helenjp

Yes, I was thinking of the texture. Japanese flour has less gluten than US flour, and I tend to add a titch more water anyway, so the bread doesn't usually seem dry...but you're right, Pullman loaves are very moist and springy!

Off-color pork? I think not! Nope, good family fun only, sir.

Japanese...the automatic translation is clunky ポークのない世界は私のための世界でない Pooku no nai sekai wa watashi no tame no sekai denai How about this version, crafted by the entire family "hive-brain" and even including a pun on "pork"... Yo no naka - ton nashi nante tonde mo nai! 世の中　―　トンなしなんてとんでもない!

Surprising number of nostalgic items in this blog! My family kept bantams when I was a child. They laid remarkably well, and were much cleverer than the Leghorns, which used to lay eggs on bare branches in the lemon tree with expected results. Small new potatoes - they really are too good to pass up when they are new because they are young and just grown, not ground-stored potatoes from plants whose top-growth was killed off with defoliant . I see you have loganberries. The general wisdom in northern New Zealand is that loganberries withstand warm humid conditions without succumbing to mold much better than raspberries do. Is there much difference in ease of cultivation between the two in Cambridge? Middle English? Leave it to me! Just as Jackal10 tells us in his instructions, this means "bring out the blender"...

Heh, heh, as I suspected, my "large" pan which barely fits in my Japanese oven is not large by US standards! It's about 10 inches long... I enjoyed looking at all the bakeware though, thanks to Abra and andiesenji! What happened to Berlinsbreads? Still thinking of trying these pans?

Freeze away! I think a lot of the cheaper stuff has already been frozen once, mind you...

I have one, haven't used it for a while I admit. It seemed to stick a bit more readily than some of my other pans, and I suppose the dough is pressing firmly against the sides of the pan, so it's worth getting a good quality pan. My pan is a bit big - it would take 2 loaves' worth of dough easily, and I would use it more often if it were a bit smaller. Of all breads I've made, this must be the closest in texture to a bread-machine loaf. I'd be interested to hear whether other people agree!

I must look out for the tube tamago-dofu - the Japanese product is so fragile that you have to be very careful when turning it out of the container - I think it would break up if you stir-fried it.

I think S. niphonius is sawara, and S. maculatus gets called sawara because of its close resemblance... S. australasicus is blue mackerel, though I think it goes by other names too. Personally, I would avoid using the term "horse mackerel" if I could, because it is used for quite a variety of fish. Aji is often called "yellowtail", haven't seen it called horse mackerel, but then I haven't seen Japanese restaurants in the US. The dried or salt-grilled styles in that thread are best with ma-saba, because of the extra fat, though of course they're not too bad with goma-saba either. I'm hoping to find recipes for cooked goma-saba, nanban-zuke is a good call! About the only other thing I do with it is a curry-flavored tatsuta-age...but I plan to try a kind of coarse-chopped satsuma-age/fish patty.

Hmmm...if you see daylight during exam marking period, they can't be working you hard enough . Enjoying the herb pictures, especially the close-up of elderflower. One of the earlier photos looks like lovage, I'd even say it might be a wild relative of lovage, but can't recall the name of the plant I'm thinking of...so I'll say lovage. (Retires to at least arrange student essays into strata, if not actually do any nasty marking...)

I reeled in a couple of large, juicy goma-saba at the supermarket yesterday (it was actually quite a feat, and took DS2 and I several minutes, as they were so slippery and heavy ). Just about to bake them with herbs as I tend to do in summer when I don't want the rich miso recipes associated with winter ma-saba varieties, when I started to wonder what other Japanese dishes there are for this fish. DH is paranoid about parasites in saba, so we no longer eat it raw. Looking forward to hearing more, as we are on a Vitamin D binge just at present, and will surely be eating plenty of fish for a while yet. Note: ma-saba or ao-saba: chub mackerel, atlantic mackerel etc. goma-saba: blue mackerel or pacific mackerel, sometimes spotted mackerel or spanish mackerel, though "spotted mackerel" is also used to refer to "sawara" (a type of seerfish), and "spanish mackerel" is happily applied to any fish that looks a bit like a mackerel, as far as I can tell!

Interesting! I prefer silken tofu in ma po dofu, but my husband prefers cotton. Guess who wins...

Origamicrane, this is driving me nuts! You have to explain...either you have some pretty unusual tamago-dofu slicing technology, or you're talking about something else...surely?

How thick is American toast? Cold thick toast is just shoe-leather, while cool thin toast is pretty good. Hot toast is fine too, but not soggy hot toast that has sat on a plate for more than a few seconds...

Yeah, that's what I meant by gritty! Good thing somebody knew what I meant, since I obviously didn't! Making cream cheese myself...any time they start selling cream in packages larger than 1 cup in Japan and knock a few zeros off the price, I'll be happy to experiment! Oh yes, and Philly is definitely MUCH firmer than cream cheese I buy in New Zealand, but as I haven't been there for nearly 2 years, my memory is getting a bit unreliable.

Plant stress is apparently a hot topic at the moment, though I'm not really sure why. There are some curious things that happen in the world of plants...I noticed that some herbs I was too lazy to transplant and which were *seriously* stressed developed much hotter and more bitter flavors than their more pampered siblings - not all components of the flavor were equally intensified (or maybe they were, and I just couldn't tell).

Some very useful comments on both ingredients and process, thank you! Cream cheese without gum - I had never noticed the stabilizers in the list of ingredients before! I also suspect that I like a definite tang of salt in pastries and cookies, so I'll try adding a little more salt too.

I've used Philly, and also a cheap tube-packaged cream cheese (that was the one that felt gritty, couldn't help wondering if it had been "solidified" with milk powder or something like that ). The rugelach recipe I used was from Rose Levy Berenbaum's Christmas baking book - her recipes are very handy for people outside the U.S., because of the obsessive measurements - gives me a starting point if the texture is not what I expected in a new recipe. I've tried other cream cheese pastry recipes, but not with great results - maybe I'm just too wedded to the taste of butter!

You might want to get the possibility of allergy checked out - it's serious. My sister reacted badly to a bee sting, and by the time my mother got her to the doctor, her heart stopped beating - luckily she responded to a stimulant injection, but she was also warned that a second reaction would be worse.

I agree, Challah is not brioche, but egg breads can be dry. I think I'd use all milk, not milk and water. Other possibilities: Too much yeast/rising time too short (no time to develop flavor). Baked too long - egg breads seem to cook quite a bit faster than other breads.

I'd appreciate some opinions! About 10 years ago, I thought I'd learn how to make cream cheese pastries. I've fiddled with them on and off since then, and I hate 'em. Rugelachs and similar things I've used it for always seem utterly bland and tasteless, and occasionally gritty to boot. Is that just what cream cheese pastry is, or could I leave the cream cheese out of the fridge for a while to ripen, or should I have chilled the finished items down more and baked them in a hotter oven...or is there a "better brand" of cream cheese out there that I don't know about???

I think Hiroyuki is right, in fact I've heard that "ramen" is a new word and that it used to be called "shina-soba" but I can't remember just when... Yaki-soba...makes a regular lunchtime appearance around here because 1) most kids can cook it themselves on a table-top hotplate when I'm frantic with deadlines and 2) even the fussiest visiting kids like it, and they like it even more when they've made it themselves. We usually use more veg than recommended - an assortment of onion (especially the new onions available now), Chinese chives, bean sprouts, carrot, bamboo shoot, red (or failing that green) peppers, and occasionally lettuce and wakame. Meats: pork shreds and sliced chikuwa (tubular fish sausage). Even lettuce and wakame have made an appearance. We use the powdered sauce, because that's what visiting kids expect, and now we've got used to it too! I use little or no water, because the larger than usual proportion of veges releases plenty. Frying the noodles separately before combining with the veges and meat keeps the noodles firmer (and solves that "overflowing wok/hotplate" problem). Occasionally I fry some eggs, breaking the yolk and swirling them just a bit, and scatter pieces over the finished noodles. Serve with extra sauce (I use less powdered sauce than we really need) and aonori/red ginger. Mayo....nope. I don't care for cold cream with my food!

watch out for peanut miso, occasionally that name is used for a sweet thing which seems to be peanuts in mizu-ame! A big shock to the taste-buds if they are set to the "miso" setting...

Straight from the pack it is... I sometimes make a "silver and gold" cold tofu, with alternating cubes of egg tofu and silken tofu, with a little dashi/soy/mirin poured over it and maybe a sprig of young sansho leaves (kinome), but that's the most - tamago tofu is too fragile for much manipulation, anyway!

Hmmm...for me I think it's the cream cheese, not the cheesecake! I do like the really old, old style of thinner, drier, baked cheesecake, but not refrigerator cheesecake. I keep thinking I must have only tried cheap cream cheese or something, but I can't a cream cheese pastry (rugelach etc.) that I like at all. I was just about to post for help in the pastry forum, but still can't decide if I even want to like rugelach!