huiray

Insalata Caprese today, w/ Big Cheef tomatoes. Yum.

To each their own, and I would expect to read sometimes about your marvelous pairings of wine with lots of sumptuous food goodies. Out of curiosity, though, would you be one who wishes to have some sort of grape-based Western-style (i.e. French viticulture derived) wine when you are having a meal of fiery and mouth-numbing Mapo Tofu, "Water-cooked fish" (Szechuan-type, fish fillets cooked in chilli oil plus other stuff) and other such things? Or, for that matter, delicate Cantonese steamed fish and lots of similar examples? I ask because I have always been curious why so many folks in the West insist on having Western-style wine with foods that were never meant to meet with such beverages as conceived in their taste profiles. (Yes yes, I am quite aware of the interest in blending Western wine practices/preferences with non-Western foods that did not have Western wines in their taste profiles when they were brought into existence) I imagine also there is a fair bit of cultural conditioning involved - such as the expectation that wine (Western-type) be involved whenever a meal is to be thought of as "special" (if other than "routine" - see French and Italian cultural mores), no matter what the food type is. Just wondering.

Soup, frequently. I come from a soup-drinking culture. Otherwise, water or tea or the remains of my J&B on the rocks - when I drink anything when not having soup. Rarely wine.** Note that "soup", to me, is almost always the broth-type soups with chunks of stuff in it common in E/SE Asian cuisines, not so much the blended/creamy homogenized soups common in Western cuisine. I would drink/sip my soup throughout the meal, replenishing the bowl as needed from the pot. Oh, they would also generally be hot/warm, whatever the temperature is outside. ** Even when I drink wine I tend to drink it by itself. I usually will have a glass or two of wine when I dine out (at Western cuisine restaurants only; NEVER at Chinese or Indian or any other non-Western-European-based cuisine restaurants - I just don't like wine with non-European-type food) but rarely at home with Western-style/European-based style meals I cook.

http://www.minnpost.com/max-about-town/2011/12/germ-warfare-new-comic-anthology-about-whats-eating-us Disclaimer: I have no connection to the authors and have no financial interests involved. :-)

A few recent meals. ---------------------------- Lunch • Tomato soup. From ripe tomatoes - blanched, skins removed, deseeded, chopped, simmered w/ slightly browned sliced shallots & generous fresh basil, seasoned to taste; stick blender at the end. Drizzled w/ black truffle oil & topped w/ extra fresh basil leaves when plated. • “Kitchen Sink” sausages [Goose the Market] & Weisswurst [Claus’] simmered w/ barrel sauerkraut [Kühne; via Claus’] & a few bay leaves. ---------------------------- Lunch • Red durum wheat semolina papardelle tossed w/ a sauce made w/ Roma beans (sliced lengthwise), sliced Poblano peppers, chopped tomatoes (Cherokee Purple), chopped smashed garlic, sliced cipollini onions, sea salt, sautéed minced pork & minced Andouille sausage meat. ------------------------------ Late dinner • Leftover sauce from lunch, with white rice (Basmati). ------------------------------- Lunch • A simple Bravanese Kingfish dish, from Somalia, with modifications.¶ ¶I free-handed/changed the proportions of the ingredients in the recipe to please myself. I also used “Aged Gourmet Rice Vinegar” (“陳年酢”) [Kong Yen Foods (Taiwan)] instead of the white vinegar in the recipe, and also added in the juice from a whole fresh lime as well as splashing in a bit of sweet mirin [Honteri]. • Green & purple Chinese long beans (Vigna unguiculata subsp. sesquipedale) and chopped, peeled Japanese Trifele tomatoes;§ simmered w/ a rempah paste of ginger, garlic, garam masala and ground coriander sautéed in peanut oil. §The tomato pieces “dissolved into” and became part of the sauce. • White rice (Basmati).

Today: Broad Ripple Farmers' Market: • Incredible Edibles - Big Cheef, Indian Stripe, Indiana Red tomatoes. • Silverthorn Farm - Orange carrots, celery leaves. • Brotgarten - Epi loaf. • Wild's Apple Farm - Red Thumb, Austrian Crescent fingerling potatoes. • Yeager Farms Produce - Chinese loofah. • Funny Bone Farm - small head of curly kale, 2 leeks. • Nicole-Taylor's - fresh spaghettini, fresh mozzarella. Carmel Farmers' Market: • Daily Farms - Cipollini onions. • Van Antwerp Farm - Blemished tomatoes (for more soup), Tweety Canary melon. • Middlefork Farm - yellow zucchini, dark green - pale green stripes zucchini. • Farming Engineers - Young green long beans, purple long beans (Vigna unguiculata subsp. sesquipedalis). Saraga International Market: • Steamed vegetable buns (these). • Fresh Kingfish "steaks".

Thank you, Anna N. It might be useful to realize that lunch is not infrequently (but definitely not always) the more substantial meal of my dining day/night.

How interesting. Thanks for the update on salmon in China in recent years. Is there no (or little?) salmon from North America?

I usually have no problem shopping when I am hungry. I don't go crazy picking up stuff just because I'm hungry, even if I might choose a few things that look attractive "just because" (if I do) over the times when I shop when I am already full. Do what seems acceptable to you.

Of course I shop at "Asian" markets (uh, what do you really mean by "Asian"? Just asking), typically my usual Chinese/SE Asian grocery. See here for an example of what I got on one occasion. (Salmon is not a "common" Chinese-type fish, BTW)

Early breakfast - Yeung Chow style fried rice.

...and the poster "Percival" in that thread had this to say: I rinse my chicken. I really don't want to have the residual gunk on it, or other debris it has acquired during the processing and packaging (including being dropped on the floor, as someone commented) That video in the article(s) looks overly dramatic, IMO. Why would anyone wash/rinse a chicken (or anything else) under a stream of water so strong that it splashes everywhere? It almost looks like the person is using a power hose (a.k.a. your garden hose at full water pressure with a power-wash/jet attachment) to wash that chicken. BTW, when cooking Hainanese Chicken it is often recommended that your chicken be given a vigorous rub with salt to scrub off all the "nasties" and exfoliate the skin (of the yellowish stuff on it plus other skin residues) followed by, what else, a good rinse :-) and then patting dry before stuffing it with the scallions/ginger etc and poaching. That's how you get that smooth, lovely skin. ;-)

It is very pretty, and kudos to mm84321. However, if that is how you feel, perhaps you *should* spray it with the polymer of your choice and preserve it amongst your Museum Pieces. For myself, I prefer food that I can eat without too much thought about if I was destroying a Work of Art. It's food, after all, and exhibition pieces in my opinion might not necessarily be the best way to have food presented to one. YMMV.

A few meals from the past week or so: ------------------------------ Lunch • Beef shin slow-braised w/ bamboo shoots, garlic, bay leaves, cinnamon sticks, cloves & various sauces and condiments. • White rice (Basmati). The shin was bought intact then cut up into rounds. ------------------------------ Lunch • Fresh orecchiete tossed in the pan w/ a sauce prepared from sliced “Kitchen Sink” sausages, Roma beans, Chocolate Stripe tomatoes, garlic, shallots, EV olive oil. ------------------------------- Dinner • Pan-fried swordfish. (Marinated O/N in a ziplock bag w/ ripe lime juice (from one large lime), lime zest, smashed & chopped garlic (Purple Glazer), fresh chopped rosemary, sea salt, some rice wine [MRT ryori-shu] & sweet mirin [Honteri]) • Fresh red durum wheat semolina angel hair pasta, tossed w/ the pan juices & fond from the frying of the swordfish deglazed w/ ryori-shu [MRT] plus more oil. • Sautéed French filet beans. ------------------------------- Lunch • Chicken leg quarters (browned in the pan first) braised w/ fingerling potatoes (Russian Banana & Red Thumb; also pan-browned first), red & orange carrots, cipollini onions, two heads of garlic (Purple Glazer; parchments left on but broken up into several chunks of cloves), sea salt, rice wine, mirin; and fresh thyme (leaves only) plus fistfuls of fresh tarragon (leaves only) towards the end.

I assume that was for you and not for Kitty-Kat. :-)

From the Broad Ripple Farmers' Market today: • Incredible Edibles: various tomatoes - Cherokee Purple, Evan's Purple Pear, Indigo Rose, Purple Haze, "Spudokov Purple" (???)(as spelled by the vendor). • Fields Farm Fresh: Japanese Black Trifele tomatoes. • Silverthorn Farm: Rainbow chard. • Earthly Delights: Roma beans, French filet beans. • Brotgarten: Onion Epi "Wheat Branch" loaf. • Yeager Farm Produce: Poona Kheera cucumber, Chinese bittergourd. • Bloomer's Greenhouse: Collard greens. • Annabelle's Farm: Poblano peppers, a densely-packed head of broccoli. Yesterday, from my local supermarket (Marsh): various stuff including - Wild-caught swordfish steak, 1:1 mix of ground pork + Andouille sausage mixture;, Bell & Evans chicken leg quarters, boneless chuck eye steak. Also yesterday, from Woodburn Farm (Trader's Point Greenmarket): fresh red durum wheat semolina angel hair pasta & fettucine pasta.

Don't forget the THROWING of the ball of fish paste to the (chopping) board. I remember seeing expert chefs do this in my youth and it was done HARD, with force.

Unless TJ got their "Kobe beef" from the designated producers in Japan itself then their "Kobe Beef Burgers" are illegally labeled (let alone incorrectly labeled) even if they say it is "American Style".

I'm not sure what you would use for shrimp toast (which might vary depending on what kind of shrimp toast, too, I think?) The fish paste I used is similar to the stuff one would use/prepare for making "fish balls" - of the sort you might see in Chinese/E-Asian/SE-Asian stores. Traditionally, one used a somewhat firm-fleshed white fish which one could "scrape" the meat off of then "chop" with the back of a Chinese cleaver + knead etc with cornstarch or something similar, and with or without spices and other additions. Yes, the traditional way took a lot of physical labor. Here's one pictorial & description (amongst others, of course) of one way of making the paste in a traditional way: http://food-4tots.com/2008/10/29/how-to-make-smooth-springy-fish-paste/ . The fish paste I used (before adding all the other stuff) straight out of the small tub it came in looks not unlike the fish paste shown in this article. Here's another description using a food processor :-) with extra bits added in as well: http://redcook.net/2009/02/01/making-fish-paste/ Well-made fish balls (springy, "song hou" in Cantonese; tasty, fine textured, etc) - needing well-made fish paste - was considered the mark of an expert, and folks would seek out and flock to places that put out food featuring excellent fish balls.

judiu, the fish paste was bought. Venus Foods, Inc.; Labeled as "Cha Ca" ("fish paste" in Vietnamese), "金星魚漿" (金星=[the astronomical star]Venus; 魚漿=fish paste). I like this brand. It was mixed w/ chopped scallions, chopped coriander leaves, a very generous amount of ground white pepper, sesame oil [Dragonfly brand], a dash of light soy sauce, a bit of sea salt.

Well, maybe not Wonderbread; but a decent commercial white bread would be...well...decent. Kaya toast does not benefit from artsy artisanal bread with holes in it and complex multi-grain tastes and texture, as an example. It does well (or even best) with an even-grained plain white bread, preferably the Chinese bakery or Japanese bakery stuff. In your case, wouldn't the fairer comparison be Wonderbread/Supermarket bread with summertime ripe heirloom tomatoes (rather than a winter hothouse tomato) versus artisanal white bread with the same tomatoes? IMO I would be concentrating more on the taste of the tomatoes in this case and the bread would not be paramount. Commercial stuff often gets a bad rap. As an example, Heinz tomato ketchup still is the standard bearer for many people, notwithstanding many artisanal or home recipes for "superior ketchups". Opinions will vary, of course; but professional chefs have been known to try to replicate Heinz ketchup in preference over any ketchup created by themselves. See, e.g., http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/04/dining/top-chefs-say-that-sometimes-only-supermarket-brands-will-do.html?pagewanted=all&_r=1& ETA: p.s. as another comment regarding commercial white bread - have a look at the last paragraphs in that NYT article I cited above. ;-)

Thanks, Ann_T. p.s. Nice scones. That's one sort of sweetish baked product I don't mind, though I'd much prefer them without the extra sugar drizzle on it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_know_it_when_I_see_it

Yellow/green, and green zucchini stuffed w/ fish paste. Part of a batch of Yong Tau Foo. Larger pics of a plate of the Yong Tau Foo items that were made: http://forums.egullet.org/topic/144211-breakfast-2013/page-10#entry1928352

Breakfast today - Yong Tau Foo. Plus Napa cabbage ("wong nga pak") in the broth after the poaching.