January 2006

Forget the diet Macaroni and Cheese

Mac_and_cheese_surface

Filed under:  cheese pasta
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Reading: Japanese Women Don't Get Old or Fat: Secrets of My Mother's Tokyo Kitchen

image: book cover

Filed under:  books and media japanese weightloss diet
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Perfect roux and bechamel

I have two articles on the back burner at the moment, and both of them use roux. Roux is a basic that every cook should know about, but for various reasons it's rather shrouded in myth.

Roux is basically a mixture of flour and oil, which are brought together to become a thickening agent for liquids. It is used for anything from gravy, stews, soups and various sauces. The most commonly used oil is butter, clarified or not.

Filed under:  basics sauce
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Recipes and copyright - followup

Some very thoughtful responses were left to my previous post, about recipes and copyright. Rather than trying to squeeze all my responses in a comment, here is a folow-up:

Rachel, who was quoted in the Washington Post article, says:

Filed under:  essays ethics philosophy
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Euro Blogging By Post 3

Euro-blogging by post package contents

Filed under:  food events
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Other food blogs: The Foppish Baker

As much as I enjoy reading other food blogs, I don't often review them in depth. Actually, I've only reviewed 2 so far, at a rate of one per year! My aim really isn't be to be comprehensive, so I like to sort of draw your attention to blogs that aren't so well known but are so well written, or so beautiful, that they deserve to get a bigger readership. (Of course now delicious.days for instance has become quite famous, and deservedly so.)

Filed under:  other food blogs
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Recipes and copyright

The Washington Post has an interesting article titled Can a Recipe Be Stolen?. It addresses the question of copyright and recipes. Can recipes be copyrighted? If you take an existed recipe, and change around a couple of ingredients, does it make it your own? How much change is enough?

Filed under:  essays ethics philosophy
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I'm just being very me

I Was Just Really Very Hungry got a mention in the L.A. Times (registration required), alongside such illustrious company such as two of my favorite food blogs, The Accidental Hedonist and SliceNY.

Filed under:  site news philosophy
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New rice and pickled plum

Umeboshi_gohan

My mother recently sent me a huge bag of shinmai from Japan. Shinmai is literally new rice, rice that was harvested this season. It really tastes wonderful; there is very little nuka (rice powder) around it, and when it's cooked, each grain seems to glisten.

Filed under:  japanese ingredients rice
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Judging a good sushi restaurant

A reminder to those of you lucky enough to live in a town with good sushi: This is tuna season! Tuna that is caught in colder waters now has a lot of fat on it, so if you like the fattier cuts such as chu-toro and o-toro, then this is the time for you.

While we are at it, here is how I judge a good sushi restaurant, wherever it is.

Filed under:  japanese restaurants sushi
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