs. regards, trillium

Actually, I think the nicest way to differentiate is by geographic location, so I go with South Asian, East Asian and South-east Asian! But that's just me. Or you can do what my mum does in playful retaliation for being called round eye, and say slanty eye... ha ha ha...but maybe only she can get away with that. No kids here, but every single mixed kid I've seen has been too cute for their own damn good. My best buddy just had a daughter and she's adorable... same friend keeps insisting she needs a "cousin" from us too. I just thought of another Cantonese/x match, my other friend ended up with a Filipino guy and now she cooks damn good lumpia and adobo in addition to all that Cantonese food. He doesn't do much cooking though. Not to stray too far from cooking, but I think it's better to live in a more diverse place when you're a diverse family with kids. My friend and I talk about this all the time. She doesn't want to raise her kids in some podunk town where the kids are "strange" even though the dad wants to move back to the sticks. She's lucky too, that they'll have a Po-Po who only speaks Cantonese to them. Jen, I'm glad you had a good experience in Portland, I've never noticed anything at all here, it's one of the more tolerant cities I've lived in, with respect to comments from both races. regards, trillium

What a great thread! Some of the comments really made me chuckle.... and mongo, I was thinking the same thing, Asian covers a lot of countries and cuisines... I'm a round-eye who grew up in a very rural small town so I was never exposed to Asian food of any sort. But while I lived in SF I had a several great friends who were Cantonese, and they pretty much taught me all I know, including how good a bowl of 3 am jook in an little shop in an alley in Chinatown can be after a night of drinking and dancing. After a big exam we'd go out and order off the Chinese menu at seafood places for dinner for 8, even though there were 4 of us, and we'd rarely have many leftovers! We still laugh about our super white friend from Sacramento dipping the shrimp chips that came with the roast chicken into the leftover sauce from the clams with black bean sauce and saying "yummy, chips and dip!" or closing her eyes when we'd pick the crab out of the tank. Then there were all the Saturday morning dim sum gorgings too, where I learned to ask for gok bo cha instead of the house tea and spicy mustard along with the chilli sauces and that duck and chicken feet could actually be tasty. I think the thing is that while my mum had very limited resources she was an adventurous cook and eater and believed in good manners, and you pick that up as a kid. My partner of 11 years is Fukien by way of Singapore, and actually had a pretty strong bias against Cantonese food (I know, I know). In the early years he'd tell me things like winter melon soup has no flavor, and other sacrilegious comments, while he'd cook up a nasi lemak or a big vat of nonya style chicken curry. Nowadays there are some times he actually craves those simpler/purer dishes, and I have to make some sort of winter melon soup at least once per month during colder weather. When his mum came to visit I realized he got that attitude from her, since she thinks if it's not spicy, it's no good! As it is, I cook most of the Cantonese food, he does the Singaporean. We also eat a lot of Thai food because I love all the herbs, and Italian food because that's part of my dad's side of the family, and Indian because we have dear friends from Madras and Bombay who used to cook for us and now we live too far away and have to cook it ourselves, as well as more country stuff like white bean and ham soup and cornbread which I grew up eating with my mum. I don't think we could limit ourselves to just one type of cuisine, and it makes the leftovers more interesting that way (although, from personal experience, I don't recommend wonton mien and gnocchi with gorgonzola sauce in the same meal). My Cantonese friend from college ended up marrying a white dude from eastern Oregon, and he started out pissing her off because he'd eat all the sung and none of the fan, but he's learned better manners now and can eat a lot of things, even some green vegetables! When he makes his bbq ribs he'll even eat a bowl of rice with them. Her sister married a Korean guy, so she brings suitcases of kimchee from his mother when she comes to visit. The funniest part about being a bi-racial couple to me is who makes the occasional nasty remarks. In Chicago it was drunk white frat boys, but actually, the meanest things we ever heard were from really old Chinese grandpas in Chinatown. I usually get dragged away at that point, because I also learned a lot of foul language from my friends. regards, trillium

Hi Pamela, Thanks for taking the time to be here out of your busy preserving schedule. I know how hectic this time of year can be, I just finished my pomarola and prepared 3 kg of chanterelles for drying last night. I think the idea of a book on Tuscan preserving would be fabulous! I really enjoyed your "Gelato!" book, especially the catus pear sorbetto, and I'm wondering if you could talk about recreating that dense gooey texture of good gelati at home. I use a Krups automatic ice cream maker and it makes good enough ice cream/gelati but the texture is too light and fluffy to make it "gelati". Do you have any tips on making a denser textured dessert that is closer to what I've eaten in Italy? regards, trillium

I meant eat it in a restaurant or from a taco stand (my favorite sort of tacos are tongue tacos). Once I started eating and loving it, then I could cook it. But hey, if you are the brave sort, go right ahead! It won't be slimey. regards, trillium

Another nice way to eat boiled tongue (one of my favorite parts of any grass eating mammal) is with an Italian green sauce (capers, herbs, anchovies). If you boil the tongues, save the liquid it makes a great braising or risotti stock. You non-tongue eaters are missing out...tongue has one of the lovliest textures and tastes, try it if you get a chance. I would describe the texture as velvety and the taste as rich and sort of like what happens when you suck on a chicken wingtip, but not chicken. The raw tongue does start out sorta slimy, but that goes away with cooking, and it's pretty obvious about what membrany parts need to be pulled off. But I would start with letting someone else cook it for you first, seeing the raw tongue in all its tastebud glory can be rough the first time around. regards, trillium

Just to avoid this being a "me too" post, I'll also point out that the dry aged, grass finished beef I buy from a local farmer tastes so much better then the choice grade stuff I can buy elsewhere that I just don't bother with anything else any more. It is more expensive, but it just means we eat less, and usually stick to cheaper cuts (chucks, shoulders, shortribs etc). regards, trillium

Prepared curry pastes vary in their saltiness and so do fish sauces. Experiment until you like it! I'd start with less fish sauce. regards, trillium

Yeah, I'm thinking of or nee, thanks guys. I'd love recipes/methods for either version if any of you have 'em. regards, trillium

I wasn't talking about my own personal experiences or expectations, or what a customer needs to do to get the drink they want. If we're going to get into my own personal experiences, which is kind of boring for me and not the point of the thread, I'll state for the record I nearly always get the drink I expect when I order one at any given bar. regards, trillium

And good doufu fa should have the thin scoops of fresh, soft and silky doufu arranged in the bowl to look like its namesake... a flower, not brains! Hee hee. regards, trillium

So why do I think bubur chacha needs to have lard in it (obviously the Ramadan connection rules that out)? Am I confusing it with some Teochew sweet yam soup that has lard? regards, trillium

You should check out the site I listed, they have a whole page presenting thujone toxicity in a very thoughtful manner. Drinking a bottle of wormwood tincture will end you up in the emergency room, I think it was in the news a while ago, I just can't remember what the dude blew out, I think his liver? But usually in infusions or distillations the ethanol will kill you before anything else gets a chance. regards, trillium

I don't think anyone is saying that bartender should be a machine-like database of cocktail recipes or that you can cop an attitude if they don't know some obscure drink. I think the question is: are there any drinks you can assume a basic knowledge about when dealing with a bartender? I'm not sure there are, but it's an interesting question to think about. Or maybe the question is even, do all cocktails fall under the catagory of obscure when dealing with an unknown bartender? I didn't think the question was: what do you have to do as a customer to get the drink you want? Which is interesting too, but a different question. To go with the filet mignon analogy, first of all, you're not dealing with the person making it in the kitchen, you're dealing with the waitperson, so it's not quite the same, but you do make certain assumptions, for instance, that the chef knows what the cut of beef that comprises a filet mignon is, that they know what medium rare means, and that they know that butter and sour cream are not the same things. regards, trillium

So if you need to always specify the exact recipe for any cocktail, what's the point of having a bartender? If a bartender's job doesn't include knowing a list of recipes for cocktails (whatever the list may be), why not just have automatic dispensers? A curious question to ponder. regards, trillium

Not true at all, unless you plan on setting up to distill. What you've previously done are infusions. Absinthe was never an infusion with wormwood and recipes that infuse wormwood and various things into alcohol and then call it absinthe are completely wrong and misguided. Absinthe is not an infusion, it is a product flavored by co-distillation of alcohol with various herbs, wormwood being one of them, Deadhead or Burning boy/girl campers claims to the contrary. I think La Fee Vert has one of the nicest and most informative sites devoted to absinthe. Check it out. regards, trillium

The story is that traditionaly not a lot of dairy products were used in Chinese cuisine, cows/cow products/beef not being a popular agricultural product, while pigs on the other hand, get used from their snouts to their toes. regards, trillium

The best way I've found to store curry leaves in the freezer is to lay them out in a single layer on a sheet of aluminum foil, roll the foil up, smoothing down the foil as you go (so there are no air pockets) and then put your rolled up leaves in a freezer ziplock. You just unroll the amount of leaves you need, so none of the others get oxidized or exposed to the freezer air. It works great for kaffir lime leaves too. regards, trillium

If it were me, I would get them out of the liquid, but not add anything else. And the rack will be fine instead of hanging, just make sure you flip them around so you don't have any wet spots. regards, trillium

You might like to take a look at the hints and instructions for cooking jasmine rice that I gave in my eG cooking class here. In general, for Asian tastes, the ratio of 1 part rice to two parts water doesn't work at all, you're going to get a much wetter and softer grain then would be the prototypical texture. Also, the bulk "jasmine" rice sold in most grocery stores tastes nothing like jasmine rice grown in Thailand. I don't think it's even the same rice, but some sort of hybrid. The good stuff usually only come in 25 lb and up bags, but some decent stuff will come in 15 lbs and it's very affordable in your local asian grocery store. Here in Portland, OR we pay around $25 for a 50 lb bag of the highest costing/premium brand. Honestly, that bulk rice is dreadful and doesn't have the beautiful fragrance a decent jasmine rice will have (and you should still be able to taste and smell the "special" rice even if you cook it with chicken stock). As for "new" rice, new isn't better, it's just different. Some of the most expensive rice is actually aged for a quite a while! Rice conissuers believe it depends on what you're going to eat the jasmine rice with... for curries and other things with lots of wet gravy, an aged rice is preferred, while drier dishes like stir-fries work better with a newer rice. I've noticed that how basmati rice gets cooked by a South Asian depends not only on the dish it's intended for, but also where the person is actually from. The most common method I've seen is to boil the rice like pasta (where you drain off the excess water) but then I've hung out in the kitchen mostly with people from Madras or Bombay. regards, trillium