Where are some good places to buy big marrow-rich (beef/lamb/goat) bones for soup? I know this question has been asked before, but I hoped for updates.

Cost is one priority. I'm willing to pay more for grass-fed or otherwise "known higher-quality" product, though not Draeger's prices.

Currently I buy lamb shanks at Rose Market in Mountain View. There, as elsewhere, I think I'm mostly paying for the flesh, though what I really care about is the bone.

Previous posts here and elsewhere say "ask any butcher." What's the etiquette of asking a butcher to sell me dirt-cheap bones (that they might discard) when I'm not doing any other business with them?

Thanks.

Chez Sovan has Silicon Valley diners, and presumably pays Silicon Valley rents.

I'm sure That Luang is great, but is not really fair to compare prices in (more or less) the heart of Silicon Valley to a restaurant in San Pablo.

It will add to your mileage, but consider Chez Sovan for lunch on Monday:
http://www.yelp.com/biz/chez-sovan-sa...

Total hole in the wall. (Yes, it really is that place on the corner with bars on the windows.) The payoff is outstanding Cambodian food. Take two friends. Get the catfish amok, beef with green beans, chicken curry.

I'm getting quite good at making strawberry jam in my new bread maker.

Unfortunately I have yet to master the art of bread making.

Until I figure out the bread ... what are some alternate uses for this great jam - beyond eating it out of the jar with a spoon? (No double-dipping!)

Very helpful - thanks! I'm getting quite excited about the pressure cookery ahead of me. (I think this will suit my lifestyle better than the planning-7-hours-ahead that is slow cooking.)

Thanks for the explanation. Do I turn down the heat (somewhat) once steam begins to escape - just enough to keep it steaming?

I just cooked a daal (lentil) dish that required only one minute at pressure. Perhaps not much time saved, but the simplicity is appealing. With meat the time difference will be larger, I'm told.

Okay, so I decided it finally was time to use my 10-year (?) new Fagor pressure cooker.

The pressure cooking process apears to be:
1. Put in your ingredients, close the lid, and turn on the heat.
2. At some point, the contents will begin to boil, and steam will visibly escape.
3. Turn off the heat.

All the Fagor recipes very helpfully refer to "cooking time," which is never explained. Or a recipe will say "Close and cook for 3-4 minutes."

I know what "cooking time" is in a microwave, or when I'm baking or grilling or sauteing.

But what is it in the process above? Is "cooking time" how long I watch the steam blow out of the hole in Step 2? Or how long I wait after turning off the heat?

Thanks.

Not canning. Putting it in the fridge in a glass jar (not vacuum sealed or anything) to eat over a few weeks.

When a mainstream recipe calls for sugar, I typically reduce the quantity by a third or a half, to get something suited to my Californian taste buds.

I recently bought a bread/jam maker. Their strawberry jam recipe calls for 3/4 cup of sugar to two cups of chopped strawberries. So I used just 1/2 cup sugar - tasted terrific. (Kept the third ingredient: 1 Tbsp lemon juice.) It was maybe even a bit too sweet - after all, strawberries are naturally sweet.

So I was considering cutting down the sugar to 1/4 cup or less, when I read on the 'net that the sugar added to jam serves a preservative function.

Is this true? Am I running a risk of botulism poisoning (or just mold) by not adding the prescribed amount of sugar to my jam?

Thanks - that's super helpful. Although ... I hate the thought of becoming one of "those people."

As a reference for future web-surfers here, I stumbled upon this site focused on the very same intolerance: http://www.cantola.com/ (I didn't immediately understand the name - cute.)

What would they use instead? I use peanut oil at home, but I can't imagine that's usual.

After years of gastric distress, I took a food allergy test whose report card informs me that (among other things) I absolutely need to avoid canola oil and brewer's yeast for the next six months. Hmmm.

Is canola oil what most restaurants use to cook nowadays? Does it matter whether the restaurant is:
- Indian
- Chinese
- Korean
- Thai
- In 'N Out
- Ethiopian?

Not sure how to handle this (news). Thanks.

When I saw your subject header, my mind immediately went back to my student days (at Berkeley), and I thought "brown students are just like white students. We like pizza and Chinese food!"

An avocado tree in your back yard? Wonderful!

Thanks for all the great suggestions, everyone - I'm looking forward to the next week of experimenting.

Okay, so it's not quite "cooking," but what are some of your favorite quick toppings for when you cut avocado in half and eat it right out of its skin? Sure, they're great with lime, but I feel I'm missing something.

Dal (lentil) is a staple of North Indian cooking, and its flavor results from the last minute addition of a tadka (aka baghar, aka phoron), spices briefly fried in hot ghee and then added to the dal at the very last minute. Or to be on the safe side, the dal is added to the spices.

I know there are dozens of different possible tadkas, but I haven't found a definitive list, nor some formula to match a tadka ingredient with a particular dal. What are some of your favorite dal/tadka combinations? What are combinations to avoid?

I'll kick it off with some suggestions from a Bengali friend:

1) Masoor dal
Tadka: "panch phoron," whole dried red chilis, sliced garlic

2) Moong dal
Tadka: ginger, jeera (cumin) seeds, garam masala

3) Moong dal
Tadka: hing (asafoetida), jeera (cumin) seeds, ginger, whole dried red chilis

Avoid: adding salt or any raw ingredients to the dal until it is finished cooking.

My Indian cooking time and stress saver is to have my spices readily available in airtight little jars. It seems a small thing, but psychologically the jars make a huge difference versus having to rummage through lots of similar looking store-bought plastic bags and then scoop spices out with a spoon.

As others have mentioned, some recipe books make things too complicated. Chana masala, for instance: yes, you could authentically do it in about seventeen steps, performing a ritual stir or whatever at the introduction of each spice, but you can also get very good results in two or three steps.

Thanks, that's good to know - I'll watch my daal levels next time.

I always have really liked the word "autoclave." Also "iatrogenic." The healthcare system may be collapsing, but at least they've brought us some good vocabulary.

Cleaning the lid - the part where the rubber gasket inserts to create a seal - was a bit of headache, as I recall.

Interesting data point on the Swiss - I would not have guessed. Makes sense.

Actually, that is super helpful. I'm not committed to the idea of pressure cooking - just thought I should try the experiment - but I am happy to learn from the experience of others.

I will cook the regular way. Thank you!

Friends over for dinner on Monday, and I'm going to combine two firsts: (1) cooking meat [goat, on the bone, Indian style] curry, (2) in a pressure cooker.

I'm not sure why I've never cooked goat - it just hasn't happened. I've certainly eaten lots. Baaaaa.

I'm not sure why I've never used my pressure cooker. Maybe I did try it once, and the benefits weren't obvious, but cleaning was a pain.

Anyway, here I am. What is the secret to cooking curry in a pressure cooker? Will it blow up?

I have done some research. My pressure cooker is a western model - a F*GOR - but all the Indian pressure cooking recipes I've found measure time in "number of whistles" which I don't think applies, as my pressure cooker lacks the familiar whistle on the top.

Help!

(As an aside, does a pressure cooker offer any quality benefits over other methods of cooking? I know it's supposed to be faster, but that is somewhat offset by the cleaning hassle.)

I'm in the SF Bay Area.

I do the same! Sometimes over rice, even better over quinoa.

What's a great bread at Trader Joe's? The four or five ingredient $1.99 whole wheat loaf is my standby, and it's good but not great. I'm willing to try a non-whole wheat if it really is terrific, but my experimentation thus far has disappointed.

This bread will be eaten:
- With eggs.
- In sandwiches of ham, cheese, pesto, smoked salmon, avocado. (Not all at once)

Thanks.

Do you deep-fry food?

Or, for health reasons, or not to waste oil - it does seem to be a LOT of oil! - do you generally find alternative methods to approximate your favorite deep-fried meals?

Any Japanese market, and many Chinese markets, sell sashimi-grade fish. 'fraid it's been a while since my last visit to Austin, so I couldn't name a specific one.

Meat versus veggie - I hadn't thought about it that way, but what you say is completely consistent with the recipes I've seen. Very interesting insight - thanks.

I cook a lot of (North) Indian food, usually following a recipe. It tastes pretty good (to me). What strikes me is that most seem to call for the same or very similar spicing: onions, garlic, ginger, cumin, coriander, green chilis, and often turmeric and garam masala. Other spices show up more sparingly.

In other words, I feel as if I'm cooking the same dish again and again - most often with an onion/cumin base - and that much as I enjoy my meals, they're essentially similar. This is a particular concern when I'm having people over and cooking a multi-course meal.

Does anyone have, I don't know what to call it, an "overview" of the Indian spicing system which elaborates how particular spices work in combination, and how to put together multiple dishes each using some subset of the total range of spices so as to minimize "overlap" of taste across the dinner menu?

Thanks.

Thanks - this book is spectacular!

Talk about a business opportunity!

I had exactly the same question. Try ebay.co.uk. You'll have to spring for international shipping, but it shouldn't be too terrible.