Fat Guy
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Posts posted by Fat Guy
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I'd just like to make clear that I am absolutely opposed to any unlawful importation of cheese, and indeed I discourage any unlawful conduct of any kind. Specifically, I must insist that you NOT:
- Wrap the cheese well in at least two layers of Zip-Loc bags
- Pack the cheese in your checked luggage
- Remove any labels that might indicate the cheese is aged less than 60 days
- Plead total ignorance of any of these issues if you're caught
Thank you for your cooperation and understanding.
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In Vermont they would have been using hawks, though, right? I bet Eagle Hunter's eagle eats hawks for breakfast!
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Pardon my ignorance, but are you literally measuring the temperature of the water before you pour it? If so how?
He probably has special equipment. Me, as a regular consumer, I just use a time-estimate. I did, a couple of years ago, measure how the temperature of water declined in my kettle. Now I know that if I wait 1 minute after the water boils, and I always boil roughly the same amount, it will be between 200 and 205 degrees, which works well for me with the press pot.
Also, since I don't have the wherewithal to be buying and grinding super-fresh beans such as you mention I am trying to make the best possible cup of coffee I can from what I can purchase at the local supermarkets (or is "good coffee" and "supermarket" an utter oxymoron?) Do you have any recommendations about what's best of what is available in a supermarket? I've been buying brands that say they are 100% Arabica, but I still find that the coffee is usually bitter, my biggest complaint with mediocre coffee (which is why I thought I'd try the French Press, I heard that it makes better tasting coffee.)When you say you don't have the wherewithal, what do you mean? Is the issue that you live somewhere with no good resources? If so you can order all kinds of great stuff by mail. Is it a money issue? Unless you live in Alaska, the shipping charges won't be prohibitive. You may even save money if you can find a really good source -- I'd have to crunch some numbers and get back to you.
Out of curisosity, I'd like to know why the ideal is to wait two days after roasting beans, rather than using them immediately.Like many other things, they need a little time to "mellow." Freshly roasted beans are too "bright" and acidic. They get really good 24-48 hours after they're roasted. Then they're in tip-top shape for about a week and then they take a nosedive and turn into supermarket coffee.
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The other advice I'd add, for good press-pot results, is to agitate (stir) the coffee when you first add the water to it. Personally, I do 4 minutes, and I shoot for 200-degrees on the water because the water temperature drops so quickly in a press pot. Also, quantity is important: 7-10 grams of ground coffee per 6 ounces of water.
Murky, what I keep hearing from the people who know a lot about coffee is that the vac pot is a great system. I wonder if there might be an opportunity to innovate there: I've never heard of a coffee shop selling vac pot coffee.
It sounds as though you have the luxury of a small shop, which is great and allows for a lot of experimentation without a lot of capital outlay and risk. I hope your effort to educate customers about the press pot is successful. But I'd still recommend phasing it in very slowly, and laying a lot of groundwork, so you always have the opportunity to change course with minimum cost.
One marketing tool that might be interesting would be a special "press-pot blend." The press-pot, in my experience, is best for full-bodied coffees.
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This whole thing came up this morning when he offered me a sample of pressed coffee he had just made. It was excellent.
Well that has to be the entry strategy. If enough people react the way you're reacting, it makes sense to make the investment and deal with all the bullshit involved in bringing press-pot coffee into a production environment. If, however, you represent a tiny minority of connoisseurs, it's going to be one of these prolonged sinking-ship efforts and in the end all that will be left is a nice collection of used press-pots.
How much, by the way, do you think you'd be willing to pay. And what exactly is the yield on a 32oz pot?
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Vengroff, this is in DC, yes?
Looking around on Amazon Menus for DC, I see the following: Barolo Restaurant, press pot coffee service for one person $2.95 (I assume this is a 16oz press?), for three people $8.50, for six people $14.50.
Galileo has press pot coffee but you'd have to find out the price, because it's not specified here. But it's owned by the same guy, so the price is probably similar.
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First of all, the current prices are too low. Assuming he's serving a pretty good blend already (which is a safe assumption if he's seriously looking into press-pots) this guy is practically giving coffee away. Those low prices will make it almost impossible to price the press-pot coffee at an internally competitive rate. I can't imagine it being profitable to sell the press-pot coffee for much less than $4, but at significantly more than double the price of the current 20oz coffee -- and remember a 32oz press will not actually yield 32oz of beverage -- the audience will be small. Now, if the 20oz coffee cost $2.05, you might be able to get people to see the value in $3.95 for the press pot coffee . . .
The other issue is, what is the actual service procedure going to be? Is this a coffee shop with waitstaff, or is it a buy-at-the-counter place? Because there's a lot that can go wrong with a press pot when you send it out into the world. Unless you have well-drilled waitstaff available to deal with the press pots, it really has to be held hostage by the barista until the coffee is ready. If you give it to people, they won't plunge in at the right time and they'll otherwise screw it up. Personally, I'd keep all the press pots behind the counter, make the coffee to order, pour it and serve it in a mug. That way there won't be much breakage and wear-and-tear will be minimized, so the stuff can be sold a little cheaper. Plus you can add a second layer of filter to the plungers so you get clearer coffee.
Also, there really needs to be an educational and promotional phase when implementing the press-pot strategy. People need to acquire the taste for this stuff. It's always cloudy compared to drip coffee, and it has more of a "rough" taste in most people's opinions, probably in part because of the difference in the grind. So it would make sense to have little handouts evangelizing the press-pot system, and to give away lots of tastes for a few weeks: anybody comes in and buys coffee, give them a little cup of the better press-pot stuff on the side. If people react pretty well at first, go forward with the program. If they're unenthusiastic, forget about it. Cancel the big press-pot order and stick with what's working. A lot of restaurants in New York have tried selling press-pot coffee, and I don't think they've done very well with it because people are ignorant. They want their coffee to suck a certain way. In a coffee-shop environment there might be better opportunities for education, but I'd take it slowly.
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Mamster thinks outside the fruit crate.
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Be sure to check The Daily Gullet home page daily for new articles (most every weekday), hot topics, site announcements, and more.
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Hmm. Here's the image to which you're referring:
Extreme close-up:
Can't say for sure.
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Get to know Peter and Ugo in today's Daily Gullet.
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Be sure to check The Daily Gullet home page daily for new articles (most every weekday), hot topics, site announcements, and more.
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poached. in duck fat.
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Yeah but "poached" sounds better than either.
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Yeah, often when you order steamed spinach or steamed vegetables of any kind in a reastaurant, they dump the vegetables into a pot of boiling water to cook, they drain them off, and they serve them to you as steamed spinach or whatever.
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Hi Mr. Lobel.
Do you have an opinion on Certified Angus Beef in general, and specifically the Certified Angus Prime that seems to be available at a few steakhouses around the country? Is it a legitimate product or just a lot of hype?
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Using only the names of the thread starters from active topics as of 2:18 pm, IN ORDER OF APPEARANCE . . .
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Dear eGCI Team:
"schneich" is Bill Klapp's new brand of precooked al dente pasta products, produced in Germany by Bloviatrix sabg.
hjshorter and food dwarf are competing for the smallest-user award, while charcoop has been named Overlordofpastry.
Eric_Malson has uncovered a stash of Chris Cognac. Talk about babyluck! At the same time, Jason Perlow complains that the Chris Cognac isn't even enough for his twodogs let alone Schielke.
Michael Laiskonis has calculated that the gsquared of the robert40 will yield just enough boiling oil to cook-em-all.
Meanwhile, maggiethecat hosts a Q&A with Australian porn legend donk79. Which just goes to show you, you can't get bloviatrix from a stone.
-Fat Guy
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Note to all: When someone gives you canned produce, jelly, etc. it is a really good idea to give back the jars if you want to plan on getting more.
I learn something new every day.
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I think, were freezing a desirable step in the processing of fresh foods, we might not have such a sophisticated and extensive industry devoted to distributing fresh foods. Surely, it would be simpler to slaughter all your cattle once a year, freeze all the meat, stick it in a warehouse somewhere, and ship it out as needed.
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The slower the better, as I understand it. I believe the best way to freeze meat is to wrap it really well, preferably with no air in the packaging (cryovac is the best, of course), and to defrost it in the refrigerator in the same packaging.
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The only time I choose to freeze beef that is intended for human consumption (as opposed to for my dog -- we throw our leftover meat in the freezer and dole it out to him a bit at a time with his regular dog food) is when I'm making a dish, usually an Asian one, that requires very thinly sliced raw beef as an ingredient. In this case, partially freezing the beef makes it much easier to cut, and the way it is sliced and cooked eliminates most of the tenderness concerns anyway.
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When Ellen and I travel together, we eat in all sorts of places, and her dietary restrictions are never a problem. It's more about attitude than about the actual restrictions. There's an unfortunate tendency for people with dietary restrictions (be they religious, health-related, moral, or, as is the case most of the time, just completely crazy) to think the world owes them some sort of compliance -- that their dietary restrictions and preferences occupy the highest rung of the ladder of moral considerations, higher than, oh, respect for other cultures, etiquette, and the like. That's a bad attitude for a traveler to have, because the farther afield you go in this world the more you have to get with the "when in Rome" program. But, for example, the North Carolina crack refers to the days we've spent with Varmint searching for barbecue in NC. Ellen doesn't eat pork. NC barbecue equals pork. But she has always come along for the ride, enjoyed the adventure, and indeed been an active participant.
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For awhile there, Black Bear was my favorite frank. The all beef, that is. Flavorful, smoky, with less garlic than Sabrett; a quality frank. I ate so many of them that I don't know if I got sick of them or if my taste changed. Taste can be fickle.
John, I am almost certain that the Black Bear franks themselves have somehow changed. When you originally recommended them, I bought a pack and thought they were the best or among the best I'd ever had in that style. They became my standard for a short time, and then all of a sudden I stopped really liking them. I've recently purchased the all-beef natural-casing Black Bear franks twice and haven't enjoyed them very much. I doubt it's likely that we'd both develop idiosyncratic tastes along the same timeline, so I bet something has changed in the real world.
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I would like to point out that I did use bloviatrix in my entry.
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You mean Chabad doesn't have an outpost in UB?
Chabad (which, for those of you unfamiliar with the term, is a major Orthodox Jewish organization with an ambitious world outreach program directed at Jews in some pretty remote regions) doesn't have an outpost in UB, but it wouldn't be terribly surprising if it did. Chabad has a strong program in Central Asia, including in Kazakhstan (which is just to the west of Mongolia) and Uzbekistan. There are Chabad centers in Shanghai, Beijing, and Hong Kong (one of these days maybe Ellen will tell us her unusual story about the Jewish community in Hong Kong, but not on this thread). You might also be surprised to learn that Chabad hosts the world's largest Passover seder in, of all places, Kathmandu. They even have a Chabad center in Vermont.
Sweet Meets Savory...
in Pastry & Baking
Posted
I think some additional focus on the issue of cheese may be in order. Cheese is already the reigning champion switch-hitter: it's the thing that nobody thinks twice about sandwiching between the traditional savories and the traditional sweets.
Another place to dwell a bit more: smoking, and related curing processes.
Michael, you're obviously not going to have any trouble coming up with coconut or malt-based sweet courses. Truffles aren't a huge challenge either. You're going to be pretty much free to create in other directions, without having to overcome much of a preconception against the ingredients being treated as sweet.
The two seafood items are a different story, of course. They're the challenges.
Which gets back to the issue of cheese. Trout roe and cheese. Something to think about. Perhaps you could take a step back and manufacture some cheese yourself, with roe as an ingredient . . . and then plug that into a larger dessert concept.
Crab. There are so many obvious tropical fruit additions that maybe the best move is to steer clear entirely of them. Perhaps smoke can be brought into play here. That salmon candy, why not do something like that to crab? And then work from there. Also don't overlook the dessert potential of the phrase "crabcake."