Chris Amirault

64 grams of sage?!? That's insane. You'd never taste the duck.

I have been informed that my friend is also one of the inventors of Cookie Puss. Who knew?!

I gotta agree. Inadequate glassware and equipment, last minute adjustments, and the like are all par for the course. But ReaLemon? Horrors.... Just goes to show you, can't assume anything.

Thought I'd bump this up because of a spate of examples in the cocktail world. Every time I search on a recipe I find four or five "genuine" origin stories. Anyone else finding this phenomenon? Oh, and btw: wikipedia is still wrong as can be on the chicken salad issue.

A year later, and I'm just learning that this drink carries a claret float very nicely indeed, a la the New York Sour.

Can you give us some more context? I have no idea what you're talking about.

Having spent a bit too much time looking at houses the last several years, I can tell you that a "gourmet kitchen" in this neck of the woods looks precisely like this: It's meant, that is to say, to convey "ooh la la" to McMansion buyers, not to serve as a kitchen for someone who actually takes cooking seriously.

Sacre bleu! I doubt they'd have it back. It's like some plaid Yves St Laurent leisure suit: it ain't France's fault we wore it, and they sure don't want to start now.

Your parenting is a model for us all, sir. Spare the rod.... Here's a useful paragraph about this Francophilic fetish for context, courtesy of Alan Davidson's Oxford Companion to Food:

I was one who bemoaned the loss of Gourmet magazine. (Click here for a discussion.) But I'm wondering if there isn't a silver lining here. How about we kill the word "gourmet"? Are there any remaining uses for this word that aren't either stupid or ironic (and, at this point, irony may be entirely stupid as well). Would you go to a place that announces it serves "gourmet food"? Don't you cringe when a family member tells you they're taking you to a great new place "because you like that gourmet stuff"? Have you settled back in your chair, looked at the delicious meal you cooked and were about to serve, and thought, "Now THAT's gonna be a gourmet feast!" Do you wake yourself up with a snappy retort to the mirror like "It's gonna be a great day, you gourmet!"? I don't. Let's collect all the remaining references we know to the word "gourmet" and scrutinize them. Perhaps we can do the world a service and retire the word for good, much like "ether" and "horseless carriage."

I've tried it at home and can report the following: 1. My freezer barely has enough room for one bottle of gin and one bottle of vermouth. Unless we want to replace bar shelves with a walk-in freezer, that's a problem. 2. Most freezers are set well below the temperature you want for a cocktail, so heating the drink is one of the steps of a cocktail made in this manner. That is to say, the customer has to sit around and wait for his drink to warm up. 3. Part of the point of bartending -- indeed, some say the entire point of bartending -- is that it involves gestures of a la minute hospitality, a dance of front and back of house during which the customer gets a little show that results in a fine libation, all for them. Eliminating the bulk of that has all the romance of pressing a button on a nitro-pour system and slapping down the stem -- which is to say, none. Hell, I missed the ritual when I was making drinks for myself in the kitchen. In short, it's hard to see a workable set-up using this approach in a bar serving customers, which is what we're discussing here.

I wonder if the anti-noise demographic largely represented here consists of, shall we say, seasoned diners. Full disclosure: I was born in 1963.

That is the best kitchen tip I've gotten in months! I always feel lousy tossing all that hot water, and at our house we'd eat boiled eggs until our bellies blew up like Cool Hand Luke.

So does anyone want to take a crack at a list of workable, real-world strategies? Shake your 0C ice hard, one drink at a time, in a capacious Boston shaker to get that energy release and temperature drop? Store your 0C ice in a perforated hotel pan over another pan, to keep it as dry as possible? Or...?

Are you saying that the drinks should have water added after shaking and straining? That defeats the point of shaking, of course, so I'm confused. The acknowledgment here is that water is one of the ingredients of a properly made cocktail. No one here, I'm pretty sure, is laboring under the illusion that properly made cocktails lack water. But, to your point, Shalmanese isn't stipulating that which need not be stipulated. He's suggesting "topping...off" drinks with water after they've been strained, which makes no sense to me at all. I can't imagine he means literally "topping it off," but I can't figure out what it does mean. Do you stir the water in the glass, or strain it into another mixing glass and then pour it? Temperature is hard to figure out too: I like my drinks around 27-29F, and that means any water is going to warm up the drink. So, under-dilute and chill with supercold ice, shake/stir, strain into another mixing glass, add water, stir, strain again... I don't get it. We are in agreement that it leaves something to be desired!

Danny Meyer makes an interesting point about this in Setting the Table. (Excellent book, btw; anyone who reads Restaurant Life topics in eG Forums should grab it.) He talks about the cumulative effect that rooms with poor (or in this case, intentionally poor) sound design can have in a busy restaurant. IIRC, at Eleven Madison Park (or perhaps Tabla, but in that building), he had real restrictions on the interior design because the building is an architectural landmark, but he immediately identified the swift, exponential increase in noise that's caused, simply, by people having to talk with greater volume because of the ambient volume. Each table adjusts up a bit, raising the ambient volume, requiring another adjustment... and soon it's cacophony. Unable to put in many standard noise dampeners, Meyer ended up stuffing balls of fabric under tables, putting up drapes, and doing whatever he could to deal with the problem. And -- as someone who has very bad hearing that is much worse in loud rooms -- I do consider it a flaw, not a feature.

Not a clue.

Sure thing! Just posted it in Recipe Gullet.

Saucisson Sec This recipe is a combination of Ruhlman and Grigson that uses an entire 7 pound boned whole pork shoulder (which is typical of what I get from Coleman at Whole Foods). As Ruhlman notes, this sausage absolutely relies on the quality of the meat, so spend and get the best you're able to get. I've learned the value of butchering the shoulder into lean, fat, and spongy, bloody waste. The whole boned shoulders that I've used usually break down into the ratios given below, which are at a higher percentage of lean to fat than Ruhlman suggests, closer to Grigson's 4:1. If you can't get the fat to that percentage, I strongly urge that you add some additional very cold fat. A note on seasoning. My first killer batch followed Grigson's garlic sausage recipe (p 136 if you have it) and used 1 T quatre épices and 3 T cognac as the brandy. The current version substituted thyme for the quatre épices and apple brandy (Laird's bottled in bond) for the cognac, and it's the best yet. You're trying to enhance and not overpower the pork, remember, so keep it subtle. I urge everyone new to sausage making and curing to review this list of sausage basics before starting. I won't be reiterating those strategies, but they are critical. 1 whole pork shoulder, boned (~7 pounds or ~3 kilograms) 60 g kosher salt 15 g coarsely ground black pepper 2 g cayenne 25 g sugar 10 g Insta Cure #2 or DC Curing Salt #2 25 g garlic, minced finely 1 T quatre épices OR thyme (OR... see note above) 3 T brandy Break the shoulder into strips of lean meat, strips or pieces of firm fat, and waste. Discard waste and chill meat and fat thoroughly. Combine all other ingredients except for the brandy and mix well. In a large bowl and working quickly, combine meat and fat with your hands. Sprinkle 1/3 of the seasoning mix and combine well; sprinkle 1/3 more and combine; sprinkle the rest and combine. Let chill thoroughly; it can sit overnight if you want to break up the prep over two days. Following temperature guidelines obsessively, grind once through a coarse plate, chill thoroughly, mix over bowl of ice, and stuff into casings. Hang for 3-4 weeks or longer, until your sausage has become firm.

Brief update. I have a new batch hanging in my new curing chamber and will be posting results soon. Balancing the humidity is working wonders.

Shalmanese, I don't understand this: Are you saying that the drinks should have water added after shaking and straining? That defeats the point of shaking, of course, so I'm confused. Andy, I agree about the subliminal cues, and wonder if you couldn't make them conscious. I'd bet that most people contributing to this discussion know what a Boston shaker sounds like with six rock-hard 2" cubes in it and what it sounds like with a small handful of wet ice. I'm at an airport bar right now and, believe me, you'd recognize that "Slsh slsh slsh" right away....

A favorite stop of bus tours heading to Mohegan Sun, Nordic Lodge is an all-you-can-eat joint that slaps steaks and lobsters on your table until you burst like Mr. Creosote in "Monty Python's Meaning of Life." Of all the non-chain places to eat in RI, Nordic Lodge is pretty close to the last place I'd send someone. (Twin Oaks is probably last.)

The downtown area is wee and very walkable. You can get to Federal Hill as well if you don't mind crossing I-95 on an overpass. Using your criteria, I think that the best downtown option for lunch is takeaway at Farmstead, a renowned cheese shop that has an outpost on Westminster with outstanding sandwiches; eGullet Society member Matt Jennings owns and ops. I don't think anything else downtown comes close. For dinner, you might be able to put together a cheaper meal at Bacaro (small plate Italian) than at Gracie's, but not by much. For good grub in a relaxed environment you can check out Thee Red Fez (49 Pike St), which is quite a bit cheaper than either Gracie's or Bacaro. If you don't like tattoos and loud music, though, you might want to go somewhere else.

No Angostura at Proof in DC. Who's out where? [Moderator note: The original All About Bitters topic became too large for our servers to handle efficiently, so we've divided it up; the preceding part of this discussion is here: All About Bitters (Part 1)]

Beats me -- but I'm hoping we can find a way to solve this ubiquitous problem, bc it ain't just Proof's....