trillium

Are you looking for the ones that come in the flying saucer, were limited to 1000 and were only sold in a dept store in ?Paris, or are you looking for the ones released in 2001? Because the more common ones come up on ebay all the time, and I think you can still find them for sale in the UK. They really are fabulous and I swear espresso tastes better when you drink it out of them. regards, trillium

what is this? a quick search gave me some info on how it was used, such as a fermented shrimp paste, but what is the process? how are shrimp fermented? is this what is used for (cantonese) ha journg, served with seafood in cantonese restaurants, such as seafood birds' nest? sorry for off-topic. I don't think it's the same, I think they (the Cantonese) use the greyish purple stuff that also gets called shrimp paste. You can see a not very clear picture of cincalok here under shrimp. I know fermented seafood is jeot in Korean, but I don't know the specific name of fermented shrimp. Anyway, it looks just like the picture torakris posted and an awful lot like cincalok (which was supposidly "invented" in Malaka). I guess I'll just have to do side-by-side taste tests. regards, trillium

So I'll probably answer this question myself in the next day or two, but I'm curious enough to want to know now... We're going to dive into kimchi making at home because it's hard to find a nice variety of kimichi here and we love it. We're starting with a basic cabbage, green onion and minari stem one from this book we have, and we went to the Korean grocery store to buy ingredients which included fermented shrimp and anchovies. The fermented shrimp, which is a product of China, looks identical to cincalok, which is usually made in Malaysia, at least the stuff we can buy. I haven't opened the jar yet because there are other projects in line ahead of the kimchi one and the jar doesn't look like it will re-close all that easily, which means I'll have to figure out another way to store it. My question is, are these the same thing? Or do the bugs that ferment them have different flavor profiles? regards, trillium

Coeur de Lion is a nice brand too. regards, trillium

I can't stand drinking cognac (or other types of brandy) in a big ballon snifter thing. It hurts my nose way too much, I actually get a burning sensation in my sinuses that blocks the taste if I try it that way. I drink it in the same thing I drink cocktails in, which are old, heavy bottomed glasses the either are curvy (with the top being wider than the bottom) or just increase in circumfrence from bottom to top in a straight ahead way (ok, I suck at describing 3D objects in text). Recent favorites have been a Ragnaud I can't find anymore and Pierre Seguinot "Age Inconnú", which I'm enjoying right now. I usually just wait for a nice bottle from a small producer to be marked down about 40% during Sam's annual werehouse sale and go from there. We buy about one bottle a year, and around our house it goes by the simple title of "the good stuff". Agree about drinking water on the side, the same goes for any sort of alcoholic beverage that isn't initially diluted with lots of other liquids. regads, trillium

If Tongue is reasonable then your buying it at Asian or Mexican Markets it was $7.98 per pound at Shorelines Central Market. To me that not even close to reasonable. Irwin Yikes! That's not reasonable at all. I'm buying it from the farmer who grows the beef (pastured finished, organic feed). Tongue (3.99/lb) is one of their more economical cuts, as well as shortribs, oxtails, bone-in chuck, brisket and top sirloin roasts. Steaks, even flank or hanger, are now out of my league... I ate shortribs for lunch today though, so I'm not complaining. regards, trillium

And tongue. Tongue is still a great deal. regards, trillium

Hmmm...well...I apologize for my ignorance. I should have known these facts since my life-time subscription to SCIENCE magazine gained me access to BOTH of the links that you provided to the written study. In the future, I will disregard factual reporting by the Chicago Tribune and the NY Times (both highly suspect, trash-tabloid pulp). And, yes, I do question studies, regardless of the funding, that show that farm salmon from Europe is worse than farm salmon in the US, when presented in an environment that has finger-pointing and agricultural tensions at an all time high. Of course, the Pew Charitable Trusts is a reputable source, but this is the first I've heard of their sponsoring of this study. I wasn't bashing you or the Trib or the NYT just making clear what I was referring to. Sometimes the second-hand science reporting that went on in the Trib made me nuts when I read it regularly. I like to look at the original stuff rather than something written to sell newspapers (although one could clearly argue that the articles are published to sell advert space in the journals!). The funding source for the article is given at the bottom of the reference list in the study. I found it very interesting that the Pew Charitable Trust was funding these sorts of studies as well. From reading the original article I didn't get the idea that the main point was that European salmon was worse than US salmon, but rather that it might be a good idea to pay attention to feed sources. regards, trillium

Well yeah, that would be the main one for many people! But wild-caught salmon just isn't economically feasible for everyone and farmed fish isn't going away any time soon. If you can easily reduce the levels of PCBs et al., in farmed salmon by cleaning up the feed, it would be a good thing. regards, trillium

I'm talking about the actual research article published in Science, not what some reporter wrote up about the study. I highly doubt that this is "propaganda" thrown out by the US, it's a serious study done by a colloborative group of scientists from more than one university. While the authors state that many toxins levels were the highest in salmon fillets obtained from Frankfurt, Edinburgh, Paris, London, and Oslo, they also state that those purchased in Boston and San Francisco approached similiar concentrations. The peer-review process a paper undergoes to be published in Science is extensive and not limited to review by reviewers from the US alone. If you look at the funding source for the study, it's from the Environmental Division of the Pew Charitable Trusts. The FDA doesn't have guidelines for amounts of all of the toxins that were analyzed in fish flesh nor what concurrent exposure to more than one might entail, healthwise. If you follow the EPA cumulative risk assessment methods for PCBs, toxaphene, and dieldrin then it isn't entirely clear that salmon does more good than harm for every person. My interpertation of their data was that the health benifits from eating farmed salmon need to be looked at more closely, and perhaps the fish feed used be given more serious thought. regards, trillium

I use my sa po (sandpot) all the time on an aluminum diffuser coated with some non-stick surface, both when I had an electric stove and now a gas stove. I've never run into the problem Carolyn showed. A tip -- if you're going to buy one in an Asian grocery store I suggest you ask to fill them with water at the butcher counter to make sure they don't leak. Asian grocery stores usually also carry more expensive and sturdy clay pots than the sandpots, but at prices lower than what you'll find in specialty stores. regards, trillium

An interesting article in Science came out today, showing that farmed salmon has more polychlorinated biphenyls and other carcinogens than their wild counterparts. They did a fairly wide sampling of various farmed products and fish from Scotland came out the worst. Here's a pointer to the abstract, I'm not sure if you can read the "news and views" bit without a subscription. regards, trillium

I've never been in a home for dinner where rice wasn't part of the meal...but then I tend to beg to be invited for homestyle ordinary stuff, not the fancy meals. Super fancy banquets are a different story, of course. regards, trillium

Thanks for the heads up, this place sounds very promising. I always thought popia were a Nonya specialty, it will be interesting to taste the Thai version. The rhizome they're talking about might be galanga but it also might be gra chai, which goes by the name of lesser rhizome sometimes. You can see a picture of it here if you scroll down. regards, trillium

Right, right, tong yuen. I've just had factory made sweet ones, which were not big favorites. Do you guys make these at home or buy them pre-formed? The savory ones sound like something I'd like. regards, trillium

I don't have an opinion on it, sorry. Maybe other people here do? regards, trillium

Yeah, I was being funny. After 8 years in the midwest I do snicker a tiny bit when people totally freak out about a couple inches of snow and it takes up the whole news hour to report on the weather from different spots around the city. But you lose your hardiness really quickly...it was 20 F yesterday and I actually thought it was cold! Tang yuen are rice flour dumplings right? I don't know many Mandarin words at all, just Cantonese and Hokkien. Are they made with glutinous rice or regular rice flour? regards, trillium

At least, according to the this (Stewed Chicken with Dried Chestnuts) you pointed to the right book. Thanks for finding that, it looks good. regards, trillium

What sort of flour do you use for the dumpling knots? Wheat, I assume, but what sort? And the lajiao we're talking about are those squarish sichuan kind, right? I have to admit I've been sort of hoarding my sichuan peppercorns because I can't imagine mapo without them, but maybe I should just use them up and head up north to Canada for a resupply. regards, trillium

How does your mum season her oxtail soup? I do it the same way I do shortribs (chun pay (aged tangerine peel), anise, pinch of 5-spice and red tofu) but I'm interested in other methods. As for the fat, yeah, it does seem essential to leave it all in there (you don't get those pools of fat floating on top of the stew with my method) but I can't help it, I still have grad school pudge to lose. At least I don't cut the fat off the lap yuk like a friend of mine does, right? regards, trillium

Yes, like most of my attempts to mimic any Asian foods, there is a missing secret ingredient to this. (Of course, I rarely use actual Chinese roast pork, and probably don't use as much oil as most Asian restaurants use in their noodle dishes.) This is like that comment on one of the epicurious recipes where the cook made some Mexican thing but left out the cilantro and cumin and used tomatoes instead of chillies and then complained that it didn't taste very Mexican! I'm not trying to be harsh, but it is sort of funny...before you worry about secret ingredients, you could always start with the obvious ones. For um, "singapore" noodles (if I'm divorced over this, I'm blaming you all), you need the style of curry powder used by HK/Cantonese cooks. It's in Asian groceries and comes in a yellow tin and is usually made in Malaysia. Typical noodles would be beehoon, or the rice vermacelli that you soften in warmish water right before you're ready to cook them until they're "al dente" and then drain them. You can make it with fresh rice noodles (fun) if you like. You'll also need peanut oil or lard, light soya sauce, char siu (the BBQ'd pork, don't get siu yuk or roast pork), shrimp, bean sprouts, green onions, and egg omlette or whatever is in your favorite version (sometimes they use bok choy instead of sprouts, or regular onion instead of green onions, etc). The char siu and omlette gets cut into strips, the onions cut into similiar lengths, the bean sprouts rinsed, the shrimp sprinkled with a small amount of sugar and salt to keep them crisp. Because I don't have the fire power the restaurants do, I tend to stir fry the non-noodle part in the all-clad saute pan and the noodles in a nice cast iron frying pan (or steel wok) seperately and mix them together at the end. The trick is to not overload the pans, let the pans and oil get blazingly hot and be quick. If you can get good versions of this in restaurants, it's hardly worth the trouble of doing it at home. I generally fry the noodle with some of the curry powder and soya, and the onion, shrimp and omlette with more curry powder and soya to taste. Toss them together with the bean sprouts and you're done. I like the bean sprouts to be barely cooked, but if you like them more cooked you could add them to the non-noodle part of the stir-fry. It's true that SE Asian "curries" or noodle dishes tend not to rely just on curry powder and if curry powder is used it's a different animal than the bright yellow stuff. The rempah at our house is made from shallots, chillies, galangal, fresh tumeric, candlenuts, and belecan, but then for Nonya chicken curry we add some curry powder made up to the partner's nonya stepmum's specifications in S'pore and coconut milk. For fish curry, no powder, no coconut, and fenugreek is added. For assam soups or "curries" you add tamarind, etc. I think Singapore noodles get called that because they're yellow and seasoned differently from most other HK/Cantonese food and people think "Singapore" when they see them (why not Indonesia, Malaysia or Macau, I don't know). regards, trillium

Cuz I wanted to hear about Chinese cold weather cooking? But thanks for the recipes, they sound great! regards, trillium

This sounds great, and different enough from the shortribs so it won't get boring. We have half of a pig parked in our freezer, so well-marbled pork shoulder won't be a problem. I have to confess though, that I always strain these sorts of stews and let the liquid settle over night in the fridge so I can remove the fat. I find there is still plenty left in the meat and it makes me feel better about eating it. I love the "No sugar!" part too, because I don't like the sweet versions of red-cooked stuff too much. regards, trillium

Um, maybe I should have specified Chinese? (but this is in the Chinese forum!!) As for your meat and potatoes, that's pretty much what taro and lap yuk are, but you eat a lot less of it (on rice) and lots of vegetable (yu choy or cabbage is nice right now). regards, trillium

They go by "Antwerp stunts" at our house ... I love Singapore noodles, the Singaporean in the house tolerates them if I call them "trillium mee" instead. I think there has been a thread on this sort of thing somewhere. regards, trillium