It’s only been nine years or so that I’ve been complaining about my rice cooker. It cooks good rice, most of which sticks to the pot and has to be soaked off. I got tired of waiting for it to die after I read in the Washington Post that rice cookers tend to last for thirty years, so I put a new rice cooker on my Christmas list.

I ended up with the mellifluously-named Panasonic SR-G06FG, and tonight it made its maiden voyage, producing Japanese-style rice for teriyaki chicken night.

It worked great. I was surprised to find that this model doesn’t have a keep-warm function, but I don’t think I care. The rice sat for 30 minutes before dinner, and it wasn’t cold. I was even more surprised to find that it was no joke to say that most of the rice stuck to the old rice cooker: I made my usual 1.5 cups (real cups, not the cup that comes with the cooker) of rice, and instead of it being just enough for the three of us, it was absurdly too much. Cleanup was a snap, too.

People on Amazon report that the nonstick coating on this model tends to start flaking off after a year or so, and you can’t buy just the bowl. I hope that doesn’t happen, but if it does, I will probably break down and buy one of the expensive Zojirushi models.

Speaking of which, why does Zojirushi sell over 30 models of rice cooker? I’ll bet Steve Jobs eats a lot of rice. Could they get him to come in and take over the company long enough to consolidate the line into three smart-looking rice cookers? Prices would start at just $599.

(P.S.: Zojirushi actually sells a rice cooker that lists for $373. Alas, poor comedy.)

Iris has declared that her favorite fish is no longer mackerel, it’s trout. This doesn’t strike me as an improvement, but you can’t pick your friends’ favorite fish.

So I’ve been buying rainbow trout, which is not exciting, but it’s relatively inexpensive and sustainable. Sometimes I roast it whole, but often I fillet and saute it, and if I ask the fish counter guy to fillet it, (a) I never know what I’m going to get, and (b) Iris is disappointed, because she likes to see the whole fish. Probably I am being too hard on the fish counter guys, but I still haven’t recovered from the time I asked them to scale a piece of salmon and they had no what I meant.

Anyway, my filleting technique is not exactly going to get me on Iron Chef, so I consulted YouTube and came up with this English guy:

One minute and 46 seconds later, I pulled out my honesuki and did my best filleting job ever.

Has YouTube ever saved your dinner?

We’ve made and devoured two batches of homemade tamales in the last month. If you have never made tamales, I assume it’s because (a) there is a tamale truck parked outside your house, or (b) you’ve heard that they’re hard to make.

(Before we go any further, yes, I realize the Spanish singular is *el tamal,* but “tamale” seems like a perfectly good English word to me.)

Tamales are not hard to make. They are extremely simple to make. Maybe I’m breaking some sort of *tamalista* code by revealing this. Furthermore, tamales are actually better if you cook them ahead and reheat them. Further-furthermore, tamale-making produces delicious byproducts. From the last batch, we have leftover pork filling that will go into tacos or burritos, plus a bunch of rich, garlicky pork stock that will form the basis of tortilla soup.

Finally, you can make a lot of tamales for not a lot of money.

We’ve tried two different pork tamale recipes, one from Rick Bayless and one from Zarela Martinez. Both were good; the Martinez recipe was slightly better, if only because the pork had a little vinegar in it. It’s hard to go wrong. Next time we’re going to try doing a cheese and green chile filling and a chicken with tomatillo filling. My only tips are: use good lard; spread the masa thinly (I used an offset spatula); and don’t skimp on the soaking time for the husks.

Iris has gone crazy for tamales. She has had tamales for four meals in the last three days. Okay, actually, so have I.

If you have a couple days off between now and 2009, and you’re not as snowed in as I am, please do me a favor and make some tamales. I want to hear about it.

We’ve now had snow on the ground for over a week, which is unusual for Seattle. We live at the top of one of the steepest hills in our neighborhood, which has become a sledding/snowboarding/skiing hill night after night until long into the morning. A couple days ago we saw someone going down the hill in a wheelchair. Iris sledded down twice and then got wet socks and had to come inside, which makes her a girl after my own heart.

One day during this endless silent barrage, we got a few inches of snow and then a layer of freezing rain atop the snow. Iris and I went out and karate-chopped every glassy surface we could get our gloves on and had a contest to see who could extract the largest unbroken sheet of ice.

I was explaining this unusual weather to a friend. “Then more snow came down on top of the ice layer,” I said. “So you had a thin crunchy layer between two soft layers, kind of like a breaded pork cutlet sandwich on a soft bun. Wait a minute, I was going to make burritos for lunch, but now I’m going to make a pork cutlet sandwich.”

And indeed I am.

This month on Culinate.com:

The cider house rules: Real cider, for adults

> For his current bottling, Irvine’s Vintage Blend, he’s using a mix of bittersweets (tannic apples with low acid) and sharps (tart apples with low tannin): Yarlington Mill, Brown Snout, Vilberie, and Chisel Jersey. (Have you noticed how any article about apples soon devolves into a list of apple varieties with evocative names?)

While researching this article I came across the fact that some people believe drinking cider vinegar will make them live to 120. Since hard cider is the necessary precursor to cider vinegar and I drank plenty of it for research purposes, I figure I’m good for 117 years at least.

Oh, and I also appear in a great gift idea column which you should NOT read until after Christmas if you are Jake.