Xochitl10

Penne tossed with a cooked sauce of fresh tomatoes, eggplant, and garlic and onion sausage A big bowl of ripe, blushing, beautiful cherries from Yamagata Prefecture

Essentially Manhattans made with Suntory whisky, Cinzano sweet vermouth, and bitters. Because of the Japanese base whisky, we think it needs a different name, and are leaning toward "Asakusa," after the district in Tokyo. Also because the idea of people trying to pronounce "Asakusa" after a few amuses us.

Count me as one of your devoted readers going forward! Your dinners always sound amazing -- it will be great to see them under construction.

3:1 Tanqueray martinis garnished with Japanese cocktail olives. We envision requesting a care package including fragrance-free soap, cocktail onions, and proper olives very soon. Maraschino cherries also v. disgusting here -- waaay more chemical tasting than American maraschino cherries. Broiled salmon, asparagus and shiitake steeped in a soy/dashi dressing, and steamed rice.

Eggplant and string beans cooked in sesame oil and glazed with miso ("nabe-shigi"), with some pork tossed in for protein, served over rice. Served with a nice gift jizake from Shisui, Chiba Prefecture, near Tokyo.

A couple of miso-basted...something... onigiri and cold rice noodles topped with sesame dressing, shredded chicken, cucumber, shredded tamago, and tomato from the Lawson.

Azami requested Western food this evening. We had Pink Gins, hamburgers (okay, ground pork burgers, since our grocery store doesn't carry ground beef), and "broiler fries" liberally seasoned with Old Bay.

Salt-grilled horse mackerel, broiled bamboo shoots, and steamed rice

I'm guessing dried and powdered. There were no identifiable greens in the broth other than the onions, and no distinguishable taste. The soup definitely had more viscosity than normal oyako udon. Think very early stage gelatin. According to the internets, kudzu is native to southern Japan and known as "Japanese arrowroot" for the thickening qualities of powder ground from its roots.

Good question. It had a dense texture and was kind of bland, rather like factory mozzarella. The menu simply called them "cheese shumai." They were listed among a number of appetizers featuring cheese, including "cheese gyoza" and "fried cheese," so factory mozzarella would not surprise me. They weren't bad on their own, but the Chinese mustard improved them quite a bit.

I did follow the instructions exactly. It occurs to me now, though, that both times I made it, I had an imprecise oven, so it's possible that baking temperature issues were at play. Also, I think you're correct about the serving temperature. I'll try it again when I'm back in the States and have access to "The Cake Bible" again. I won't. It's an entirely academic question, but one I've always wondered about because almost everything else I've made out of TCB has been quite successful.

Delivery udon! Oyako ankake udon: chicken, egg, and udon in a broth thickened with kudzu. Also cheese shumai with Chinese mustard.

Hmm. I've made RLB's cheesecake a couple of times, and generally been underwhelmed. Even with the chilling, both times it has come out very soft and not firm enough to get clean slices. I've made it once plain and once with strawberry puree swirled in, and I haven't used the cornstarch. The strawberry version, perhaps unsurprisingly, seemed to be even softer and more difficult to slice. I recall thinking both times: "There's no way I could ice this." These experiences leave me with two possibilities: 1) I'm making it all wrong; or 2) as you suggest, I find the more mousselike texture of this cheesecake not to my liking. Would the cornstarch make a significant difference? I want to like this cheesecake, but because of my apparent lack of success with it, I've made Nigella Lawson's London Cheesecake my go-to.

My birthday cognac: Camus VSOP.

Spam is apparently a very common ingredient in Okinawan food. We met friends for dinner at an Okinawan joint last weekend, and were served no fewer than three dishes containing Spam. It made its first appearance in a stir fry ("champuru") of eggs, green onions, and goya (a bitter-tasting gourd that looks a lot like a big spiny cucumber), served as the eponymous pork product in "pork tamago," and encored in fu champuru, stir-fried wheat gluten, vegetables, and tofu. It was a surprisingly good complement to the bitterness of the goya.

Sapporo Black Label beer Stir-fry of pork, yellow pepper, shiitake, and some lovely snow peas that our neighbor gave us from her garden Genoise sandwiched with whipped cream and strawberries, garnished with a bit of parsley. I don't make these things up.

5:1 Tanqueray martinis Salmon poached in water, sake, and garlic, then flaked and tossed with butterbur cooked until crisp-tender and spaghetti coated with toasted sesame oil. Tahitian Vanilla Pocky (Yes, Heather, I intend to try them all! )

The first dinner in the new kitchen, which consists of a fridge, two gas burners, and a grill/broiler. I made "taki-awase," or an assortment of simmered foods. The assortment included shrimp, shiitake, tofu, butterbur, and wakame (a type of seaweed). All were simmered in dashi stock supplemented with with some combination of mirin, soy sauce, sake, and sugar or salt. The whole dish was quite tasty, though Azami and I concurred that the tofu was especially awesome. We had chocolate Pocky for dessert.

An Okinawan doughnut that was a gift from the proprietor of the place where we ate dinner last night.

Leftover RTC chopped steak quesadillas on corn tortillas and a glass of cranberry juice. I am now officially out of cheese.

Quesadillas on corn tortillas and frozen green peas. I'm down to dregs in the house.

Roast chicken + Ibitini = fantastic last dinner at Palena Cafe. My friends' prosecco drinks (one with strawberry puree, the other with blood orange juice) were lovely, but I much preferred my sweet, spicy cocktail (blood orange juice, Hendricks' gin, Campari, Carpano Antico Formula vermouth).

The Xochitl10 Farewell Dining Tour made a stop here last night, specifically for the Black Sheep Riggwelter. My friend and I split an order of the bacon-wrapped figs, a plate of risotto fritters, and the mussels with chorizo. The figs, which have been described above, were lovely -- I would actually describe them as lush, between the velvety figs and the creamy mascarpone. Risotto fritters are adorable, like risotto ping-pong balls laced with corn. We enjoyed the mussels, which were fresh, generously portioned and sitting in a buttery, chorizo-y broth. Not someplace I intended to visit before I left, but I'm not sorry I did.

Yellow cake with raspberry buttercream.

A bag of McVitie's miniature dark chocolate, green-tea-cream-filled digestive biscuits. They're no Banana Blacks, but I think they're growing on me. They're ugly, that's for sure.