StephP's Profile
Inexpensive source for passionfruit / lilikoi flavor, recommendations?
Hi all,
I'm looking for an inexpensive way to get a lot of passionfruit flavor since the fruit is too expensive out here. Can anyone recommend good sources and brands to look for? location is pacific northwest.
ie. syrup or Asian brand canned stuff or whatever works
Thanks in advance!
Best Grocery Stores - Chinese, Korean, Vietnamese????
Thanks for the suggestions and the WW link, that's a fantastic resource!
Best Grocery Stores - Chinese, Korean, Vietnamese????
I'm needing good cheap sources for Chinese, Korean, Japanese and Vietnamese groceries.
based in SW but can make weekend trips into suburbs.
looking for good cheap veggies and fruits
good qpr for meats and fish in tanks, oxtail bones etc
other Chinese and Korean specific ingredients
Please send your best ideas , thansk in advance
What do you think of New Zealand OSB (other than sauvingon blanc)?
I liked the OSB in NZ as well. A few faves that I haven't seen in the states...
Fromm in Marlborough had my favorite dry and off-dry rieslings
Te Whare Ra in Marlborough's cool climate syrah
Greystone in Waipara and Pegasus Bay's versions of gewurtz, riesling etc.
Dry River has an amaranth gewurztraminer (not the lovat one)
Ata Rangi's alsatian style pinot gris
Mint Hot Cocoa/Chocolate Mix -- any recipes ??
Hi,
Land O Lakes Mint Hot Chocolate is wonderful but too much for
the pocketbook in the amounts I'm consuming. .
Anyone have recipes for Mint Hot Chocolate that are as good as?
Gracias,
Cheap Online sites for Bulk food like powdered milk, cocoa?
hi all,
Where do you shop online for cheap bulk items?
eg.
powdered milk (to make yogurt)
cocoa powder
mint flavoring
Thx in advance!
Suggestions needed for a substitution in a granola bar recipe -- instead of honey...?
Hi all,
I've a granola bar recipe that I'm experimenting with and it isn't glueing together, mainly because I've reduced the honey in the recipe (too sweet!) and I don't have access to any wheat germ/flaxseed.
Dry ingredients --- 2 C oatmeal, 1 C nuts, 1 C coconut
Glue --- 2 tbsp butter, 1/4 C brown sugar, 2 tbsp honey instead of 2/3 C, and vanilla
The "glue" was melted together and mixed with the toasted dry ingredients and then baked for 25 minutes at 300 F. After it cooled and was cut, the bars crumbled too easily and it was still too sweet.
Do y'all have any good alternatives for glueing the thing together but reducing the sweetness?
Thanks in advance!
What were your 'discovery wines' of 2009?
just nice discoveries, nothing super wow comes to mind right now.
an alsatian style pinot gris from ata rangi and their pinot noir as well.
03 manu riesling from martinborough vineyards (slightly botrytised)
food pairing suggestions for 2004 Corino Barolo (Arborino)?
I'm looking for suggestions on dishes to make to pair with this wine:
2004 Corino Barolo. It's the Giovanni Corino and I think its the Arborino.
BTW, there's more summer ingredients here since I'm in the Southern Hemisphere.
Also, should this be opened for a few hours before serving or not?
Thanks in advance,
Girls, Orange County Bridal Shower Ideas, HELP!
Ladies on the board,
I'm outside the US and planning a bridal shower in OC. I haven't been
in the area for years and could really use your input!
The attendees might have small kids.
Activity centered would be nice. (high tea, or a spot with painting pottery nearby, any other ideas??)
Most people are near and can fly into John Wayne Airport, Orange County.
15-20 people.
Any memorable bridal shower ideas/locations recently?
Thanks so much in advance!!!
Microbrewery tour along the 101?
Thanks for the input, it was great.
Could you recommend two choices and help us with the choices?
which of these? lagunitas or speakeasy or anchor
which of these? moylans or iron springs pub
so far the ones we've decided are bear repub, russian river, flavor bistro maybe, and rogue in sf.
Need Cool Wine Bar Atmosphere Near Moscone
press club has a good looking space and would be interesting for an out of towner. check the hours though and see if they work for your schedule
-----
Press Club SF
20 Yerba Buena lane, San Francisco, CA
Microbrewery tour along the 101?
Looking for trip planning advice.
Which would you visit? If there's any good additions, please add.
Anderson Valley
North Coast
Bear Republic
Russian River
Lagunitas
Moylans
Marin Brewing
Speakeasy
Drake's
end in SF with Toronado/Zeitgeist/ or something for Moonlight.
Recipes from the 2008 Chowing with the Hounds Picnic!
i'd like the mochiko recipe if possible!
Chowing with the Hounds Picnic, 2008 Report.
I arrived later in the afternoon so missed some of the dishes, but i liked everything that was left actually. The highlights were the kebab meat, avocado soup, the cucumber-honeydew salad, the raspberry sorbet from scream, pistachio gelato, the mochiko, melanie's wines. i was kind of hoping the squid dish from last year would make an appearance, but everything was pretty great. good job everybody! it was a hot day but the conversation was great.
Recommended tomato recipes to go with Arneis
heirloom tomato recipes to go with Arneis? I've one from sfchronicle, but am seeking any great recommendations.
Thanks
The super Danish waffle cookie --- Gouda's Gilde Siroopwafelen, where to find? ---
Any leads on where to find the Danish waffle cookie?
Gouda's Gilde Siroopwafelen in the Bay Area? I'm in Napa, but willing to drive.
Gouda's Gilde Siroopwafelen in North Bay?
Looking for Gouda's Gilde Siroopwafelen!
Has anyone seen them in IKEA, Tj's, Whole Foods, Costplus, Dean and Deluca's? If not, what specialty food stores in North Bay have you seen them?
Thanks in advance!
Korean market or kimbap near Napa/Vallejo/Fairfield?
Looking for a (1) Korean market and also (2) places that offer kimbap in the Napa Valley, Vallejo, Fairfield area.
Thanks in advance!
St. Helena alternative to Taylor's Refresher
the chichi breakfast burritos from sunshine are a local secret. they tend to sell out quickly, but are definitely worth the five bucks. The vegetarian ones are especially yummy -- mushrooms and roasted red peppers.
Place to grab kimbap (Korean "sushi") in downtown SF?
Any leads on kimbap north of the Bay, in Sonoma side, Vallejo, or closer to Napa?
whats the max and minus temp. your wine can sustain?
storing in refrigerator --
sometimes condensation can cause your labels to come off.
and sometimes, very rarely, you might also see a small amount of clear crystals come out of solution, it won't affect taste, think of it as sediment.
Working thru Andrea Immer's book
Just started working thru the pairing lessons in Andrea Immer's book, Great Tastes Made Simple and decided to write up a report about it for anyone interested in the book.
The first chapters list descriptors and orders wine categories (eg. NZ SB and alsace PG) by intensity. Subsequent chapters are a taste lesson (acidity, corn, herbal tastes, earthy) with her recommended foods and wines. As an entry point, the book begins with three wines and three foods, All nine combinations are designed to illustrate that most wines with most foods are fine, but certain foods will be better than others. I improvised from the pantry to make certain flavors.
The wines I ended up with:
2006 Domaine Fouassier Sancerre
2006 Brancott Sauvignon Blanc
2004 Gallo of Sonoma Chardonnay
2003 Chianti Rufina 'Selvapiana'
2004 Rosemont Diamond Label Shiraz
San Patricio Fino Sherry
The foods:
proscuitto
toasted almonds
marinara pasta
cold tomato toss with pasta, olive oil, salt.
heirloom tomatoes, basil, goat cheese
bok choy cooked in coconut milk
smoked mozzarella
homemade hummus that ended up tasting more like sesame)
bread with different oils (EVOO, truffle, sesame)
corn-jalapeno chowder with grilled corn kernels
popcorn
duxelles
Experimented pretty much everything with everything, since bad pairings are informative like good ones. The chianti with the pasta was probably the favorite for everyday things, and I wouldn't mind fino sherry with roasted almonds on a more regular basis. Adding different herbs to the goat cheese and eating them with the Chianti tended to make certain features pop (eg. oregano). The chianti had a lot of flavors going on in it, so it was a little more fun to work with. Also white truffle oil was pretty amazing stuff, it reminds me of chartreuse in flavor intensity and complexity.
The Sancerre with goat cheese was good, but too heavy for everyday fare. But it was pretty interesting seeing the contrast with the NZ Sauvignon Blanc when eaten with the same foods.
It was hard to make the Rosemont Shiraz taste palatable with anything, since its really one big alcoholic raspberry. From all her talk about corn, I kind of expected the corn chowder to work with the CA Chard, but it really didn't do anything for me. Instead the buttery popcorn and Thai coconut-based dishes were better with the CA Chard. She also describes a link between sesame oil and Chard, but the sesame-tasting hummus was actually a little more interesting with the fino sherry. It kind of made me wonder whether dandan noodles in Chinese food, and various Korean foods with sesame flavors might go well with fino.
Ultimately, it may have been cheaper to register for a class on wine-food pairing. But it's a little more free-form and fun to do the pairings at home. Plus, it's an interesting exercise to find out what's available in Bevmo, Costplus, and local wine shops, which for me ended up being Corti Brothers.
Wine pairing for Italian meal
Maria, Whiner,
Thanks for the detailed responses and articles!
Steph
Favorite Dish(es) and what they say about Wine Preferences
i've always wondered if you knew people's food preferences, whether you'd be able to predict what wines they'll prefer and which ones they'd really dislike.
It's not exactly a rustic food preference matched to rustic wine preference, but i've noticed flavor preferences can be consistent across beverages. For instance, there's an medicinal herb flavor in certain soups from northern china and korea that is found in chartreuse. So I like chartreuse. And I've always liked oolong and jasmine tea growing up (tea is almost like a food to me), so white wines with the same kind of scent profile are a plus -- tea, jasmine, white flowers --- which single estate coffees from Panama tend to have as well. I'm fond of smoked anything or slightly toasty food and that slight toast is easy to find in red wine, I love toasted almonds, hazelnuts, cheeses with nutty tastes like gruyere, so sherry and other nutty flavored beverages are naturally a favorite.
There might be wine counterparts to other preferences....roasted sesame, roasted seaweed, the meaty beefy kimchi chigae. Squid, fresh rockfish with ginger and soy, slightly bitter asian sauteed greens, soybean sprouts and shredded daikon, the fermented beans and pork in traditional zhajiang, shanzha (sour fruit), black zhejiang vinegar, toasty rice.
I'd consider a lot of these preferences to be earthy flavors but they aren't traditional wine-earthy flavors if that makes any sense. Despite liking these earthier, rustic flavors in food, I generally like fruit forward wine. But that could be because my food experience and wine experience has been largely disconnected.
Wine pairing for Italian meal
maria, whiner,
could you elaborate on why these particular choices? i haven't wrapped my head around reasons behind food pairings.
for instance would you choose prosecco for all fried things, or is there something particular to zucchini flowers? And why the sparkling rose or pinot nero with beef carpaccio -- is it the beef part or the raw aspect? and for the gnocchi, is it the tomatoes or the doughiness, that suggest a barbera? what part of the barbera taste spectrum is enhanced with the gnocchi?
thanks!
Cheese Platter suggestions
anything with a vein of truffle in it. i think i had a moliterno with something like that.
northern chinese comfort food, but s. italian?
well stuff i grew up with --
the fresh noodles with various sauces like zhajiang or any others, jiaozhi,
he cai dai mao, liang cai, mu shu bing, huo guo, pi dan doufu, all the different sauteed chinese vegetables, luer da guer, shaobin youtiao, dou di zi, chestnuts in all forms, some of the claypot stuff, suan bai cai. actually, if you've ever been to xiao wangfu in ritan park in beijing -- that huge menu of random jia zhang cai is all pretty decent even though it's not all beijing area specific. i can't remember specific dishes except i liked their fen zhen rou.
i guess i'm looking for similar dishes 'cause southern italian strikes me as having a lot of everyday peasant-ish food too. i suppose beijing has its fair share of imperial cuisine, but it's not my particular interest.
NYT - chinese food translation for olympics
I've always had two particular problems with translations. Most of the list is adequate, but I don't favor names that make the dishes sound unappetizing (that just discourages people from ordering them) and the other is when the name is so general that people won't order it either (Eight Flavor Delicacies is case in point. You couldn't tell if it was animal, vegetable or mineral).
Spicy is a general catchall phrase, but they really should define the spices. Even if the names are cheesy, we need good English names for them at some point. The vegetables too. "Toon" is not a good name for a vegetable unfortunately. I think I favor phonetic translations of most vegetables since they have no Western equivalents in a lot of cases. Kaofu is not bran dough. But I'm not sure how they should handle that one.
I think the biggest problem is that everything gets lumped under "spicy" or "fried" regardless of what actual chinese cooking technique or spice is being used. That pretty much means either the cooking technique has no English equivalent (true in some cases) or the translator has no clue what that name should be.
If they wanted to do this properly, they'd probably need a team of a food historian, chefs from the respective provinces, someone fluent in both languages, and a food marketing person to put together names of cooking techniques, spices, meats and vegetables. Then decide first which dishes to describe and which have enough history to stand phonetically or with the old translations. That'd probably get a good first pass.
