aqn's Profile
Gluten-Free Italian?
I work in the building right behind Trento, and Trento's owner(?)/GM Donnie Damuth (ex-GM of NoRTH in The Domain) is a friend. I stopped by to say "Hi" and saw their gluten-free menu; it has about a handful of items in each.
Additional tidbits:
One of the chefs, Andreas Exarhos came from Austin's Zoot (which has re-opened at a new location on Bee Cave Rd.).
The other of Trento's chefs, Alex Kahn, is a 27-year old "kid" from nearby Westlake:
http://www.austinchronicle.com/food/2001-11-30/83789/
Finally: no, we have not eaten at Trento yet, but considering that we know both the GM's track record, and that Trento has a couple of (other) chefs from 2nd Bar/Bar Congress, we'll definitely try it soon.
What are these 'knife skills' of which you speak?
I don't know what batonnets or a brunoise or tournes mean (without Google'ing). Is it still possible for me to have good knife skills? :)
What are these 'knife skills' of which you speak?
OTOH, if two people can produce the same quality of cut/chopped stuff (size, accuracy, uniformity, etc.), but one does it 50% quicker, that person has better "knife skills", no?
What are these 'knife skills' of which you speak?
To be fair, you also have to count the time needed to clean up the knife & chopping board versus to clean up the food processor.
For me, chopping/slicing/dicing for a meal for two means a knife wins, every time.
I only break out the food processor if I'm making, say, filling for 250 spring rolls.
Fish Sauce, do you find it overpowering?
If íts not a liquid, it's MOS DEF not fish sauce!!! :)
Ideas for recipes with sea urchin roe?
10 bucks a tray?! Wow, that's a great price!! (Well, I suppose when compared to a per-piece sushi price, *anything* is a great price!)
Ideas for recipes with sea urchin roe?
That's a different kind of "cream sauce"! Sounds delish!
Tip: Invite your taxi driver to eat with you
Great idea! It'd be even more enjoyable if one like one's cab driver.
On a related note, when visiting a place we've never been to before, we usually take a half-day "city tour" of some sort to get a quick overview of the city, get our bearings, note the places we'd like to visit more later, etc. We usually ask the tour guide or driver "If *you* were taking your family out for a special lunch/dinner, where would you go?" We've found that yield much better eating places than merely asking "Where is a good place to eat around here?"
How to eat sushi?
"Most of this thread is so clearly about traditional Edo-mae sushi, that in context, calling ceviche Japanese food is a tragedy."
Is calling such food "Japanese" the issue? Would "Japanese-inspired" work? Do you have a standard that qualifies food to be labeled "Japanese"? "Italian"? "French"? "Vietnamese"? Let me know so I won't piss you off again. Buddha knows, once is enough.
"And so is claiming that "right on cue" you`re going to link your pet theory about the history of how sushi relates to America with your pet favorite restaurant in Austin."
I offered no such theory. I reported something I heard ("sushi is street food"). I named my source; it'd be up to the reader to decide whether that source are credible and therefore whether to believe that they read without further research or verification.
If anybody cares, they can see from the fact that the overwhelming majority of posts on your most recent ten pages of posts are on "Japan" or "ramen" or "sushi" or "Tokyo" that you might be the more reliable source of theories and observations relating to Japanese cuisine than, say, a sushi chef whose remark is being reported firsthand.
I do, indeed, have a pet favorite restaurant here in the non-Japanese culinary backwater :-/ that is Austin. Why that would be irksome to you is quite beyond me.
"Falling back on the typical concerns about stifling creativity or the authenticity argument is fine, except if you really hang around Chowhound long enough and read around, I think you'll find that many people here are genuinely interested in what and how food is eaten in Japan, Italy, and Vietnam."
And indeed that is a great thing.
"And they want to educate themselves on that on a cultural and culinary level ..."
And *that* is great, too.
"without having it diffused through the lens of some "artist" taking creative liberties- no matter how clever they may be...not that there isn't a place in the world for such experimentation."
OK, let me know when it's safe to talk about "artists" and "such experimentation".
How to eat sushi?
"...you're not going to find any of this tangerine infused oil ceviche crap like you see in that video."
I can see how watching that video one might get the impression that it's just another nouveau cuisine con-FUSION preparation, heavy on wow factor and low on actual performance. Instead of seeing the chef as an "artist", one might get the impression that he's a "con artist" trying to talk up a weird combination that does not actually work very well. There are lots of examples of that type.
OTOH, while one will probably never see any traditional Japanese-like fish preparation that includes a fruit (even tomato), I would claim that one is missing out on a lot if one regards such a preparation as "crap". It's like dismissing out of hand the possibility of putting fish sauce in spaghetti sauce, or mustard in "shaking beef". Sure, that's not "authentic" Italian or "authentic" Vietnamese. That wouldn't necessarily make it any less clever a combination or less tasty of a dish.
Recognizing authenticity is a good thing. Dismissing something out of hand for being "unauthentic" would be a bit of a tragedy.
How to eat sushi?
Using your hand is not bad manner. To eat nigiri sushi pieces, that is. :) But, again, I'm not concerned about manners and etiquette as much as I am about doing things bass ackwards.
Re. "not super fancy": during a drinking/hanging out session, a sushi chef told me that indeed, sushi is "street food" in Japan, that it's only here in America that more is made of it. He was very matter-of-fact and even with his remark, not being condescending towards Americans elevating a lowly "cuisine" to new height. (This is is Tyson Cole's "sushi sensei".)
And, right on cue, here is a video (in five parts) of Uchi/Uchiko's owner/chef Tyson Cole making a suzuki ceviche. I learned a couple of new things from these videos. For instance: the tail end of a fish is the least "valuable" part because there is more muscle back there (fish swim with their tail). Also: there are several layers between the skin and the flesh of a fish; those layers carry some of the fish's body fat, and a lot of flavor.
I hope you'll find these interesting and educational as well:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0tebNp7r1qw
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u3o1XhylO9U
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1G98JbAc8Fc
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YdSFBIpcQy4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cp2EbBJhbuM
How to eat sushi?
At the end of the day, it's your money, and you are free to do as you wish. This thread should be regarded as not about "etiquette", but about "The Correct And Logical Thing To Do".
I don't suppose you would pay multi-hundred dollars for a hunk of truffle and then red-cook it in a vat of fish sauce and sugar? If you love fish caramel, by all means, but you might as well save yourself a lot of money and not bother with the truffle. Same idea here. Some people love soy and wasabi; I know I do. In my early sushi years, when I was much more culinarily naive, I routinely did the soy-wasabi mud bath thing. But I eventually learned, after having spent a small fortune on sushi, that I was wasting money. These days, I buy supermarket "sushi" when I want to indulge in my soy-wasabi fetish.
What's for Dinner? Part 80 - Old
I used dried pasilla peppers in a chili once. I liked the flavor but next time I'd scrape & discard the seeds 'cause they remained quite tough even after having been braised FOREVER in the chili.
What's for Dinner? Part 80 - Old
Cranberry-orange relish sounds like a great idea!!!
Ideas for recipes with sea urchin roe?
No, I have not tried that. I've only had uni at sushi places (Uchi and Uchiko here in Austin), but in many guises: on a sushi piece (by itself, with ikura (salmon roe), with shiso (Japanese herb), with quail egg yolk, on top of a piece of saba (mackerel) with vinegared shallots), in a risotto (uni risotto!), as uni powder on a corn sorbet (a dessert!), uni with marinated strawberries (an amazing combination!).
Anyway, I'd love to hear a report from you on these uni 'cause they look a bit, um..., suspect, in that tin.
Ideas for recipes with sea urchin roe?
Did you get it from latienda.com? Is it this one: http://www.tienda.com/food/products/se-80.html# ?
Recommend me a fridge!
Door-style bottom freezer is not all that bizarre; we had one (one big door on top, one big door on the bottom). I find a door for the bottom freezer results in more efficient use of space than a sliding drawer. A drawer wastes room with slides, baskets, gap between basket & interior wall, etc.
That said, our current fridge/freezer is a "wide by side": side by side, but the fridge part is wider on top and the freezer part is wider on the bottom. It's my favorite combination, over the traditional side-by-side and freezer-bottom styles.
What's for Dinner? Part 80 - Old
We often do the same "sausages with onions and peppers" quick-dinner thing. We use balsamic vinegar.
How to eat sushi?
I read through the "sushi etiquette" and while I agree that some of it belongs in the "opinion" category and not the "fact" category, one can't go very far wrong believing what's on there.
I also watched the CHOW video on "How to (Properly) Eat Sushi" and it's useful and correct information as well. I would like expand on the video's recommendation of sitting at the bar, not at a table: fish is cold, sushi rice is warm, that's why you don't want to sit at a table if you want mainly nigiri zuzhi, because by the time the pieces get made and brought to you, the fish would be kinda room temperature, or worse, warm; not good.
This is in Tyson Cole's recent book: "Uchi: The Cookbook". The book has other "tips" on eating sushi which echoes the info above: don't make a paste with soy sauce and wasabi; don't dip a sushi piece in soy sauce rice-first; don't put pickled ginger on your food; etc.
Here are a couple more:
Don't order all your sushi at once. See "cold fish, warm rice", above. A bigger order takes longer to make, and longer to eat. By the time you get to the last piece, the fish is guaranteed to be no longer cold or cool. Sit at the bar and order as you go and eat it right away.
Avoid the spicy tuna roll (unless it's a REALLY GREAT one and you REALLY LOVE it): that's how restaurants get rid of their older tuna.
Escolar is a natural laxative! :)
Tuna is actually better a few days after it was caught. It has to go through "a process of rigor mortis and loosening up", like beef aging.
What's for Dinner? Part 80 - Old
It's a Friday during Lent, so it's non-meat for us. Wife suggested scallops.
I went with big scallops from Whole Foods, seared in SS pan w/ olive oil. (Next time I *HAVE* to resist the temptation to move the scallops too soon: they stick a bit; in my defense, over-cooked scallops is something even Jesus won't forgive . :) ) Served that with a salsa: equal parts diced Roma tomatoes and diced red onions and diced navel orange (Fine Cooking's "How to segment an orange": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kQr9QQLtBU0)), chopped jalapeno, chopped cilantro, 1/4 tsp of zest from the orange. Add the "run off" juice from the orange (reduced to 1 teaspoon), salt, lime juice.
Next time, I'd try adding a sprinkle of fish sauce to the salsa.
Cooking pasta for a crowd or in a restaurant setting?
I might try a strainer stock pot for reheating the pasta.
Punching down dough - why?
I forgot to mention that my pre-ferment lives in the fridge, so it's quite rare that it develops alcohol, but it does do that sometimes when I leave it out too long before putting it in the fridge.
Punching down dough - why?
I don't buy the "redistribute air bubbles" theory. I find it difficult to believe that folding the dough a couple of time will redistribute its internals. I have also found that no matter how rough or casual I am in handling the dough, it always rises sufficiently (the proverbial "double in volume") in the last rise, so "defalting the dough" has not been a concern of mine.
I subscribe more to the "redistribute yeast/food supply" theory of "punching down dough". I "punch down" my 48-hour pre-ferment two or three times by kneading it a couple of times each time. I kinda suspect that, since yeast don't have legs :) , after they have "digested" the starch in their immediate vicinity, "punching down" shift the dough around just enough so yeast cells come into contact with more starch.
Anyone Have Ideas or Favourite Recipes that have Dried Figs in the Ingredients?
I made a bunch of this fruitcake as holiday gifts:
Spiced Rum Fruitcake
http://www.finecooking.com/recipes/spiced-rum-fruitcake.aspx
I substituted dried Mission figs for the dried apple.
Seeking: Vietnamese-style baguettes
It appears that *SOME* rice flour is used, but more in the way that, say, butter or oil, is used in the dough, to make the dough less "lean" and makes their crumb softer and crust thinner than in a French baguette. It probably affects the loaves' flavor as well, but I can barely tell. In any case, it's more the "flavoring" and not the major ingredient.
Tonight was my baking night, so I decided to bake Vietnamese baguettes using my French baguette recipe, adding a "paste" of cooked rice+water (based on this recipe: http://drfugawe.wordpress.com/2010/04/04/vietnamese-baguettes-revisited/). I did not add the paste to the pre-ferment as called for in that recipe, since my pre-ferment had already been fermenting for two days and was ready to go. Instead, I added the cooked-rice paste to the final dough, using the same amount of flour as called for in my recipe but reducing the amount of water.
In a nod to the proper banh mi, I shaped the dough into loaves about 6" long and 1" wide instead of my usual time-saving two big loaves. The resulting loaves are about 8" long and 3" wide.
The result was surprising and impressive! At the proper doneness (loaf internal temperature of approximately 205'F) the crust is a little too thick, but still more delicate than in my French bread. The crumb is softer than French bread crumb. The flavor is not markedly different than French baguette, but I think it's different enough to differentiate it in a side-by-side taste test.
I'll probably try various proportions of rice flour and cooked-rice paste in my French bread dough and see what happens...
French bread in Chicago?
Do you have a citation for your claim that Vietnamese-style baguettes have a "significant amount of rice flour" in them? What's "significant"? 50% by weight? 10% by weight?
Given that rice flour has no gluten in it, my years of baking bread tells me that using a large amount of rice flour (more than 20%, say) in bread would be a mistake. Here are some real life experiences that back that up:
http://vietworldkitchen.typepad.com/blog/2007/05/vietnamese_bagu.html
http://drfugawe.wordpress.com/2010/04/04/vietnamese-baguettes-revisited/
http://chowtown.wordpress.com/2009/10/20/vietnamese-style-baguette-recipe-baguette-for-banh-mi/
Vietnamese-Style Banh Mi Burgers (Food & Wine)
Do you have a citation for your claim that "Viet baguette is distinct from French baguette because of the addition of rice flour"?
Given that rice flour has no gluten in it, my years of baking bread tells me that using rice flour in bread would be a mistake. Here are some real life experiences that back that up:
http://vietworldkitchen.typepad.com/blog/2007/05/vietnamese_bagu.html
http://chowtown.wordpress.com/2009/10/20/vietnamese-style-baguette-recipe-baguette-for-banh-mi/
Seeking: Vietnamese-style baguettes
Just wanna make sure unreliable information won't spread: do you have a citation for this claim that "Vietnamese baguette is supposed to have some rice flour in it"?
Given that rice flour has no gluten in it, my years of baking bread tells me that using rice flour in bread would be a huge mistake. Here are some real life experiences that back that up:
http://vietworldkitchen.typepad.com/blog/2007/05/vietnamese_bagu.html
http://chowtown.wordpress.com/2009/10/20/vietnamese-style-baguette-recipe-baguette-for-banh-mi/
The New Uchi
Uchiko is slated to open sometime in June 2010. Their "soft opening" period is in June 2010.
Favorite Thing at Uchi?
We actually don't have a favorite Uchi thing. We usually just sit at the bar and have the sushi chef taking care of us just serve up whatever he feels like. The mix is usually 80% from the daily specials (which IMO are always the most interesting, new, clever, dishes), 10% nigiri sushi and 10% "other".
One "regular" item that we often order is the "Ton Tamago" ("bacon and eggs"): grilled pork belly with grilled quail eggs and "candied" scallions.
Oh, and we always have whatever the "dessert special" is that day: it's great 90% of the time.
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Uchi Restaurant
801 S Lamar Blvd, Austin, TX 78704
