trillium

Has anyone else read Madhur Jaffrey's review of "Breath" in the most recent Saveur? Very interesting. The impression I got was that Madhur really liked most of the recipes, but she found wok hay elusive, and ends with a question for Grace Young about whether or not it can really be accomplished at home on a normal stove. I'd really like to take a look at the book... like saluki I usually wait to buy mine as remainders or used, but this one is very tempting to buy right away! regards, trillium

I use Lyle's in anything that wants corn syrup, which mostly ends up being pecan tarts. I also use it as simple syrup in cocktails. regards, trillium

You mean there are places that don't add it to char kway teow????? The horror. regards, trillium

I may be selling the average round-eye home cook short (especially since this is eG, afterall), but while I absolutely love "Wisdom of the Chinese Kitchen" it's not something I'd recommend to someone who was just learning to cook "Chinese" food from an outsider's perspective. For starters, it's range is very narrow, it's nearly all Cantonese recipes, and has a good deal of tonic/soup recipes I'm guessing the beginning cook wouldn't want to mess around with, since they're cooked more for health then good taste (not that they all taste bad). I've given tons (ok, at least 5) copies of this book as a gift, but in all but one case, I've given it to ABCs/2nd gen people who grew up with a Cantonese granny but didn't learn enough of her tricks. regards, trillium

For more fig ideas I really liked this article by Deborah Madison. regards, trillium

I don't mean to doubt you trillium, not at all, so don't take this the wrong way. But will those stores have canned tuna for my Tuna Mornay? Well, that's such an exotic ingredient I'm not sure that you'll be able to find it, but you can find canned mackeral, sardines, "anchovies", and dace so maybe she'll just have to make a substitute! Mackeral Mornay has a certain ring to it, no? regards, trillium

You can get belecan to make sambal belecan at Uwajimaya, and almost all of the other ingredients that came up in this thread (except the Sarawak laksa curry paste) at the Vietnamese owned stores in the ID. Happy cooking trillium

Vietnamese laksa? I gotta try that! Actually, Gernot's web page kicks but in a major way for just about any sort of spice or herb you can imagine. You get the latin names, and the names of whatever it is in all the languages he can find. If you put polygonum in the search engine you'll get a link to what I've been calling laksa leaf with a really nice picture. While I'm at it, this thesis that lives at the Singapore Science Centre is a nice resource for latin, mandarin, cantonese and hokkien names of different plants too (but no laksa leaf). And there is no Vietnamese laksa! That has to be the silliest thing I've ever read. It gets used in lots of other things though... Great job on the blog, very entertaining. regards, trillium

Laksa leaf? That's a Peninsular/Singaporean extravagance! No, I don't remember it being used in Sarawak laksa, but others may want to correct me. Hmmm. Every reference I found for Sarawak laksa mentions corriander leaf, not laksa leaf, so it must indeed be a regional thing (extravagance? I don't know about that!). Here's a picture of laksa leaf (top of page middle photo) from one of Thian's websites for them that are curious. No mention of Sarawak laksa, but he's a S'porean, so what do you expect! Oh my god, this is great, did you know laksa has it's own Webster's Dictionary entry now? regards, trillium

mali = jasmine? uh-huh. I corrected my post... regards, trillium

Actually, the frozen leaves you can get here from Thailand are really good for stuff like nasi lemak or chicken rice because they have a great scent and you just knot them up and throw them in the rice. I'm surprised you say they have no flavor. One or two leaves will not only strongly scent a pot of rice but the whole house as well. I think most Pandan essence you can get in the US is pretty vile, we don't even have any in our house. Mali (jasmine) essence I like, otoh, go figure... For things where you need to wrap with the leaves the fresh ones from Hawaii work better even though their scent isn't as lovely. The problem is that in littler cities they never even have the fresh ones (or kalamasi limes!). How nice it would be to just go outside and pick some! At least we have laksa leaf growing outside and can occasionally find fresh kaffir limes and leaves. Mr. Laksa, is laksa leaf optional in your laksa? Is it a regional thing? No S'porean I know would consider laksa complete without a sprinkle and I think I see cilantro in your bowl of laksa, not laksa leaf! It would be very cool to have more defined sections like Korea, Thailand, Singapore/Malaysia in the Asian section of the forum, but I'm guessing amongst other obstacles that means finding volunteers to do the hosting duties. regards, trillium

When I have firm tofu laying around that I don't know what to do with, I always make ma po... the Hokkien by way of Singapore version, not the actual Sichuan one. Not that the "real" one isn't just as tasty or even tastier, but it's one of those childhood dishes for the partner and you know how that goes. For the ikan bilis, the super tiny ones we find now we never behead either, because we don't notice a difference and we're lazy. We were just talking about making nasi lemak before we went to sleep last night (yeah, that's romance) and wondering if we had any in the pantry. I've typed up a recipe from Mrs. Leong's cookbook for laksa lemak ages ago that one could find in the rec.food.cooking archives if one was feeling ambitious and wanted to make their own laksa paste. Great blogging, btw, I'm hungry! regards, trillium

Almost any SE Asian grocery should have them too, and for very cheap. A dozen costs less than $2 usually. And while you're there, buy some actual quails...around here, I buy 6 for $6 from the freezer section (right next to the blue chickens and stewing hens). regards, trillium

Are the heads cut off at your location? I hate buying whole fish when I can't see the eyes and gills, so I've never bought salmon at Costco, but I've been tempted. regards, trillium

In some thread in this forum, Ms. Dunlop also suggests using the red crushed pepper for making kimchi as a good substitute for sky facing chillies for getting that nice red colored oil in the dishes she writes about in her book. regards, trillium

I'd recommend Yan Kit-So's "Classic Food of China" (ISBN 0333569075). She was a real scholar (holds a doctorate in history) and a lot of the books in her bibliography aren't even available in English. This book has quite a few good regional recipes, and recipes I haven't seen in any other cookbooks. For a more introductory book, I always recommend her "Classic Chinese Cooking" (ISBN: 0789433001). Her food always tastes great too. I was quite sorry we lost her to cancer a few years back. If you're interested in a book devoted to Sichuanese food, then the most recent and one of the nicest would be "Land of Plenty". You might be interested to see the differences in what they do in Sichuan and what they do in Sichuan restaurants in Seattle. regards, trillium

I was wondering why no one had brought up these burners. The partner is a home-brewer and we bought a Camp Chef burner with leg extensions to do the wort boils outside on the porch. Not long after we went out and bought a big-ass wok, a couple of spatulas and have been stir-frying like crazy all summer long. It really is nice to do stir-frying outside, because you don't smell up the house. Kang kung (aka ong choy) and other veggies taste so much better cooked this way, and all the stuff with tons of chillies (Thai and Singaporean stuff mostly) is much easier on the nose and lungs when it's cooked outside. regards, trillium

For sure (summer = salmon)! A friend came back from a honeymoon in Alaska with 3 monsters which he brought over to my house. I was a bit flummoxed with the size of these (my cutting board and flexible knife are too small), since I'm not used to filleting anything that big. And then, what on earth do you do with that much salmon? We ended up making most of it into gravlox, which I think will freeze well, I froze some pieces and we're going to grill the bellies and carcasses. Probably dropping one off to a smoker wouldn't have been such a bad idea. regards, trillium

Something to think about when choosing jars... I liked the wide mouths for their easy filling too, but after I switched to them I realized you get a much bigger surface area for oxidation to happen. I didn't like that with my tomato sauce, because I scoop that part off and don't eat it. Some jams are worse then others, I've noticed the oxidation problem more with red fruits then yellow or dark blue/purple. This probably isn't a problem if you have perfect storage areas (cool, dark) and eat them in less then a year, but for those that don't.... regards, trillium

I've found that a french pestle (the olive wood kind) works very well as a muddler and may be easier to find then an actual unfinished/stained muddler. The only problem is the handle is a little too short for some glasses. Then I resort to a wooden spoon. regards, trillium

It's really hard to tell you if something is wrong or not, without actually being there. It could be bacterial contamination (the cloudiness you describe sounds like bugs) or it could be some oxidation because you've stored them in a hot, light place. Sometimes jams do oxidize a bit on top, but I haven't noticed it happening in a few months, more like a year. regards, trillium

I live very near by. It's pretty packed around 7ish most nights, with people waiting. And this is with all that outdoor seating too. regards, trillium

Yeah. I didn't want to get into any physics pissing contests, but this stuff acts differently then the tiles I was using. I'm pretty cheap when it comes to buying things, and I was totally annoyed that I waited so long to buy the Fibrament. I mostly bought it due to one guy that really loved it on rec.food.equipment and would rave about it any chance he got. regards, trillium

I sterilize my ladle and funnel when I do the jars and don't wipe the rim of the jars because there is no need to the way I fill them, so I guess it all boils down (ha ha) to personal technique. I'm used to doing using sterile techniques in lab, but really, I don't want to install a tissue culture hood in the kitchen! Everybody has to do what's comfortable for them, though, and maybe if I had small children around I'd feel more paranoid about it. The photos of the litchi jam show whole litchis suspended in the jam, I'm fairly certain. But I'm sure it's more practical to have them cut up. I think some of this stuff is not really intended to be eaten the way I think of jam anyway (spread on a piece of bread). As for the boiling times, it really depends on the amount of water in your fruit that you have to drive off by evaporation, and the amount of pectin you have in fruit. Greener fruit will have more pectin. From what artisanbaker wrote about her class in this forum, I think that she likes the "natural" set of fruit so much she's willing to sacrifice a consistant product for it. In other words, I'm guessing not all of her jams set perfectly either, unless she has a gift for picking fruits that have the right amount of water, pectin and acid (and maybe she does!). I also think that it's hard to find fruit growers that don't over-irrigate their produce in the US, but it might be different if you're growing it yourself. If you don't like the taste of jams that are cooked a longer time you can always experiment with adding a little of the liquid pectins out there. I've been contemplating the peach saffron too, it sounds really good. I wasn't able to find any more good apricots for making jam, which has been a total disappointment, so maybe I should do some peach ones. regards, trillium

We picked Tra Chang (the balance brand with the red label) for cooking and this one I'm blanking on the name for tableside. It's got a yellow label, a gold coin and two silver fish on it. It frequently comes with a little "sample" bottle attached to it that we like to take to work and stick in a drawer. Tra Chang had the deepest nuttiest notes to our tastes, while this other (Phu something...) had a very floral, aromatic taste to it and is less salty. mamster is right, though, that nearly any good brand you buy with with a minimal ingredient list will do you well. We were lucky that we had access to a really fabulous Thai grocery store run by Thais who liked to cook when we were in Chicago. They loved sharing their favorite brands with us and talking about food. I still get my friends to go there to buy my fermented shrimp paste and dried shrimp. When a guy from Bombay (my friend) walked in and pulled a tub of Klong Kohn shrimp paste of the shelf that really provoked a reaction. They wanted to know how he knew the best one to buy. He was just going by the picture I had scanned in and emailed to him with my shopping list! regards, trillium