helenjp

Further comments on Rosolio; Strained twice, through a cloth and then through a coffee filter, which produced a clear (few tiny floaters) liquid with a pleasant lemony color from the whey, I imagine. I've set it aside to mature for a while. At present, even diluted, the first impression is "sweet" and "vanilla". If I made it again, I might add more lemon. The whey is not obtrusive, simply creates a rich and smooth feeling - and maybe this makes the sweetness more obtrusive than it would be otherwise. The strained milk solids, boozy and lemony as they are, are the best part so far!

Simple is what I'm thinking, bulleted points actually sound good to me... I'm fascinated that probably every eGulleteer would agree that they don't want too much fluff in menu descriptions. But watch what happened when somebody actually described the items on some proposed tasting menu items in a minimal way (in a topic which I read this morning but now can't find). The first reactions he got were from people saying "not enough information"; especially, not enough information to differentiate the dish from all the other similar offerings out there in restaurantland. So what does that perfect menu really read like, I wonder? Another point, when you pick up a menu, is it enough to know that this is fried chicken, or do you need to know at the ordering stage that this fried chicken isn't like *their* fried chicken?

Just applying the can-opener to this well-preserved topic! What do you want to see on the menu for a "foreign" cuisine? In countries like Japan, where a non-roman writing system is used, of course there's another level of incomprehensibility - if the menu is not romanized, you not only don't understand the words, you can't even read them or make a stab at pronouncing them. So if you walked into a restaurant, where do you want your menu to be, on a continuum from "authentic" experience/ understand nothing to full explanation/more info than the locals get? For example (content, not finished copy) - if you order this popular drink snack without knowing more than the name of the main ingredient, you will not get the expensive slices of monkfish popular for winter hotpots, but a "cheap treat": the grilled jaw of a deepsea fish, bristling with teeth, and with some flavorful but slightly stringy cheek meat: 1) あんこうのやなぎ焼き 2） ANKOU: Yanagi-yaki 3) Grilled Monkfish 4) Ankou no Yanagi-yaki, grilled jaw and cheeks of monkfish. 5) Deep-sea monkfish (ankou) is a winter treat highly prized in the Kanto region of eastern Japan. "Yanagi-yaki" is the grilled jaw of the monkfish, enjoyed for the flavorful cheek meat. Recommended orders: Order a hot flask of sake with the yanagi-yaki along with one of the monkfish liver dishes on our menu as snacks, and follow it with a main dish of tender, mild sliced flesh in a hotpot. Follow the hotpot with a bowl of hot rice, or onigiri (riceballs). And how different are your expectations, depending on whether you are 1) at an "ethnic" restaurant in your own country, 2) on a foreign country, eating "local" cuisine in a major city or resort area, or 3) in a foreign country doing business in a minor local town, eating at a local restaurant? It's possible for Hicksville Diner to provide menus in seven languages if they so choose, but is that something you even want, either as a "native local" or as a "foreign visitor?"

It seems we have lots of topics on bad menu writing, and I can see why that is: the only way to talk convincingly about food is with your mouth full! But here I'd really like to ask about good menu writing. I've read and translated reviews and interviews with artists, dancers, architects, and designers of every kind, my lip curled in disdain - and then had my breath taken away when I experienced their work directly. They do their stuff so well, but they talk about it so badly! Somebody should have stamped "Keep Away From Pens and Phones" on their foreheads at birth... So...whether you are a chef who has to write menus, or a writer who has to RE-write menus, or a diner who has to read menus, what makes a menu good?

Milder? My hairdresser gave me some "coral salt" (sango-shio) which apparently contains only about 3/4 of the sodium salt content of regular salts, but much more potassium and some calcium and magnesium. Is your Sasakawa salt also milder because of the high non-sodium content, do you think? I wonder if the high non-sodium content is one reason why old pickle recipes use such a high percentage of salt. What about the texture? Is it a flakey dry "yaki-shio", or a wet salt in small or large crystals?

Let us know what you find - and don't hesitate to nag! You never know what you might bring about...a bit of a shake-up wouldn't hurt the dairy world. I always suspected that in NZ it was a Scottish fondness for salt that led to salty butter (I admit, I often do prefer salted butter even where unsalted butter "should" be used). Isn't the water content related to salt content??? Tastelessness = not cultured. I bet you'd be happier with a cultured butter! It was a big mistake buying my first pack of cultured butter, because I didn't want to use fresh-cream butter for anything after that. I use a lot more oil in Japan than I ever did in NZ, because the butter here tends to sit in the shops and get stale. Maybe as well as buttered toast in your future, there are chiffon cakes and exotic nut butters?

My mistake, I "remembered" her as a double expat! I think there are quite a few European-style butters made in Australia, aren't there?

Hi Sandra, You are in New Zealand, aren't you? One of the big companies used to make cultured butter, but I haven't seen it when I've been in NZ recently. I did see one product "flavored" with lactic acid rather than actually fermented with the culture, but that was a while ago. I'll ask a friend who should know, but why don't you contact (=nag) some of them about better butter products for eating/baking and low-water-content butters for baking yourself? They do tend to focus on exports and let the domestic market fade into the background, so it's worth stirring things up a bit! Seems that Karikaas is the most popular small-manufacturer cultured butter at present. I believe that Atalanta is NZ-made, but have not seen it. Anchor butter...I'm not sure whether it's "Fonterra" or "Anchor" when it's at home in NZ! I also noticed that dairy products in NZ are quite regional - if you contact manufacturers or ask around at delicatessens (even if they don't have what you want in stock), you may find out about alternatives. When I first saw Lurpak, I was astounded at how pale and "mild" (to me, back then, bland) it was - cows grassfed almost all year produce yellower, stronger-flavored butter. I hope that somebody in NZ can give you better information!

Le Peche, the beans I have are a bit smaller than what I've seen in the past. Is that relevant, or was I just lucky to get some nice beans, regardless of size?

My bag of lovely beans just says "feijao preto" - if you do a Google image search, you will find quite clear photos. They are definitely not Chinese/Japanese black beans, which are a type of soybean, and would never get as soft and flavorful as the feijao preto.

Love to see recipes! I've only got enough black beans for one batch, so I need to choose carefully! My black bean supply has dwindled so fast because they were particularly tasty when cooked in a pressure-cooker. Does anybody like to cook their feijoada in a pressure-cooker?

Dessert...isn't this a chance to BUY dessert? I don't know about calories, but something small and pretty from Pompadour? Small and exotically flavored from Puccini? Or an out-of-season extravagance such as a few early berries, or some tropical fruit?

No, I don't think so - just that the alcohol-soluble (fat-soluble) aromatic compounds will marry with the oily elements in the citrus juice (most likely a little bit from the peel), in the same way that they would marry with the alcohol than with the syrup or juice in a cocktail. (In other words, fat/oil/alcohol are similar). Just to out of interest, I chased up the sweet/bitter thing a bit more, and discovered that this research claims that we actually sense sweetness and bitterness using the same biological structures. Makes me more and more amazed that sweetness and bitterness so often go together in plants. So while we know that bitterness will increase the flow of bile, and sourness will increase salivation, a purely sour and bitter aperitif would take a lot of getting used to. We know that certain tastes influence our perception of other tastes - sweetness is different depending on what we taste along with it, and also depending on what we taste before or after it. Something incredibly complex is happening when we use bitters in a mixed drink...but I'm a long way from knowing just what that is! Aromatic chemicals are entering our bloodstream through our nasal mucous membranes and our lungs, too, and possibly do things like stimulate or suppress heartbeat or respiration as well as influence our appeites, though I hesitate to say that bitters are going to alter your state of mind or induce fits, etc etc.! Other people understand it and I just about follow it so true! Can't even explain clearly what I know from herbs, which is that the taste is an important part of their availability to our bodies. You can chew an aromatic and bitter herb, or you can drink it in a tincture or solution, or you can grind it up and put it in a capsule, but the herb will be less effective in a capsule, because you don't taste it. So my guess is that bitters not only modify our perception of how other ingredients taste, they possible arouse our senses so that we are more alert to flavors in general.

Yes, I hear you. I don't think it's possible to expect yourself to be perfect sweetness and light all the time - just keep reminding yourself that dinner will get done, efficiently or inefficiently, it's no big deal... A relative lived with us for quite a few years - he has a chronic mental illness which means that he is slow to learn new things, and doesn't have the best grasp of cause and effect. Then he lost his job, so he was at home A LOT, and lonely. And then he started going to a program where he learned some cooking skills. This lead to things like "practicing chopping cabbage" which involved hours of very slow chopping, preventing me getting into the kitchen at all to make myself some lunch. When I was making dinner, he tended to hang over my shoulder and either asking me about everything, or telling me how a professional (such as himself) would do things , Not to mention using up entire bottles of sesame oil in frying one dish of chopped cabbage for his lunch, "because it's so healthy". Dishwashing for one meal was his responsibility, and it took literally hours, and who knows how much water. I would nearly weep trying to find things like saucepan lids, which had been neatly put away in the potato bin, "because there was a gap there just the right size." I never did find the solution to that, but switched to Corelware, and tried not to put anything unfamiliar in the washing-up! Bless the fellow, he has not a malicious bone in his body, but I definitely felt that my territory was being invaded. And I admit to a sense of relief that he now lives closer to his work center. As for the hovering problem, I think that if the hoverer wants company, what works for me is: putting a comfortable chair in the kitchen and planting him in it, then inviting him to tell me all about "the perfect method of carrying a saucepan", or giving him a magazine about very healthy food and getting him to talk to me about it while I get the cooking done. Another tip is to put a heavy cover over the dining table, and take food that needs preparation in there and do it sitting down - with him in another chair at the table. Somehow the table protected my "space" a little more! Can you put some small thing up in the kitchen that you really love to look at, so that you can look at it and mentally "escape" to your own space from time to time?

This really made me laugh! Obviously my concept of DisneyWorld is way out of line! Surely noisy guests are noisy guests, whatever their age? Admittedly diners are not paying for exclusive use of restaurant facilities, but if you are seated next to an obviously noisy party and not offered an alternative, how many restaurants would allow you to reschedule your booking without penalty? The worst-behaved kid I've seen at a restaurant was the child of a guest, eleven-year old step-grandchild of the guest of honor. Not possible for me to say anything about her behavior, though she was the eldest child there, and far worse behaved than her own younger sibling. Fortunately, we had booked a separate room, so young Empress Catherine only made our group miserable, rather than an entire restaurant. Ironically, the private room was designed to be less tiring for the two most elderly guests...instead of being turned into a torture chamber!

A metallic taste could be something bad, but as far as I know, a metallic taste isn't very likely to occur from eating raw fish with high contents of methyl mercury (that is, organic mercury). That is, the fact that raw fish does or doesn't taste metallic probably isn't a very accurate guide to mercury content. More likely, you have a good sense of smell and taste, and pick up the "iron" taste of blood in rare steak or tuna sashimi. Alternatively, some iron salts used to prevent fish and meat from staling might leave a tang, but that seems an unlikely explanation if you notice this taste most times when you eat raw tuna.

An interest in herbs made me wonder why so many naturally sweet plants have a bitter principle along with the sweetness. I often wonder why people seem to naturally like a balance of sweet/bitter flavors. Please excuse my iggerant science, but it seems that bitter flavor compounds are more likely to dissolve in fat or alcohol (while sugars and starches tend to dissolve in water). Adding bitters to your juice probably "grabs" and modifies/mellows the fat-soluble aspects of the grapefruit taste. Since bitters also include some water and water-soluble flavors, it does also modify the grapefruit sugars to some extent. Highly aromatic chemicals are also often fat/alcohol soluble, so no doubt bitters have at least as big an impact on the aroma of a mixed drink as on the taste.

Are Lebanese brands generally considered to be a good choice, or is Cortas a special case? Is there a clear difference between products from France, Lebanon, and India, for example? (I don't just mean quality, I mean the actual fragrance) Diluting extract...I wondered about that, and was interested to hear your response. However, the popularity of rose cosmetics, room fresheners etc in Japan has meant that we see a HUGE number of rose "oils", "extracts" etc, mostly from China. They are mostly not really suitable for use in food, and don't have a really attractive scent.

Yes, my whole post was pretty much either quoting or summarizing from the linked sources, sorry if I didn't show that clearly. I wanted to do two things - show what issues are being discussed by Japanese consumers, and also show what kind of information is available to the averagely curious consumer. I'd be interested to hear what other coastal and island East Asian and Southeast Asian countries are saying on this issue, because the impression I get is that there is quite an east:west divide regarding the safety of wild fish. As you say, the information and conclusions are quite different from current western recommendations (though the "official" recommendations vary even among western countries). On the one hand, most food-safety coverage in Japanese media appears to concentrate on individual companies; rarely does anybody take on on entire industries - the dioxin and endocrine disrupters fuss is probably all but forgotten by most people, and it's quite possible that mercury issues could go the same way. Let's hope that we see more information made available - and it would be great if people who are aware of useful resources in Japanese or English would post about them. On the other hand, it is true that a big swing away from fish in a country with little agrarian land would have big consequences. According to government statistics, Japan's self-sufficiency in seafood in 2005 was just over 60%, for meat that was only a little over 40% - while most meat-eating countries were at least 80% self-sufficient in meat, and many had surpluses. Those figures probably influence the FSC's management of mercury intake much more than if policy were determined at a less central level. Somewhere in those links was a comment on the fact that mercury levels in Japanese people have been falling for many years now. No doubt this is also seen as a reason not to rush to implement economically and politically sensitive restrictions. Meanwhile, the issue of diet for pregnant and nursing women in Japan is clouded by the issue of fish as traditional diet, and the issue of maternal weight gain. Whatever the rights and wrongs of the maternal weight gain issue, Japan does have a high rate of low birth weights for babies, a rate which started to climb at the same time that women started receiving advice to limit weight gain very strictly during pregnancy. The MHLW comment about not wanting to put pregnant women off their fish is probably linked to a real risk of pregnant Japanese women cutting their protein intake too far - especially if they perceive milk as loaded with dioxin, meat as "fatty" , eggs as possibly riddled with salmonella, and chicken as contaminated with hormones. With the negative image of imported food here, the high prices of domestic meat and chicken, and the old-fashioned image of soy foods, young women's diets are at risk of being low in protein. The reason I translated that great long list of species and recommended limits was because that kind of specific information is not easy to come by in English for women having children here. I will try to add some information later on just which commonly available (in Japan) fish tend to have the lowest levels of mercury, but it looks as if I will have to comb through species lists myself to get that - I haven't found a handy compilation yet.

I grow these because they stand up to "cooking ahead" better than regular green beans (=great for lunchboxes), and they stand up to aggressive seasoning too. They seem to work best when stirfried and then simmered, rather than straight boiling. Because they stand up to longer cooking than green beans, they go well with eggplant in a vegetable-rich variation of Chinese ma-po tofu (just sub the eggplant for the beancurd). I like them in a "thoren" (dryish south Indian curry with coconut), because the slight sweetness seems to go well with the beans, and the dry texture is great for lunchbox food. Yard-long beans, snake beans are not just a variant cultivar of green beans, they are a different variety, related to other Vigna species such as mung beans, azuki beans, black-eyed peas etc. The pods therefore have a slightly different texture and taste from regular green beans, and they need to be eaten younger - before you can see any hint of swelling from the ripening beans inside the pod. I'm not familiar with the paler green Indian types, but generally with the Chinese and Japanese types, the slightly shorter cultivar s are better eating than the very, very long ones. They won't germinate reliably until temperatures are over 30 C (in the 90s F), and the closer the temperatures are to the mid-30s C (100-plus F), the better they like it. However, pests rarely trouble them and they are easy to grow, even in containers.

I'm tied to the computer for most of this month, but the Tokyo area halal shops which have websites don't list it. (Ikebukuro-Takadanobaba is a good area, for some reason). There are not so many Turks in Japan, but plenty of Pakistanis and Iranians, so I'm sure it's around...just needs to be found. Japanese department stores all seem to stock the same French brand - Monteux - little bit pricey, don't know anything about the brand, and also requires a trip into a more moneyed area of town to find it! Thanks for information on the Cortas brand, it was listed on at least one online shopping site at reasonable prices, so good to know. I'm still very interested to hear opinions of different brands though - I had a small supply left over from my father's pharmacy (from back when some medicines were compounded by pharmacists!), but it was of very average quality. Secondly, you can recently buy rose-flavored chewing gum in Japan, and it's vile! I really want to avoid toothpastey-geraniol type of flavor. As for orange-blossom, is ALL orange-blossom water from bitter orange blossom, or not?

I'm looking to buy rosewater and orange-blossom water, and I'd love some advice on reliable brands or personal preferences. I've found lots of online stores that sell rosewater or orange-blossom water...but only one which ships to Japan, so far.

It's popular these days in a Japanesque "Chinese" recipe for chicken livers - livers dusted in cornflour and a very little five spice powder are fried till nicely crusted, then simmered briefly in soy sauce, rice wine, and perhaps ginger and dried tangerine peel, then allowed to steep in the cooking liquor.

I noticed that one of my favorite medium-sized fish, trevally, is bang in season right now in Hawaii. Is it popular in Hawaii? And how is it enjoyed there? I can't buy it in Japan, but please help me dream !

I made Rosolio the other day - milk, sugar, lemon juice/flesh and zest, vanilla bean, grain spirits. The milk should curdle, apparently - but so far it hasn't. It's so cold in my kitchen that I am sure it will be perfectly preserved until some archaeologist digs us all out of the permafrost in years to come, but shouldn't the milk curdle pretty much immediately? Maybe the juice is locked up in the sugar, and will curdle the milk in good time?