International Asian Dumplings Day

Coolinary Summer Specials End 19 , Anniversary of Tom's 50th Tribute Eat Club Dinner at Andrea's in 2022...and Labor Day...20

This is International Asian Dumplings Day. Dumplings--stuffed pasta, more or less--are found in almost every kind of Asian restaurant. It all started in China, but it's found now from Burma to Sakhalin. Dumplings can be made in many shapes and sizes, with many kinds of stuffings. The most typical is a light pasta skin wrapping a mixture of meat, vegetables, and herbs. Steaming is by far the most popular method of cooking. Some--notably "pot stickers"--are cooked a second time in a hot wok. The vast range of Asian dumplings is most striking in dim sum restaurants. Japanese shu-mai and gyoza and the Korean mandu are identical to Chinese dumplings. The mark of quality in all these is lightness. A dumpling with a thick, glutinous skin is a poor dumpling. Deep fried dumplings are the mark of a restaurant looking to streamline its operations, not make the best.

ganache, n.--A rich chocolate filling or frosting, used between and over the layers of cakes when a major chocolate statement is being made. Ganache is made with chocolate and whipping cream. The former is chopped into small pieces, and the latter is warmed and whipped with the chocolate chunks until well blended. Depending on the amount of cream, used, ganache can range from thick and intense--almost like a fudge--to fluffy and mellow. Either way, the flavor is much more explosively chocolatey than chocolate alone. Ganache is also used to make chocolate truffles.

When you can pick up a freshly-cooked pot sticker with chopsticks, dip it in the sauce, and transfer it to your mouth without its splatting pack to the table, you can claim a blue belt in chopsticks usage skills.

The Peapod Rocks are three of islands in Puget Sound, the many islands off the northwest coast of Washington State. The North Peapod is thirty-two miles northeast of Victoria, British Columbia, Canada, the closest major town. The Rocks are not always above the surface of the water; tides can submerge them. This makes them popular with scuba divers. Whales swim by. Salmon run through here. If that makes you hungry, you might boat the five miles over to the Quilted Pig Restaurant in Eastsound.

Chicago was founded today in 1833. Originally the point from which boats on Lake Michigan would portage to the streams leading to the Mississippi River, the site's advantages as a transportation hub soon became evident. When the railroads boomed, so did Chicago. The rails made it the center of many industries, not the least of which was the shipping of meat, beef in particular. Chicago has been a great steak town since the arrival of the first cattle cars. It's a terrific place to eat anything else these days--probably the most underrated (except by Chicagoans) eating cities in the country. The restaurant scene is not uniformly fine--it's dominated by chains, including many local ones. But the best of Chicago rivals the best anywhere else.

This is the Glorious Twelfth in Yorkshire, England, marking the beginning of the grouse and ptarmigan hunting season. I wonder how many of those birds are still around in England, after being shot at for as long as they have been. In this country, the only way you'd ever eat such a thing (there is an American grouse, living in the northern woods) is to shoot it yourself. Fortunately, laws prevent any kind of sale of wild birds, so they won't become darlings of expensive kitchens.

Diamond Jim Brady was born today in 1856. He started small and ended up big--in every sense of the word. He made a fortune selling railroad supplies, and used it both in philanthropy and very high living. His appetite knew few bounds, and his dinners in New York City were legendary for their grandeur and size. He got his nickname from the million dollars' worth of diamonds he collected over the years. We had our own Diamond Jim in New Orleans--Jim Moran, who was the owner of La Louisiane in the 1940s. But that was a different guy.

Kyu Sakamoto died in a plane crash today in 1985. He was a popular singer in Japan for many years. He had the distinction of recording the only Japanese-language song ever to make it to Number One on the American pop charts. It was named Sukiyaki for the American audience, after the Japanese beef dish--which had nothing to do with the song's real lyrics.

Cliff Fish, who was part of the 1970s rock band Paper Lace, was born today in 1948.

"Hell is an idea first born on an undigested apple dumpling."--Herman Melville.

"Drunkenness is temporary suicide."--Bertrand Russell, a very bizarre thinker, in The Conquest of Happiness. Who would want to conquer happiness? On behalf of what?