Bigfoot

My grandma gave me her old Mastering the Art of French Cooking (Julia Child) when I was in university about the same time my mom gave me New Chinese Cooking School (Kenneth Lo). I was lucky to start out with two comprehensive books -- I still refer to the Chinese one a lot and the French one occasionally.

Buri teriyaki. Pork kakuni (yum).

Ah, I should clarify -- I didn't have to kill it, the fishmonger took care of that for me. I just skinned, cleaned & filleted it. I looked at it as part of a larger cooking project I have: every week, buy an ingredient I've never worked with before, and make it tasty. A challenge every week!

I'm on a definite Thai kick this week. Had simple green curry with pork & little Thai eggplants, plus larb with lots of lettuce & fresh mint/cilantro. Went freestyle on the curry (no recipe), but used the new good fish sauce (Golden Boy brand) for the first time, Thai sweet basil & fresh kaffir lime leaves found in Chinatown -- very nice.

Actually, once I tried to make kabayaki on my own with humorous results. I was visiting Japan a couple of years ago after having moved back to San Francisco, and picked up a great cookbook called Washoku no Kihon Gijutsu with all kinds of illustrations of how to prepare seafood. I flipped through and was inspired by the unagi section -- could I make fresh kabayaki in SF, and abandon the cryopacked frozen stuff? A quick trip to Kappabashi made me the proud owner of a meuchi (metal stake for basically nailing the eel to your cutting board) and long metal kushi rods for grilling. Back in SF, I got my hands on a fresh eel from Chinatown and set about skinning and filleting it (stubborn to skin, not bad cleaning/filleting). Made the sauce for it, and then discovered the reason that most people don't make kabayaki at home: THE SMOKE! As I should have realized, unagi is a really oily fish (okay, eel), and grilling it in the kitchen resulted in smoke filling the entire house and setting off *all* of my smoke alarms. After pausing cooking to deactivate all of the alarms and calm my alarmed Japanese cat, I finished cooking the kabayaki and tried it -- really, not bad! But I'll never do it inside again! I checked out The Barbeque Bible, and it suggests wrapping two bricks in foil and placing them on an outside charcoal grill -- thus imitating the yaki-dai that suspend the skewers over the coals without letting the food touch any grates. Maybe it's time to try that out!

Hot takoyaki just off the grill plate, with mayonnaise and toothpicks for two!

I've had good luck heating up pre-cooked kabayaki by putting the whole thing (either thawed or frozen -- right out of the freezer) on a foil-covered baking sheet and putting it under the broiler until the top gets slightly crispy-looking. I've tried putting it in a 350 deg. oven the same way, but prefer the broiler method (much better texture).

Lotus root tempura -- mmm. Quail egg kushikatsu.

90 from me (including Thai Food on its way!)