helenjp

Yes, vinegar - just a little, and maybe a dash of honey if you are subbing for a liqueur rather than for wine or sherry. Lots of things appreciate a tiny dash of vinegar, even soups.

I'm with Shinboners...I'm finding Peter Gordon's "Salads" very interesting. The book might date...flipping through it, I was inclined to think "mango...roast tomatoes...meh", but by then it was too late - within an hour, I'd made two recipes from the book. It would be a mistake to think that you can't make Asparagus, Baby Potato, Rocket and Watercress Salad with Roast Olives, Sultanas, and Cherry Tomatoes just because you live in a country that never sells sultanas and doesn't always sell raisins (even in the beer snack aisle where they usually reside), rocket and baby potatoes are out of season, and somebody ate the last of the asparagus. No. For a start, the dressing vs. ingredient dynamic (had to get THAT word in!) is worthy of attention in every recipe, and here he uses a soy/vinegar dressing that pulls the bland, the sweet, and the peppery/aromatic together well. Secondly, although the ingredient list is as trendy as a professional chef's ingredient list is likely to be, it is NOT chosen entirely with the photographs in mind, nor is it just a mindless trend-bend. Since a salad has to be fresh to be good, subbing ingredients is unavoidable. Things that really sing, or howl or moan together make it that much easier for me to think of plausible alternatives. The book is bigger than I thought it would be...over 150 pages. There is one short page on basic dressings, and I'm giving nothing away, but bet that many salad-oriented readers will find fine recipes for modern dressing ingredients that are already at their fingertips. There are sections on canape salads and dessert salads, and the rest of the book is grouped under vegetable salads, cheese salads, seafood...etc. These salads are intended to make up a good part of the meal, and some of the recipes are really a plate of two or three complementary salads. This is not lettuce plus one to fill out the BBQ plate - you'll need to read and think - but that's why this whole book of salad recipes works. I have lots of good salad ideas clipped in ones and twos from newspapers or in other cookbooks, but generally, salad cookbooks either rely on outre ingredients plus vinaigrette (no good if you don't shop at the same place the author shops at), or they are drearily predictable. This is the thriller of salad cookbooks - a real page-turner!

I have bought them at that time of year to make a nostalgic "shirasu" dish from my country too- white bait fritters! They are always quite pricey, and not easy to find. They aren't white, either, but quite glassy.

1) My son told me that the Yamanote line trains have been "chocolate coated" by Meiji (lookee) in a centennary promotion. 2) Those shio-caramel Kitkats have also come under investigation from both sons, who think it's one of the better special flavors! 3) Harvest cookies...I checked while at the supermarket recently, and the Cocoa Harvest cookies don't contain any sesame. I got each member of my family to also read the ingredients list too, to make sure my eyes hadn't just skipped over it. The dots shown on the package are cocoa nibs, not sesame seeds. Naturally, they don't taste like the original sesame Harvest cookies though - they are a dark but not oversweet crisp thin cocoa cookie.

I came across a mention of "akazake" earlier this year in a food magazine. It's definitely a trend...the only question is whether it's anything MORE than a trend!The selling points are that it is fermented, and that the final product is weakly alkaline (supposed to be healthier, though what happens when it's mixed with food and then encounters digestive juices is anybody's guess. Let us know if you find out more, Hiroyuki - it sounded interesting, but I haven't seen the actual product around.

Haruyutaka is good...but according to this site, Kita no Kaori (from Kida Mills) is better. Nyada nyada nyada. I do like Kita no Kaori (just as wel, since I have 25 kg of it!), but I admit that Haruyutaka would have been just fine.

Yes, I was thinking about the Megmilk logo. I remember thinking at the time that it was so barefaced, to just put on a different hat and say, "Hey, this is not that bad guy, this is some other guy!" Since my husband has a longstanding anti-Morinaga thing going, adding Yukijirushi to the list has made our house almost an "okashi-free zone". But Tohato are in favor, because he once won an award in an essay competition, and received a carton full of Tohato goodies. To tell the truth, apart from the Caramel Corn, Tohato do make some very tasty items...my favorite is probably their thin, crispy "Harvest" cookies with sesame. I like their salty shortbread cookies too.

This is the time of year when fish start coming back from their summer holidays, nicely fattened and looking very tasty. Top of my list right now is mackerel - not really ready for thick fish soups yet, but fried fish goes well with autumny marinaded eggplant salads, or with crushed lettuce and bread salads, or even sharply seasoned potato salads with plenty of green beans. Whole snapper are sometimes cheap at this time of year, and if you can buy large, whole fish, this might be the time for a wonderful baked fish before you put your barbeque away for the year. What's looking good in your area?

Somehow, our household has developed the habit of starting the day with Indian tea, drinking our preferred brew during the day, and usually drinking green tea or some other Japanese tea in the evenings. I'm always interested to read about Richard scaling new heights of teamanship, but my daily cuppas are much more pedestrian. I think I'm a natural "grandpa", I like my tea and coffee quite straightforward. I'm not telling how I make coffee, but with good tea, I much prefer a few leaves in the bottom of a cup, wet a little bit, topped up, and sipped while I admire the unfurled leaves (with the lid of the cup to hold the leaves back if absolutely necessary). When I worked in a Chinese grocery, the tea was made once or twice a day and kept in a big straw basket, and I still occasionally use my father's old tea basket. In Japan, roasted teas are used for bulk brews intended for "refill" drinking. As for the morning brew, that goes into a big double-walled Dutch teapot. I love that thing.

There is "chuu-riki" or "medium" flour, which tends to be expensive, but also flavorful (usually designed for udon). Thanks for the mutton supply tip - local Hanamasa went bust, supermarket no longer stocks cheap, frozen sliced lamb (well, we'll call it lamb). What's your favorite J flour for pastry making? I rarely make hot-water pastry because I have the same problem - tends to end up thicker than I intended!

It's not exactly breathtaking, is it? Apart from the slightly melted look of the "m", it looks like a hundred or more other logotypes. I guess it takes something more, err, momentous, to bring real change - for example, the new look Yuki-jirushi, or whatever they morphed into!

Welcome to eGForums, Steven! Deep into baking....you will surely know a lot more than I do, but I do quite enjoy baking. Haven't heard of Kate flour, it sounds very interesting indeed. I order from Tomizawa, and also from a Rakuten store, "Hokkaido kara no Megumi"...I've just cracked open a 10 kg bag of "Neige" flour from Kida Mills in Hokkaido, but have not yet used it for cakes. Protein content if just over 7%, and it makes nice scones (biscuits) and is at this very moment turning into some okonomiyaki. First off, do you use any Japanese baking books? I find that serious baking books in Japanese work well for me with Japanese ingredients. Also, where did you start baking? I started baking in NZ, where flour is also unbleached, and the baking tradition is more British, so high-ratio cakes are not a strong point with me either. Have you tried subbing "katakuri-ko" for some of the flour? The cheap katakuriko is actually potato starch...really good in cakes. Adding a little vinegar to the mix might help. Also, what type of sugar are you using? You could try giving granulated sugar a whizz in the blender to make it finer...the regular "spoon" sugar is too wet for really fine cakes. Finally...size of oven vs. size of cake...how fast does the temperature recover My favorite US baking author has to be Rose Levy Beranbaum - that obsession with detail is really useful for those of us who are using non-US ingredients. I haven't seen her latest though. My Japanese favorites are all very old, so I'd love to hear what you are reading and using. I love some of the European baking books in Japanese, but it seems that books on classical American cakes are harder to find...books on US baking seems to be more everyday.

Here a few places where regional differences and specialties have been discussed! Meibutsu-famous local foods topic Kanto vs. Kansai topic Ainu Cuisine topic Toyama topic Aichi & Nagoya topic Ishikawa & Kanazawa topic Fukui topic Nagano topic Saitama topic Chiba topic Slow Food including some Akita information

Nakiri and Usuba are very often used interchangeably (as much regional as anything) though a nakiri is not usually single-edged. I think if I'm going to use a double-edged nakiri, I might just as well use a good-sized, well-balanced all-purpose knife such as a santoku/bannou/funayuki etc.

It's 3 years since my kids were at a school with a lunch program, so I'll be very interested to hear what the latest and greatest menus are! Fascinated by the number of options for school lunches...our local JHS only ever had A lunch and B lunch. Not an affluent area, but not rock bottom (for Chiba, anyway).

I must admit, I prefer the type of container that has small drop-in plastic containers that function as dividers. That way, you can zap cooked items to reheat when you put the bento together. What makes bento so stunning is the link with formal food for special entertainment, served on trays. The standard farm fare was always rice balls and pickles, but the rules of formal eating dictate a variety of textures and colors for the modern bento. Fruit is by far the most popular sweet treat in a bento. I really will try to revive my poor camera and take a photo of some of my favorite bento boxes. The kindy ones have been repurposed and now hold small electronic parts, sewing kit for quick repairs, etc!

It goes against the grain to expose an infusion to all that air before it's ready, but it must be very nice to enjoy the intense aroma of roasted teas before drinking.

Weinoo, Dave, how do you make your caponata? The only place I saw carrots mentioned was on Wikipedia (I should know better, but there you are) and knowing my Iranian friend's love of carrots in everything, the nature of caponata meant that I just had to try it. Regarding fennel...I can't help wondering whether the "original" celery is really the big-stemmed variety we have now, or a soup-celery, or something equally strong tasting...maybe even the leaves more than the stems ???. Don't know enough about celery varieties in Italy to even speculate fruitfully, but have always thought of the modern celery as more of a cold-climate plant. Celery in Greece - if this is similar to what was referred to elsewhere as the "green stringy celery of Sicily", perhaps it would be worth using the leaves as well as the stems, or using soup celery if possible?

Either of those explanations sound good to me! You can see over-ripe/dehydrated cucumbers pulling apart into their original "segments". The texture might not be as crispy, but they are not spoiled.

I think the green olives do make a difference - they are tarter tasting. By the way, it occurs to me that slightly unripe tomatoes or even slightly unripe green grapes may go well in this.

I think "standard recipe - Carluccio" about does it for me - not too elaborate, but covers the basics. That's because I think of caponata as an appetizer rather than a relish. Wikipedia on caponata was useful too! Those little Kagome sachets of tomato paste are just right here (no "overcooked" taste) - I dislike canned tomato in caponata (too dominating) and prefer to add some fresh tomato and cook it down. Zucchini - who needs it! Some people use garlic, I think prefer to, but don't always. Rule of thumb - total quantity of fried aubergine should be equal to or greater than the volume of combined other ingredients...according to me! Things yet to try: Fennel instead of celery. I like the sound of this! Sundried tomato. Maybe... Eringhi - Costco arrived a short train ride away, and with them came big boxes of eringhi. I believe a winter caponata is called for, and I'm considering drying some aubergine to a half-dried consistency to go with it.

Caponata...perfect "cut and come again" food for summer, sharp and rich enough to stimulate and satisfy heat-jaded appetites. How do you like to make yours? More on the sharp and fresh side, or more on the rich and fruity side? I've discovered that I like it with not too much celery - an accent, rather than a main ingredient. A little carrot helps the sweet/sour equation to balance with more complexity to balance the multiple sour notes. Pine nuts - I'd rather scatter them on at the last moment. Anchovies - take 'em away, I want my caponata WITH fish (home-preserved sardines, grilled sardines, or other full-flavored fish), not tasting of fish itself. Oil - is more really better? Some people roast or steam their eggplants, and I suspect that deepfrying them and then dousing in boiling water might work well too. This aspect interests me, as the paterfamilial tum is sensitive to too much oil or fat. Saveur, based on an older recipe Standard recipe - Carluccio Standard recipe - Wright Caponata is obviously deeply embedded in the eGullet brain: Sicily, cook it and eat it TongoRad makes caponata

Haven't yet seen (=haven't looked) new harvest teas, but that "tricky" sencha looks very interesting indeed. I will look out for the new tea, because the weather this year has been very trying for most summer crops, but possibly quite good for tea - lots of rain and overcast weather both before and after monsoon season, and warm but not blisteringly hot. Avoiding mold on harvested leaves might be the biggest challenge, but for a "cool" summer, we haven't had the really low temps we had back in 1993, so I expect that leaf crops have grown fairly steadily.

I made both of these before the weekend, just to refresh my memory, and found that even the oil/vinegar recipe is much lighter and fresher tasting than oil-packed sardines, while the vinegar/milk recipe was exceptionally good midsummer eating.

A little trawling in Japanese leads me to believe that these are a fad, oops, I meant a recent development. One explanation I found was that a small amount of tea made with generously cut leaves can force the lid off in a conventional small teapot...a problem which is easily resolved by doing away with the lid!