Here is a German Split Pea Soup from a loosely followed Saveur recipe containing onions and carrots. I boiled the smoky ham hock in homemade stock before adding the other ingredients and removed the entire ham hock before the peas went totally soft. The result is very very good but I simmered for much longer than the recipe instructed to get a smoother...

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Usually, the macaroni and cheese at our house is a pretty loose concoction. The pasta is often large macaroni but also shells and various rigati or penne - whatever Barilla is on sale typically. The meat is usually some kind of pork - ham, smoked pork chop (a tip from a chef friend) or very thick cut bacon. For vegetables, the SO likes...

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This recipe is again from David Thompson's Thai Food book and is posted on Google Books. The resulting beef in the recipe is tender but perhaps a bit salty for me, so I will probably lessen the salting time in the future. Otherwise the dish is fairly easy to make and quite tasty.Some notes: The lemon grass needs to be very very finely...

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Un-methodically tested first choice dumpling brand. Purchased from Ranch 99 Market in Foster City but probably available elsewhere. Comparable quality Korean or Japanese dumplings are available but these are Chinese style pork dumplings. The dough is not too thick or thin for pan frying or boiling, and holds together decently when pried out of my saute pan. The filling is pretty tasty with...

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Japanese Cooking: A Simple Art by Shizuo Tsuji is a very detailed instructional manual. From the mise en place of proper Tempura making to the various ways of skewering and arranging grilled fish, no technical question is left unturned. Strange that my first attempt at making Oyako Don was a little bit disappointing. The ratio of soy sauce in the sauce and indeed...

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World traveling sort of screws you in the food department. Once "authentic" Thai beef soup, Shanghai eels, truly stinky Stinky Taiwan Tofu and proto El Pollo Loco Mexican grilled chicken sears your taste buds, nothing you can order at the closest neighborhood joint lights the same fire. Cookbooks are somewhat in the same vein. Many often try to reduce foreign cuisines into palatable...

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George Orr has dreams and then whatever he dreams come true. After doing a little too much self medicating, he is assigned to an oneiric specialist, a thinly disguised Freudian psychologist who may or may not be perfectly scrupulous in finding a cure for George. Ursula K. Le Guin's book is a terrific read, drawing from the fear of unconscious desires and documenting...

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The interweb has never known such linguistic and cultural feats of pedantry. First, the glossary of science fiction terms, then the comprehensive time line of imaginative inventions. Technovelgy is a fount of knowledge for geeks with a freak for warp drive dynamics and a great bibliography of sorts for hard sci-fi reading material and forgotten classics. The interweb has never known such linguistic...

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