Food [benlehman]

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One of the goals I've set for myself over the last few months is to cook and taste new dishes. So far, I've done a lot of poking around with meat, as it is a pretty new thing for me, although I also tried the infamous natto, which I found odd and slightly off-tasting, but not so bad.

Tonight, I tried pasta carbonara. Oh, man that was good stuff. If I go and stay with you, ask me to make it.

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There are 15 comments on this entry. (Reply.)

Natto. Egh. I've been told that the relationship Americans have with natto is the same relationship Japanese have with cheese, which is fair enough when talking about camambert or any bleu, but not when you talk jarlsberg or monterey jack. There is no monterey jack of natto.

Carbonara is one of my favorite all-time dishes. It's amazing how easy it is to fuck up, though. The biggest problem I've had with it is making it too oily. Feh.

Hey, I know you were in rice territory, but I've gotta learn to make Chinese noodles. You don't know how to make any of those awesome sauces, do you? In August we'll be moving away from my favorite noodle restaurant (with the possible exception of Menchanko-Tei in New York), and I gotta learn to make good noodles.

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I was actually in wheat territory, so I'm the right guy to ask, in theory. Sadly, I couldn't break through my host mother's host/guest and male/female prejudices to get her to teach me how to cook. I think that the key to good noodles (Chinese or otherwise) is to make the dough yourself. The other key, for Chinese noodles, is to have a 锅 (american English: wok) to fry them in and MSG to add to them.

yrs--
--Ben

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That's exactly what I was afraid of.

My wok's a nice dark color, but my noodles are consistently suck.

Good noodles can be bought. I see the noodle guys I go to break open a package all the time. I get the same stuff and they suck.

There's something to it I don't see, aside from the MSG (which I can use sparingly without the weird reaction I get sometimes at serious Chinese restaurants).

I've been having dreams about this dim sum place in Boston called Chow Chau City. It's so fucking good.

Crap. Now I've made myself hungry.

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I'll see if I can come up with any other insights.

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Do you use soy sauce? What kind of oil are you using? Do you have a nice, hot gas burner?

yrs--
--Ben

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Yes, Canola/Sesame, yes.

It's the stir-fried chow fun that I most want to emulate, which are a rice noodle, I know, but there's some magic way that they get it to get a little singed, but never dry out.

DAMMIT I'M HUNGRY.

I'm working on Mountain Witch right now, but I can't think over the RUMBLING OF MY TUMMY.

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Oh.

Chow fun. I thought you meant chaomian.

(which was not an unreasonable assumption given, you know, the implication that you were talking about a wheat dish.)

Yeah, man, no clue. You're on your own.

yrs--
--Ben

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Oh, I had some chow mein the other day and I screwed them up, too. That was probably a pretty simple mistake: I should have rinsed off the noodles before frying them.

Crap, I'm hungry. I wish we had something good in our fridge. Like, I dunno, a Chinese restaurant.

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I would also like to log my super-jealousy that Tim got to you first.

yrs--
--Ben

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That's a very nice thing to say. Thanks.

Vincent's got me on consultant duty, since he's trying to learn page design, and Mountain Witch isn't so terribly far from done (assuming I get my computer behaving better tonight. I gotta squeeze more RAM into this thing), and Under The Bed is moving along nicely.

It's all great. I'm pretty sure I couldn't have done Polaris and been confident that it would be done in time.

Pretty confident.

If you want me to consult, though, I'd love to help.

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While you're frying them, pour a *little* water on then put the cover on the pan, so they sort of steam. You might also try experimenting with how hot vs. how long you cook them. I've never actually tried that by the way, so tell me if it works =)

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That's actually what I did. Rinsing the starch off the noodles would have made them better, too.

OK, it's daytime now. I can go to my noodle shop.

Thanks to this thread, I've been thinking about this all day.

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Huh. I didn't have any problem with oiliness (outside of the expected amount from a dish containing both butter and bacon) but maybe that was a happy accident -- all we had in the house was capellini, which has a sort of "mop" effect on grease.

And Orie's fresh, home-made natto could easily be considered the Monterey Jack of natto.

yrs--
--Ben

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Yeah, the traditional pasta for it is spaghetti, which is less moppy.

Mm. Carbonara.

I'm sure there's good natto in existence. I'm also convinced that every Japanese restaurant I've ever been to stocks the stuff that's most likely to make the gaijin make icky-faces, just so they can watch.

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I'm sorry I missed Orie's natto, though I don't know if I'd have been brave enough for it. That bleu cheese sauce you made kicked ass, though.

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benlehman

Food

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bleu cheese

May