Will

I really like Floating Leaves in Seattle. http://floatingleavestea.com/ Shiuwen, the proprietor, tends to get things with good body and often a touch more oxidation than some other sources. I will not say that her stuff is the best in absolute terms, and like any source, can vary from season to season (haven't had any of the 2012 winter season oolongs yet), but her choices tend to to match my personal tastes well, at least in terms of greener oolongs. She is also very responsive, and will usually give a very honest opinion of a tea if you ask. I think the pricing is fair for the quality, and usually there is some quantity discount as well. Hou De is also a good source, and I think while he's been putting less stuff up, the quality of his Taiwan oolongs has actually gone up slightly in the last year or so. Stéphane Erler, of http://teamasters.blogspot.com/ has some good items. The prices can be high, though I think not impossibly so. Some folks have had good luck with Teahome (http://www.teahometw.com/), which ships direct from Taiwan. You can get the non-Ebay prices sometimes if you email them directly. I was not blown away with the one thing I tried of theirs, however, some people have had good experiences.

One thing to keep in mind is that the duty free shops have a pretty good selection and pricing, so if you're short on luggage space and / or don't make it to shops while you're in Japan, just stock up at the airport. As well as the Yoichi, maybe check out Miyagikyo. We got one or two of the blended ones as well. Good news is that there finally seems to be a little movement on Nikka gearing up to sell in the US at some point. I have purchased via Whisky Exchange before (as well as bringing back some stuff from Japan directly).

Don't pre-heat for so long then. Also, you can pre-heat, turn the heat off, swirl the oil on, and then turn the heat back on. And make sure to keep the aromatics moving, and have everything else ready to go in. We are talking about Chinese style cast iron, and not a super heavy cast iron wok (the kind you can't lift), right?

Not a cookbook, but I love the recipes at http://www.koreanbapsang.com/ (formerly "Eating and Living") --- lots of good home style recipes.

Are you willing to use solid fats, such as (non-hydrogenated) coconut oil shortening or earth balance neutral shortening sticks? If so, I've had good luck just substituting directly, though I do know that butter is 20% water. I think just subbing in liquid oil will work as well, but may not come out exactly how you want without some playing around.

I've seen the kernels used as charcoal (which is great, by the way), but hadn't noticed them as snacks. I'll keep an eye out. I have had the sweet Chinese olive snacks before. They're definitely very different from the normal Western olive preparations. I can't say I'm a huge fan, but I definitely recommend trying them if you get the chance (most Chinese markets seem to carry them). The olive pit charcoal is hard to light, but has almost no smoke and a pleasant and mild scent. It's traditionally used in the Chaozhou / Shantou area for heating water for tea under small clay kettles.

Translation please? Online translators tend to make mincemeat of anything that involves metaphor/allusion, etc. I think this says 'be born in Suzhou, live in Hangzhou, eat in Guangzhou, and die in Liuzhou' http://www.liuzhou.co.uk/liuzhou/coffins.htm explains a bit of the background on why, especially the last bit.

If you want to learn about mixed drinks, try starting with some American whiskey (bourbon or rye), some sweet vermouth, and some angostura bitters. That will at least let you make Manhattans, Old Fashioneds, whiskey sours, etc. Or, if you prefer, gin, dry vermouth, orange bitters (you can make the Martini, Tom Collins, etc.). If you learn the skills to make these drinks (when drinks should be stirred and when shaken, how to determine balance, etc.), you will not find making most other drinks that difficult. Then branch out from there, exploring variations on some of these (for example, see the Manhattan variations thread at http://forums.egulle...tan-variations/ to see the # of different variations you can find for a single drink). Most of the things you mention aren't that generally useful.

I think "chopping" can mean different things. I would say that in general, Japanese and Chinese knife skills often have more of an up-down motion than a slicing forward motion like in French style cutting. I would consider this "chopping", even when it's not cutting through bone. In any event, a light duty slicer will likely get nicked if used to cut through bone. I bought a bone chopper (even though I'm vegetarian), after my father-in-law nicked a CCK carbon steel cleaver (#3 / 1303 maybe?) cutting through chicken bones. In addition to the CCK slicer and CCK bone chopper, we have a Sujimoto Japanese made Chinese style cleaver which is a bit heavier, but still fairly delicate. The bone chopper is way overkill for our household, but does sometimes come in handy for cutting open squash.

My wife loves the Cynar flip http://cocktailvirgin.blogspot.com/2008/12/cynar-flip.html etc. It's just ~ 2.5 oz Cynar and a whole egg (obviously, should probably grate some fresh nutmeg on top). It tastes surprisingly good, and different from what you'd expect. My only suggestion, just in case you don't already know - as with many egg drinks, dry shake with a hawthorne strainer spring for a while before shaking with ice.

Why over-complicate things? Is there a problem you're trying to solve by cooking it for so long at a lower temperature? Just cook it at a medium simmer for an hour or so. I'm vegetarian, so usually make my rice porridge pretty plain, but my MIL likes cooking dried scallops (very expensive by weight, but they're light, and you don't need a lot) in her porridge, which would be another way to add more savory flavor. I wouldn't add soy sauce or salt during cooking, only when serving. Small slices of frozen or rehydrated dry doufu skin added at the beginning will break down and add a nice texture to plain porridge (trick a friend taught me).

I checked and don't have Talisker anyway. I don't have too many options for mixing - other than Glenfiddich 12, I have Glenlivet 12 and 15 and that's about it. I also have Bunnahabhain and Lagavulin but we prefer to drink them neat. The Bowmore Legend looks interesting - I will keep my eyes open for it! Dump the scotch and go with a nice smokey mezcal instead. Sombra is a good place to start. Chris Carlsson recommends it as an "authentic" Blood and Sand. I found it to work quite well. Maybe cut back the OJ a bit or make it a bit less sweet by using Luxardo Maraschino instead of Cherry Heering which is almost cough syrup sweet. Not familair with the Luxardo Cherry liqueur but i would guess that is pretty sweet as well. Based on the color, maybe just back off on the amount of Heering? I know part of the color comes from the vermouth, but it looks a bit redder than I usually see (it's been quite a while since I've made one, though). Are you using equal parts of everything? I like the classic (equal parts) method, but one online recipe suggests doing 1 oz each scotch and orange juice, and .75 oz each of the heering and sweet vermouth. It comes down to personal preference (I know some people like the flecks of ice), but I would also suggest double-straining or dry-shaking some more after straining (a technique I saw just recently which works really well) to get rid of those bits of ice. I made a twist with Seville (bitter) orange juice instead of the orange and rye instead of scotch called The Catcher in the Rye, which is quite good.

But what if you got labeled this way? http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/12/13/chick-fil-a-ching-chong-r_n_1146266.html

I don't own the book, but I've used a couple recipes from it. In particular, the white beans alla Toscana with extra virgin olive oil and saba (served on crostini with grilled raddichio) is great. I've had the same dish at her restaurant, and the recipes is spot on. I used to make white bean spread more like hummus - cooking the beans and then adding oil while mixing it. But in Tuscany, as at Mozza, the texture is a lot more "beany". I think the secret is adding a lot of oil (1/2 C) during cooking, but then not adding much or any oil in the final spread. The oil adds a surprising amount of flavor and richness to the beans, but the texture of the spread is much airier.

I used a pie dough for one recently with good success, using the proportions from a recent Sunset magazine (3 C flour, Tbsp sugar, 1.5 tsp salt; 1 C fat (I used Earth Balance veg shortening)). I modified slightly by using the vodka method, so instead of 2/3 C of cold water, I used 2/3 C of a very cold 50/50 vodka / water mixture. My flakiest crust yet. I don't eat dairy, but I'm sure it would be even better with butter.

I get it sometimes, esp. from certain Asian beers. It may be psychosomatic or totally unrelated, but I've been paranoid since hearing about formaldehyde that's added and / or naturally occurring. http://www.urbanmyths.com/index.php?/Food/beer-myths-is-there-formaldehyde-in-beer.html Of course, most microbrews are fairly high-alcohol, and it is also worth just making sure to stay well hydrated while drinking - a lesson that I learned in college, but have since managed to unlearn. I think getting older may also be a factor. (FWIW, foods high in tyramine do sometimes also seem to be headache triggers for me).

I think jianbing (煎饼) is something else. I think the outside of niurou juan bing is cong you bing (scallion pancake - the flakier type -- should be lots of recipes for different styles of this online), and then there's usually suan cai, cilantro, and marinated beef inside. Usually, I think people eat these at restaurants, since it's a lot of trouble to make at home, especially if you make everything from scratch (you can buy pretty decent frozen cong you bing and suan cai at good Chinese markets, though). With the disclaimer that I've never eaten or made this dish (I'm a vegetarian), I found at least one recipe in English by doing a quick web search; there are probably some more out there. http://kennys-eats.b...n-pancakes.html

I think you mean dcarch? I never expressed any worry about consuming small amounts of lye in food - strong alkaline solutions have been used in making noodles and pretzels for ages.

Since I'm vegetarian, I often use water instead of stock a lot when cooking, especially in Chinese recipes where there are usually a lot of other umami seasonings and just a tablespoon or two of stock called for in the recipe. Or, I'll make a quick stock of some sort, or, if I'm really lazy, add a little bit of vegetarian "chicken" powder (kelp / mushroom based, so basically MSG). For Asian style cooking, you can make a quick stock with kelp (kombu), (soy)bean sprouts, maybe some shitake mushroom or carrot, and maybe a bit of green onion white. This won't have a lot of flavor on its own, but will add a savory element. For Western style cooking, you can make a court stock based on the ingredients below. I like making a roasted vegetable stock based on the recipe in the yellow "Gourmet" cookbook - it's easily available online. Or, for cases where a lighter taste is wanted, just a mix of leek, carrot, bay leaf, stewed tomatoes, thyme sprig, black peppercorns, garlic (sweat the veg before adding water). Sometimes a little bit of bean in the stock is nice too (cook soaked white beans, for example), for body and flavor. I like to make a huge batch of stock, strain and reduce it down, and then freeze into ice cubes - if memory serves, I reduced it down enough where a 1x1 ice cube will be about a quart when diluted back to normal strength. Tomatoes can be left out in either case, though I do think they add a nice brightness as well as savory flavors (they can make straining a bit of a pain, though). Some of the commercial ones in aseptic packaging (esp. Kitchen Basics roasted vegetable stock, and, to a lesser extent, Imagine Food's "no-chicken stock") are pretty good too. To me, these are way better than the versions of "Better than Boullion" I've tried (though some people swear by it). To me, the latter has too much of a "boullion cube" type flavor. If I'm making a recipe like risotto that's super dependent on a good stock, I'll try to make it myself, but for everyday cooking, esp. in soups or something, the packaged broths can be convenient, especially if you're not cooking vegetarian all the time and just need it for a particular meal.

I don't think there's one "complete" or definitive method. What ingredients are you hoping it will have? That said, why not just compile the "youknowwhat" and blend your own? "Mourad: New Moroccan" has one method -- took an afternoon or so for me to track down most of the ingredients, and some weren't available locally so had to mail-order. But, next time, I'll have them all.

I'm there near the bottom left in a slightly longer clip from the same video at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_SI5LeBelow I would rather have my wife's rings back than have these folks serving long sentences, but... BBC also has the same videos, and a little less over-the-top coverage. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-19182350

I am not from Atlanta, but my friend Jason, who knows Chinese food pretty well, though Golden House in Duluth was really good.

It's mugwort potash, so I assume potassium hydroxide (basically, the older form of lye, which these days is more often sodium hydroxide from what I understand). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potash

Don't have too many brilliant ideas, but one tip that may be helpful to some: when deep-frying rice paper (for example, when making Viet style deep-fried rice-paper spring rolls (imperial rolls)), I've heard hydrating the rice paper in beer rather than water will give crispier results. Aside from spring rolls, deep-frying rice paper gives a nice texture which could make a good "skin" for a lot of things. And this is probably obvious to many, but... don't put anything made with soaked rice paper in the fridge afterwards. It will ruin the texture.

http://teachat.com/ - a lot of noise, but there are some really knowledgeable people who post there. I also follow some tea friends' web logs, e.g., http://marshaln.com, http://puerh.blogspot.com/ I would just say that there's a lot of inaccurate and misleading information about tea on the Internet. It is worth being skeptical about stuff you read. As far as books and what not, as a basic introduction, the Harney and Sons book about tea is not too bad. I also really enjoyed "A Tea Lover's Travel Diary" http://www.amazon.com/Tea-Lovers-Travel-Diary-Single-Tree/dp/0982654006