helenjp

That's been my experience too. I wonder whether the sauce is saltier than salted water for pasta is. And I also wonder whether I'm just not keeping the broth at the same rolling boil that I would use for pasta cooked in water. But I assume this does have something to do with the paucity of good "one pot" recipes.

Trudeau tongs - the silicone tongs I bought were similar to this...I found them much more useful than I expected. Chinese mesh ladles - these are always useful - if they are slightly concave rather than flat, so much the better.

More photos please! I've always wondered what grits looked like...you have no idea how exotic this dish sounds to me.

We have way too many of the same authors on our shelves...so what are the main differences between Arabesque and Middle Eastern Food (since my copy of MEF has literally fallen apart...)?

Will do, with thanks...No Good Boyo is almost as keen to learn to cook new things as to learn more music. And Wellington is also only a hop from all the musical goings on in Nelson.

I've never been able to grow bay in Japan - it really doesn't like snow! Being able to grow it in the ground is a big plus in a NZ garden, and I'm very envious of your neighbour. The wind thing...hey, that was my first comment - you're mixing me up with nickrey. NZ is generally a windy country. You probably wouldn't recognise Manurewaif you visited...the Dawson butchery and Richardson shoes have long been replaced by a middle-eastern food store and an Indian confectionery. When I was a kid,Clendon shopping centre was an old house in a ramshackle garden with a big hedge where I used to stash my bicycle before catching the bus to school...all farmland, and hardly a house to be seen.

I see...you still have to find freezer room for icecream made with an electric ice-cream maker. We won a DeLonghi in-freezer type maker, and not only does it take up room, the small Japanese-size freezer drawers don't get cold enough to freeze icrecream really well in summer. Does the electric ice-cream maker perform worse in warm summer temperatures? And was it as good as it looks? Luverly pav...soft and almost marshmallow-y inside, not crisp or chewy - looks perfect. Though crisp and chewy pavs have their uses too! Thanks for that blast of Wellington wind atmosphere...

Well, I don't know, a bag of potato crisps in Japan IS 25g. You don't really get a chance to eat more than one "serving" that way!

Thank you very much for the tour of suppliers...you are right to emphasise where your food comes from, though your Beef Wellington must be a project your butcher is happy to be associated with! It looked gorgeous, and wow, NO SHRINKAGE! Is there a NZ style of food? I've often thought about the same thing...maybe not in the sense of "here, and only here", but there is a certain NZ idea of what's good. When I read (and cooked from) Peter Gordon's Salads book, it not only impressed me as good, it was an instantly recognizable approach to food. P.S. After Peter asked about meat prices/popularity, I also checked out the supermarket that is my local when I'm in NZ - Clendon Foodtown, which serves one of NZ's poorest urban areas. Flicking through the specials, I noticed that only beef and chicken made it even into the first 5 pages of specials, though when I'm actually there, often mutton neck chops are about the cheapest buy. Interesting that the preference for beef and chicken holds true even at the top end! Leslie, when I was a kid, chicken was an expensive meat and not eaten that frequently. Lamb and hogget were affordable, but starting to lose out to beef...I think my family was on the old-fashioned side and that maybe beef was already king in most homes. When I got back to NZ after years in Japan and couldn't remember how to do the dinner thing NZ-style, my friends were saying "You know, beef casserole!". How does that compare to your experience? What about seafood? When I was in Wellington I was surprised at how different the local fish were from the regulars in Auckland fish shops. How often do you cook fish or other seafood, and what types? P.P.S. Was that a purple carrot or black salsify with your Beef Wellington?

I love Singapore...everything from hotel breakfast buffet on out just screams "multicultural, and what of it?!"

Hmmm...apparently chicken skin makes good rat bait!

Thanks for the Ontrays tour! I think this is the first of your visits that covers a company I know...I'm having a great time seeing so much that's new to me. Gin in Japan - it's not a big gin market for home use, though there are plenty of places that serve cocktails. So what did you have for breakfast this morning?

So no plans for Lighthouse to conquer the Japanese market then? I'm thinking the Wairarapa might have changed just a wee bit since I was there last...about the time you were gorging on Masterton sausages, I was running around interpreting for a Japanese TV crew doing a feature on the Golden Shears! I don't recall fine wines making much of an appearance... Love the leafy table setting at Tirohana.

I wondered if we might see some Martinborough product! Hope it was as good as it looked, and don't those runner beans and your dessert look so summery. Cinnamon icecream sounds wonderful...I see that Kapiti lists a black plum icecream, a big dose of Kiwi nostalgia for me. As for the lamb, just the thought of an oven big enough to fit it into makes me marvel. You said you've switched from gas to induction - any particular reason? That hillside pic looks so Wellington...never really had a good chance to explore as I always seemed to be there on work.

Ooh, an expat's delight, and technically still summer too (though maybe not (ever!) in Wellington?). I think Wellington is generally less "Asian" than Auckland anyway? My decades-old memories of Chinese food in Wellington are that it wasn't a serious part of Wellington dining, at least back then. Looking forward to getting a more up-to-date impression of Wellington through your blog, as we may be extraditing sending younger son to Wellington for study next year. Dinner party dish...hmmm...end of summer...if I took my starving hulks they would be nagging for rack of lamb, but I would be looking for mussels and smoked fish or a good-sized snapper to grill, knowing that they would eat anything if they thought they were getting Rush Monro icecream for dessert. With feijoas...

Isn't it funny, I thought that an interest in food - especially in the preparation of food - was a highly moral thing. I know it sounds soppy, but everything bar the salt I put in my mouth stopped living because a human being decided it was food. It seems immoral not to make the most of it in every way.

Just following up a mention in the Daily Sweets topic...whether Whoopie Pie obsession is something you can share or not! I first discovered Whoopie Pies about 10-15 years ago, when wondering what to do with a glut of pumpkin. Since then, I've made them with persimmon, carrot, molasses, spices, chocolate...and decided that while I love how cheap they are to make, I'm not a fan of chocolate Whoopie Pies. I think they are best with old-fashioned strong flavors like pumpkin or molasses, especially if you want to fill them. If you are OK with chewy and soft rather than crisp/soft, you can reduce the extreme amounts of sugar found in some recipes. Filling...cream cheese or something with a tang, plus lemon or orange zest. But I really prefer them one at a time, unfilled! Seems to me that end-of-season sweet potatoes should make a good whoopie pie and/of filling, especially if the raw sweet potato chunks are soaked in cold water before cooking, so that they have a nice, bright color. And if there was ever a recipe that asked to be Japanified with solid country stuff like azuki beans, black sesame, tofu, kinako, and black sugar, whoopie pie must be it.

Sounds like there was a lot going on there...and maybe people think that nutmeg can be used in the same quantities as cinnamon (not that cinnamon should be eaten like cornflakes). I've often thought that the reason older herbals often specify the origin of a herb or spice is just to avoid this kind of unpredictable reaction...apart from individual reactions, a plant harvested in one place may have noticeably more or less of an ingredient than plants from a different source.

I've been avoiding this topic...but andiesenji, did your friend chew up a nutmeg, or take it in water, or in oil/alcohol? Anything hallucinogenic is going to be hard on the liver... Kitchen herbs and spices...with two 'pothecaries for parents, I grew up fascinated with herbs, and all our kitchen spices came in jars with Latin labels. Obviously, if you want to use a spice medicinally, you should keep it whole, then crush or grind immediately before extracting in oil/alcohol or water as appropriate, rather than buying it pre-ground, storing it badly for long periods, and then scattering it over the top of food before baking, so that the aroma is all you get of it. I managed to give myself an allergy to bayleaf, avocado and cinnamon by diligent consumption of a decoction of cinnamon (that is, boiled to extract, not just tea-bag style). Not only was I taking a lot of cinnamon, but drinking tea on an empty stomach is probably a bit different from a cinnamon roll downed with a latte. That occurred using a water-extraction, but many of our "treasured" imported spices have fat-soluble active ingredients that are stable enough to remain active when dried and transported. If I'd taken an oil or fat-based extraction of cinnamon daily for several weeks, I would have made myself very sick. Japan's native herb tradition relies strongly on fresh (green) herbs, and the more I've explored that,the more differences I find between fresh and dried herbs. For example, it's only fresh ginger that will help with nausea...so a slice of fresh ginger held in the mouth is supplying you with different chemicals from ginger wine made with fresh ginger or ginger tea made with dried ginger. Son1 told all his friends that ginger tea made with fresh ginger, or fresh ginger grated into rice gruel, was the best thing for nausea from exam nerves. I once tried clove oil on a cotton wool ball for a sore tooth, with sad results, but a clove held in the mouth near a swollen area of gum (wisdom tooth etc.) seems to reduce inflammation. But so do frequent saline mouthwashes, for that matter! The very best thing I know for skin infections, from pimples to wounds, is the Southeast Asian herb houttuynia cordata (fish mint, dokudami in Japan). The youngest leaves are great in salad, but I use it fresh (bruised or crushed) on grazes, burns, and large pimples, and infused in shochu (strong rice wine) as a lotion for teenage acne. It is used dried as a laxative tea, but can be too effective! For sinus infections following a cold, the last couple of years I've been keen on raw juices, because they make it so easy to get those chlorophyll-rich green vegetables, and it's a solution that uses exactly what I can lay my hands on most easily in the cold and flu seasons. My usual standby is parsley and cabbage or mustard greens juice, cut with citrus or celery and failing that, apple. A little fresh ginger is nice, but only needed in larger quantities for a very stuffy nose. One thing to consider is how much of a herb or spice is really needed to change something about your body...it's more than you would keep on hand for culinary purposes only. I find a thyme gargle very good for sore throats, but one vigorous bush is not enough to make a decoction every day for a week! Sage makes a larger bush, and so I can indulge my personal sage tea habit summer and winter, but if my family wanted to drink it too, or I used it medicinally, I'd need more.

A thought about size: I bought a 4.5 liter size (4-5 quarts,is that?) because I thought that was the largest I could deal with in a Japanese-sized kitchen. If I'd been in a western country, I might have bought a larger size, but I'm glad I didn't. I don't really want to make gallons and gallons of stock to get old and tasteless in the freezer - one good thing about the pressure cooker is that making a fresh, tasty stock only takes 40-60 minutes tops.

Definitely a "shoot from the hip" type, but if I refer to the source of a "favorite" recipe, what I find is very often not what I've been cooking for the past decade . Another drawback is the way I go in phases, and then forget about things for years at a time. Recipes = ideas...I have folders full of recipes that I have clipped and never looked at again. I'm sure that the process of clipping them commits the essential features to memory, though! Two things that helped this quick-draw cook: memorizing basic baking proportions, and analyzing ingredient combinations in terms of flavor or texture...that made substitutions more fun and less risky. For example, pork and apples...sweet/floral plus sweet/funky. Banana would therefore work well in terms of flavor, but both pork and banana can be slimy...so I avoid stewing them together. That analysis shows me that banana and some of the sweet/funky fish like yellowtail (amberjack) go well together, especially because yellowtail can be dry.

Yes to the idea of turning the layers while still sticky on top, and I find that if I just "rumple up" the first layer into a log at one end (instead of rolling it), the following layers seem to make a rounded shape more easily. Spinach (squeeze water out well and chop, season) can go into the first layer, also unagi (grilled eel) trimmings, powdered cheese, crumbled wakame or a little hijiki, slivers of spring onion and/or some frozen green peas (they work well dropped into the first layer while it's still liquid). Anything colorful is fair game. Don't add stuff to the outside layers, as it is harder to stop it popping out as you roll. Don't underestimate the plain rolled omelet though - it's even better served a floret of broccoli or some spring greens than it is with the greens mixed into the omelet.

Gosh...you can't mean that is is an "only in Japan" problem, surely? Are there no food products that raise your eyebrows come Valentine's Day or Easter?

I made a torta di grano saraceno at the weekend...a torta with buckwheat flour and walnuts. I think almonds may be more usual,but the walnuts were a perfect match for the buckwheat. I toasted them very lightly and then ground them with part of the sugar (a light brown sugar, keeping them a bit coarse and not allowing them to get to the oily stage. Split the finished cake and filled with a small amount of lemon curd. This cake was a great success - it's attractive, and it tasted wonderful.

The Fissler pressure cooker that I have has the same kind of spring-loaded pressurizing system. It doesn't release steam constantly the way an old jiggler-type pressure cooker does...but if you overheat it A LOT, you will see steam coming out the quick-release valve on the handle. However, to be honest I've started working and forgotten about turning it down, without having any problems (not that I recommend it!). I have once or twice allowed the valve to get clogged by cooking several things in succession without cleaning the valve area thoroughly enough. When that happened, the cooker simply failed to come up to pressure...in other words, the error was on the side of safety rather than risk.