adventures in cooking

Yesterday I decided to make a Japanese meal, so I went to Sanko to pick up some ingredients. I love this store, mainly because it has so many interesting things I can't find anywhere else.

I decided on two recipes from The Japanese Kitchen (a gift from Parki): Satsuma-jiru (chicken and vegetable miso soup) and Futo-maki. The latter is traditional roll, though I modified this recipe to make it more like the rolls my mom made). Instead of shrimp, I used eel, and I also added pink seasoned codfish.

The chicken and vegetable miso soup recipe apparently originated in the southern island of Kyushu in Japan. I chose it because it had interesting vegetables I had never cooked with before, like satoimo (taro root), gobo (burdock) and daikon. I had also never cooked with brown miso before, only white and red.





At Sanko, I puzzled over a rack of unlabelled vegetables for several minutes before finally going to someone to ask for help. I had guessed right on the daikon, but had no idea what gobo looked like (see picture at top of Blatherings). Ack, what an ugly vegetable. Someone must have been pretty hungry to try eating this. Apparently gobo was introduced to Japan from China as a medicine before the tenth century, and can grow to more than 2 feet in length.

Back at home, I simmered the chicken in water, sliced ginger and mirin, then added the gobo, daikon, taro, green onion and miso. Meanwhile, I was also preparing the ingredients for the norimaki. I'd forgotten how labour-intensive it was: soaking the kanpyo (gourd strips) and shiitake mushrooms then simmering them in a mixture of dashi, water, and shoyu, making tamagoyaki (rolled omelet of eggs, dashi, sugar, salt, rice wine), making the sushi rice.

When my mom made sushi rice, we kids had the job of fanning the cooked rice as she stirred in the mixture of vinegar, sugar and salt. According to the cookbook, this fanning helps with quick cooling and gelatinizing of the surface of the rice, "giving it an attractive, glossy appearance".

After the sushi rice was made, I spread it out on the sheets of nori (toasted seaweed) laid out on small bamboo mats, added the ingredients, then rolled it up. After letting the rolls sit for about ten minutes, I carefully took off the bamboo mats and cut the rolls into thick slices for serving with wasabi and pickled ginger.





Both the rolls and the soup turned out well, yay! Lots of leftovers for today, too.

Once I've gotten more practice, I'm going to start inflicting my Japanese cooking practice session results on some of my friends and family. You have been warned. :-)






Links/News:

Palm is replacing Graffiti with Jot. Source: Brighthand

"My Big Fat Greek Life", a new television series based on the hit movie My Big Fat Greek Wedding is debuting on CBS next month. Source: Nando Times

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Today's Blatherpics:

	Gobo, or burdock.
	Simmering the kanpyo and shiitake mushrooms in water, dashi, shoyu. Afterwards, I let them cool a bit and then slice up the mushrooms and cut the gourd strips into 4" lengths for putting in the sushi rolls.
	Laying out the filling ingredients before assembling my sushi rolls.
	Woohoo, success!

cookbooks revisited

Congratulations to Rand Bellavia and Adam English (Ookla The Mok), who have been invited to be Interfilk guests at GAfilk in Atlanta next January! Looks like I have to go for sure now. :-)

A while back, I asked you all about cookbooks and recipe storage. Here's some of the feedback I received:

Favourite cookbooks

"I have some of the old standbys, like The Joy of Cooking and The Betty Crocker Cookbook. I hope to inherit my mom's copy of Meta Givens' Encyclopedia of Cooking. She has way too many cookbooks that she doesn't use. She was upset that I gave my copy of The Silver Palate Cookbook to a friend years ago. (It has since been replaced.) My current favorites are Sundays at Moosewood Restaurant (Sesame Noodles, page 183) and the one I picked up at last year's Greek Festival, held at the local Greek Orthodox Church. One of these weekends, I want to make a large pan of pastitio and freeze most of it. I also want to get my hands on a copy of Moog's Musical Eatery, which was written by Shirleigh Moog, wife of Bob Moog, inventor of the electronic music synthesizer." - Jim Poltrone

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"Another cookbook lover here and my friends include Joy (of Cooking) and Betty (Crocker Cookbook), and more recently, Julia (as in Baking with). I have some I'll probably never use but are beautiful, like art books. My current favorite of that sort is The French Laundry Cookbook (named for the now-famous place in the SF Bay Area). I like looking through cookbooks compiled by groups like churches, mainly to be amazed and sometimes frightened by what folks consider food/favorites, but unlike Amanda, I don't buy them. That said, my favorite cookbook for Japanese American recipes was put together by a local JA organization." - Joey

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"I adore cookbooks. I got 2 for Christmas (OK, technically 1 for Christmas and 1 as a very belated birthday present): Off the Shelf and How to Be a Domestic Goddess. I prefer really easy recipes that don't require a whole lot of advance planning. (I've cooked once this year... it's a start...)" - ElectricLandLady

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"Looks like we have a bunch of Cooking Light Magazine fans . . . I am a fan too *grin.* It fact, that's how I got my Mastercook, preloaded with a bunch of Cooking Light recipes. The Joy of Cooking is my standard reference book too :-)" - Andrea

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"As for collecting recipes books -- I've gotten tired of it!! After about 20 years of collecting books, I finally burned out! I no longer care to read through new ones. But I won't do without my Joy of Cooking (for a reference), my old photo album, and the few Specific Carbohydrate cookbooks I have." - Luisa

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"Regarding my favorite cookbooks - my current fave is Cooking Light Magazine. They also have a great searchable database for recipes on the 'net." - Ana

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"Cookbooks - Any cookbook by Cooking Illustrated .. and cookbooks based on well-known cooking magazines .. You know it's been well tested :- ) BTW - I heartily recommend Cooking Illustrated Magazine .. Doesn't accept advertising and goes into intimate detail of why a certain recipe works .. It's addictive reading. And yes, I loooove to cook." - Andrea

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"Delia Smith all the way. She doesn't just tell you to do stuff, she tells you HOW to do stuff (i.e. instead of saying 'caramelize the onions' she says "heat up the oil until it's sizzling. Now put in the onions. It will look like you've got far too many but don't worry, they'll collapse considerably. Now sprinkle in the sugar but don't stir too soon...") Very reassuring. And when she says something should happen in five minutes, it does.

I'm convinced that her One Is Fun cookbook won me my husband's heart. You can't go wrong when you can whip up a really tasty meal in about half an hour. (And it's a great book for couples. So much easier to double up a recipe for one than to divide a recipe for 4-6 people!).

I also like the Moosewood Cookbook I got last year. Haven't made it much further than the breads and breakfasts section but, thanks to one of their recipes, for the first time in her life this Scottish girl is actually enjoying porridge (oatmeal)!" - Julie

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DGlenn tends to improvise rather than use cookbooks.

"I don't avoid recipes entirely; it's just that I usually don't think of trying to follow one. But I'm trying to force myself to start writing down recipes for things I make, for the times when other people ask me for a recipe. I'm not too good at that yet (see the recipe for squash and potato soup that I posted in my LiveJournal in November). I need a system that'll remind me to take notes for future recipe-writing-down while I'm making stuff up." - DGlenn

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"I love to read cook books. I love to read new recipes and think how different flavours will blend together and if I really like the look of a dish, I will try to modify the recipe so I can work around my food allergies. However, unless I am trying a new baking recipe, I can usually get a decent result without actually using a recipe." - Silmarien

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"I love reading cookbooks as well. I like Betty Crocker, and one called American something. I have a number of cook books and browse them occasionally. I playwith recipes once I've gotten used to them. There are several that I consider 'mine' these are when I've fiddled with old ones and made changes. I love to cook, I wish I had more time, and a family who enjoyed different types of food. Don't get me wrong, they like what I do, they just don't like new things." - Heather B.

"I have over 50 cookbooks and I love to pull them out and read them. I tend to use them for ideas, but I almost never follow a recipe exactly. The exeption is for baking, you kind of have to be more specific with yeast and baking soda than you do with tomato sauce. I cook frequently enough that I can generally pull something together with only a peek or two at a cook book for temp or spicing suggestions.

Current favorites are the Nigella Lawson books, because she's fun to read. I've made a few of the things in How To Be A Domestic Goddess (all about baking) and they turned out really well. She also emphasizes that most things are a suggestion, and if you want to play with the recipes you should.

I also use Better Homes & Gardens New Cook Book, The Joy of Cooking, and Sunset magazine as references, for things like how long to cook a turkey and what temperature. Current reads, aside from Nigella, are Jane Grigson's English Food, Jamie Oliver's new book, and James Peterson's Splendid Soups." - FishDreamer

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"While I never tire of watching other people cook on TV, I tend to memorize a dozen recipies and do variations off those, making a dive for Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone when I need a fancy dish or a clue on what to do with a pound of parsnips." - Nan

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"Good Housekeeping's Cookery Book, Delia Smith's Complete Cookery Course, Good Housekeeping's Complete Book of Vegetarian Cookery and finally A Taste Of The Orient. The first of these is a copy printed in 1966 so it's as old as I am." - David

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Recipe storage

Mastercook - Janet, Andrea and others

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"I enter my recipes, then print them out and either put them in page protectors in a 3-ring binder or in a photo album. As old and creaky as my eyes feel after a long day's work, I like being able to print them out in LARGE PRINT MENU style so I can read them from half-way across the kitchen. I can't recommend this product too highly (I wrote a review of it for Amazon and actually got emails form some people about it!). I also figured out a way to export entire cookbook folders to my PDA, so if I'm at the store and see a good deal on eggplant, I can check my recipe and make sure I don't forget the other ingredients for bouillabaise!" - Janet

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As for recipes, my three boxes of clippings are a testament to my inability to organize them. I had file folders but I couldn't keep up. Luisa's photo album setup sounds very workable to me, though. - Joey

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" I used to use the 3" x 5" cards, but have since "graduated" to a 3-ring binder with hardcopy of the recipes. Many of my recipes are typed in to the computer as a word processing file. Some of the older ones are in WordPerfect; the newer ones are in MS Word. The binder doesn't have any page protectors right now, but I do like the idea. Some of the recipes I have are photocopies, which I should scan for posterity (or in case of catastrophe). I have way too many recipes clipped from newspapers and magazines that I've never tried." - Jim Poltrone

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"For the recipe organizing... I personally have a card file, which is full, mainly of recipes I don't use. Real Simple's December/January issue has an article on setting up a recipe binder for yourself, complete with colour coding and lots of office supplies (a plus!) -- basically you get a binder, a whole bunch of clear plastic envelopes, and coloured paper for the backing, so you can colour-code recipes you've already tried vs. recipes you haven't tried yet. It also recommends writing down recipes you use a lot and what books to find them in, also writing down entire menus and the ingredients required on a single card. Looked like fun but I thought on the whole I'd pass for now, too much effort. If you're looking for A Project, it could be useful. The pictures are pretty, anyway." - ElectricLandlady

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"I don't store recipes so I always end up losing them. Then I have to call the person I got it from or I have to try and find something similar on the web. Or I make something else I can find in a cookbook. Almost all of my 'standbys' I can make from memory. These include: lemon cookies, potato chip cookies, baked chicken, margarita chicken, stroganoff, spanish rice, chicken curry, waldorf salad, red potato salad, tuna noodle casserole, macaroni and cheese, chicken cheese soup and french onion soup." - Amanda S.

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"I store my recipes in one of those photo albums with the see through film that goes over the pictures. I've had it since the late 70s. I find that the newspaper cut outs are going yellow, so now I tend to photocopy them first. I have yet to fill the book -- I end up removing recipes I don't like.

Despite all the computers in my house, I don't think I'll ever put my recipes on computer. In fact, some of my recent recipes from a web page got printed out and put into my photo album. It's actually a joy -- some of the recipes bring back such wonderful memories. Like the one of a favourite dip sent by my friend Joanne in the late 80s through our VAX VMS e-mail system and printed on the line-printer at work at the CBC. Or my favourite banana bread recipe supplied by some actress in the back of the TV-guide in the 70s." - Luisa

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"Storing recipes: I have used MasterCook but quite often I download recipes from CookingLight.com (I'm a fan of the magazine).

I print recipes out and put them in plastic sheet protectors in a ring binder. Handy for the kitchen and good for wiping off splashes. It also makes it easy to reorganize. I used to write out recipes on paper and keep in a daily planner type thing, but paper recipes get ratty really quickly..." - Julie

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Today's Blatherpic:

Tom Jeffers and me. It was Tom's birthday yesterday! Tom is sick at home right now. :( Please feel free to e-mail him with happy thoughts. Here's the song I wrote for Tom seven years ago.

limpy boy

Jeff broke or sprained his toe a couple days ago. He says it's not serious enough to go to the hospital, and he's seeing his doctor this week anyway. But meanwhile, he's limping about, and his toe/foot is getting puffier. I've started to (affectionately) call him Limpy Boy, but perhaps that's not the best choice of a term of endearment. I welcome other suggestions!

Since setting up the UBB Blatherchat message board, I've heard from several people who have told me that they don't post because they don't like the interface for some reason. Too complicated, too many clicks, worry about security. When I first set up Blatherchat, Movable Type and its comment capabilities didn't exist, and there was no IP-banning and other security features.

I'm thinking about switching on the Movable Type comment option in Blatherings so that people can post more easily, mainly because I've been hearing from people who say they'd like to post but don't want to do so via UBB for some reason. You can see an example of how the Movable Type commenting feature works in Harald Koch's blog (click on "Comments" under any entry). I would still keep UBB running for the existing message boards (like the Tolkien boards, the filk-related boards, etc.).

Advantage of keeping things as they are: Even if people don't keep up with my Blatherings every day, they can still just go to one place to see the central discussion, rather than have discussions scattered throughout different entries. Plus I've noticed that people don't necessary talk about my Blatherings but go off on other conversation tangents, which I think is kind of cool.

But I'm interested in hearing people's feedback: Click here to take survey (three questions, you don't have to give your name) or let me know by e-mail.

Thanks!

inkygirl

So I went into technonerdgirl mode yesterday and created Inkygirl (http://www.inkygirl.com).

Yeah, yeah, I know I just finished writing a Blathering about shutting down online projects so I can focus more on my writing. But if you read the entry closely, I only talked about shutting down some NON-WRITING projects. :-)

The fact is, I was already bookmarking interesting-looking writing-related sites, keeping a list of promising job listings for telecommuting writers, and doodling the occasional writing-related comic. Now I'm just putting it all in one place and giving it a name. I'm also hoping that this central page will help cross-promote my various writing-related projects. Eventually I may try to syndicate some of the content, but first I want to see how it goes. I've purposely set no firm update schedule.

I had been planning to learn PHP so I could pull content from multiple blogs into one place, but I just found out about a new Movable Type plug-in that does everything I need. The main Inkygirl page thus includes content from three separate blogs: my general Inkygirl blog, my writing comics blog, and my freelance job listing blog.

I'm also starting to experiment with Trackback, but still don't entirely understand how this works. What I do understand, however, looks pretty cool. I notice Harald uses this in his blog. I tried pinging one of his entries from a test MT blog, though, and it didn't seem to work (my ping didn't appear in his Trackback log).

Now that I've gone through the process of setting up Inkygirl, I realize how realtively easy from a technical standpoint (compared to starting up a print magazine) it would be to set up an online magazine or community blog if one had the time, disk space and knowledge. Hm....perhaps this is something I could write an article about.

Anyway, I've added a link to Inkygirl in the links menu in the column on the left.

Hope you're all having a great weekend!

Blatherpic:

I created this logo in Painter yesterday. Font: LunaITC TT-Bold.

sushi and high tea update

To those who are going to GAFilk this weekend, especially Jodi: have fun! I was the first Supporting Member this year. Not nearly as exciting as actually being able to attend, of course, but I'll take what I can get. I'm hoping to go next year; I've heard such great things about this filk convention. This year, Bob Asprin in Guest of Honor, Sherman Dorn is Toastmaster, Jeff Hitchin is Interfilk Guest.

Update re: Urban Tapestry's upcoming CD, "Sushi and High Tea":

As most of you already know, we're planning to release a new CD this fall, which will consist of tracks recorded live at Consonance, Conchord, and Didgeri-Douze when we were Guests of Honor. The playlist (may change slightly): Amanda, Another Story, Battle On, Dark Is Rising, Friendship Song, Homecoming, I Am Stardust, Monday, My Jalapeno Man, Neurotic Love Song, Star Sisters, Truth Is Out There, Waiting For Frodo.

I talked to Bill Roper (Dodeka Records) yesterday afternoon to sort out some CD specs. We're going to be including all the lyrics to the songs in our liner notes this time. I've volunteered to do the layout of the insert, and will probably be including some little cartoons. Beckett Gladney is doing the cover (yay!).

Links/News:

Looks like the Segway's being banned from several cities. Source: SiliconValley.com.





Today's Blatherpics:

Ginny gave the family Oasis, jackets as gifts at Christmas. Even the kids got little Oasis jackets, but they were too Christmas-hyped to pose for the photo. From left to right: JBR, Jeff, Debbie, me, Case. Yes, it gets somewhat confusing with two Debbies in the family. One Christmas, for example, someone drew my name for gifts, but inadvertently bought them all for the other Debbie. :-)