Chris Amirault

Snooping around for a new absinthe cocktail, I found this entry at cocktaildb titled, simply, Wax. It's not the Wax Cocktail in Savoy and Patrick Gavin Duffy, which is a Pink Gin made with orange and not Angostura bitters. I fiddled a bit and came up with the following: 1 1/2 oz gin (Plymouth) 3/4 oz absinthe (Marteau) 1 T egg white 1 t gum syrup Dry shake with a Hawthorne strainer spring; add block ice and shake hard. Strain into a glass that enhances the full-on wax effect: Those of a certain age will remember wax candy, a strange quasi-food shaped as a bottle (or lips, or fangs, or...) that was more or less edible. If that strikes a chord of nostalgia for you, then this is the absinthe cocktail you want to make. Maybe you want to twist a bit of lemon or orange on the top just to cut the paraffin effect slightly. Me? I think I'd stick with the Gasper for the full-on gin/absinthe assault.

I have imagined saying, "If you like White Russians, you'll love this...."

I don't think we do need a new word. Look around eG Forums: there's a remarkably wide range of people posting here who don't fit neatly into a single term. Restaurant nuts who haven't prepared a meal themselves in a decade; people who obsess about one cuisine and are happily ignorant of others; chocolatiers, mixologists, charcutiers; newbies and veterans; professionals, passionate amateurs, and the curious. What word could encompass us all?

Not quite. Imagine you're cutting some bresaola on the slicer. As each piece comes off the blade, the little slice of bresaola forms a shallow bowl, with the convex side facing the blade. I'll try to take photos next time I slice something.

Yeah, post hoc "easy to make, easy to plate" suddenly is a lot more appealing!

Sorry for the lack of clarification: the latter, Brandy Milk Punch-style drinks. That's the brunch drink, if I understand correctly, and not the one with the milk solids removed. Si? No?

Congrats is right. I'd have cried in bed all day if my first big dive into a group meal involved 100 people. As you think about round two, remember these areas you'd like to improve upon (mise en place prep lists, plating, etc.) and build the meal around strengthening them.

I'm confident that we'll be bringing in a wide array of customers looking for quality food and drink, and we're ready to serve everyone from cocktail geeks to x-tini drinkers the best drinks we can make. As for partying afterward, you've no worries there. Sleeping afterward, now that is likely.

Eh? What's that you say, sonny boy?

Thanks. Two addenda to this topic. Those interested in things Sazerac will want to check out the month of Sazeracs being savored by Society member (and staff emeritus) Erik Ellestad (eje) over at his Underhill Lounge blog. Those interested in advising a middle-aged man who has decided it's time to start a career as a bartender (that would be me) at a new restaurant in town (that would be Cook & Brown Public House in Providence RI) can click here.

Strange how things go sometimes. A few years ago, I wrote about my tussles with hooch and my resulting embrace of cocktail-making. (Click here for that Daily Gullet piece.) The embrace has turned into a passion: I've been teaching home mixology courses, judging cocktail contests, getting my BarSmarts Wired certification, and more. The passion is poised to become a wage-earner, and an exciting one at that. Michael Dietsch (Society member dietsch) asked me to join the bartending team at Cook & Brown Public House, a new restaurant opening next month here in Providence RI where he'll be bar manager. He's working hard on liquor accounts, the cocktail menu, and so on; I'm helping out where I can, whether with a Milk Punch recipe or taking a crowbar to a really, really ugly bar. But that's ending shortly, and soon these creaky arms are going to be shaking and stirring like mad. Working bartenders, I'd like your thoughts on everything: customer service to hygiene; good shoes to ice, glass, & equipment maintenance; what to do and what not to do. Pithy advice from the trenches most welcome.

Renn mentioned Japanese Kitchen Knives: Essential Techniques and Recipes by Hiromitsu Nozaki up topic. I was at Borders today and devoted half an hour to it. I think it's an excellent book, though I don't know enough about the techniques to know how complete it is and it suffers, of course, from being still photos instead of video. I'd be very interested to know what some more skilled folks think of the book.

Jeepers: that popular, eh? OK, how about this: for those of you who have enjoyed the beverage at restaurants, how are they served?

Bruce, for how long did you marinate the beef?

Radishes: great idea! It all looks great. What was the best dish? The worst? Lessons learned?

For a good while now, Paul Clarke over at Cocktail Chronicles has been organizing a monthly online cocktail event he calls Mixology Mondays: The next MxMo takes place Monday, February 22, and Sonja over at Thinking of Drinking has chosen Absinthe as the theme: I'll email everything posted here by Monday, Feb 22 at midnight to Sonja, so get crackin' -- and mind the little green fairies, please.

Oopsie. Phew and -- huh? "[m]isquoted"?

I think that the debates above make it clear that looking for the "best" or "most authentic" is gonna get you in trouble fast. I think John is right about sausage and/or tasso, both of which you could make if you aren't happy with what you can find. Tasso, in particular, is pretty straightforward and makes a stunning difference to the quality of the final dish.

Thanks, Ben, that makes a lot of sense. The TV cameras were rolling after all....

Nope, not 20 for one batch; 20 for three batches, as noted above. Oh, I think you've got it here: prepare fish and chips in the fryer together, so that they come out for service at the same time. Parallel processing seems obvious now, but I was focused on having the two fried in sequence. Thanks!

I made a full-on fish and chips fry last night using the Saveur Milwaukee fish fry recipe I've always used and the standard two-fry method for french fries (following Anthony Bourdain's Les Halles cookbook), with the only real change being that I used 3/8" and not 1/2" potato sticks. It raised some questions about fry technique and timing that I wanted to ask here. Because I didn't want the fries to taste like the fish, I used the following rough schedule: 1. Blanch the fries at 280F for 8m or so. 2. Let them rest while you bring the oil up to 375F. 3. Fry the fries at 375F in two batches. 4. Batter and fry the cod in three batches. You can probably guess the problem here: the fries are done at step 3, and it takes an additional 20 minutes or so for the cod to cook. Thinking of the delicious fries cooling at the table, I rushed the second batch of cod into the fryer before it was up to temp, a stupid move that lead to a bunch of beer batter stuck to the bottom of the fry basket. Perhaps the march of time is simply impossible to navigate here, but does anyone have solutions to how they pull this off? Or do you only ever fry one thing at a time?

What's "Amazon fulfillment"?

Interested to get some feedback from working bartenders about single-glass Milk Punches. Questions: Do you dry shake before adding ice? Shake with cubes? crushed? Dilution sought? Garnishes? Nutmeg? Lemon? Glass? Served over crushed ice? Big cubes? Straw? No? Finally, several folks (Embury included) suggest that you can serve the same recipe hot or cold. True/not true?

Rye and gin here, too: Rittenhouse BIB or Wild Turkey 101 for rye, and a variety for gin (I've got Beefeater, Plymouth, Bluecoat, Tanqueray, and Junipero in there now, plus a couple of genevers). In summer, that'll likely be gin and rum.

I curse my one piece of All-Clad's lipless wonder every time I grab it instead of the Sitram....