Today on Gourmet.com:
[Gado-Gado and a New Grandma](http://www.gourmet.com/food/2008/07/gado-gado)
> You can find an excellent gado-gado recipe in James Oseland’s book Cradle of Flavor. As I read the book, however, I became increasingly jealous of the author and his generous friends, who ply him with spicy delights as he makes his way through Indonesia. Two can play at this game, Oseland!
I’ve mentioned before that I love Daiso, the Japanese dollar-store. Now Iris loves it too, ever since I brought her there and told her she could pick any toy in the store. (The most expensive toys in the store are $5, but most are $1.50.) She chose a gaudily-painted ceramic princess. The tennis game I bought there on my first visit (two flimsy rackets and two striped ping-pong balls) has provided literally hours of fun.
But it was Iris’s idea to record a commercial.
[Iris Out Loud #5: Daiso](https://www.rootsandgrubs.com/podcasts/IrisOutLoud-5.mp3) (1.3MB MP3)
Today on [Culinate](http://www.culinate.com/):
> You can make fresh sausage so flavorful that a little goes a long way, and thereby encourage yourself to use meat as a flavoring rather than the main event, just like Mark Bittman told you to.
> Wait, where are you going?
Years ago I reviewed a restaurant with the awesome name of Jack’s Tapas Café, Mainly Chinese. My favorite dish there was a stir-fry of lamb and napa cabbage, with lots of rice vinegar.
I could eat stir-fried napa cabbage every day, but for some reason I’d never gotten around to recreating this recipe at home until last night. I thought it was great, and it makes a little meat (about $3 worth, in this case) go a long way. (Iris ate about half the lamb, but I was happy with spicy cabbage and rice.)
Here’s the way I made it last night, and I was very happy with it; obviously you can adjust this any way you like.
**SOUR NAPA CABBAGE WITH LAMB**
Serves 2 to 3 with rice
1 lamb shoulder chop, fat and bones discarded, meat sliced thin
1 teaspoon soy sauce
1 teaspoon rice wine
2 tablespoons peanut oil
1 large carrot, thinly sliced on the diagonal
1 small onion, thinly sliced
half a medium head of napa cabbage, shredded
1 clove garlic, minced
*For the sauce:*
3 tablespoons rice vinegar
2 tablespoons rice wine
1 tablespoon soy sauce
1 tablespoon chile-garlic sauce
1 teaspoon sugar
1 teaspoon cornstarch
1. Stir together the sauce ingredients until the sugar dissolves, and set aside. Stir the 1 teaspoon each of soy sauce and rice wine into the lamb.
2. Heat the peanut oil in a wok or large skillet over medium-high until it begins to smoke. Add the lamb and cook until well-browned but still slightly pink in spots, about 1 minute. Remove to a bowl, reserving the oil in the pan.
3. Add the carrot and onion to the pan and cook until the carrot slices are well browned on both sides, about 2 minutes. Add the cabbage and garlic and cook, stirring occasionally, until the cabbage is markedly reduced in volume and well browned in places, about 2 minutes. Add the reserved lamb and sauce and cook, stirring, until the sauce is thickened and coats the meat and vegetables, about 1 minute. Serve immediately with steamed rice.
There are a thousand books out there about feeding children, but most of them are cookbooks, medical books, or self-help books for dealing with specific problems. Almost none of them are actually about, well, feeding children: stories about what it’s actually like, stories that make other parents smile in recognition.
I felt enough of a void in the genre that I wrote my own book, but Betsy Block has happily beaten me to the punchbowl with The Dinner Diaries: Raising Whole Wheat Kids in a White Bread World. This is not the advice book that the subtitle suggests. It’s about *what actually happens* when one mom decides to try to improve her family’s diet. It’s believable, compulsively readable, and really funny. And it never hectors the reader. I’ll go ahead and spoil the best part, where Block offers her five-year-old, Maya, some carrots:
> “I think you’d like these carrots, My. A *chef* gave me the recipe,” I add, trying to make them sound exciting. “They’re sweet.” She picks one up between her finger and thumb and takes a taste.
> “Yum, they’re good!” she exclaims. I smile, though not too broadly. I’m well aware that if at all possible it’s best to keep a poker face during mealtimes, even if your insides are churning with frustration, or jumping with glee. “That chef who teached you this recipe is a good cook!” she goes on. “But even though I like them, I don’t want you to give them to me for dinner ever again.”
If this sounds as familiar to you as it does to me, you’re going to love _The Dinner Diaries._
About four years ago, I copy-edited an article for eGullet called The Way of the Knife by Chad Ward. In it, Ward talks about taking a favorite knife and customizing it to his own preferences. I had never heard of anyone doing such a thing and didn’t even know it was possible. He used terms like _gyutou_ and _ubersteel._ I had worked in a kitchen store, selling knives, and hadn’t realized there was anything to know about knives beyond Wusthof, Henckels, and Global.
Now Chad has turned his knife knowledge into a book: An Edge in the Kitchen. It covers buying, using, and sharpening kitchen knives. That sounds unbelievably boring, I know. It’s not. I devoured this book. Chad is funny and direct. I loved it when he said people who use glass cutting boards are going straight to hell. He busts myths: you don’t need to look for a full tang or a forged blade to get a great knife.
But beware. The cover price of _An Edge in the Kitchen_ is deceiving. It may say $35, but it will probably cause you buy $500 in new knives and accessories. That said, one of the most exciting things I learned from the book is that there are really awesome Japanese chef’s knives available in the $50-$60 range. I’m never going to buy a $400 custom knife, but I’m certainly going to try a Tojiro DP.
I’m still not confident in my ability to sharpen my own knives. Unlike chopping an onion, which I do every day, knife sharpening only needs to be done once a year or so. So unless I want to maintain a menagerie of knives like Chad does (and believe me, I *want* to, but…), I’m not sure how to do it often enough to get good at it.
But Chad has inspired me to make two changes in my knife use.
First, I’m going to chuck my medium-gauge honing steel, which Chad says is junk, and get a ceramic steel.
Second, I’m going to change the way I grip the handle of my knife. I’ve been using this Henckels 4-Star 8-inch chef’s knife for twelve years, and I’ve always held it the same way: gripping the handle with a fist. Even though I knew chefs didn’t hold their knives this way, I justified it by saying that I have small hands. It’s true, I do have small hands, but I know five-foot-zero female chefs who certainly don’t use the baby-silverware hold like I do.
It’s time for me to grow up and start holding my knife handle with three fingers and place my thumb and forefinger on either side of the blade. If I sever anything important, I’ll bill Chad.
You can read an excerpt from _An Edge in the Kitchen_, with discussion, on eGullet.