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I've basically done what you've done, flybottle. I've decreased the amount of beef I eat but I haven't eliminated it.

But if the whole center of the clove is green, whatever remains is too dried up from having served as a reservoir for the shoot that it's not worth using.

My advice is, if the sprout is well-established enough that the middle and not just the top of the garlic clove is green, throw it away.

:shivers: I agree students should learn about [fill in the blank] food history/culture and preparations, but to bypass the classics of the French culinary masters? Really????? Yes, send me to Provence!!!!! Agreed, beans. What's more, Provencal cuisine is quite different from cuisine in other parts of France and very worthwhile on its own terms. I love Chinese food but would never compare French food unfavorably to Chinese food, and would consider it absurd to denigrate French food at its highest levels. Both cuisines are great, in the right hands. I do tend to agree with zora on this, however: Except that French-influenced Moroccan restaurants can be a lot of fun, etc. It's really all about how tasty things are, in the end.

Our pleasure, Marian!

Is it possible that you just haven't had really good Indian or Korean food? You used to live in New York City, right? Which Indian and Korean restaurants did you eat at when you were here?

How is it pronounced?

I haven't heard that in a long time. You're a Sesame Street fan, eh?

I hope Grace decides to join eGullet because I'd be interested to ask her what she plans on doing in the culinary world. Sounds like a fun roommate!

Suzanne, you make a lot of sense (as usual), but I do think the French have brought back a taste of merguez and couscous from North Africa. Ruth, I disagree that people who like hot pepper can't appreciate subtle flavors. I think it's a matter of preference. Many people find subtlety tasteless and many people find a bit of capsicum intolerable, but there are those who are able to appreciate both. I'd have to think I'm one of them. My lunch at Grand Vefour in the summer of 2002 was one of the greatest dining experiences of my life, and I didn't think for one second about the absense of capsicum while I was there, yet I like hot pepper very much. Also, hot peppers do have flavor, not just hotness, and different varieties of hot pepper have different flavors.

Fat Guy, some of the dishes at Amma were too hot for my mother, but that doesn't make the fine ingredients in them a waste of time for those (like me) who enjoy a robust level of capsicum.

Good luck, PJ!

My favorite tropical fruits are lychee (more subtropical), rambutan, really excellent large mangos, really perfumy papayas, bananas just off the tree (especially tart ones), limau nipis (perfumy Malaysian lime), limau purut (formerly "Kaffir lime"; what are people calling it now?), jambu air, and durian. [Edit: I forgot pineapple. I've always loved pineapple, and while it's way better in Malaysia, I find imported pineapples acceptable. I also used to love buah kemunting, little red berries that grow wild near the graveyard in the Malay village I used to live in. I haven't eaten them in at least 26+ years, however.] What do I miss most? Most of them. Lychees travel well, thank goodness, and are readily available in season in New York. Rambutan travel horribly, and you have to go to growing regions to have really good ones. The mangos I usually see in stores in New York are of the third-best variety of the three in Malaysia: the small ones called pauh there. The best variety is mangga (called Indian mango, I think), with kuini (almost the same size as mangga but with spots on it, IIRC) almost as good. I don't think Mangos were in season when I was last in Malaysia in August. Good Hawaiian papayas have a perfume like good Malaysian ones do, even if they are flown in and not as fresh. I can't eat raw bananas in a temperate zone like New York, because they are mostly inferior varieties and never ripened, having been picked weeks too early. There's nothing like having bananas picked ripe off the tree. To my knowledge, limau nipis is completely unavailable in New York, and if it were available, it would cost an arm and a leg, just like starfruit/carambola does, and while good fresh starfruit is refreshing in hot weather, the pathetic starfruit I usually see sucks, and I like oranges better, anyway. I assume the same is true of jambu air: If it's available, it's inferior and unbelievably exhorbitant. [Azrael, I agree with you about buah salak; I'm indifferent toward it. LJC, what is Mamone?]

No ahem necessary. I spent parts of two days with Ms. Foster (friend of a friend of my aunt) in Tuscany in 1991 and found her extremely intelligent, an excellent conversationalist who's genuinely interested in what everyone else is doing and thinking about, and a gracious and witty person. I thoroughly enjoyed making her acquaintance.

Stash, I may be obtuse, but I don't understand what you mean. Would you please elaborate? jgould, thanks for participating; your contributions are much appreciated. But I can't agree with the idea of going regularly to a restaurant that has "average food at above average prices, hi wine prices for below average wines" just because big names go there. If I want to see stars, I'll watch a movie. If I'm spending good money, the food is way above average or I don't come back. Thomas, I always considered Morningside Heights (aka the Columbia neighborhood) part of the Upper West Side, and still do. I'll allow that I might feel differently if I had grown up on 77th St. instead of 97th St.

Maybe they've gotten better. I haven't been there in a few years, but I was never impressed and felt it was kind of overpriced for its quality. Come to think of it, though, it may be more than just a few years since I was last there...

If any eGulleteers are able to grow plants from dried Sichuan peppercorns, I hope they'll be gracious enough to tell us about it!

There are malls all over the Kuala Lumpur area, and I had one of my best meals ever at a Chinese restaurant in a mall in Petaling Jaya (one of the suburbs of KL).

JJ, I've never had to specify anything but the name of the dish. I find that they spice robustly enough for me without my saying anything. And in order to calibrate your taste in hot pepper against mine, I'll mention that I like to slowly chew up hot peppers at times.

Why? What's involved?

I think there are also people who believe that in Euro-American-style restaurants, knowledge of and use of ingredients usually used in Asian cuisines is taken as a sign of sophistication, even if the result isn't a thoroughgoing fusion (whatever "thoroughgoing fusion" would really mean). But if we want to talk about whether fusion=sophistication, it seems to me that's another thread, albeit a related one.

I drink hibiscus tea every day. I enjoy its bracing sourness unaccompanied by any added sweetening agent, and its red color is fun too. I also understand that regular drinking of hibiscus tea has been shown to lower blood pressure, which is why I drink it.

Grade B is by far my favorite grade of maple syrup. For those who haven't tried it: You have missed out on one of the greatest simple oral pleasures in life. Get some!

No cappucino this morning? Happy birthday!

Relative to the Asayoshi, Per se, Rare, etc., Cafe Gray is affordable -- the average dinner there, from what I've read, will cost half as much as the other places (or one-fourth as much as Asayoshi). Does that mean $100 a head instead of $200, or is it worse than that?