huiray

https://www.google.com/search?q=tamagoyaki+pan&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a#q=tamagoyaki+pan&client=firefox-a&hs=VHv&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&source=univ&tbm=shop&tbo=u&sa=X&ei=MNusUaemM5HUyQG-9IDIAg&ved=0CC0Qsxg&bav=on.2,or.r_qf.&bvm=bv.47244034,d.aWc&fp=7e21cf457c659309&biw=1214&bih=1070

Latest update: http://eater.com/archives/2013/05/29/photos-of-top-chef-new-orleans-shooting-at-whole-foods.php Interview w/ Colicchio: http://www.nola.com/tv/index.ssf/2013/05/top_chef_hosts_padma_lakshmi_a.html

I just saw a video of this recently. Very interesting. Wish I could find it again. Try these. One shows the making of a lightly-colored one, the other shows the making of a browned one. Both are fine. There are other variations selectable from the list of "similar" videos on the right panels of the webpages if you went to the actual youtube page. Note also that the Google set of images for tamagoyaki shows stuff varying from blond to browned. http://www.google.com/search?q=tamagoyaki&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=_-yrUYfuKcaIygHJnIHoAw&ved=0CD0QsAQ&biw=1153&bih=1039 And just for fun, here's a one-egg tamagoyaki: http://justbento.com/handbook/recipe-collection-mains/1-egg-tamagoyaki-japanese-omelette

Be careful if you are making risotto for that notorious risotto-judger, Tom Colicchio, on Top Chef, who has personal ideas on what risotto should be and who ignores what circumstances sometimes mean for how a risotto turns out on the plate.

But why would he need to? I just find it odd that the STANDARD that you (and others) seem to promote (from other posts elsewhere) is NO BROWNING, which is not universally held.

A visit to the Traders Point Green Market yesterday evening...and the resulting dinner. (The Swiss chard will be for another meal) The morels came from the TP stall. The other veggies came from a husband-wife team new to me, operating out of central Indiana - he had some of the best-looking vegetables I've ever seen. Chioggia beets and Rainbow Swiss chard. Baby zucchini (I asked him not to remove the flowers for next time :-) ) and morels (from the TP stall, they were "from the Midwest", hmm...) Chioggia beets, simply simmered in salted water, de-skinned, sliced; plus some of the lovely greens, sautéed in EVOO w/ some sea salt & dusted w/ ground pepper. The baby zucchini, sliced in half, sautéed w/ the morels in butter + EVOO. Nothing else was needed, I simply let the ingredients speak for themselves.

There are also these, traditionally made/eaten by some at Chinese New Year if one felt like making the effort... http://userealbutter.com/2012/01/22/chinese-egg-dumplings-dan-jiao-recipe/ http://gbtimes.com/food/recipes/chinese-new-year/egg-dumplings-wealth-and-health

Franci, just curious - does your husband like rice congee? ("Chook"/"jook")

Heh. Well, it *is* sort-of, uh, Thai, in inspiration... :-) It looks like a nice soup.

huiray -- that's what the vendor at USGM sold it as. if you'd like to take issue with that, perhaps you should hie thyself there the first chance you can. re bread-making, total food cost is about $10 and an hour of your time. dear me, the other day I cooked an omelette -- with brown spots -- in 10 minutes. I think that ship has sailed, don't you? There's a time and a place for this discussion, and this thread isn't it. My, my - sounds like you are a little touchy there. Still, it seems clear that it matters little to you what "Chinese cabbage" actually is - it's just whatever is sold to you as something called "Chinese cabbage". The other stuff? Opinions differ.

SobaAddict70, care to elaborate what you mean by "Chinese cabbage"? As for making one's own bread and other pursuits of foodism - there is an area of discussion involving, in modern times, whether one has the disposable income and time to do these things (as opposed to less modern times when there was no choice but to do it yourself). ;-)

Friday lunch: Carrots, celery, French Breakfast Radishes, sliced chicken breast, chicken livers, shallots - in a chicken stock made from the second simmering of a shredded 5-lb chicken, with bones, celery, onions, carrots, sea salt. Soba noodles.

To eat egg "a la coque" you pour it in a glass and add butter to it? Never thought of serving eggs this way. I should try it! I like to drink my soft boiled eggs. With a bit of good soy sauce & a good grind of pepper, white preferred over black, out of a rice bowl. Done it all my life when I've had them. Unless I was a guest somewhere and the host(ess) dug out her otherwise-never-used egg cups when I would be polite and do the tap-tap-tap routine with a teaspoon and remove the top and sprinkle salt and whatever and daintily eat the contents with the spoon while trying not to break the rest of the eggshell and dump the rest of the being-excruciatingly-eaten egg onto the table. :-D

2013-0530 Lunch at “MaMa’s House” Korean Restaurant in Indy. • Banchan, 10 generous portions: Napa cabbage kimchi, lightly fried & tangy teensy baby anchovies, chillied garlic chives, tangy pickled button mushrooms, cold deep-fried hard tofu slices in a piquant sauce, lightly pickled beansprouts, baby bok choy dressed with a savory sauce, cucumber kimchi, lightly pickled daikon strips, cubed daikon kimchi. (Gratis) • Korean fried chicken wings, chillied; dressed w/ sweet-mildly hot thick sauce. Pic of the leftover KFC brought home. :-) • Tofu jjigae – a “stew” of small beef cubes, sliced onions, scallions, “Tong Ho” (edible Garland chrysanthemum), tofu slices, one BIG clam; simmered in a seasoned spicy broth. With white rice.

You are certainly entitled to your opinion. But as I explained above, I would not expect chefs in a non-French tradition to be expert in FRENCH techniques. If we talk about Manhattan restaurants, which is what you talked about, I would not be concerned if I were eating at Jungsik and found out the chef(s) there didn't know how to make a perfect Parisian omelette. I would be more concerned about whether they know how to properly execute KOREAN food. If I were eating at some place like Kyo Ya or equivalent I wouldn't be too concerned about whether they could make a perfect Parisian omelette. In the latter case how they make a tamagoyaki, instead, might be a better test, whether they normally offer it or not. A roast chicken might be a not unreasonable idea, I'll allow, as this is a more common theme in non-French cuisines. Still, I wonder if you might turn your nose up at a Cantonese "roast chicken" since it would not be traditionally done in an oven but done by holding a chicken over a wok and repeatedly ladling hot oil from the wok over the chicken back into the wok. I could envision the objection that it is not done the French way. ;-)

I like this. However, I'm a little wary of your recommendation to "liberally salt" the spinach. Do you squeeze out excess water/salt or do you just cook the "liberally salted" spinach as-is? Depending on what "liberally salted" means I could envision a too-salty dish at the end... I suppose "adequately salted" might do it for me. :-) Or salt it as needed at the table... ;-)

Y'know, all this stuff about cooking a one-egg French (or Parisian) omelet/omelette or the "make me an (French) omelette" test is relevant ONLY to restaurants serving FRENCH or French-derived or French-inspired cuisine in the traditional style. Jacques Pepin testing people on their (French) omelette skills is truly relevant only to his French restaurants. As sigma said, even new French restaurants don't need the technique, although yes it is a nice one to know. I for one would not consider it a critical test of whether you know how to cook at all. Yes, many (but not all) Western/European-type places do draw upon the French culinary tradition but I suggest that there are other cuisines and traditions around, hmm? I somehow doubt that it is a skill that is of much relevance in a traditional Cantonese restaurant, for example, or any other restaurant serving cuisine that is not derived from French techniques or cuisine. That covers quite a lot of the restaurants in the world. Are chefs competent to cook in a restaurant that does not serve French omelettes if they don't know how to make a perfect French omelette? Like said Cantonese restaurant, or a New American Cuisine restaurant? I would think that the answer is "yes", as sigma has already explained. By all means teach the people in the kitchen (or other folks) how to make a one-egg French omelette - hello, Jacques P. - if not anything else but to preserve the knowledge of how to do so but to think that this is a test of skill for any chef in any cuisine is not sensible. You might say that nobody here has said such a thing but OTOH nobody here so far has talked directly about the context of what cuisine or cuisines is/are involved. One poster at least has alluded to this by specifically calling it a "Parisian Omelette" rather than the generic "omelette". For that matter, would such a skill in making a French/Parisian omelette be something that a chef-candidate would be tested on in those Spanish restaurants in Spain that the OP remembers fondly where she had those Spanish tortillas?

Someday you should try that...it'll teach you how to cook. That smacks faintly of Cultural Imperialism. I think Keith_W knows how to cook, notwithstanding what you may think.

2013-0528 Lunch • Salmon fillets (de-skinned) simply steamed w/ sliced white button (common) mushrooms, olive oil, fresh lemon juice, sliced scallions, sea salt & fresh ground pepper. • “Kai Lan” sautéed w/ garlic in peanut oil & quenched w/ a mixture of “Luscious Soy Sauce” [Kim Lan], Drunken Chicken Marinade [Lee Kum Kee], sweet mirin [Honteri], ryori-shu [MRT] and Ponzu sauce [Kikkoman]. • Steamed white rice (Basmati). I ate every bit. :-)

2013-0527 Lunch • Red Wattle pork cutlets,¶ simply pan-fried in oil + some butter, and with salt & pepper. • Mushroom medley – with fresh morels, fresh wood-ear fungus [both collected in N. Indiana; bought from the Farmers’ Market] & rehydrated snow fungus. • Bucatini [Garofalo] tossed in the pan w/ sliced garlic (mature cloves) & baby spring garlic sautéed in butter + olive oil. • Fresh asparagus & broccoli briefly simmered in chicken stock. ¶ Raised by Hood’s Heritage Hogs, processed by This Old Farm. Not sure I liked all that liquid around the cutlets after defrosting. There wasn’t much fat in these cutlets; definitely redder than “commercial” pork. The cutlets had already been pre-bashed. I overcooked them a bit, not used to cooking this cut; but I was curious about it and wanted to check what the flavor was like – which was pretty good.

Lovely dishes, Soba, as usual. Interesting photos upstream of your kitchen, too. You have even less counter space than I do! A further question - do you do your courses sequentially (eating them as each one is completed) or make them more-or-less all together, then? Since there is limited space to have many things/dishes all together I am wondering if it might be the former? Interesting (Bengali five-spice) asparagus dish.

I see. Well, in that regard you certainly succeeded with this rendition of a French omelet. :-)

Maybe it might be an idea to have other kitchen goddesses as well. :-) I do, but with respect to specific things like omelettes, Julia is it for me. *shrug* Heh. I made an addition to my post above. :-)

See my response to Weinoo above.

Maybe it might be an idea to have other kitchen goddesses as well. :-) ETA: One of the issues here - to me - is that folks talk in the West/USA about "an omelet" as being only one kind of thing - that pale FRENCH omelet. Even then the non-English speaking parts have frittatas, as an example, which may have browning and have a different shape than that pale, neatly folded French omelet. Yet it is still an omelet. So are all these other kinds of fried beaten-egg dishes in other parts of the world, which DO NOT follow the French model. If one said that one was making a "French omelet", rather than just simply "an omelet" then the specifications for it become narrower. (I'm not specifically referring to you, of course, I'm talking in general) ETA2: Even Wikipedia lists all sorts of omelets/omelettes, amongst which a French omelet is just one kind and the ONLY one described as having "little to no colour" when properly done. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omelette