Chris Amirault

Something to celebrate tonight, as it turns out, so before I head off to the shindig I made myself a Rum Old Fashioned with demerara, Jerry Thomas Decanter Bitters, and a bit more of my dwindling supply of Inner Circle Green. Perhaps not quite as pricey as that Carpano Stagg-hattan, but I can live with middle-of-the-road if it tastes this good.

Bit late to the party here, but I thought I'd toss in Grace Young's Breath of the Wok, a beautiful book with quite straightforward recipes from chefs to home cooks. I would avoid the inconsistent Chinese Kitchen by Eileen Yin-Fei Lo, myself: too many misses in my kitchen from that book to count.

Over here, bostonapothecary wrote: Ever since Stephen wrote that, I've been thinking that "balance" is just plain wrong, that I've been relying on a useless concept for years. I've been especially marble-mouthed about it during the cocktail course I've been teaching and at the contest at which I and Society member dietsch were judges. For example, next Monday night, students are going to be drinking Fish House Punch, Egg Nog, and French 75s, and if those three drinks share any sense of "balance," I'll eat my hat. Perhaps the term is itself relative in relation to genre: a sour has a certain kind of balance, a nog another. But that just seems like some compensatory strategy that looks silly next to a more precise, useful notion like direction. But I can't say for sure.

I think I'm going to let 'em make their own champagne cocktails (as I let them make their own gin cocktails last time), make a big Egg Nog together on site, and have a Fish House Punch ready to go. I found Marie Brizard peach liqueur and nabbed it; if anyone has a recipe tweaked to account for it, I'd be mighty grateful, else I'll be tinkering.

Andrew, thanks for the information here. I'm trying to get a keener sense of what's happening around RI in this regard, and will report back when I know more.

Hanukah is around the corner! What are people planning this year?

For a good while now, Paul Clarke over at Cocktail Chronicles has been organizing a monthly online cocktail event he calls Mixology Mondays: This month, MxMo is being hosted by Kevin Langmack of Beer in the Shower. His subject? No, not practical uses for cocktail umbrellas while enjoying a cold one in a hot shower. It's Money Drinks: Yes, yes, we know: two different definitions. So be creative -- use either one! I'll email everything posted here by Monday, Dec 14 at midnight to Kevin. Have at it!

We interrupt another fine eG Forums discussion for this special announcement: The eGullet Society survey is here! Whether you are a member or not, we want to hear from you! Click here to take the survey -- and thanks!

Where are you located, Dan?

Before cooking, when they're thin, yep.

I ground the nixtamal to a finer consistency, so they were a bit thinner. However, that's not the delimiter in the system; rather, when I press them to a thinner, er, thickness within the ziplok bag, getting them onto the comal in one slim piece is a trick. I've been thinking about using aluminum foil on one side, so I can transfer the pressed dough directly onto the comal. If anyone knows a technique, I'm all ears.

Crikey. That thing is potent. It looks like a machine I saw in the window of a store down in southern AZ, about $350. What'd it run you?

You can also do this in a 200F oven to the same effect, following Wolfert et al above.

Andie, your description of your cooking strongly resembles the one I have formed based on your posts here. Your cooking harkens back to a time when people filled their larders with their own goods out of both desire and necessity, and you always seem to make the case for accommodating the requirements of your guests and friends. Seconded.

Melissa, that's just fascinating to me! I have a pretty barren food childhood, save for the odd Maine clambake with lobsters, corn, the whole nine yards, so I never would think of myself as nostalgic. I'm more often seeking to create new memories, not recreate old ones. I'd never have thought of this characteristic as a defining element of how I cook, but it clearly is. Both nostalgia and the new can co-exist, I'd imagine. Grant Achatz has repeatedly declared his desire to evoke memory in many of his most famous dishes at Alinea, a restaurant that's at the cutting edge of gastronomy in the US.

And what kind of cooking do you, you know, cook?

FYI, Kevin's post got me thinking about the "cook I am" part, about which I started a topic here.

I've been thinking about this question -- what kind of a cook are you? -- for a while now. Partly I've been wondering about my and others' choices in the "Cookbooks That Made You the Cook You Are" topic; it's interesting to see who chose certain traditions, who drilled deep in one area and who went for breadth, who lists references, etc. I've also been talking to a lot of chefs lately, and they all have precise multi-word descriptors, 140-character tweets, and 30 second, 130-word-max elevator pitches ready to roll off their tongues, intended to give concise descriptions of the cooking they present at their restaurants. It's very impressive to me, as I tend to blather on endlessly even as I attempt to keep things succinct and to the point <-- e.g. So I'd like to get a sense of how you'd describe your cooking. What words are important descriptors? What cuisines or styles would you stress? Pros, please educate us with your pithy perfection, and I'll try to share mine as I learn from what y'all post, pros or amateur.

FWIW, I keep a dedicated pair of cheap gloves by the freezer (my organization skills aren't perfected), which would also help with the crate handles.

Chest freezers still are, it seems, more energy efficient, based on the Energy Star website. My 20.3 ft3 upright is rated at 671; equivalent chest freezers are around 450.

Two years ago, I bought a 20.3 cubic feet upright Frigidaire freezer to replace a klunker we had in the basement. (It's model LFFH2067DS, but I can't find it online any more.) We love it. The features we really like are the movable shelves, the two wire shelves in the bottom that can be completely removed, and the temperature alarm. It's also huge, which we thought was going to be an issue until, well, we filled it up. If you want accessibility, the upright is the way to go. Why do you want a chest freezer in particular?

Made the above with Regan's instead of Angostura, Marteau instead of Kubler, and a clementine horse's neck. Some people would likely want to bump up the simple, but I really love this weird thing.

Made another few pounds of masa today following the procedure above, broken into three batches. A couple tweaks: Four or five quick pulses in the Cuisinart is enough to crack the corn slightly, enabling it to grind easily in the Ultra Pride. I kept track of the amount of extra water I added throughout: a scant 8 oz for the entire 2 lbs of corn (weighed dried). I only added it when the UP started getting jumpy, with the machine making a low thudding noise instead of a smooth grinding sound.

I've heard that Grey Goose order several times, too. Yikes. That seems like an opportunity to ask, "14 different ones, so what do you like?" Bump 'em up to something better (and pricier) with a targeted suggestion, and cut down on the annoyance at the same time.

I loves me Punt e Mes, but in this cocktail I feel it overwhelms the Benedictine and Amer Picon. I go with Martini & Rossi rosso -- and with an original bottle of Amer Picon, which I dole out in tiny amounts.