Recipes which use shiitake: snow at the bottom |
In a cooking forum recently someone asked how many fresh shiitake to use instead of dry.
Several suggested how much to substitute. (Note: names have been changed, but the conversation was real (ok virtual and really, paraphrased or edited in parts).) Achen: The two are not interchangeable. Dried mushrooms should be soaked the night before, not the 30 minutes in warm water most recipes instruct. The long soaking makes them a luxuriously plump and yielding product not unlike softly biting into a person’s lip. They have a smoky pungency, a huge hit of flavor, and the soaking water can be used as a base for braising liquids or sauces in Asian cooking. Fresh shiitake have a wine-like complexity to use in western style dishes and gravies.
Tess: Dried shiitake are very different from fresh. Substituting one for the other will yield very different results. … The big difference is the texture and the bonus of flavorful liquid from the dried shiitake… braised dishes are nice with the dried shiitake/or even just the liquid for dashi…
Does that umami taste/flavor/sensation (??) make you just sort of click your tongue? GAK or am I nuts! Achen: Click, click!
You and I must be from the same nut. Tess: You know, that is funny.
Husband has a jaw-tapping impulse for greens: cabbage, kale, chard, any leafy greens… me, I like those things but have no click click kiss kiss sort of reaction or longing for them. Neither does he have that tongue desire for the foods I crave. Mari: What foods do you crave, Tess? Just curious. ;-)
Tess: LOL— the “tongue desire” part may be a bit of artistic ‘over-exaggeration’?
Is that why you ask me about foods I crave? Mari: Yes, that is exactly why I asked what foods you crave. I crave different things at different times, and I have food allergies, so right now I’d love some good crusty rye bread. I used to make almost all of our bread before the advent of my allergies.
I crave summer melons, especially watermelon but only if they’re perfect. Whole wheat matzoh with sweet butter. I’m driving myself crazy, which is not too difficult at the best of times. I do often crave rice of different kinds and I can eat all sorts of rice. Tess: #1 without a doubt would be pasta of any sort, anytime!
Even the act of eating long noodles or spaghetti involves sort of kiss-shaped lips to eat them. When I was 4 that my mother served spaghetti one night. I wanted seconds because it was so so so delicious that I didn’t want to stop eating it. But my mother wouldn’t give me more until I drank a glass of milk. My grandmother must have been there because my mother didn’t usually force us kids to eat anything we didn’t like. So I drank the milk as fast as I could…gulp, gulp, gulp…so you can guess what happened: my stomach did not feel good at all. After the mess got cleaned up, I still wasn’t allowed to have more spaghetti! I’ll even admit to loving chef boyardee raviolli, that’s how much I love pasta!Spaghetti sauce was the very first thing I learned to cook by myself. I was 10 and got distracted by a TV show (Leave it to Beaver?) and the sauce almost boiled away—water to the rescue just in time. I didn’t care, and everyone else ate it so it was probably adequate. I didn’t have much sauce so I would have room for more pasta. I do ramble, don’t I? Your post is charming. A discussion of food preferences followed with an agreement that, “Food is so personal, yet we don’t understand why one person likes this and another prefers that…” |
love mushrooms but love fellow cats more. noodles, rice, turkey, you name it… you’re cookin’ i’m eating! even won a contest cuz of soybeans!
bet you have good kitty recipes! H
check this out!!! ya gotta CLICK THE YOU TUBE LINK TO SEE IT!
http://bit.ly/funnyvideowinner
Hi HOOTe CAT
Soybeans?? !!! Don’t give my mom any ideas:
https://1tess.wordpress.com/2010/01/22/tess-expose/
Gracie
≥^!^≤