Chris Amirault

Just got a pound of gum Arabic from Frontier Coop. There are dozens of mentions of gum Arabic in the Spirits & Cocktails forum, but I'm having a hard time figuring out specifics for applications in orgeat, grenadine, gum syrup (in non-massive amounts), etc. So what do people use it for? In what proportions? Feel free to suggest experiment; I'm game for anything.

A classic eG Forums topic: duck confit.

Why not? I can buy bread far superior to anything I can make myself, but I'd put my confit sausage, pancetta, etc. up against anything I can buy. It's all relative to what I can (or cannot) and want to (or don't want to) make well myself.

Indeed. The price of prepared hummous is only slightly more outrageous than the crappy quality of said hummous.

I do it like Heidi instead of tossing it violently. The lighter stuff is on top -- noodles, say -- so plate them evenly first, then add the stuff that's heavier on top evenly.

Sausage, bacon, & ground beef.

I should add that I'm a lefty and those Chicago Cutlery shears work just fine for me.

This PDX Magazine shot is the only one I could find of the bar at Teardrop Lounge in Portland. If you look past the smiling pates of Evan and Daniel you can see their island set-up, complete with floating teardrops of lucite (?) for bottles. I'm not sure how they feel about the ultimate design, but it seemed very bartender- and customer-friendly to me the nights I spent there.

Depending on the number of people who will work at the bar, the width of the working space needs adjusting: one person will appreciate an easy reach from back wall to bar, but two or more people working in such a narrow pass will kill each other within an hour. Against a wall or as an island? I've seen both work and fail, particularly regarding bottle placement. Having to walk around the island to get a bottle half the time sucks. Ditto for the server station placement. Drink concept and design will have a major impact on the bar, too. I taught a course recently at a bar built for beer and wine service, and I smashed my knee on the wine chest fridge too many times: right location for them, wrong location for me. Similarly, a cocktail bar dedicated to providing a wide range of drinks with a wide range of ingredients needs a different design than one dedicated to a displaying a wide range of vodka and making a handful of standards out of the well.

The combo of Chartreuse and the two pine solutions worked well, but 28 hrs wasn't enough curing. Next time I'll go for at least 36. Minor quibble though -- the things flew off the plate.

Just a quick update on the Waring, with which I've been very happy all this time. However, when frying 10# of roots and tubers for chips yesterday in 25F temps outdoors, I noticed that the break-away plug would loosen slightly. I don't know if the temps had something to do with it or not, but it was difficult enough to fry stuff in those temps without losing power now and then. Still, the damned thing maintained temps even in the frigid tundra of my porch.

Just another vote for Alton Brown's recipe, a big hit last night. Not as good as when I included the bacon lardons, but, well, that's to be expected.

I was going to make a similar case for these pull-apart Chicago Cutlery shears, which I got on supersale at the local hardware store and have used almost daily for a decade. I had a pair of classic bird's beak poultry shears at the time, too, but these do everything those do and more; in particular, they do a much better job with finer items (they can cut paper), and the classic ones failed consistently at skin. They're very easy to touch up with the sharpener too. I'm not impugning the Wusthofs, mind you -- they may be great. But unless your friend is mightily brand-conscious, I think that there are as-good options out there for far less. Hell, get two: when you're breaking down poultry, it's often nice to have a clean pair for all of these other useful tasks.

The latter.

Lots of kids and a menu with some gluten-free options drives the New Years Eve Eve party menu (which is, yes, tonight -- gotta get crackin'), all of which is homemade: Regents Punch Egg Nogg mulled cider Cuba Libres with Mexican Coke sparkling lemonade for the kiddos chicken wings pine & Chartreuse cured salmon canapés devils on horseback (pancetta-wrapped dates stuffed with gorgonzola dolce) mac & cheese mezze plate (hummous, tabbouleh, baba ganoush) w roasted vegetables deviled eggs seasoned root chips (potato, yam, yautia lila & amarilla) popcorn nam yu peanuts

Yeah, but what with persnickety categorization anxieties, I wasn't sure about the Menta & lime. It's a freakish, if tasty, Cuba Libre if you splash in some Mexican Coke.

Thanks to our wonderful, litigious culture, the folks at Rogue Cocktails had to pull the plug on that name and come up with a new one: enter beta cocktails. Lots of good stuff already: the Scotch Sling looks very tasty indeed. As one of the 277 owners of a rogue cocktails book, I can attest to the joy that book gave me; I've made more than 2/3rds of the recipes and enjoyed most of those. To that end, I was trying to find a way to use the Matusalem Clasico and spied the Cynar Julep, a great drink I'd made before -- but I was lacking mint. In beta fashion, I concocted this: No Mint Bittered Cynar Julep 1 1/2 oz Matusalem Clasico 1 oz Cynar 1/2 oz Branca Menta -1/2 oz demerara syrup dash Angostura lime (Ti Punch slice) Stir with ice and strain over fresh ice. Squeeze lime slice over drink -- like it's a twist, not a wedge, with skin out -- and drop it in. Bitter haters, beware. Bitter lovers, I offer you love & happiness.

Thanks to you, Richard, and Greg at Norbu tea, the Dian Hong Yunnan black tea is a regular part of my life.

True that first-wave proponents were already on board, but that number was very small. The tipping point was reached with On Food & Cooking.

Del Maguey mezcal, Aleppo pepper, Khmer salmon head soup, octopus confit, Smith & Cross rum.

I'm back at it with the white pine needles, with this year's attempt in the fridge. Details: Took 60g of sprouting white pine needles (ends of little branches), washed them, and cut them into 1" pieces. Made two infusions: 30g white pine 50 ml vodka 50 ml Everclear Shook hard in small jar for 30 min. Added 50 ml green Chartreuse Meanwhile, steeped 30g white pine in 250 ml water brought to boil and left for 15 min. Added 60g white sugar, 90g brown sugar, 80g kosher salt and dissolved. Strained and cooled both infusions, saving the needles. Layered needles under salmon, poured cooled solution over salmon, layered more needles on top. It's now in the fridge weighted down and curing. I'll report back with results.

Here is Eat Me Daily's list, which includes Collichio's great "Think Like a Chef" book and gives poor Rocco his due.

I don't think that there's any question that McGee's On Food and Cooking was and will continue to be the most important book about cooking of the decade. We all have our favorites, but that's the only book published in the decade with which everyone publishing a book on food had to reckon. You could argue that it influenced many important cookbooks that followed, either by incorporating information from it (Keller's books but also Ruhlman & Polcyn's Charcuterie, Alinea, Corriher's Cookwise, Fat Duck, etc.) or by reacting against the sort of "scientific" cooking derived from its principles (River Cottage, Nose to Tail, Pig & Sons, etc.). Arguing that is probably going too far, but you could do it. We'll look back on McGee the way that Brian Eno looked back on the first Velvet Underground album: only a few hundred copies sold, but everyone who bought that record started a band. I think that everyone who read McGee cooked in a fundamentally different way after reading it. I would agree with the Guardian that David Foster Wallace's Consider the Lobster was the best piece of food writing in the decade, hands down, no contest.

Has anyone attended the seminars run by Vadrna? What techniques does he teach? And what does Uyeda teach when he's apprenticing someone?

Yes, you're exactly right, but those people you mention (in bold) are not the people in question here are they? I don't really understand your point to be honest. My point is that expectations have a profound effect on pleasure no matter who we are or how sophisticated our palate is. I'm not talking about schmucks here: check out this Wall St Journal article about wine judging. Taste is a matter of taste after all. I'm sure that the first French Pearl I ever had at Pegu Club was a fantastic drink; I'm not sure I can sort out all of the factors involved in that evaluation. I'm pretty sure that I'll like whatever Mr. Uyeda serves me, too, for similarly complicated reasons. Whether there's something wrong with that is up to you to decide.