anzu's Profile
Mark Bittman: Expert in Residence!
Actually, David beat me to it, but the salt grinder is not a necessity per se. However, the last time I bought "coarse" sea salt, it was too small and hard for me to crumble w/ my own little hands. . .so it`s just easier to have something that grinds salt. I had Maldon salt before, which one can crush w/ one`s own hands.
What's your favorite use for almond butter?
If you have the crunchy kind, it goes really really well with pink lady apples. :)
I was at the new Google chef cafe (name currently escaping me) in my (old) hometown, and they had on their menu some kind of chard braised w/ an almond butter sauce that was quite good. It had almond butter, a bit of kick to it, and some curry flavors. When I get back from my travels, I was going to try to reverse-engineer it and try to make it.
great cold soup recipe?
I am currently traveling and don`t have access to it, but I`ve tried making a melon soup w/ lavender which was good chilled. My favorite, though, is mango gazpacho. So easy, and quite refreshing (though not a main course type of soup. . .)
Loose/Bulk Spices in Santa Clara co. / Sunnyvale area?
Can you get that at an Indian grocery store?
Mark Bittman: Expert in Residence!
As a follow-up question to TDQ`s #2--I saw the list of essentials on the NYT link, but if you were for example, posted somewhere short term (a few months), and had to pick 10-15 cooking condiments (spices, oils, extracts, etc), what would they be? (I ask, b/c I just had to uproot myself and now must rebuild my spice/seasonings inventory, but am only here for a few months and have limited means.)
My first three purchases were a black pepper mill, course sea salt (will get a salt grinder soon), and good quality EVOO. (I also brought saffron with me.) I plan to get soon vanilla extract, cardamom (probably not a top 15 herb, but I absolutely love it), chili powder of some sort, smoked paprika (again, not essential, but it`s on the same list for me as cardamom. . .), cinammon sticks, cumin, turmeric, coriander, miso. . .(wow. That was 13 w/o even thinking. Maybe I should up the qty to 20. . .)
what to do w/fresh figs besides gobbling?
It's been months since I've been on, but I was just on looking for summer fruit ideas and just realized you you replied to this-- I just discovered this French cheese--Fourme d'Ambert. Lovely mild blue cheese. Figs go absolutely lovely with it! Now I must go have a sandwich w/ that.
School fundraisers gone mad
Yeah, theoretically, tamari soy is supposed to be made with no wheat, but some brands make it w/ very little wheat. Also, I've noticed (since I read Japanese) that the labeling, when they relabel things in English is often ridiculous and wrong. So they forget to include things like wheat. Or they say "Product of Japan", just because the label is in Japanese, even though if you look at the label, it says "made in China" in Japanese. I know we're diverging off-topic, but as someone below said, I guess the point is translated labels are never 100%. I usually label if I bring stuff to bake sales, but most of my friends that have food sensitivities (allergies, gluten intolerance) will simply not eat if they are the slightest bit unsure-- so I still say make the inari, and there will be other people who will happily eat!
School fundraisers gone mad
Inari is a good idea, but it's not gluten-free, b/c of the soy sauce, which has wheat in it.
Along similar lines, it's time-consuming, but one of my coworkers sells tamales for $1-$1.50 per piece, and they are always a hit!
At Japanese school bake sales, they have the Japanese equivalent of junk food--e.g. mochi, daifuku, etc.
This might require cold storage, so perhaps not feasible, but I would totally buy pre-made no-dishes-needed type meals:
e.g. pupusas, (tamales as mentioned above), calzones or anything pocket-y that I can eat w/ just my hand and a napkin, and various chinese things-- the chive pockets, any of the baos, etc.
Other things I'd like that stray from the traditional cookies/brownies:
-a bag of seasoned nuts (sweet, or savory)
-polenta fries
-someone once made homemade flavored popcorn, which I loved
And this one is a cookie, but I think it's fantastic. It's a sophisticated butter cookie for grown ups:
http://orangette.blogspot.com/2007/12/cookie-baking-part.html
Very different from your traditional fare.
Oh, and it's the wrong time of year, I know, but if I saw something like rum balls in mid-June. . . on second thought, this is a kid's bake sale, so never mind. . .
ISO Horlicks Malted Milk Tablets
You might call to confirm, but I could've sworn I saw them at Cost Plus (MV) the other day. The reason I'm not sure is b/c I haven't heard of them, but I saw them at CP and remember thinking, "What are Horlicks?", "What an odd name", etc. Maybe it wasn't Horlicks and maybe it was another weird-named drink (It was hot cocoa or some kind of drink, whatever I saw, though it looked like powder rather than tablets). Then I saw this post.
However, don't hold me to this. Next time I'm there again, I'll check.
Help with Santa Clara dining, please...
What about Korean? There are hundreds of Korean restaurants in the Lawrence Expwy/El Camino vicinity. Can't think of one off the top of my head, but I'm sure if you do a search on this board, there are some. I think I might be going to one today or tomorrow to get naengkongguksu.
Roasted Okra
I just tried this. Got some okra after reading this thread, and did the cornmeal dusting/pan-frying thing. It was DELICIOUS and so simple. You just made my evening. Thanks! :)
Reporting Back On Your Question Posts - [moved from General Topics]
I'm guilty of this, but I've tried to become better at it. I guess I've been on the board slightly longer, so I'm no longer newbie-ish, but you need to cut us some flak (I'm not replying to MC per se, but to the long thread about newbies doing this-and-that blah blah), because although I've been on this board for a while, I've only recently discovered the "my chow" thing.
If you're just starting out (or heck, if you have other things that occupy your time), you may not have as much of a vested interest in the site, so often, it takes a while to figure out the etiquette, protocol, etc. (e.g. like looking at My Chow to see if I need to reply to a post).
Sometimes I just forget. I go out of town, come back, and the first thing on my mind is not, omg. Let me rifle through several pages of old posts to see if I need to reply to someone's post. I go through phases of checking CH every day, but other times, if life gets in the way, I'm not nec. checking CH, and may be off for days/weeks.
Also, as I mentioned elsewhere, I've posted very sparsely on my home board, and in general, I've found my home board sort of clique-ish, where there are always the same people replying. So I've posted questions/reviews/comments in the past and either a) noone replies (or maybe they did after all; I guess I could check via My Chow now that I know I can check up on my posts), or get very few replies, or several times, my replies/suggestions were just plain shot down. I don't mind disagreement, but it makes you kindof not want to offer up opinions when people say things like "They make the most horrible doughnuts, bleh" after you've just suggested it. Maybe it's the tone or maybe I'm being thin-skinned. But I've also read things like "Whoever says they like more than 70 percent chocolate must be a snob, b/c I can't imagine anyone being able to taste more than 60 percent" (I'm paraphrasing, roughly) from people on my home board. So yes, I do go on that board sometimes to read, but for the most part, I still feel like an outsider and so less likely to remember to respond.
For the other boards, again, I am sometimes remiss, but I generally find the tone much friendlier, and the board culture is noticably different. People on the home cooking board are much more likely to respond to queries, for example, and I feel more comfortable digressing, so I'm more likely to reply as well.
But sometimes I've not followed up and replied just b/c I've lost the thread and forgot where a random recipe was posted. So I might say something like, "thanks. I'll have to give that a try." and if I try it that weekend, then the thread is close enough to the top that I can find it, but if I try a recipe a few months later (as I'm more likely to do) and flip through the first few pages and can't find the particular reference, I'm more likely to forget to follow up.
Btw, apologies if I have done that to some of you.
The power of suggestion - or not knowing the ingredients
This is the reverse of the situation you mentioned, but I went out to lunch w/ coworkers and ordered grilled squid. Yum. Well, one of my coworkers wouldn't touch it. She said she can't stand squid. Then somewhere along the lunch, she mentioned liking calamari. So I told her that um, squid=calamari.
She then tried the dish I ordered and liked it. To think of all those times she's missed out because someone ordered squid instead of calamari!!
the annual frustrating search for a good peach
Wow. I was just staring at the brandy wondering what to do with "all that brandy". :) Thanks. I have to wait for a few jars to free up, but if they do, I might have to try this.
Jam-what am I doing wrong? Will I die?
Ooh. I think I'm going to keep my second jar of jam around after all! Wow. I could even make this in the winter! Thanks!
Kale for a hater
A bunch of people have already mentioned it, but raw kale, very thinly sliced, dressed generously with a very good olive oil and meyer lemon (also generously speckle w/ freshly ground s&p), plus a grated cheese is divine bliss.
There are two recipes that I alternate between or combine-- one is on epicurious (just do a search on raw kale salad), which turns out like a sophisticated caesar salad, and the other one I found in the NYT (again, I'm sure a search will yield it) recipe written by Melissa Clark. The epicurious recipe uses ricotta salata; the NYT uses parmesan, but the base is roughly the same.
However, this only works with lacinato kale. Perhaps I should've asked you first what kind of kale you have.
Jam-what am I doing wrong? Will I die?
Oh thanks for asking. :) Well, we ended up doing the full-sugared version, which I think was 1.25 cup sugar for every 2 pounds of fruit? I did send my friends the link of you saying that we don't need sugar, but I was outnumbered by people who wanted to follow an "exact" recipe. Ah well. I have 3 jars of this sitting at home, but I'm afraid to open it, until I can figure out ways to minimize the mold onset so soon. Plus we made pint-sized jars, which will be twice as hard to go through (the jars that mold are usually 1/2 pint or smaller). :)
I think I will open it once I get through my mold-contaminated plum jam, which might take me a few more months to eat up. :)
Your theory is perfectly plausible, since none of the jams I make ever seem to mold so quickly, and I make almost all of my jams low to no sugar. However, I also have an inversely proportional correlation between the sugar factor and consumption factor, so it's likely that I'm devouring the almost-all fruit ones much quicker. :)
White Miso
Hmm. That's a tough one. For the mirin, the real kind is just distilled sweet rice (or whatever grain), but a lot of the cheaper "mirin-style" I think don't actually have alcohol. Check the label, b/c there are dizzying numbers of the various types of mirin/mirin-style liquids.
A quick google search yielded this site: http://cookiemonzters.blogspot.com/2007/03/alcohol-substitute-list.html
which says that rice vinegar is a good substitute for sake. If you do that, though, I would increase the sugar somewhat and maybe not use so much vinegar? However, the other thing to keep in mind is that the mirin will have quite a bit of sweetness.
If all else fails, the miso alone will be a good tenderizer, so perhaps mix w/ the fake (non-alcoholic) mirin-style whatever, add a small bit of vinegar?
Jam-what am I doing wrong? Will I die?
Wow. Thanks everyone for the info re: botulism vs. mold. The botulism, I brought up, b/c I once asked my friend about mold and she was like, "throw it out! Don't you know you can get botulism from moldy jam?" So I now associate moldy jam w/ botulism. Thanks for setting me straight. :)
As for all the people who mentioned they don't get mold, I'm really puzzled. There is one jam that I get from a friend of mine-- it is the lowest sugar content of all of the jams I get, and that jam never ever molds (I've been getting her jams for 6-7 years and it takes me anywhere from 3-6 months to go through one jar, but it has never molded).
But the jams that have molded have been from about 3 different sources. The latest was a plum jam that was made less than a month ago, w/ standard (high) sugar content. In fact, it's so sweet, I've had very little of it so far (a little going a long way). At this rate, I might finish it by next April. :)
I have been using clean spoons, but maybe I'll do as others suggested and use a separate utensil to handle it.
Hmm. There seem to be mixed feelings about whether I can still use the jam, but given the sugar content, it sounds like it's safe to use if I scrape the surrounding area.
the annual frustrating search for a good peach
Thank you! Since they are in the fridge and brandy may or may not be a sterilizer, do you need to sterilize the jars?
Wow. If you can leave things alone till December, you have better will power than I do. :) I currently have a few jars of pickles I made and I'm supposed to wait 8 weeks for them. I'm on week 1 and I keep staring at them wistfully!
the annual frustrating search for a good peach
Do you have a good recipe for brandied peaches?
Jam-what am I doing wrong? Will I die?
Absolutely. I mean, heck, I even refrigerate tomatoes (I know that's sacrilege, but my apt. gets really hot during the day, so if I can't eat them before they start getting soft, in they go.) And I always use a clean spoon. . ..
Maybe I should start freezing it.
White Miso
My favorite way, as some one mentioned below is to marinate fish in it w/ sake, mirin, etc. I like marinating black cod w/ it. It acts as a great tenderizer, and my mom used to take meats that were otherwise tough and marinate it in a miso-based thing, which made the meat very tender.
The miso will last a very long time (years), so no need to worry about spoiling.
Jam-what am I doing wrong? Will I die?
Great. Now I know I can eat around the mold (kindof like cheese. Heh heh). Actually, I ate my mold-contaminated jam yesterday and I'm fine, so I guess it's ok.
Thanks!
Zucchini Blossoms
Similar to this, my favorite way is stuffed. I stuff with ricotta and mix in dill and sauteed/carmelized shallots, season generously w/ freshly ground pepper and salt, also mix in pecorino or parmesan, stuff and bake. My apartment is small and I get headaches from frying, so I just bake them.
Another way to use them is on homemade pizza-- toss with ricotta and mozzarella.
Mmm. Now I need to get some for myself!
My soba noodles were a gummy mess
Wow. That sounds fantastic! Did you save the broth afterwards or discard it?
My soba noodles were a gummy mess
Unfortunately, they absorb water really quickly and are soft noodles to begin with, so don't make the best salad noodle.
When I do use them in salads, I tend to cook them on the firm side (8 minutes seems really long to me, but I never measure time. I just keep testing the noodles and as soon as they lose the core, I stop cooking), then immediately dump them and rinse in very cold water, and then dump ice on them and keep them on a strainer so the water continues to get drained. My parents always serve soba on a bamboo strainer-like thing, which I don't have, so I just usu. put ice in a strainer and mix in the soba noodles.
Also, I tend to use soba that is not 100 percent buckwheat, but since you said this used to work for you, I'm puzzled as to why it suddenly stopped working. In general, though, I also tend to keep the noodles dry (i.e. undressed) till the very last possible moment, or it'll get soft/soggy, etc.
Jam-what am I doing wrong? Will I die?
Ok, this is several questions in one about homemade jam.
My friend gave me some homemade jam about 3 weeks ago. It's one of those big pint jars, which I knew I wouldn't be able to finish, so I asked them to give me the jar that they already partly used up.
They canned the jars, did the sterilization process, etc. etc.
This morning, I had some with my yogurt, and I noticed after the fact that one of the areas had already developed mold. Ugh.
So my questions (since I can never seem to finish a jar of jam without it molding)
1. Will I die from botulism from this morning's experience?
2. The mold typically grows on areas of jam that are either stuck on the walls, etc. Maybe I missed this, since we never really did this while growing up, but am I supposed to meticulously scrape off any remnants of jam off the walls of my jars every time I have jam?
3. I hate wasting food, but I hate the idea of dying from botulism even more. :) Can I just discard the area that was contaminated with mold and then proceed using the other uncontaminated areas?
4. I don't think my jam-eating rate is that ridiculously slow, but all of the homemade jams I've ever received (except this one plum jam that I receive from my friend every year) have never lasted more than a month or two before it starts to mold. Is there a way to prevent this? I just made pint-sized containers of apricot jam, and I'm afraid to open it lest it start to mold before I manage to finish it all.
FYI, these are full-on sugared jams.
Thanks much.
Sincerely,
The Jam Idiot
Farmer's Market Mystery: Can You Identify These Species of Melon and Zucchini?
The melon sortof resembles a very very ripe Sharlyn melon, though they are usually more yellowish in color.
