Food, glorious food (and possibly cooking).

[Kathy Li]

Ok, let's move this out of the "what would you be?" discussion thread. (Given DD's Edibilia page, I somehow feel that Herself would approve of this topic)

Rysade wrote:
Dead on, kli. I got a book on how to make sushi from the library. We tried to do it the way it said, but just ended up with really weird sushi rice and rolls that fell apart.

Sounds like not-enough or too-much water in the rice. There are two weird traditional methods for getting the right amount of water. You put as much rice as you want to cook into the pot, then you cover it with water. Make sure the rice is level, then stick your forefinger, straight down, until the very tip of it touches the rice, then fill the water up to your first knuckle-line. The other way is to put your palm flat on top of the rice, and add water just until you've covered the top of your middle finger knuckle (aka "The Mt. Fuji method").

I know it sounds nuts, but it works.

So, I tried making DD's mother-in-law's sodabread recipe the other day and ended up making a rock-hard mess, even using cake flour. (sigh). I can make sushi rice, but I can't bake.

[meteorite]

*collapses in a nifty heap*
I just returned from Hanathon, where we drag a bunch of friends out on what amounts to a camping trip with really good food for a weekend. We always eat too much junk food, but the last meal before we leave is always a feast. This time it was tenderloin steaks marinated in garlic and peppercorns, fresh picked corn from the farmers' market, and a vegetarian stew called Buddhist's Delight. Yum on all counts.

Now I'm all hungry again.

[Gryphon]

Ah no!!! A topic on sushi. Bleck. What is this world coming to?????

Meh, Gryphon, you're not the only person in this world. Some people do like disgusting foods with fish. Raw fish. Contrary to some RPer's view of me, I do NOT like fish. That's THE Gryphon.

Fish is bad enough as it is...

But ooooooooooooooooooooooooooo *drools* Rice. Mmmmmmmmmmm...................
S'pose that makes up for some of the fish.

[Kathy Li]

Gryphon, errr.. it's a topic about food. Pick another food to talk about if you don't wanna talk about sushi.

And, as we mentioned before, sushi is the rice (vinegared). You can make fishless sushi, y'know. Inari (sweetened tofu pockets with rice inside), mountain potato & ume (a traditional "dessert" sushi, which is more like a palate scrubber. It's sour and crispy cool, not sweet), tamago (egg), kappa maki (cucumber rolls), etc.

Sushi is just another culture's version of finger sandwiches. You can put whatever you want in it, but what makes it a sandwich is the bread.

And then, there's the sushi version of the doorstep sandwich: onigiri/musubi, which can be just rice, or rice wrapped around just about anything (traditional some cooked fish or ume (preserved plums), but I've seen recipes out there including things like tuna salad and spam.)

Always cracked me up how Pokemon translated onigiri to "donut.

[Peter Murray]

In case anyone missed this entry in DD's blog - it was right after the extract with Carmela reacting to her first sight of Ronan - this is a "sushi" recipe that does not involve fish. At all.

Irish sushi - it doesn't involve rice, either, though there is rice vinegar, and Wasabi powder.

Why don't you believe me?

[meteorite]

RE: the sushi with Spam in it is a Spam Musubi in Hawaii. A brick of seasoned sticky rice with a slab of fried Spam on top, and a strip of seaweed wrapped around it to hold it together. Sounds peculiar until you've tried it, then it's just tasty. Hawaii has a lot of odd sounding local foods, but once you try them, many of them are good. Mmmm... hot malasadas... mmmm...

[Kathy Li]

Ooo! You use sticky rice, not regular short grain?! Cooooool.... and yeah, you BETTER have the nori around it. I love the wild abandon with which Hawaiian cuisine uses spam.

A Hawaiian friend of mine has also told me that sometimes you can find a margarita glass salted with li hing powder, instead of salt. Yum...

Peter--snicker. Now I'm wondering if there's some way of using potato flakes...

[Zgirl]

Did you know that sushi tastes really good in tacos? Yeah, a Korean girl gave me some sushi and I didn't like it so I stuffed it in my taco and ate it that way. (By the way PM I love your new avatar!) My dad makes Ethiopian influenced sushi. It's regular sushi with ethiopian spices on it!

[Gryphon]

And you didn't love the one before it? I love PM's avatars! Oughta have a PM Avatar funclub...

Anyway, this isn't a topic about sushi? Oh, look, it isn't! Wow. I feel realy oblivious right now.

So I'd like to talk about snow cones. Does anyone have a problem with snow cones? They're great! Heh. I got a snow cone maker for my Birthday. Mmmm... We got a fourth flavor for it today: watermelon. There's also grape, cherry, and blueberry. So good.......

[Agent M]

PM's avies are funny.
FOOD!!! I dunno how to cook though...

[Gryphon]

Hah... I stink at cooking. Cooking everything. It all usually turns out black, but that's just me. Lats thing I killed were two bagels. And I didn't set the toaster up all that high...

Ooohoo! Mom made brownies. Soooo goood.

[steph]

i did that with toast before. it was funny when it came out because it was blacker than black. but genrally, im pretty good at cooking. i like making me and my friends luch when mom and dad aren't home. usually i make pasta. it is SO yummy. its my favorite food.

[Agent M]

hee hee. You don't wanna know my attempts at cooking.... it has something to do with tiny burnt and square pancakes... Or hotcakes...

[Zgirl]

I think I can make pretty good food...(if I do say so myself.) I've never really burnt anything. I HAVEN'T killed any foods today Gryphon.

[semiramis]

hee... a friend of mine, who is a fellow second-generation asian immigrant, and I were staying behind in math class the other day, and our teacher was asking us questions concerning Asian cooking. One of them was: "how do you reheat rice and not make it sticky?"

Our answers:

"huh, that's a difficult one..."
"mostly, you just make new rice."
"yeah, but we're talking about reheating here..."
"maybe you put water in it?"
"No, that just leaves you glop."
"Glop...? oh. You mean zho."
"Yah, glop."
"that doesn't sound so appetizing, though..."
"Well, it's not."
"good point."
"...fry it?"
"that changes the texture, though. And it makes it fattier."
"true, true. How about mix it with fresh rice?"
"That's ridiculous. It's like saying you make more barbecue sauce by putting ketchup in it.*"
"Yeah..."

..etc. We finally came up with a good, true answer: "You don't."

XD

*this is what my parents told me when I was four XD