helenjp

I remember my father using oils to flavor or perfume the few handmade medicines and ointments etc. that pharmacists still used to prepare themselves Back When. He was a keen woodworker as well, so paid some attention to the nature of oils - in the pharmacy, he liked almond oil as a mild-tasting, light oil that was also fairly tolerant of heat and pale in color. As for amount of dilution...hard for anybody else to say, as oils vary so much in intensity.

A day late and a dollar short, as usual...and no pix, sorry! Son1 was in charge of taking photos, but somehow, there's nothing on the camera. We made three types...all using the same batter. I think I used about 1 lb flour, a slightly smaller volume of dashi, 3 beaten eggs, and a ridiculous amount of naga-imo - about 10" length, grated. I had a large cabbage, so half of that shredded made a huge bowlful - added that to most of the batter, along with some chopped red pickled ginger, 1 finely chopped naganegi, 1 bunch of scallions, chopped, and a generous pack of ten-kasu (fried scraps from tempura). We fried up a little under 1lb of pork slices, and dropped the batter onto them in spoonfuls - the reverse of the normal procedure, but it works... For the second type, we dropped plain batter on to the fried pork, then fried a little shredded cabbage and onion separately, and turned the pancake over on top of that. This normally works well, but this time round, the huge amount of naga-imo made the batter very cohesive, so it didn't run down into the cabbage enough. The naga-imo does stop the batter getting too floury and stodgy though. We topped ours with the stanadard tonkatsu sauce, mayonnaise, ao-nori, and katsuo-bushi. Third type...drumroll...canned fruit fried on the hotplate with a dollop of plain batter on top. Our sons were the only takers for this version, but they thought "dessert okonomiyaki" was pretty good! I suggested mayonnaise with it, but they wisely ignored me.

That's adorable! I found a thingie on the net suggesting that you can improve the flavor of kuri-gohan by rubbing a little sugar into the peeled raw chestnuts, then tossing the bag of chestnuts with adhering sugar into the freezer...thaw and use. I used half a net full of chestnuts to make rice the usual way, and I have a bag full of frozen chestnuts with about 1 tsp sugar rubbed into them, waiting for The Experiment. The Horticulture Department where I teach had a big display on persimmons last year. They gave it the punning title of "Kaki-koushuu" (Summer/Persimmon School), and had many varieties of old and new persimmons, and several types with samples in various stages of soaking in shouchuu to remove astringency. My perverted son2 developed a taste for fresh, untreated, astringent persimmons, and got himself quite a following of screeching girlie horticulture students trying to figure out how he could eat them. Maybe boys can eat anything if they have enough girls watching them? If they have the display again this year I'll take some pix.

Hey, you're not supposed to DRINK the champagne you buy to celebrate a daughter's birth, you're supposed to cellar a crate or two of a good champagne from the vintage of her natal year until her wedding or her 21st birthday party!

Receipe for skyr and other Icelandic dishes My sister and her husband both instantly responded "Skyr!" when asked what the best thing they ate in Iceland was! I think it's also spelled skyrr.

I had the interesting experience of watching my husband turn green before my eyes when he put an ikizukuri ebi in his mouth, and it "jumped"...

Japan loves new words...in the 20+ years since I came, there have been numerous efforts...ita-meshi for casual italian, soto-meshi for eating out, uchi-gohan for eating in...etc. Sozai have been big in Japan for a long time, 25 years ago my first FIL used to buy almost everything from the department store basement on his way home, on the pretext that MIL had a weak heart...but in fact, she just hated to cook, and had never learned, because she grew up during the war. Lots of young people never cook anything more than soup and rice, if that, and many people seem to regard quite basic Japanese favorites as "too hard to cook at home". They are the children of my first parents-in-laws generation, and for them, bought deli items have gone from being an indulgence to a normal part of everyday eating. To cater to this generation (or to CREATE this generation as a market!), the sozai outlets have expanded from the Mom and Pop shop selling rice-balls, packs of rice, and a small range of nimono sold by weight, situated in some low-rent out-of-the-way backstreet (next to the tofu and the old ladies' dress shops), and the department store basements, and are now found in supermarkets and convenience stores. Supermarkets in particular have been rearranged so that the sozai are mostly closest to the entrance, and always a long day's march from the vegetable and meat sections favored by the DIY shoppers. Convenience store sozai tend more to the bento type.

One thing it does is allow you to cook things evenly without having all ingredients completely immersed in liquid , or to reduce the cooking liquid without drying things out. (Well, obviously...) I guess it makes efficient use of a smaller amount of sake, soy sauce and mirin, too. I imagine that western basting achieves much the same, but with more effort. Paper towels...I haven't tried that, but have used muslin, or a square of baking paper. It's a useful technique for cooking beans, definitely. I'd be curious to know where the technique originated too.

Yes, it does look as if Japan is yielding...oops, nearly got into a political rant there! I also heard that's where the problems lie...what happened to farmers' co-ops and federations, or representation on boards of meat industry corporations?...Did such companies all get bought out by the independent biggies, or was there never significant involvement of ranchers in processing and distribution? If there was, are there any signs of resurgence? I guess that primary producers are still not paying enough attention to distribution and gaining some control over it - my horticulture department English students in Japan are still focused entirely on growing a better crop, and have some notion of trotting off to market with a little covered basket, I think. Living in Japan has made me re-evaluate beef, anyway...I now think that it's more reasonable to derive everyday meat from smaller animals. Large animals like beef cattle maybe deserve to be more of a luxury, selling at higher prices that reflect the longer production cycle.

That's interesting! I know I've bought "shinmai" which could not possibly have been all new-crop rice, judging from the flavor and the crumbliness of the rice grains. I've given up paying higher prices for new-crop or fashionable brands, because I just don't feel that I'm getting the value that I pay for. Then the government research institutes and the big companies wonder why Japanese people eat less rice than they used to...!

That reminds me...I had some nice, cheap Sicilian reds over the summer. Plus a couple of awful ones, sorry I can't remember the names, but definitely worth a look! Impressive list, carswell. And now to bed for me, yawn.

Definitely - a fun drink, but not more.

Yeah, I remember when I asked my sister's Kenyan classmates at the Geothermal Institute about coffee-making in Kenya. They guffawed. "Pot on the back of the stove"was their consensus...so much for flannel drips, cold-water infusions, etc.... (On the other hand, I'd like it if people wouldn't laugh when I make coffee with a tea strainer. I happen to LIKE that sludge...)

Oh all right, I'll ask my sister who lives in the Netherlands again! She is a recovering geologist who specialize(d) in geothermal activity, and enjoyed her trip to Iceland hugely. I hear that drinking rather than eating is the thing to do, and I suspect that she probably went round Iceland on chocolate biscuits, but I'll ask anyway...

I bought just a little of this last year from the winery to bring back to Japan as gifts, plus another Sav B they called "Fat Cat" - a pleasant drink, from memory milder than the Selak's SB. The winery owners were bewailing the latest twists and turns of the NZ Post Office, which make it prohibitively expensive to send small orders of 6-12 bottles overseas by post. Very annoying. Yes, I did mean the "cat's piss" nose...to me, that sounds like what the other review called "green pea" flavors, but I'm just guessing. I'm no expert (as if I needed to say that!). To me, used to NZ SBs, French Sb tastes flat and metallic, though very smooth. NZ SB, on the other hand, can certainly get overblown. As to whether "pissy" is good or not....in my amateur way, how can I explain...it's more that without that and the grass, you would have an extremely floral/fruit wine. Those flavors, in moderation, pin the wine down somewhat.

There is another side to the sweet wine question...if you follow a low carb, or even a low-sugar diet for a while, you do become extremely sensitive to sweetness. Curiously enough, sensitive enough to notice the impact of added sugars, in comparison with the flavor of residual natural sugars.

Selak's Premium Selection Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc, 2002 Just under the 1,000 yen mark from Costco, Japan...not sure if it scrapes in under $10.00 in the US or not. I saw a review that said I would have said something more like "appropriately pissy and grassy", but it has plenty of taste though I think "elegant" might be pushing it. I have great respect for Selak's. They started out like any other West Auckland ex-sherry makers, rose rapidly during the '80s, and now make some very good wine indeed, but I am impressed with the care they put into their everyday wines. This wine is not one of the classic NZ savvies that bring tears of exultant nostalgia for misspent evenings drinking Marlborough wines on the wharf in Picton, but it'll do, it'll do...

This is my outside opinion...as long as the US does things like trying to force Japan to re-open their markets to US beef, instead of upgrading their BSE inspection and testing system, I won't be buying US beef. I gather from eGullet postings on this topic which I have followed in the past, that this is a minority attitude. It's not just safety that I'm concerned about...it's what that anti-reform attitude says to me about the beef industry's self-respect. It sounds to me (and I know I'm over-simplifying) that this is an industry that would rather bend Japan's rules than shape up. I don't much care if the US wants to let its beef industry sink, but I'd rather they just abandoned the Japanese market if they don't care to observe its requirements. What shocks me even more is to hear from a north american (who trains people in cutting and packing meat, and has his own business as well) that he and others are pushing for reform in this area (testing and inspection, hygiene and processing standards, and enforcement of standards and regulations) and getting slapped back. I admit that I don't much like grain-fed beef anyway, so I'm not suffering a great deal. Also sorry if I upset anybody, but I wanted to make a stand for some of the rest of the world, in the spirit of an honest exchange of opinon...

Forgot to say...it doesn't go too well with other foods (unless you're Dutch, maybe), but most Dutch people are passionate about "drop" - a salty licorice candy. You can likely buy it at European delicatessens.

OK, I asked my sister...who was DELIBERATELY OBSTRUCTIVE, in the way that only siblings know how to be. She guffawed at the idea of fine cooking for Dutch birthday parties, and maintained that she has been at birthday parties which featured cheese sandwiches in the central role. When she calmed down, she suggested crisps and beer, or conversely, if the birthday boy is under 30, beer and chips. That set her off again, but we finally progressed to... "A cream cake or selection of cream cakes always plays a central role at a Dutch birthday party". Home entertaining is always "Coffee in the morning, tea in the afternoon" -- so much so that people don't ask the time if invited for coffee, they know it must be for 10:30am! As far as Frisian specialties go, my brother in law and his Frisian great-uncle and aunt got as far as "some differences in the spices used for meatballs (bitterballen), cookies, spice loaves, etc", but were unable to be specific. Sounds as if he might prefer something more eclectic? Some recipes from the closely related Ost-Friesland region at... http://www.ostfriesen-info.de/mab/rezept2.htm Or just browse around at... http://www.i-friesland.com/

cdh already said what I was going to say, but why would that stop me? Sweetness brings out more variety in flavor (I think), so any off flavors in cheap sweeter wines are right there in bucketloads...and if you chill them really severely, you may be lucky enough to kill off any actual wine taste, and end up with nothing BUT the sweetness and the off-flavors! Since my husband can't tell the difference between nailpolish remover and pinot gris, I don't feel justified in spending a lot of money on wine for myself...what I'd like to see on a drinks menu (more often, anyway) is a wider range of wines by the glass, so that I can try out all sorts of things that I either can't find locally or can't justify buying untried. That way, I'd be totally unfettered by guilty doubts that I was keeping my husband from ordering the beer that he'd really prefer, and could try more than one wine with a meal, instead of struggling through a bottle that maybe turned out to be less wonderful than anticipated. In a restaurant with a reasonable throughput of diners who drink, wouldn't it be possible to offer a wider range of palate-educating wines by the glass or mini-carafe? Sorry to be sacreligious etc...

>>Pasta? << Yeah, I idly considered making Hungarian egg barley. I got through most of my cracked eggs - saved some for tomorrow's omelet, made a chocolate cake for son's friend (couldn't find my recipe, which involves boiling water poured over cocoa to make a very dark cake), found a goodie which uses a similar technique in eGullet's own chocolate cake thread. For some reason, most Japanese people like chocolate cake (maybe disguises that butter taste?!). Of course, this happened the day *after* I spent a couple of hours packing up my cake tins and putting them on top of a high sideboard because I rarely bake these days. ..

lemon curd (lemon cheese, lemon honey, same thing...good with other citrus too).

Unbelievable! I nipped downstairs thinking that I would pickle a few eggs ready for tired people (=me) coming home from School Sports Day on Saturday, unwilling to cook, but very willing to eat... ...and was greeted by two packs of frozen-solid eggs, burst in their shells I'm planning to make an Australian and New Zealand favorite dessert, Lemon Delicious Pudding - add more or less milk, depending on how quivery you want the pudding in its lemon sauce to be...here's a fairly small recipe, from a well known TV cook Allyson Gofton Lemon Delicious recipe Meanwhile, I'll be heading back up thread for ideas to use beaten egg...

Found a recipe googling for salted eggs (nothing like obsession...) The recipe for 12 duck eggs (the larger the egg, the more evenly they pickle) cited 1.5c rock salt for 4c water to make a brine that is poured cool over the eggs. They say 3 weeks, I think 2 is enough for hens' eggs. Used to make these often, learned them from the Chinese grocery I worked at when I was a student.