helenjp

Low pressure - useful for white fish, especially thin fish like sole. Also for steamed or even blanched vegetables, especially if you have a steamer insert. It's so fast that vegetables stay colorful and flavorful. You can poach fruit on low-pressure too, though that's something I haven't tried.

Yesterday was Setsubun, or the day winter officially switches to spring in Japan. So all the supermarkets were selling overpriced "traditional" nori roll sushi...something that supermarkets have pushed and pushed every year until it has finally spread from being a minor local custom to being a national "tradition". When I lived in Osaka 30 years ago, they were available from sushi shops at this time of year, but by no means something that "everybody" "had to eat". More, what I remember was very different from the modern supermarket product. How could any Grinch object to more tasty food in the world, you may ask, but what gets me is the total uniformity of these manufactured traditions, along with the way they are divorced from home cooking. A bit like buying a pumpkin latte for yourself vs. sharing a pumpkin pie with friends and family. Not to mention the sanitization of real-life culture...I notice that supermarkets are not in a hurry to tell us that the original setsubun nori roll sushi were party food for ladies of light reputation to eat in front of their male guests...that's why you're not supposed to bite them! And if that weren't bad enough, a few days ago I saw a supermarket flyer advertising nigiri sushi with the screaming injunction "It's nearly setsubun! Eat sushi!" I should eat sushi because it's "nearly setsubun"????

I bought a Fissler New Vitaquick 4.5 liter (that's just under 5 quarts) quite a few years ago now, and have never fallen out of love with it. The lack of fiddly furniture on top was a big factor, but after several years of use, summer and winter, I don't regret the cost. The size has been convenient - it's as big as I feel comfortable handling, and big enough to handle a whole chicken or a big mess of beans. I wouldn't muck about with the old balancing weight "jiggler" type...just seems to negate all the good things about pressure cooking, for no advantage.

Somebody did give me a leg of wild boar once...in a plastic bag, with skin and hair attached...e careful what you wish for! Upside down luck - that sounds like my kind of luck, for sure. China or not, that coffee and white beer look very good indeed.

Jam/Marmalade. I started out using a Claudia Roden recipe. Here are some options: Exquisite mandarin jam - super easy! Turkish Tangerine jam Other than that, syrup cake - not the pound-cake type, but the Middle Eastern (Greek, Syrian) type with cornmeal/ground almonds/semolina. Tangerine custards. Tangerine mayonnaise.

All kinds of Middle Eastern food for me...even when I lived in NZ. I think it must be because dishes go well with both rice and bread, and there is a good balance of fruit, vegetables, fish,and meat. Chinese and Korean food...probably because they blend in well with our "mostly Japanese" style of eating.

Remove cupboard doors and hang curtains....don't do it!! Or at least, I wouldn't. The more solid the barriers between Asian wildlife and your food and crockery, the better. And I'm not just talking about what my sons refer to as "the black six-wheelers", I'm talking about gentlemen who come visiting in tails...

Preserved vegetables? Canals! And also, though in this weather it's probably not a hot topic, what kind of aquatic vegetables are used in the area? Are carp popular, or too expensive?

Looking forward to this...always had a big hankering to see Suzhou...hope there will be lots of photos!

I second the lassi-like drinks. A couple of years ago, I had some kind of severe neuralgia that had me on an absolutely liquid diet, and what suited me best was vegetable juice (rather than smoothies...couldn't manage the texture) either plain, or cut with plain yogurt for breakfast and lunch. A very cheap juicer worked just fine. If you want a bit more texture and fuller taste, try stirring in a bit of Japanese toasted soybean flour (kinako) or toasted ground sesame. Pain dulls appetite, and these are the ones I remember as most refreshing. Tomato and carrot juice with yogurt. Celery and apple juice, with or without yogurt Chinese greens with apple juiced with lemon (whole) and ginger, straight or cut with soda water.

I've always thought that this type of pudding/cake is particularly popular in Australia and New Zealand. They are usually called Something Delicious or Something Self-Saucing Pudding. Here a few examples - a high liquid ratio is best, otherwise they can get very stodgy: Lemon delicious butterscotch self-saucing pudding chocolate hazelnut self-saucing pudding Chocolate Ginger Self-Saucing Pudding Not to mention chocolate & pear, chocolate peppermint, chocolate pumpkin... Blueberry SS pudding Banana SS pudding

Just looking at this from another point of view...there *are* people who phone up people they don't know with extremely unreasonable requests/claims/complaints. I can't and do not say that this particular caller's claim was or wasn't well founded, but as long as your phone number is accessible, you will no doubt get some phone calls from people who are not mentally able to judge what's reasonable and what isn't. Please don't tell me I'm being condescending - we had a difficult relative living with us for a while, and had to talk him out of/clean up after some ill-advised phone calls. Such a caller would be just as distressed as if they were making a reasonable complaint, but if you feel that somebody is not making a lot of sense, don't try to reason or argue them out of it, as each new argument probably just confuses them more. Once you've established what you can or should do about the situation, perhaps the best thing would be to just gently re-iterate your POV succinctly and calmly and try not to let the phone call go on too long (the more often the caller repeats their point, the more convincing it becomes to them, unfortunately). For example, if you can't do anything without the original package, then just keep returning to that point. The caller will have to cede that point, and with any luck, that will eventually short-circuit the tangle of assumptions that led her to call in the first place. And of course, if the caller does send the package, well and good.

I did actually check Japanese sources, and it's very likely indeed that Hiroyuki would have some good ideas. The only thing I found was that immature (underripe) roes can be bitter, and I have indeed tasted slightly bitter ones. The only recommendation was to cook them, because heat makes them somewhat less bitter. Apparently it's hard to identify an immature roe by sight alone anyway.

Both the language aspects and the safety (chain of errors) aspects of this fascinate me...a person with a good aural memory might find it easiest to simply walk to the serving hatch and repeat the order, and distracting to write at the same time (much harder to take down music dictation than it is to just walk to a keyboard and reproduce it, for example). But you'd have to be willing to spend your own time practicing it, instead of practicing on your customers! What gets me is the number of errors that fast-food or family restaurants can come up with, even if they are keying it straight into a cash-register or portable order recorder. Trouble is, they parrot back the order items faster than they can key them in (trying to sound faster and more efficient, maybe?), instead of using the call-back as a "done that" check. I know how embarrassed my students are when they mess up at their jobs (because they tell me about it in English class!), and I can imagine how much OJT waitstaff and counter staff receive, so I try to be patient when I'm on the receiving end. At least with a written order, you can find out where the errors are happening - when the order is recorded, when the kitchen staff read the order, or when the server collects the order for distribution? It's not that other industries don't have errors - while each error is an aberration, the fact that errors occur is normal unless there are specific steps taken to prevent/remedy them - it's just that people won't figure out how to prevent them if everybody thinks a wrong order is no big deal. Which it isn't, compared to a plane crash!

There was a Jiro ramen right close to my older son's high school...it was definitely a place to go on a dare, rather than for a good eating experience. I'm almost never in the Shinjuku area, but you might like to take a look in Kabuki-cho (just not too late at night!). Fun, especially if you are with a friend, to poke around the small stalls and bars. Marusuke Ramen in Shinjuku 3-chomeis standard ramen, should be quite close to where you are...with Shinjuku station at your back, walk along Yasukuni-dori to the big intersection that has two Isetan department store buildings opposite each other on the left sider On the right-hand corner is the Take Eight building, where you will find Marusuke.

Because it can make the whole dish taste over-sweet and bland!

I was in Koln last year at Christmas...we had sausages in bread rolls after a Christmas Eve carol service for "Christmas dinner"! Christmas markets...I am sure others can tell you more, but as the owner of hungry teenage boys, I can tell you that we went for sausages (overpriced maybe, but what else would one expect?) and waffles.

That is actually precisely what I had in mind! I had forgotten about the chanko nabe, but wandered on to eGullet intending to dig up a nabe thread, only to find that the East Asian weather or sunspots or some such thing had led you to do the same thing. There is just NOTHING like nabe (except maybe noodles and ochazuke) for quick and tasty but healthy dining...working fulltime away from home again and also not being quite up to slicing and dicing has fully revived my nabe-tastic enthusiasm. Kiri-tanpo nabe is my current favorite for early winter - shoyu base, lots of fungi, chewy rice sticks, and fat negi.

Isn't this something that is determined more by the size of your table than anything else? Since nabe is hot, and often mild and mellow in flavor, I like to go for intense/crisp/crunchy/sharp/fresh. That means lightly-pickled pickles with lots of citrus to me. But it could mean oysters simmered in soy, ginger and mirin until they are shrivelly, or crunchy slices of octopus alternated with tomato slices and drizzled in a lemony vinaigrette (except that I put chili rather than parsley with mine). Also, herby salads using seri or mizuna are refreshing. Also neatly avoids the problem of people who hate strong flavors like seri in nabe. What did you have in the end? I'm considering a wonton/gyoza nabe for tomorrow night, and could do with some fresh "go-with" ideas too.

spanish style pea soup? (With dried split peas, tomato and onion? We just had some for dinner, and I wish we'd had a spare ham bone or so to cook with it!

I would say, compared to a good Japanese knife kept sharp and in good condition, I don't know that a Kyocera knife is hugely sharper. The advantage is more that it's THIN and sharp. They don't last for ever...the blade will inevitably develop nicks, although I understand it is sometimes possible to get them reground. I also wonder if they get little surface cracks that propagate over time. A ceramic blade can cope with some fibrous items, but it's not good with hard items. My husband just broke our small Kyocera trying to cut a pumpkin with it. That's the second time he's done that...even though the knife packet practically screams "Do not use on pumpkin/hard items".

I don't doubt Chufi has plenty of fellow-travelers on this thread as December approaches. Spreads sound ideal for my needs - an office knees-up that I can only attend for 20 minutes, needing to bring something vegetarian that will withstand a 90 minute Tokyo commute!I do like Japanese toothpicks as mini-skewers - tidy to eat and easy to carry.

I tried the steaming trick this year...poured over a little rum or brandy, depending on the fruit, while still very hot. Half the cakes are still in the oven, the others are cooling, but I feel satisfied with the steaming approach - the fruit wasn't as dropsically distended as a "boiled fruitcake" technique makes it, and the steaming helped strip off the worst of the encrusted sugar. Digital probe thermometer - oh yes, I love this tip, thank you! When the probe registered 93 deg. C, the sides were pulling away from the cake mold, but the top had not yet cracked. Temperature control was my biggest problem, as I have a small, new, and heavily automated Japanese oven. The emphasis on low power consumption seems to have resulted in an oven that can't get back up to temperature rapidly when food is placed in the heated oven, and last year's Christmas baking was a frustrating experience - the cakes were cooked, and they were OK, but I was not really happy with the final result. Erin, sorry to hear about the musty flavor in the dried persimmons - I have occasionally had musty/moldy persimmons and the fustiness seems to develop round the sepals. Persimmons have done very badly in Japan this year, and I have not yet seen any dried ones (and precious few fresh ones) in the supermarket. Couldn't find the usual glace kiwifruit either so this year's cakes contain: Lemon and mandarin zest Glace cherry tomatoes Candied ginger Big black seeded raisins, mixed green and brown sultanas, regular raisins, black currants, apricots, figs, dates, pineapple.

Forgot to say, there is a nice salad in Peter Gordon's "Salads" book...a base of charred tomatoes, topped with a mixed salad of greens, quinoa, and olives, then lightly grilled tuna or other flavorsome fish (or beef...), and a kind of "solid dressing" of chopped boiled egg, parsley, and capers to top it off. It made an excellent one-dish dinner tonight. I had some cooked quinoa left, so simmered it in coconut milk with rum and a little sugar, added some concentrated coffee and thickened it slightly with potato starch, and then spooned it around some sweetened mushy azuki beans and left it to set. The very slight remaining crunch of the quinoa worked well.

There are several cookbooks on Peruvian cooking in English that should have recipes for quinoa...I believe The Art of Peruvian Cuisine is the glamorous choice, though I'm considering something more compact, like Exotic Kitchens of Peru. Meanwhile...